[sit-rep]

Question for you... Why is China buying U.S. Treasury notes?

[sam_paine]

I think they do it to manage their currency security the same way a child holds on to the side of the swimming pool on a cruise ship. The child's safety (China's economy) is all relative to its immediate surroundings and also the greater unseen surrounding environment. If the US sinks, how does that help China expand markets?

Lately, I've been trying out the counter-panic perspective for FR:

1) Perhaps Bush DOES NOT have some grand strategery or insight on Miers? Maybe she's just a dopey choice that flopped (in process).

2) Perhaps Karl Rove DOES NOT have a weather machine, and Kyoto WOULD NOT have stopped Katrina.

3)Perhaps the Joint Chiefs do not really have a viable long term strategy to extend Pax Americana beyond the historical scope of Pax Romana.

4)Perhaps China's purchase of US notes today has no more relation to the future price of tea in the US than Mao's swim in the Yangtze really had anything to do with the rise of State-owned-Enterprise semiconductor fabs in Shanghai.

In Occam's words, maybe Chinese buy US Treasuries for the same reasons that the UK, Japanese, French and Americans buy them?