The U.S. government's 2026 fiscal year came to an end on 30 September 2026. On that date, after tallying up the entire the national debt to the penny, the federal government's total public debt outstanding totaled $40,171,825,101,340.31.
Compared to a year earlier, the national debt increased by 6.7%, or about $2.532 trillion, above where it stood on 30 September 2025.
To whom do you suppose the federal government owes all that money?
Wonder no more, because here's the basic breakdown! The following chart provides a first estimate of who the U.S. government's biggest creditors are at the end of its 2026 fiscal year, along with the portion of the $40.172 trillion national debt they are owed.
This is a first estimate because it will take about six more months before the portion of the national debt that is owed to foreign interests is properly allocated to the nations to whom it is owed. Right now, the U.S. Treasury Department knows the total amount of what it owes to those foreign interests, but this initial data indicates the nations where that debt is held, not which foreign institutions lent the money.
It will be months before all the numbers for 2026 are finalized. This chart presents a first estimate of who owns the U.S. national debt, which should be within a few tenths of a percent for most of the major holders of debt securities issued by the U.S. government.
That said, let's get to the overall picture of to whom the U.S. government owes the most money....
The Overall Picture
76.8% of the national debt is owed to U.S.-based institutions and individuals. 23.2% is owed to foreign interests, which is the lowest share since 2023's 22.9% foreign ownership. Foreign ownership of the national debt has been declining since 2014 when it accounted for 34% of the total national debt.
The U.S. Federal Reserve is once again the U.S. government's single largest creditor holding U.S. government-issued debt securities worth 11.4% of the U.S. government's entire total public debt outstanding, which increased from 11.2% a year earlier. The Fed owns 22% of all U.S. government-issued debt securities held by U.S.-based institutions and individuals by itself.
Grouping U.S. individuals and institutions such as banks, insurance companies, investment funds, corporations, and individuals together, we find they collectively increased their share of the national debt from 50.4% in 2024 to 51.7% in 2026.
Three major U.S. government-controlled funds make up the balance of the money owed by the U.S. government to U.S.-based entities. Social Security's Old Age and Survivors' Insurance Trust Fund accounts for the largest chunk of this debt, dropping from 6.4 This decline coincides with the ongoing depletion of its Old Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund, which has run in the red in every year since 2009.
The combined share of the U.S. national debt held by the government's military (5.4%) and civilian (3.0%) employee retirement trust funds grew from 7.7% to 8.4% of the total national debt from 2025 to 2026.
Foreign Holdings
The share of the national debt held by Japan and China, the two largest foreign holders of U.S. government-issued debt securities, declined. Japan's share fell from 3.1% to 2.7%, while China and Hong Kong's combined share dipped from 2.6% to 2.1% between 2025 and 2026.
The major international banking centers of the U.K. and Belgium, Ireland, and Luxembourg saw their reported share of U.S. government-issued debt increase from a combined 5.5% to 6.0% year-over-year. Meanwhile, all other foreign creditors saw their share of ownership of the U.S. national debt decline from 13.2% to 12.4%.
About the Data
The U.S. government's total public debt outstanding is the value recorded for 30 September 2026, the final day of the government's 2026 fiscal year, which also applies for the portion of the national debt held by the government-operated trust funds for Social Security, military and civilian government employees. Data for foreign holdings is based on estimates through August 2026 that were available on 20 October 2026. The Federal Reserve's holdings are those recorded on 30 September 2026.
Labels: data visualization, national debt
Soup season has arrived! With fall now in full swing, complete with leaves changing color and cooler temperatures, Americans are increasingly turning to warmer foods as the warmth of summer fades. Foods like Campbell's Tomato Soup, which is second only to Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup in its annual number of sales.
It's no wonder because the iconic Number 1-size can of Campbell's condensed Tomato Soup been one of the Campbell company's most popular products since it first rolled out to grocery stores in January 1898. It ranked as the company's most popular soup until Chicken Noodle was introduced in 1934.
But in October 2026, Americans may be buying less of Campbell's Tomato Soup because its price has spiked upward, reversing a year-long trend toward lower prices.
Here are the prices we observed for a 10.75 ounce can of Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup at ten major national and regional grocery-selling retailers, along with howe they've changed since our Summer 2026 snapshot:
- Walmart: Increase of $0.53 to $1.53 (+53.0%).
