All This Talk About Economics And China

[lligrd]

makes me wonder if these people don't realize that China owns us. How in the heck can we put pressure on a country that could call in their debts and bankrupt us?

[lefador]

1. China is not our main lender

Forget our debt to China, it is peanuts compared to what we owe to most of the big Japanese and European banking systems.

[malikstein]

2. Here are the latest figures available

Japan $648.8
China, Mainland $353.6
United Kingdom $249.3
Oil Exporters $102.4
Total $2239.7

This is US treasury securities. Japan holds about a quarter, China about an eighth of the foreign holdings. These are the top four countries as of January 2007. For details go here:

http://www.treas.gov/tic/mfh.txt

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Interesting thing about that chart...

is that while Japan's buying has gone down a bit, and others, even China, have gone up or down by around 10% or so at most, British buying has gone up almost 30% in a year.

What's the deal we cut with Blair so the Brits buy all that paper?

[malikstein]

4. Quite a number of central banks

have announced over the last couple of years that they would be diversifying their holding away from dollars. Others, especially Iran, have announced that they will no longer trade in dollars, but euros, instead.

Somebody has to pick up the slack, and the UK is about the only country still loyal to the US, so it looks like they get stuck holding the bag. Suckers!