Well, in his defense, we both made the same mistake in our posts. Sometime you can overlook things when you hit the Reply button.
The Chinese can't call in the debt, it would create as many problems for them as it would for the US.
What exactly is that $3 trillion going to do for them? What do you think would actually happen if they called in the debt?
We're selling them the older model of F16s (F-16A/F-16B) upgrade kits....... I believe we've done this with other allies as well. I actually don't think we should be selling the latest/greatest things we've got when our older models are superior to what most countries have in their arsenal. No....big.....deal... Unless you love Taiwan and see them as an extra special ally or something.
$1 trillion of it is Gold. They have something to fall back on to cushion their fall in addition to the fact that they actually have heavy industry (whereas we have the Rust Belt), they would come out of an economic collapse better than we would.
I don't know if they are all that special, but they used to be good leverage when dealing with the Mainland, but that's been squandered away like so many other things Obama and his lackeys touch.
The lion's share of the blame goes to the left for changing the character of the American people. The Republicans simply cooperated with the left. There won't be two successor states. There will be dozens. Those foreigners who fear American power should consider people like me to be tactical allies.
Yeah, I don't think the entire U.S./Taiwan relationship has been damaged. If the Taiwanese were saying so, I would give it credence. The thrust behind this was issue to get Lockheed Martin a contract to build more new F16s. I see all kinds of complaining from U.S. congressmen and no actual complaints from Taiwan. Gee.....a manufactured issue? No....couldn't be.
Of course we had a choice. We could have chosen to sell them the fighter jets. What is China going to do? Nothing, that's what. They own our debt, but we own their entire economy. Without us, there would be no growth, no investment.
There is zero chance they would do that. We would simply repudiate the debt and tell them to go pound sand. Have fun trying to grow your economy without access to American consumers.
Those dollars wouldn't be worth the paper they were written on if we repudiated our debt. What's more, their economy would contract HARD without a robust consumer market to drive their production. China's economic future is totally dependent upon the US and Europe.
China can't "call in", that's not how bonds work. they can stop buying, or dump the bonds on the market-that's it. problem with that is, they have nothing else to do with the money we ship them for the crap we buy from them. we stop buying and they're in real trouble. they need us much as we need them-maybe more.
It's just paper. Paper isn't worth anything. A market for what? You think Chinese and Indian people have enough disposable income to buy all the material niceties that Americans consume? Without access to western consumer markets, China is dead in the water and they know it. The only one who doesn't seem to understand the leverage we have over China is our inept government. The US is still the big dog on the block and we need to start acting like it. I'm not saying we should engage in protectionist policies because that won't help anyone, but letting China dictate our foreign policy is just outlandish. They are an impoverished and underdeveloped nation with a military that is light years behind us. Letting them boss us around is like a pitbull rolling over for a poodle.
Then our economy would vanish and the dollar wouldn't be worth the paper its printed on while China shifts its market to India and Europe and floats on its $3 trillion in reserves.
