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How can all these countries owe so much money?  Why & where did they borrow it from?
Others have pointed out that the entities loaning money to the government are typically people and institutions.  Recently, however, the US federal government borrowings were largely funded by money printed by the Federal Reserve.  The government had to borrow $1.1 trillion from October, 2010 through June, 2011.  During this period the FED printed around $0.8 trillion new dollars to purchase US debt.  Thus, the US government was not borrowing money from people, it was being funded by money printing.  The central bankers call this "quantitative easing".