Friday, January 22, 2010

Thank Goodness for China

Jim Jubak and others have speculated about (and Thomas Friedman has written about) the prospects of a Chinese bubble and finiancial collapse, or at least a major recession there.  There is talk about shorting some element of Chinese investment to capitalize on the expected events.  I have no idea if you or I should short China or not, but it made me wonder what would happen if the Chinese stopped buying our debt?  Given the seemingly insatiable appetite for debt or government sustains (see next post, I cannot post live links right now), what would we do to attract more investors in our bonds?  Could we pay a high enough rate to attract world wide and US investors away from other investments?  What if the final limit on what the US can borrow comes from a lack of folk willing to buy our debt?  Or, perhaps we'll hit the Death Spiral first.