While our government's debt has been a hot topic for many years, it's the money that we owe China that has been frightening financial analysts, especially since the crash of 2008. The fact that we are indebted to one of our biggest competitors on the global stage, does not bode well for our future. The only question is, what happens if China decides to pull the rug out from under us by ditching these debts?
We may be about to find out, since lately, China has been dropping US government bonds like hot potatoes. After the Chinese government devalued the yuan in August, their currency experienced a massive sell-off by investors who feared that more devaluations were ahead. To contain the situation, China's central bank has been buying up their own currency while selling their dollar reserves.
And China isn't alone either. By July, Russia had sold $32.8 billion in US Treasury debt, and Brazil and Taiwan have been dumping the dollar as well. All of these countries used to be our biggest customers. India has actually increased its holdings, but it hasn't been nearly enough to offset what we've lost. Foreign purchases of US treasury notes and bonds have been in the red throughout 2015, and peaked to about $123 billion in loses last summer; the largest decline since we started keeping track in 1978. While the trend is still young, it appears that the global dollar sell-off has begun in earnest.
Comment: Washington's financial/currency war on China and the Yuan's eclipse of the US dollar