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Comment by chaosbutters314 | Hacker News Reader

2 words: national security. as the world's police and adult, we have to be self sufficient in food, tech, defense, resources, etc

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> As the world’s police and adult

I can’t tell if this is parody or not

A lot more adult of a superpower than say, China's petulant behavior. The US is a mostly benign superpower in comparison. People like to say the US is violent and imperialist and what not, but it's a lot less so and a lot more benevolent than any prior superpower has been in past centuries. Ignoring the past and looking at the future, just look at how China is going all gung ho at the silliest perceived slight, going into petty trade wars with major trading partners over the silliest things (Australia inquiries into the origin of COVID).

So realistically, there's not a lot of "maturity" on the geopolitical world stage. The US is objectively on the "adult" spectrum.

> As the world’s adult

Led by an octogenarian who replaced a septuagenarian man-child.

And good luck with that with China holding so much of our debt. Military leaders in the US for decades has been warning politicians that our debt is one of our biggest threats.

China holds 3.2% of the US's outstanding debt[0]. I'm not particularly worried about that angle. Even if China owned an order of magnitude more, what practical benefits would that confer?

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080615/china...

The number one holder of US debt is not China. It's US investors and own citizens from Social Security "entitlements" (misnomer: they are fully funded by our mandatory contributions).

https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/debt/...

China holds US debt denominated in dollars, which is different from eg holding Sri Lankan debt denominated in dollars. In the US case, the government can issue more treasuries to cover payments or if things are dire they can just print more dollars. Sri Lanka can’t make new dollars so they need to get them through trade and if they have an imbalance there it can be very hard.

I think it isn’t really very relevant to think about China holding US government debt because it isn’t like they will call up the bailiffs or otherwise be able to exercise control over the US because of that debt. I think it would be basically equivalent to say that China holds US dollars which doesn’t feel particularly concerning to me.

Printing more dollars leads to inflation.

It does, but then China can't use their debt holding as a weapon. China is incentivized to keep the dollar stable relative to the yuan, because crashing the dollar would hurt China a lot, and propping up the dollar also would. The whole debt holding is a lot more of a rent-seeking arrangement. Both the debtor and debtee are better off keeping the status quo. Plus China doesn't exactly have the capital to do anything about it. Their own economy is in a debt spiral only kept from crashing by huge government intervention and very tight forex capital controls.

I mostly agree.

I’m not sure I’d call it ‘rent seeking’. China needs forex reserves like a lot of countries and China is big so it’s reserves are big. It’s just that it is generally more convenient but basically equivalent to hold treasuries instead of dollars if you have an enormous amount of money. Doesn’t eg Japan also hold a bunch of treasuries for similar reasons?

I'm no expert on this topic. My perspective is simply that it's against a debt holder's interest to have the debt's underlying asset (currency) devalued. It's much better if the debt holder gets their interest payments (the "rent seeking" part) against an asset that has a stable equivalent monetary value (in term of purchasing power). Especially when we talk of currency, since the interest payment is made... in the currency that would be devalued. Basically, China is long on the USD.

Do you mind sharing an example of military leaders in the US warning about our foreign debt being one of our biggest threats?

https://brooks.house.gov/media-center/news-releases/after-mo...

Thanks for that link! I think it's reasonable to argue that fiscal responsibility is related to national security. That being said, I don't know what this has to do with China holding any part of the national debt?

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