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. Who owns the US national debt?
  2. Which big U.S. cities have the highest murder rates?

Chart 1 of 2 · Federal budget

Who owns the US national debt?

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

At the end of August 2026 the federal debt was $40.2 trillion. Other U.S. investors (banks, mutual funds, pension funds, state and local governments and people) held $18.5 trillion, 46%. Foreign investors held $9.33 trillion (23%), federal trust funds such as Social Security's held $7.76 trillion (19%), and the Federal Reserve $4.55 trillion (11%). Foreign holdings are Treasury's TIC estimate, partly at market value, and the U.S. share is what's left after the others, so the split is approximate.

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: U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data, Debt to the Penny; U.S. Treasury, TIC Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities; Federal Reserve Bank of New York, SOMA Holdings (Treasury data public domain (U.S. government work). 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 Aug 31, 2026

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Chart 2 of 2 · Crime

Which big U.S. cities have the highest murder rates?

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

In 2025 St. Louis, MO had the highest murder rate of the 89 biggest U.S. cities whose police reported a full year to the FBI, about 51.3 per 100,000 people, followed by Memphis, TN (31.0) and Cleveland, OH (28.0). Irvine, CA (0.0) and Plano, TX (0.7) had the lowest; the U.S. rate was about 4.4. Departments that didn't report a full year are left out (for 2025, New Orleans, Orlando and St. Petersburg, Florida). Each rate is per person the department serves, and a few, such as Las Vegas, Honolulu, Jacksonville and Louisville, serve their whole county. A city's rate also depends on where its borders fall, so compare cities with care.

How to read this chart

Each bar is the number of murders in a city in one year for every 100,000 people its police department serves. The dashed line is the U.S. rate. Murders are rare, so in a smaller city a handful more or fewer in one year can move its rate and its rank a lot.

Questions to discuss

  1. How many cities on the chart have a murder rate above the U.S. rate, and how many are below it?
  2. Why does a chart like this use murders per 100,000 people instead of the total number of murders in each city?
  3. A city's rank can jump from one year to the next. Why might small numbers make rates bounce around?

Source: FBI Crime Data Explorer, Uniform Crime Reporting Program (Public domain (U.S. government work); source FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program) · Data as of Dec 31, 2025

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