[ArcadeQuarters]

We send them numbers and a few little green pieces of paper and they send us useful products. After that, the transaction is done. We’re not required to give them our stuff. We win.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: We send them numbers and a few little green pieces of paper and they send us useful products. After that, the transaction is done.

If I owe you $1,000 dollars and cannot pay, I am under your mercy.

If I owe you a trillion dollars and cannot pay, YOU are under MY mercy.

[eastforker]

First you have to have a job to send them those little green pieces of paper.We still need to bring back manufacturing jobs. Then we need to make sure those jobs are available to US citizens.

[riverdawg]

“We send them numbers and a few little green pieces of paper and they send us useful products. After that, the transaction is done.”

Not quite. They take the little green pieces of paper and buy dollar-denominated assets. Those might include U.S. Treasury bonds, real estate, commodities like oil, U.S. companies ... Remember when the Japanese went on a buying spree in the late 1980s and early 1990s, buying the Pebble Beach Company, Rockefeller Center, etc.? Many of those investments later turned sour, the Japanese economy tanked, and the Japanese investors lost their shirts. History could repeat ...