USA Debt

[oldtimer1]

China is making no effort to establish their currency as a reserve currency.   And, as long as its value is controlled by the government (keeping it artificially low), it will never be adopted as a reserve currency.  No country would agree to having assets whose value is controlled by the issuer.

China owns just 13% of our debt, BTW.

Wrong, 26% of foreign holdings are by China.

[Gonuclear]

Wrong, 26% of foreign holdings are by China.

My 13% figure is the percentage of all US investment assets held by China as a percentage of ALL such assets.

If you are giving a figure that is a percentage not of all outstanding assets, but all assets in foreign hands, that is a different number.   Still, 26% does not sound right, so what is your source for that number?

[The Abdominal Snoman]

[syntaxmachine]

As already mentioned, the public debt to GDP ratio is 75% (just under $12 trillion), not a particularly interesting figure -- there just isn't any empirical research indicating that this value has special significance (discredited research indicated that 90% had special significance; see "Rogoff and Reinhart").

Since the public debt to GDP ratio has two inputs, the federal government can continually add more debt to the pile while simultaneously decreasing the ratio. While Washington absolutely needs to address certain fundamental problems (e.g., reforming Medicare, reducing world police-style defense spending), there isn't anything fatal about the current situation even if such work is delayed -- CBO projections indicate it will take another 25+ years for the public debt to GDP ratio to reach 100% if no changes at all are made.

lol, just lol @ all the fear mongering around these issues. Somebody is making a lot of money off of it, but I have a feeling it isn't the people soaking it up.