Posted on 05/14/2020 10:51:36 AM PDT by knighthawk
As the Trump administration seeks ways to penalize China for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, it need look no further than Tennessee.
The Lewisburg, Tennessee-based American Bondholder Foundation holds $1.6 trillion of century-old Chinese debt, including interest, dating to before the founding of the communist People’s Republic of China, that it wants the administration's help in redeeming. There is an estimated $6 trillion or more of the debt outstanding worldwide.
The bonds were issued by the Republic of China -- which ousted the imperial government in a coup -- as far back as 1912 and backed by gold; they were defaulted on in 1938. The ROC government fled to Taiwan, where it remains the official ruling body, after Mao Zedong’s communist party took over following the 1949 end of the revolution.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxbusiness.com ...
PING
The Chicoms will say it’s Taiwan’s debt.
At least it can be used to force China to recognize Taiwan.
BINGO!
Or, failing that, find a bunch of Confederate bonds that they want redeemed.
It's not just Communism. It's Communism combined with a multi-centuries old cultural belief (by some but not all Chinese citizens) in the superiority of the Middle Kingdom - the ‘Center of the Universe’. Even those Chinese citizens who have become westernized, fear and respect the perceived inevitability of world dominance by the Middle Kingdom.
Mainland China sends us the virus, and some bank wants to fiscally break the non-communist ROC? Could only make the CCP mainlanders happy.
But they also say Taiwan is part of China. Not that I expect them to honor it anyway.
Call in the favors, errrrrrr loans due.
China, it’s time to pay the piper...
Yeah, kind of puts them in a pickle.
Confederate bonds or confederate money used to turn up on sitcoms, most notably on The Andy Griffith Show, but there were others.
They can’t unless they want to give up on their 1-china policy.
There is a well founded belief that if you owe the bank a million dollars and cannot make the payments you are in trouble. But if you owe then bank a billion dollars and cannot pay then it is the bank which is in trouble.
Think about it.
[Or, failing that, find a bunch of Confederate bonds that they want redeemed. ]
That saying used to have ‘million’ in it instead of ‘billion’, inflation changes everything.
They would then be acknowledging that Taiwan is not China. Not going to happen.
There is a problem here. The United States is also in default of bonds issued prior to 1933. At the time the US was on the gold standard so we were borrowing gold (which was money at the time), and explicitly promised to repay in gold. But when we abandoned the gold standard in 1933 we defaulted on the bonds, returning only paper currency. There are so many countries that have defaulted on debt at time or another, that this is just not going to fly.
Then China cooks up another virus and...
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