Who owns the most U.S. Treasury bonds? China? Japan? Saudi Arabia?

The answer: None of the above.

It’s us. We Americans own almost $5 trillion in Treasury bonds, all told. That’s more than twice as much as China, Japan and all the oil exporting countries put together.

And so when Donald Trump monkeys with the U.S. government debt, as he has in two interviews in the past few days, this isn’t just a matter of abstract economics or of sticking it to foreigners.

It’s about threatening to take your personal 401(k) out into the back yard and beat it like, as they say, “a rented mule.”

According to official data, we collectively own about $2.6 trillion in Treasury bonds directly or through mutual funds. Our pension plans own another $2.2 trillion. And our insurance policies, such as the life insurance contracts that will pay out if we fall under a bus, are backed by another $300 billion in Treasurys.

According to the Investment Company Institute, a mutual fund industry trade group, the average 401(k) plan is about 25% invested in bonds, both through bond funds themselves and through “balanced” funds. (Balanced funds are typically 60% stocks, 40% bonds).

The older you are, the more you are likely to have in bonds. For “safety.”

Opinion Journal: A Trump implosion?

Trump last week said if U.S. debt levels got too high he’d “make a deal” with creditors. That means a default.

That means you.

Trump on Monday denied that his words had meant what they (sic) said. “I said if we can buy back government debt at a discount, in other words, if interest rates go up and we can buy bonds back at a discount,” he told CNN’s Chris Cuomo.

Sure.

He added that the U.S. can never default on its debt, “because you print the money.”

He’s right on the second point. You can just print the money. You could, ultimately, pursue the “Zimbabwe” route and print ad infinitum. How this represents the new monetary policy of the Republican Party is anyone’s guess.

The one thing that’s certain: Anyone who thinks Treasury bonds are still completely “risk free” is dreaming.

Just a political showdown over raising the debt ceiling in 2011 caused the S&P 500 SPX, -1.11% to fall 15%. How tame that seems now.

A President Trump just winging it in public is going to cause chaos in the Treasury and currency markets.

Legal experts aren’t sure what a default crisis would entail. The U.S. Constitution says government debt can’t be questioned. But it’s never been tested. “No one knows what happens if it is,” Harvard Law School’s Noah Feldman tells me.

Last summer, when the presidential race was just getting going, I imagined a President Trump putting the U.S. into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and crushing everyone’s 401(k). But my article was obviously tongue in cheek. It was supposed to be satire.

I’ve pointed out several times the way Trump has stuck it to creditors and stockholders. It got a lot of angry comments from Trumpanzees who felt I was being totally unfair to their guy.

Little did we all know.

To those who think we in the media are biased against Trump: You have no idea. We secretly love him. He’s the best thing to happen to our business since the invention of the expense account. Trump, Trumpalazoo, and the Trumpanzees are suddenly rescuing the beleaguered finances of the entire news business. A President Trump would ensure at least four more years of plenty for us all.

But in good conscience we do, reluctantly, have to report the truth about what his presidency would do to the rest of you.

If you want to “Trump-proof” your portfolio you would logically want to own non-U.S. assets such as an international stock fund, foreign currencies, and also precious metals. The Treasury bonds of choice would have to be shorter bonds and inflation-protected bonds, which could offer more protection against a spree of printing money. Actually the safest holding of all would probably be cash.

For those who are comforting themselves that all this is academic: bookmakers currently give Trump about a one-in-three chance of winning in November.