Chart assignment

Charts to read and discuss

Read each chart, then answer its questions. Every chart shows its source and date; open it for a table of the numbers and the data to download.

  1. How much US debt does the Federal Reserve own?
  2. What share of people use the internet in each country?

Chart 1 of 2 · Federal budget

How much US debt does the Federal Reserve own?

The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.

The Federal Reserve held $4.58 trillion of Treasury securities on October 28, 2026, compared with a peak of $5.77 trillion in May 2022. Its holdings jumped when it bought Treasuries to support the economy after the 2008 financial crisis and in the 2020 pandemic, when they more than doubled in two years, and fell as it let them run off from 2022. Each point is the last weekly figure of the month, including TIPS' inflation adjustment.

Questions to discuss

  1. In one sentence of your own, what does this chart show?
  2. Find the biggest change or difference in the chart. What might explain it?
  3. Who collected these numbers, and how recent are they? What else would you want to know before drawing a conclusion?

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, System Open Market Account (SOMA) Holdings (The SOMA Holdings data is subject to the Terms of Use posted at newyorkfed.org. The New York Fed is not responsible for publication.) · Data as of Oct 28, 2026

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Chart 2 of 2 · World

What share of people use the internet in each country?

The interactive chart needs JavaScript. The numbers are on the chart's page.

In 2024, 94.7% of people in the United States used the internet and 64.9% in India. The highest share was 100%, and the lowest 8.6%, in Burundi. 182 countries and territories had a 2024 figure. It counts people who used the internet at least once in the previous three months; places without a 2024 figure are left out.

How to read this chart

Each bar is the share of a country's people who used the internet in the previous three months. The dashed line is the whole world. The chart opens on the top and bottom of the ranking; search for a country to find its bar among the rest.

Questions to discuss

  1. Find the United States and one country on another continent. How far apart are their shares?
  2. What do the countries at the bottom of the ranking have in common? What might keep people there offline?
  3. The world figure is closer to the bottom than many rich countries are to the top. Why might that be?

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators: Individuals using the Internet (% of population) (CC BY 4.0 (credit the World Bank)) · Data as of Dec 31, 2024

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