Sunday, April 18, 2010

Who is the Boss: Creditor or Debtor

The Chinese government is creditor of the U.S which had heavily invested into the U.S Treasury Debts,T-bills and others. Other creditors are Japan, Germany and other countries which have trade surplus or USD reserves. For example, the Chinese government holds roughly $800 million of T-bills, and the U.S federal government has almost $50 trillion in debt!!! I want to show the big picture clearly, 1 trillion is 1,000 billion. Yeah, it's a huge absolute amount. Investors, pundits and ordinary investors are worried about the debt of the U.S. Investors are taking worried to much on the value of USD and solvency of the U.S federal government. Does the U.S indebted?

I would say that $50 trillion debt is not a big amount relatively to assets of the U.S. Yeah, you did read it correctly a not a big amount. The U.S government also has balance sheet, like in corporations, its total assets equal to $111 trillion. If we calculate debt-to-equity ratio of the U.S is 83%, to corporation 70% is recommended.

Recently, I've read that people worried about the value of the USD, they were afraid that the Chinese government might dump it's T-bills and trigger collapse of the USD. It's a big myth, think a bit. If the Chinese dump their holdings, it would lead to over-supply of the T-bills, thus price would sink, where the Chinese would carry big losses, and the Federal Reserve of the U.S can easily manage this situation by buying long-term T-bonds. Here comes, that the Chinese are dependent on the U.S heavily and creditor is not the boss, but the U.S is the boss.

No comments: