China (and to a lesser extent, Japan) OWN us.

If this doesn't worry people, I suspect it's because they don't know/understand it.

The U.S. budget deficit is financed by borrowing. More and more of that money comes from China, now the United States' second-largest lender, after Japan.

China's investment in U.S. government debt has more than tripled in the past five years, from $71 billion in 2000 to $242 billion in 2005.
Re-evaluating U.S. Debt



Interesting facts on the National Debt
http://zfacts.com/p/461.html

That, coupled with the vast opening lucrative market for American businesses; it's no wonder then, that the US is willing to look the other way when China has one of the worst human rights records in the world.

China and Saudi Arabia are good examples of the true nature behind American foreign policy. It really hasn't anything to do with protecting human rights or ending tyranny, but all to do with the mighty dollar and McGlobilization.

Well said.

Not too long ago, there was an Onion headline that read "North Korea wondering what it has to do to get attention of US military."

If NK had anything we wanted (resources, territory, consumers, etc.), you can bet we would be paying more attention to this member of the "Axis of Evil."

So now things look even worse. China is threatening to dump it's 1.3 Trillion dollars of US Bonds and cash onto the open market. It could destroy the US $.
Source... China threatens 'nuclear option' of dollar sales - Telegraph

Damn. This administration partly went to war to save the dollar (as they made an example out of Iraq, one of the countries jumping the OPEC bandwagon by switching their oil sales from dollars to euros). It will be interesting to see what reaction Washington has to this, if any. I didn't see any report of this on any American news.

It is that dog gone liberal media yanno

MARKETWATCH FIRST TAKE

China's threats may be blessing in disguise

Commentary: Selling dollars would achieve what has to happen anyway

By MarketWatch

Last Update: 12:17 PM ET Aug 8, 2007

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Reports Wednesday suggested that Chinese officials have begun threatening a concerted series of foreign reserve sales to deliberately weaken the U.S. dollar and punish the U.S. Congress for its efforts to impose trade tariffs.

We should be so lucky.

Such sales would effectively accomplish what China's congressional critics want -- i.e. reduce U.S. imports -- while at the same time destroying part of the value of China's foreign exchange holdings.

Massive sales of U.S. treasuries would doubtless cause interest rates to rise and, combined with the already faltering U.S. housing market, probably push the U.S. economy into a recession we're probably overdue for.

The real question the Chinese leadership must resolve is whether the damage to their own country's economy, or at least to its apparatchiks and nouveau oligarchs, would be any less severe.

In some ways the U.S. relationship to China is a variant of the old saying: If you owe a billion dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe a trillion dollars, you own the bank.

As China's most significant export market, a healthy U.S. economy means China has a place to offload all the plastic gizmos it can make, along with toys covered in lead-based paints and tubes of toxic toothpaste.

Maintaining blistering growth has been important enough for China's own "political" leadership that they've been willing to subsidize U.S. consumption by buying up U.S. debt and keeping interest rates low.

At some point that will have to change. China will have to let its currency's appreciation against the dollar accelerate, irrespective of what anybody in Congress says.

So Americans should probably be grateful. After all, as long as we're heading down this mountain with no brakes on, we're better off having the accident sooner rather than later, even if the collateral damage takes out a few politicians on both sides of the Pacific.

- Tom Bemis

Neo-liberal maybe.