I know I am veering slightly off topic here - but to what extent is it in the interests of Russia/China that the US economy does not nosedive ? Is it something to do with China holding $1.4 trillion US debt ?
Apparently Russia are offloading their US debt - but they hold much less than China. I don't know that China are selling US debt - but they are stocking up on gold.
Can someone clear this up for me - China could potentially severely weaken the US economy by trading in Remnimbi => dollar losing value. They don't choose to do that (at present).
They have loaned the US a lot of dollars - is it the case that if they were to sell that debt it would (necessarily) be at a huge loss (almost by definition) - and so if they are to keep it they need confidence that the repayments can be maintained ?
It wasn't too long ago there was talk of a US default.
Is it that China needs the US as a market for export ? And if so, is this a price worth paying for China ?
This is also in reply to a discussion I had earlier on in this thread:
Many people say China can't afford to sell, they would only shoot themselves in the foot. IMO, China (and Russia) knows their treasuries are worthless in the long run, they won't ever get their money back anyways. So what can they do?
They try to get rid of as much of it as possible in an orderly fashion (hence the selling now), they try to buy gold and infrastructure for the money, because that is what stays after the reset. There is no way they get their money back from the US, but if they blow up the system right now, they won't get ANYTHING back. So they play along with the game and try to save as much as possible, as long as they get their (huge amounts of) gold that's going eastwards every week...
Let's see what happens the moment the west is completely out of physical gold. That moment seems quite close.
In regards to Russia, they only hold a very smart part of US debt, true, but if they dumped all of it, couldn't that cause some panic in the markets and set things in motion? For anybody who says "They would only hurt themselves if they sold", see above, similiar situation as China.
China is on the verge of credit market and real estate collapse, but when all is said and done, let's see who holds the gold...