Word: debts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...China, meanwhile, it is fashionable to blame U.S. trade deficits on the debt-addicted ways of American citizens and their government. There's an element of truth to this too. If the U.S. borrowed and spent less, its trade imbalances would be smaller. But China has been enabling this profligate behavior for years by buying trillions of dollars in U.S. government debt and mortgage securities as part of its continuing effort to - you got it - keep the yuan from appreciating too much against the dollar...
...only question about BABs is the cost. So far local governments have issued just over $50 billion in BABs with an average yield of just under 6%. That means the federal government is paying just over 2% interest on that debt a year, or about $1 billion. Many estimate that the volume of BABs could triple over the next year. What's more, most of these bonds are issued with a term of 15 or 30 years. That means by the end of 2010 the federal government could end up being on the hook for as much as $90 billion...
...China announced, almost casually, that it was canceling 150 items of maturing government debt owed to it by 32 African countries. The announcement came a few days before a meeting between China's top legislator Wu Bangguo and Kenneth Marende, the Speaker of Kenya's National Assembly, to discuss cooperation between the two countries. Further, on Nov. 8, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was to attend the opening ceremony of the 4th Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation to be held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt...
...more credible than they used to. When Faber forecasts not only a worthless dollar but also a "collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today," it's impossible to dismiss him out of hand. Second, the data point that has dollar worriers most alarmed - burgeoning U.S.-government debt - is for real. Finally, the global monetary setup we've had since the early 1970s (one with the dollar at its center) is looking rickety. Something has to give. (See pictures of the global financial crisis...
There's not much to add to the first point - that really bad stuff can happen - other than to note that capitalism has just experienced the equivalent of a meteor near miss. But the second and third points demand more explanation. The reason a big federal debt undermines the dollar is that a government with really big debts will be tempted to inflate its way out by printing money to pay creditors. Printing more dollars (the process actually involves the Federal Reserve's purchasing government securities with dollars it conjures out of thin air) reduces the value of existing dollars...