Who owns Federal Debt?

When somebody says "we're broke", what does that even mean unless you know who the creditor is ?

The operations of the Federal Reserve may be a bit opaque. I think I know how they do open market operations, which is what controls the interest rates ( and money supply ). In order to raise rates, they sell bonds on the open market. This puts downward pressure on the price of bonds, which inversely effects their yield rate. ( I think ). So, if they want to tighten monetary policy ahead of inflationary pressures, they'll sell their supply of bonds. This also has the effect of reducing their holdings of bonds.

Thinking a bit about this. If the Fed monetized the debts ( by buying bonds ), they'd eventually gather up a crap load of US bonds. Eventually, they'd like to get rid of all that paper, and one way would be to off load it into the market. But by doing that, they'd have to raise interest rates. We've been in a high interest rate environment since the Biden years took over in 2021. It was also a time of higher inflation. Thus inflation can be a cover for offloading all those bonds that they accumulated over the years of low interest rate and QE ( which included monetizing US Debt).

Hence the question. Who bought all that debt from the Fed so that they could raise interest rates?

It doesn't appear to be China, nor any of the BRICS countries. Not hardly. Then who?

I'm going to guess that it was the big US banks. It would be considered a safe place to park money. But if interest rates go down, then what?  The Fed's going to buy those bonds back, but from whom?  Anyway, it is a opaque type situation. Is anybody giving it much thought?

By monetizing all that debt, they may have to monetize it right back to lower rates. Rates are fairly high so as to tame inflation. What happens to inflation then if the Fed floods the zone with cash?

Not sure what to think about all this.