The size of the US debt is the number everyone quotes. The number I find more useful is what the government pays each year to carry it. Debt can grow for years without hurting. Interest is the bill that arrives, and it moves when rates move.
That is why the Bullion API now serves US federal interest payments. It comes from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), quarterly, in millions of US dollars.
Why you would want it
The Bullion API is built around gold, and the interest bill bears on it. If a government spends more on interest, it has less for anything else. The pressure to borrow more or hold rates down goes up. That pressure is part of the case people make for gold.
The API already serves gold prices, policy rates and bond yields. With interest payments beside them you can ask real questions in one place:
- Did the interest bill rise when yields rose, and by how much?
- How does the cost of the debt compare with how the gold price moved over the same quarters?
- Has the interest bill kept climbing while policy rates were flat?
The Interest tab of the US government debt page shows the series. The API tab beside it shows the call for the same data, and the endpoint is /v1/debt-interest/us.
Reading the number
BEA publishes this series as a seasonally adjusted annual rate. Each quarterly figure is what a year of interest would add up to if that quarter's pace held. So it is about four times the interest paid in the quarter.
For example, a quarter reported as 1,000,000 means $1 trillion a year at that quarter's pace, or about $250 billion paid in the quarter. To get the interest for one quarter, divide the value by four. Don't add the four quarters of a year together, because that counts the year four times.
BEA counts interest as it accrues, in the national accounts. Treasury's monthly figure is gross interest paid. The two measure different things, so they will not match, and a gap between them is not an error in either.
