New York Times (August 27)
“Propping up the yen. Buying back U.S. debt. Americans might wonder: What is the Treasury Department doing? Over the past month, it has made some unusual moves to tamp down an alarming surge in interest rates. The global history of maneuvers like these suggests that they rarely work on their own — and can often be worse than doing nothing.”
Tags: Alarming, Buying, History, Interest rates, Maneuvers, Propping up, Surge, Tamp down, Treasury, U.S. debt, Unusual, Worse, Yen
Barron’s (August 8)
S&P diverted attention from the real problems facing the global economy. The U.S. debt “is perhaps the least of the clear-and-present problems besetting the world’s economy.” Bigger problems include the soft U.S. economy, the European debt crisis and a growing bubble in China linked to local debt, “which at $1.7 trillion equals 27% of that nation’s 2010 gross domestic product.” As for the U.S. downgrade, “the U.S. government may be the world’s largest debtor, but its liabilities still are the safest assets in the world.”
Tags: Chinese debt, Europe, Global economy, S&P downgrade, U.S. debt