- Amazon: Increase of $0.50 to $1.50 (+50.0%).
- Kroger: Increase of $0.50 to $1.50 (+50.0%).
- Walgreens: Unchanged at $1.99 (0.0%).
- Target: Increase of $0.30 to $1.59 (+23.3%).
- CVS: Unchanged at $2.49 (0.0%).
- Albertsons: Increase of $0.01 to $1.50 (+0.7%).
- Ingles: Initial price at $1.39 (0.0%).
- H-E-B: Increase of $0.04 to $1.28 (+3.2%).
- Meijer: Increase of $0.20 to $1.49 (+15.5%).
We've replaced Food Lion with Ingles in our sampling of prices since Food Lion's web site was experiencing technical problems when we sampled them.
Five of the retailers have really cranked up their shelf prices for Campbell's condensed tomato soup, with Walmart, Amazon, and Kroger raising their prices by 50-53%. Target boosted the price it charges its customers by over 23%, and Meijer increased its price by over 15%. The remaining retailers either held prices steady or increased them by a small, single digit percentage.
Our trailing twelve month average of the price for a single can of Campbell's Tomato Soup bottomed at $1.10 per can in August-September 2026, before increasing to $1.15 per can in October 2026 with the month's price hikes.
The following chart presents the price history of Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup in the 21st century, from January 2000 through September 2026:
Prices have risen for Campbell's Tomato Soup because the costs of the things it takes to make and distribute it to grocery stores around the nation have increased in recent months. Those higher costs have put additional strain on the business of The Campbell's Company (NYSE: CPB) at a time when it is still carrying an unusually high debt load because of its acquisition of Rao's. In September 2026, the Campbell's Company acted to compensate for its increased costs and its high debt burden by cutting its costs, which includes slashing its dividend. Campbell's is also increasing prices as part of its turnaround strategy, which is why the prices of many of its products rose sharply in October 2026.
The company's business situation is such that we think it's unlikely we'll see prices return to the $1.00 per can level, which had become the floor for consumers to buy an iconic can Campbell's Tomato Soup since 2022. Since 2022, we would still periodically see discounts lowering its price to the $1.00 per can level, but given the company's change in its pricing strategy, we think that floor will rise to around $1.25-$1.30 per can in the next year.
It's a far cry from the 12 cents a can price consumers could buy the identical size can of Campbell's condensed tomato soup a century ago. Speaking of which, for more history, you can find our collected price data extending back to January 1898 here.
Image Credit: 1923 Campbell's Tomato Soup Ad from The Saturday Evening Post on Pinterest. Original image entered into the public domain in 2019.
Labels: soup
The S&P 500 (Index: SPX) fell 1.95% in the trading week ending on Friday, 16 October 2026. The index closed out the week at 7,659.44, which is a little over 2% below its all-time record high from earlier in the month.
The biggest market-moving events of the week came on Wednesday and Thursday with the one-two punch of the Consumer Price Index and Producer Price Index inflation reports both coming in higher than had been expected thanks largely to oil prices. While both are still a far cry from the high inflation unleashed by the Biden administration, they were enough to prompt investors to shift their attention from 2027-Q1 back into the current quarter of 2026-Q4 because of their potential to affect how the Fed will be setting interest rates during the quarter and raised the specter of the Fed hiking rates during October 2026.
By the end of the week however, the CME Group's FedWatch Tool outlook was mostly unchanged from the previous week. The FedWatch tool continues to project the Fed will act to hike the Federal Funds Rate by a quarter point on 9 December (2026-Q4), followed by additional quarter point rate hikes that will be announced when the Fed's rate-setting Open Market Committee meets on 17 March (2027-Q1) and 28 April (2027-Q2). This last hike represents the only meaningful change from the preceding week, which is now projected to take place six weeks earlier than it had been. The FedWatch Tool's probabilities however suggest it will not take much for it slip back to 9 June (2027-Q2).
latest update of the dividend futures-based model's alternative futures chart better shows how the changes in how far investors are looking into the future are resulting in the changes in stock prices.
