Uh Oh: China Doesn't Want To Lend Us Money Anymore

08-22-2009 • The Business Insider

The United States needs to borrow nearly $10 trillion over the next decade, including about $1.6 trillion this year. Where's it going to come from? This is a critical question, because resistance on the part of creditors will drive up interest rates, clobbering the housing market and demolishing the value of whatever cash savings Americans have left. The other answer--our government lending the money to itself--will destroy the value of the dollar, and that wouldn't help too many people, either (except debtors--it would help debtors because they will be able to repay nominal debts with toilet-paper dollars. For now, the money we're borrowing is coming from somewhere, thankfully. But it's not coming from China, which has funded our spending for most of the past decade. As you can see in the chart above from the NYT, China's absolute purchases of Treasury debt continued to rise through last year, but the percentage of our borrowing that China is funding is s

3 Comments in Response to Uh Oh: China Doesn't Want To Lend Us Money Anymore

Comment by TheRockster

Entered on: 8/23/2009 10:14:37 AM

Shouldn't that poster be entitled:

Louse Tze ???

Comment by Michael Shoen

Entered on: 8/23/2009 10:11:34 AM

The quote about the ports and rail systems cannot be blamed on Obama. This started decades ago when China made a commitment to become the manufacturing leader of the world, including infrastructure. Instead, after WWII, we made a commitment to begin stealing wealth from other nations, instead of acquiring it the hard way, through product innovation and manufacturing. We stole it through the dollar as the world currency standard, we stole it through the IMF and WTO and we stole it through our chickensh-- wars and CIA manipulations in over 40 countries throughout the world. Instead of spending our extra money on infrastructure and education, we poured it into the military-industrial-governmental complex to fight phony boogie men. The Bush Crime Family, the Republicans and the the phony religious right were behind much of this, but we all share the blame. The Democrats were more of the same and rarely spoke out -- John Kennedy excepted, and they shot him down like a dog on the streets of Dallas. So stop singling out Obama, and spread the blame around, including to ourselves.

Comment by Lucky Red

Entered on: 8/22/2009 2:15:17 PM

Uh...I got a newsflash for ya: the dollars has less value than toilet paper. Yeah, I realize that while y'all think it's Obama's fault, the reality is that it started a long, long, looooooooooooooong time before Obama came to be. If you wanna start looking for someone to blame, howz about you start with Bush? That'd be a bit more realistic, honest and on the ball.

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