Fitch Warns Of Possible 'Junk' Rating On U.S. Treasury Bonds

Free Internet Press

China warns U.S. debt-default idea is "playing with fire ... Republican lawmakers are "playing with fire" by contemplating even a brief debt default as a means to force deeper government spending cuts, an adviser to China's central bank said on Wednesday. The idea of a technical default – essentially delaying interest payments for a few days – has gained backing from a growing number of mainstream Republicans who see it as a price worth paying if it forces the White House to slash spending, Reuters reported on Tuesday. But any form of default could destabilize the global economy and sour already tense relations with big U.S. creditors such as China, government officials and investors warn. – Reuters

Dominant Social Theme: Don't even try it. Don't even go there. You owe us the interest and ... you ... will ... pay!

Free-Market Analysis: We tend to go back and forth regarding the world's larger financial fix. We have arrived at the idea, eventually that the Anglo-American power elite responsible for the mess wants to push Western citizens as far as possible without setting up full-scale revolutions. The idea is simply to afflict Western Middle Classes with such misery that they will not notice when their countries' sovereignty is removed in favor of a One World Order.

The best way to do this is to keep people distracted and miserable – hovering on the edge of foreclosure, food insecurity and professional oblivion. In Europe this has been accomplished by ensuring that many counties have borrowed far more than they can pay back, thus ensuring generations of "austerity" (assuming that Europe's young people don't revolt against the prospect). Hey, it's a fine line.
America has been a tougher nut to crack. Americans come from hardy immigrant stock and have tended to be thrifty and hard working, certainly in the past. The Anglo-American power elite has been at work for decades to ensure these admirable qualities are subdued. Result? America's finances are a mess.

The US deficit is scheduled to reach $1.4 trillion, and the U.S. Treasury Dept., responsible for funding it, needs to borrow more money than it is authorized to do. Republicans in the House and Senate have seized on the opportunity to demand that the Obama Administration agree to significant cuts in spending.

The Democrats, for their part, warn that using the debt-ceiling to enforce frugality is a most dangerous strategy, one that could virtually sink the United States' credit. If the US cannot borrow, it will have to default on its debt payments, which would likely lead to some sort of devaluation of the dollar. Since the dollar is the reserve currency of the world, this would lead to significant tumult abroad.

China is willing to do its part in this all, apparently. According to a Reuters' article that appeared yesterday (see excerpt above), China's top officials have some strong opinions about a potential default in the US. Reuters quotes Li Daokui, an adviser to the People's Bank of China, as saying that a default could undermine the U.S. dollar. "I think there is a risk that the U.S. debt default may happen," Li told reporters (according to Reuters) on the sidelines of a forum in Beijing. "The result will be very serious and I really hope that they would stop playing with fire."

While no one seems to know how much US debt China holds, Reuters claims confidently that it is $1 trillion. We've read US$800 million and US$ 2 trillion as well. But US$1 trillion sounds about right. That's certainly a lot of money. Do Chinese officials really expect to get repaid? Here's Li again: "I really worry about the risks of a U.S. debt default, which I think may lead to a decline in the dollar's value."
Ben Westmore, a commodities economist at National Australia Bank, is also upset that the Republicans are holding the debt-ceiling hostage. "It has dire implications for the economy at a time when the macro data is softening. It's just a horrible idea."
Financial markets remain steady, but that may not be the case if the stand-off continues. Republicans, Reuters informs us, have been working on the theory that bondholders would put up with a delay in payments in return for a bipartisan deal that would lower US spending and make the country stronger in the long term.

According to Reuters, central banking officials around the world are less sanguine about the ramifications than Republicans are. "This could then create huge panic globally," Reuters quotes one Indian central banking official as saying. At the same time, India's Treasury officials continue to buy and hold dollars. The government held US$39.8 billion in U.S. Treasuries as of March.

Of course, Reuters doesn't mention that countries HAVE to buy dollars in order to purchase oil from Saudi Arabia, which will not accept anything else. This is how the dollar's reserve currency status is enforced.

The article concludes by quoting Yuan Gangming, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, as saying that default was indeed a real risk. "The possibility is quite high to see a default of the U.S. debt, which would harm many countries in the world, and China in particular."

We're not so sure as Gangming that the "possibility is high" that the US will default, or not seriously anyway. The House is led by Ohio Republican John A. Boehner (about as radical as a mushroom). Boehner is one of a handful of elite politicians, one of the most powerful men in the world thanks to his position as Speaker of the House. The idea that John Boehner will lead a radical restructuring of America's finances does not seem especially feasible to us.

Of course, a good deal of pressure is being put on Boehner by the Republican-oriented Tea Party, and perhaps this will serve to shove the Republicans out of what would otherwise be their comfort zone. Hard to tell, really.

What is more significant from our point of view is the message the Chinese are sending. The Chinese central bankers, like central bankers around the world are not willing to entertain an iota's reconfiguration of America's debt. It's a kind of dominant social theme – a fear based promotion. We're not sure it will hold, but the rhetoric is stern. We have seen the same sort of implacable rigor in Europe, where the ECB has been at the forefront of the fight to ensure that Greece and the rest of the PIGS pay ever euro of their increasingly unpayable sovereign debt.

The mechanism of American austerity, then, is to be Chinese insistence on the immutability of American repayment terms. What the sovereign crisis is doing to Europe, the Chinese will do to America. In fact, American "austerity" is already here. The Chinese are providing the proximate cause, but increasingly we believe this was the plan all along.

Britain is in the same fix, Europe is rioting, the Middle East has gone up in smoke and Africa is trending the same way. Surely this couldn't be coincidence could it? We think not. The world's economic system is controlled out of the City of London via the Bank for International Settlements (based in Switzerland) and over 100 central banks around the world. The Anglosphere elite that constructed this system knew full well it would self-destruct over time.

They knew it in Europe, too. In fact, it has been admitted. The Eurocrats knew that the current system was unstable and would break down. They intended to take advantage of it to build a more centralized system and in fact they are currently doing so.

The wild card, as we have pointed out, is the Internet itself (and the truth-telling it provides), which we believe has destabilized Europe far beyond what the elites expected. They are said to be meeting somewhat unhappily in Switzerland today, as part of the annual Bilderberg affair. War is supposedly on the menu, along with selecting an IMF chief – and stabilizing Europe. There is to be austerity, yes, but not revolution.

In America, austerity is coming, too. The Chinese and perhaps the Japanese (and other creditors) will demand it. But the same realities hold for America as for Europe. There is perhaps a limit to what people will put up with, a limitation reinforced by the Internet Reformation.

Conclusion: We have no doubt that a chaotic financial situation around the world was intended to increase pressure for a more centralized currency – and for more centralized bank regulations, etc. We are not so sure the current plan will hold. Will the elites get their chaos? They might wish to be careful what they wish for.