Word: debts
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...approval rating, two percentage points higher than that of his predecessor, Pervez Musharraf, just before the general stepped down. And that was the situation before the government was forced to apply for a $7.6 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in order to avoid defaulting on its debt - a loan that stipulates an end to subsidies and an increase in taxes, which could further diminish the government's popularity. For now, the IMF loan has helped stabilize the economy, but the Pakistani rupee has been devalued by almost 20 points in the past year...
...year ago, few would have predicted such a rapid fall from grace for the affluent North Atlantic nation. Iceland topped the most recent U.N. Human Development Index and boasted one of the highest GDP's per capita in the world. But its banks, carrying massive debt loads, became early victims of the global credit crunch. In October, in an effort to salvage the hemorrhaging economy Haarde's government negotiated a $10 billion bail out package with the International Monetary Fund...
That reluctance is not necessarily for the reason often cited when U.S.-China trade issues come up. A frequent assertion by critics of U.S. trade policy is that Washington can't afford to get tough with China on trade because Beijing buys so much U.S. Treasury debt. Washington can't even say "Boo" to the Chinese, this argument goes, without risking that China would take its money and go home, driving U.S. interest rates up in the process...
...instead of reinvesting those dollars back into Treasuries. But the Chinese, despite some scary stories that have circulated to the contrary, show absolutely no sign of doing that. In November, the last month for which data is available, Beijing actually added $29 billion to its overall position in U.S. debt. (Beijing sold $9.2 billion of long-term U.S. Treasuries in November but bought $38.2 billion of short-term government notes.) Indeed, part of the reason short-term interest rates are so low in the U.S., as Council on Foreign Relations economist Brad Setser notes, is that foreign central banks - including...
...Perhaps it's true that if sufficiently angered by U.S. trade policy, China would feel compelled to inflict economic pain on itself by dumping U.S. debt, in order to send a message to Washington. But Geithner, despite his brief rhetorical flourish about manipulation, knows what his job is when it comes to persuading foreigners (whether governments or individuals) to continue to invest in Treasuries. Sources close to the Administration say that thus far he has argued privately that "what the world wants to know, first, is that we are going to fix this [economic and financial] problem and make people...