A look at who actually holds America's $36 trillion-plus debt shows the picture is less scary than the headline number, and it's actually neutral-to-good news for anyone holding U.S. bonds.

• The U.S. owes more than a full year of everything the country produces, but 80% of that debt is held by regular investors, not foreign powers plotting leverage.
• Foreign countries own about 30% of the publicly held debt, with Japan and China together holding under $2 trillion — a relatively small slice of the total.
• The single biggest holder is actually the Federal Reserve itself, sitting on over $6 trillion, which keeps a lot of this debt "in the family."
• Countries that hold a lot of U.S. debt actually want America to keep borrowing cheaply, since it protects the value of what they're holding.
• Anyone who owns U.S. bonds is effectively collecting a slice of future American tax revenue as interest, which means bondholders have a stake in the country's financial health.

Outlook: Expect the debt conversation to keep growing louder, but the ownership structure suggests no single foreign country can easily use its holdings as leverage over the U.S.