July 13, 2011
That’s what folks should be asking Jon Stewart. The United States as a country owes China money because it has a trade deficit. The trade deficit means that United States would be borrowing from China even if it had a balanced budget, as for example was the case in 1999 and 2000. The fact that China happens to hold a lot of Treasury bonds simply is the result of what U.S. assets they choose to hold. They could, and do, also buy private bonds, stock and other assets.
Of course the trade deficit is high due to the over-valued dollar. This in turn is partly the result of the fact that China and other countries have a policy of keeping the dollar high by buying up assets like U.S. Treasury bonds.
All of this may be way too much depth for a comedy show, but how about leaving China out of the story? We have a lot of China bashers in this country. There are reasons to object to many of China’s policies (I certainly do), but do we need to throw China into the picture gratuitously? After all, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Barack Obama would seem to provide plenty of comedic material.
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