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carefree-bob 11 hours ago

The point is that the entire article is wrong, factually.

In terms of institutional investors and sentiment, I think you are fundamentally not understanding why the rest of the world holds US debt, it is to support running trade surpluses. That is a core economic need of much of the world, and as long as there is that need, you will see foreign government accumulation of dollar denominated assets.

For some reason people either refuse to understand simple balance of payment accounting constraints or they are deeply offended by them, and want to live in a world in which moral outrage determines things like global capital flows.

But we do not live in that world. The reason why the rest of the world accumulated a trillion of dollar denominated assets last year, split roughly 50/50 between private and public, is solely because China needed to run a trillion dollar trade surplus. And next year it will also need to run an even bigger surplus. That forces everything else.

lokar 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Yep. The flow has to balance out somehow. If the US buys more then it sells (all in, including services, which trump ignores for no clear reason) the sellers have to end up owning USD denominated assets.