Posted on 02/24/2023 12:30:39 AM PST by Nextrush
The US debt is more China’s problem than the US problem. If the US decided to be Iceland and default, the US could rebuild from that to become the reserve currency of the world again, but could China survive without the interest payments on money that China has borrowed itself and is paying interest on as well?
If you owe the bank a million dollars, they have you buy the short hairs. If you owe the bank 100 billion, it’s kind-of a different beast altogether.
The BBC has put out the stories about China spending too much money but it almost seems like deflection or projection how wastefully the West has spent money on its welfare programs and so on is ignored.
We need not dig deeply among articles posted on this forum to encounter articles raising the debt and the cost of maintaining the war in Ukraine as reasons to end that war. For the purposes of this reply, I am agnostic about whether or not we should end or pursue the war in Ukraine.
So what we see now is the debt marshaled in arguments to control public policy akin to arguments that raise the covert pandemic, climate change, and alleged inequities in our national commonweal advanced to the same ends.
Nimble politicians invoke their own fiscal profligacy to justify whatever position they advocate today. As you have pointed out, seldom do we see our leaders on either side of the aisle raising the debt as a reason to curb wasteful spending. When the crunch comes, the cleverest and most nimble politicians will promise the most and take the most.
The greatest threat to America is not the war in Ukraine, surprisingly it is not even the existential threat posed to us by China it is, rather, our own national debt which threatens to bring down the very institutions which glue our divided government of checks and balances together.
Make no mistake, reform does not come in the wake of economic disintegration. In the wake of economic disintegration the man on horseback, who will prove the tyrant, comes promising salvation to the cheers of desperate multitudes.
Let's stop using the debt to distort national policies and and acknowledge the debt itself as reason enough to come to fiscal sanity. If we do not control the debt now it's very size will soon control every bit of our destiny.
The U.S. had an annual GDP of about $23 trillion, and is currently facing a $31.5 trillion debt limit.
You really think our debt is CHINA’s problem? LOL.
It is both countries problem. Also China economy and resources are very much not as reported, they are way worse of, but then again so is the US.
You won’t rebuild into a reserve currency after default. Just like you won’t rebuild into a safe heaven after seizing other people’s assets.
The author of the article is not stupid, but he thinks the readers are.
What is the point of wishful thinking? If you want to check out who is going to fail in the event of a spat, then consider thst the US is less than 20% of the Chinese exports nowadays. Now go tobtue store and find a thing not made in China. Now imagine all things gone.
How does the U.S. regain its position as a global reserve currency after default? That’s like getting an insurance company to insure your home again after you burned it to the ground.
It might be something that has to be sacrificed, unfortunately. It’s going to be lost any way, better now at $31 trillion than $100 trillion.
Apparently so. LOL.
Definitely defending the US ability to manage our debt and finances, but if you think everything is preachy for China you are fooling yourself. They are not much better, if at all, than the US.
These are the sort of economic imbalances that lead to world wars. The problem this time is that 2 of the countries we seek to screw over are nuclear armed states. Russia in particular has a very low debt to GDP and is not going to be interested in any global economic reset that leads to a devaluation of the ruble, and the Western economies with their unpayable debt won’t be able to inflate that debt away easily without clamping down on the rubles rise because it would enrich Russia and give them enormous economic power which would translate into increased military power. There’s no easy way out of this predicament which is why WW3 appears inevitable at some point.
Biden and the Dems were paid by China to allow them to run the World.
What you are describing there is the collapse of an empire, so if it’s inevitable it doesn’t really matter when and how it happens, does it?
How Nikita Khrushchev-esque
China has already liquidated most of its US T-bills in order to reflate the Chinese economy. The Federal Reserve is by far the largest holder of US debt.
China is a manufacturing powerhouse, with half of population still in poverty. It can sustain growth by simply pulling the poor out of poverty. Then China has Africa to bring to the middle class and maie tons of money off it. Now with Russia broke with the West it has full priority access to Russian resources. What not to like?
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