There's not much difference between 2026-Q4 and 2027-Q1's rates of expected dividend growth, so the change in stock prices is less impressive than others we've tracked in the past. All the same, unless we see serious erosion in the outlook for dividends, stock prices will likely continue following the trajectory that aligns most closely with how far into the future investors are focusing their attention. If you know which point of time in the future that is, you'll know where stock prices are likely to go next.
In practice, that's something that can be determined by the random onset of new information like the market-moving headlines that investors absorbed during the trading week ending on Friday, 16 October 2026....
- Monday, 12 October 2026
-
- Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
- In the US, a wealth boom and a price shock collide
- Oil prices rise as attacks on Saudi Arabia overshadow Trump's Russian supply announcements
- Fed minions engage in wishful thinking:
- Bigger trouble developing in China:
- China home car sales downturn continues, exports retain momentum
- China's "Golden September" Stalls: Car Sales Crash 28% As Exports Become Lifeline
- China's $7.5 billion EU hybrid boom faces new curbs under China-EU deal
- China’s debt interest costs are soaring above U.S. levels and growing faster than any other budget category as Beijing struggles to prop up growth
- Bigger trouble developing in Eurozone:
- Nasdaq falls ahead of earnings, economic data while oil rallies
- Tuesday, 13 October 2026
-
- Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
- US existing home sales rise in September; higher mortgage rates dim outlook
- Oil prices settle mixed, focus on US-Russia diesel deal, Saudi Yemen attacks
- Fed minions talk up plan to hike U.S. interest rates again this year, hint they'll stop, starting to figure out that AI buildout is driving up inflation:
- Fed's Collins sees another rate hike on the table before end of 2026
- Fed's Williams sees no need for rate hike in 2027, Bloomberg News reports
- Goolsbee says AI-induced inflation is 'jumping out of its lane,' Semafor reports
- Bigger trouble developing out of China:
- BOJ minions swimming in the inflation they longed to create, expected to keep hiking Japan's interest rates:
- Japan's wholesale inflation remains elevated
- 88.6% of Japan households expect prices to rise a year from now, BOJ says
- IMF expects gradual BOJ rate hike towards neutral setting
- Bigger trouble developing in Eurozone:
- Europe's mass-market carmakers under 'enormous pressure', Volkswagen CEO says
- China's carmakers expand their presence in Europe
- BMW deliveries fall 6.3% in third quarter as China sales slump
- French supermarket fridges get hacked, heating to 122°F and sparking fires
- How one of the world’s biggest economies got trapped by debt
- Nasdaq ends down as chipmakers fall and bank earnings roll in
- Wednesday, 14 October 2026
-
- Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
- Consumer Price Index: Inflation At 3.7% In September
- Oil prices climb as traders weigh Saudi supply risk, Russian diesel flow
- China buys 8-10 US soybean cargoes in first deals since Trump-Xi summit, sources say
- Fed minions say no need to rush on U.S. interest rate hikes, but inflation data says maybe there is:
- Fed's Bowman says there's time to 'wait and see' before any more action
- Fed's Daly says rate hikes likely needed, but not urgently
- US inflation heats up in September; Fed rate hike this month back on table
- Bigger trouble, stimulus developing out of in China:
- China’s exports and imports surge past expectations in September
- China's September exports soar, putting $1 trillion trade surplus in sight
- China’s exports surge 36% as AI-related shipments boom
- China factory-gate inflation heats up as commodity costs rise, CPI lags forecasts
- China September new bank loans jump more than expected on stimulus, seasonal boost
- Japanese investors shopping local for a change:
- Japanese banks and insurers return to domestic bonds as yields surge
- One company’s plan to save its factories from Japan’s population crisis
- Chief ECB minion to France: 'Drop Dead':
- Wall Street ended deep in the red after the latest CPI print
- Thursday, 15 October 2026
-
- Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
- Market selloff, rising rates test AI data centre deal boom
- Brent steady as US weighs easing sanctions on global 'shadow fleet'
- US producer prices post largest gain in 4-1/2 years; expensive gasoline boosts retail sales
- Fed minions expected to pass on hiking rates in October 2026:
- October rate hike odds retreat below 30%
- Rate Hike Odds Tumble After Warsh Does Not Address October FOMC Meeting
- Bigger trouble, stimulus developing in China:
- China Q3 growth set to pick up on stimulus, keeping 2026 goal within reach
- For Chinese automakers, the road to survival runs through Europe
- This Chinese export boom really has legs – and wings
- BOJ minion wants to crank up Japan's interest rate hike knob as Japanese institutions think about loaning money to Japan's government for a change:
- BOJ should not be overly cautious in raising rates, board member Koeda says
- Japanese insurers are poised to bring money back home - gradually
- S&P 500 ends higher as traders shift from AI to healthcare
- Friday, 16 October 2026
-
- Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
- US manufacturing output rises in September
- Oil touches $110 a barrel for first time since May on Middle East, Russia supply fears
- Fed minions, bankers say they're seeing resilience in U.S. economy:
- Bigger trouble, stimulus developing in China:
- Everyone watching BOJ minions; chief BOJ minion says will keep hiking Japan's interest rates:
- Global inflation debate puts BOJ rate-hike pace in spotlight
- BOJ chief vows to keep raising rates, anchor inflation around target
- S&P 500 ends the week lower as hot inflation and AI sell-off weigh on stocks
The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tool's projection of real GDP growth for the U.S. economy in 2026-Q3 held steady at 3.6% this week.
Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bull and bear sitting side-by-side playing a car racing video game in an arcade. On the game screen, shown from an overhead view, a race car is moving from a higher lane down into a lower lane on a track that runs left to right. The bull points angrily at the screen and says, "I HATE WHEN STOCKS SHIFT ONTO A LOWER TRACK!" The bear smirks while holding a game controller."
On 6 October 2026, OpenAI casually announced it was "releasing a broad range of new mathematical results produced by an internal frontier model", the same system the technology company used to produce its solution to the Navier-Stokes millennium challenge problem a month earlier.
"Broad range" is something of an understatement. The firm's still-internal AI system solved 376 open problems in several fields of mathematics, backed up by autoformalized proofs using the Lean proof assistant which it made publicly available on a GitHub repository.
On 11 May 1959, Eugene Wigner gave a lecture in which he described "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences", pointing out mathematics was uniquely capable of describing observations in the physical world. So much so that abstract mathematical concepts developed without any connection to any physical science were proving capable of describing and predicting physical reality.
While not quite the same, what's happening now with the specially-trained artificial intelligence models making breakthroughs in solving so many open problems at such a torrid pace might be described as the unreasonable effectiveness of AI in mathematics. The rapid development is shaking up the discipline.
A Productivity Explosion
To show how much AI is rattling mathematicians, here's an updated version of a chart we first featured two months ago to illustrate AI's productivity explosion. It shows the number of math papers submitted to the arXiv repository each month from January 1992 through September 2026.
In December 2022, when OpenAI's ChatGPT was first made publicly accessible, arXiv reported some 3,122 math preprint papers had been posted in its database. In July 2026, arXiv reported the posting of 5,696 math papers during the month. For September 2026, arXiv reports 8,919 math papers were added to the archive.
That doesn't include any of the results OpenAI released in October 2026. When we next feature an updated version of this chart, we expect we may have to adjust the vertical scale because the number of newly math papers could exceed 10,000 per month. For its part, arXiv announced it would limit authors to posting no more than two papers per month, but the daily numbers we've seen suggest that is doing little to slow the pace.
Mathematicians Go Into John Henry Mode
In American folklore, John Henry is the story of a former slave who became a "steel driving man" building railroads after the Civil War. In the tale, John Henry took on new steam-powered technology in a contest to find out whether man or machine could do the job of driving steel faster. He won, but died from the exertion.
A team of mathematicians experienced their own version of John Henry's story in September 2026. Quanta Magazine sets the stage for their story:
On the morning of September 11, 2026, Dor Minzer received a text message from a friend asking whether he was close to settling one of the most famous open questions in theoretical computer science. Minzer, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a leading expert on the “unique games” conjecture, initially thought it was a joke. Then more messages started coming in, and the rumors began to cohere. The artificial intelligence company OpenAI, fresh from announcing a bombshell proof about the behavior of fluids that sent ripples through the math world, had allegedly discovered a proof of the unique games conjecture. They might make the result public any day. If Minzer had any results of his own to share, the messages suggested, now would be the time to do so.
The unique games conjecture is an iconic question in computational complexity theory, the study of the inherent difficulty of mathematical problems. Roughly speaking, it states that a problem about satisfying multiple constraints at the same time can be extremely hard, even if you’re willing to settle for a poor approximation of the best possible solution. A proof of the conjecture would also automatically imply that current methods for solving many seemingly unrelated problems can’t be improved. Researchers would be a big step closer to a unified theory of computational difficulty.
Minzer had not, in fact, proved the unique games conjecture. But he and his graduate students Yumou Fei and Shuo Wang had recently proved a milestone result about a closely related question. They were in the midst of writing up their findings — a process that would typically take months or longer — when the rumors began circulating. The trio rushed to finish their draft to avoid being overshadowed by an OpenAI press release. Three days later, prioritizing completeness over clarity, they posted a 95-page paper online with a disclaimer on the first page: “The current version of the manuscript is complete mathematically, but it is not in the shape we wished to share in.”...
“From section 6 onward, there are literally no connecting words,” Minzer said — just an unbroken sequence of definitions and proofs of intermediate results. “We felt the need to apologize for that.”
It's not as tragic an ending as John Henry's story, yet it is telling all the same. For mathematicians who until recently haven't had any need for urgency in doing what they do, AI is pressing them to become more productive than they've ever been before.
How will they adapt? And for that matter, how many other professions will soon find themselves in a similar situation?
References
arXiv. Math Submissions. [Online Database]. Accessed 15 October 2026.
arXiv. Monthly Submissions. [Online Article and CSV Data]. Accessed 15 October 2026.
ScriptByAI. OpenAI & ChatGPT Timeline: GPT Release Dates to GPT-5.6 (2026). [Online Database]. Accessed 20 August 2026.
Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a dumptruck labeled 'OpenAI' depositing hundreds of math papers in front of mathematicians who look on sadly and worry about their future".
The dividend outlook for the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) took a turn toward lower dividend growth across all upcoming quarters for which dividend futures are available in our September 2026 snapshot of their outlook.
Projected dividends for each quarter from the current fourth quarter of 2026 through the third quarter of 2027 fell back from the levels projected by the CME Group's S&P 500 Quarterly Dividend Index a month earlier.
Here is the summary of how the expected future for the S&P 500's dividends changed between 14 September and 14 October 2026:
- 2026-Q4: Decrease of $0.04 to $21.57 per share
- 2027-Q1: Decrease of $0.21 to $22.64 per share
- 2027-Q2: Decrease of $0.22 to $21.44 per share
- 2027-Q3: Decrease of $0.23 to $21.62 per share
Dividend futures for 2027-Q4 have become available since our September 2026 snapshot. The initial projection of the S&P 500's dividends in that distant future quarter is $21.64 per share.
The following chart illustrates the expectations for the S&P 500's quarterly dividends per share as of 14 September 2026 and how they compare with the preceding quarters going back to 2024-Q4.
More About Dividend Futures
Dividend futures represent the quantified expectations investors have for the future income they will realize from owning shares of stocks, which in turn, affects how investors set current day stock prices. How changes in the outlook for dividends at specific points of time in the future contribute to changes in current day stock prices as represented by the value of the S&P 500 index is described by this math.
Dividend futures for the index indicate the market capitalization-weighted amount of dividends per share for all these dividend-paying stocks that are expected to be paid out over the period covered by each quarter's dividend futures contracts. These contracts start on the day after the preceding quarter's dividend futures contracts expire and end on the third Friday of the month ending the indicated quarter. For example, as determined by dividend futures contracts, the now "current" quarter of 2026-Q4 began on Saturday, 19 September 2026 and runs through Friday, 18 December 2026. The next quarter of 2027-Q1 will begin on Saturday, 19 December 2026 and will run through Friday, 19 March 2027.
Because dividend futures are tied to options contracts that run on this schedule, that makes these figures different from the quarterly dividends per share figures that are reported by Standard and Poor. S&P reports the amount of dividends per share paid out during regular calendar quarters after the end of each quarter. This term mismatch accounts for the differences in dividends reported by both sources, with the biggest differences between the two typically seen in the first and fourth quarters of each year.
Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "A crystal ball with the word 'SP 500' written inside it". And 'Dividends' written above it, which we added.
Labels: dividends, forecasting, SP 500
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