Is China $1 Trillion in debt... to America?

This is certainly an interesting twist, reported by McClatchy of all places. Did you know that the American people are holding roughly $1 Trillion in Chinese bond debt? How is this possible, you ask?

Via McClatchy:

The story begins nearly 100 years ago, in 1913, when the government of China began issuing bonds to foreign investors and governments for infrastructure work to modernize the country. As the country fell into civil war in 1927, paying these debts became increasingly difficult and the government fell into default. Even so, in April 1938, the Nationalist government of China began to issue U.S.-dollar denominated bonds to finance the war against Japan's brutal invasion.

Locked in a pitched battle for survival, the government issued these bonds into 1940. As part of its wartime financial aid, the U.S. government further provided a $500 million credit to China in March 1942, shipping gold there and helping to stabilize the currency. In return, it appears that the U.S. government redeemed some of these dollar-denominated bonds. But China doesn't appear to have repaid this debt either, according to State Department records, and the declaration of the People's Republic of China in 1949 ended decades of political, military and financial cooperation.

While successor governments are usually bound by the debts of predecessor governments, the new Communist government refused to pay any of these claims. The issue lay dormant for decades, just as the bilateral relationship did. Then, in 1979, as part of normalizing relations, Washington released government financial claims regarding the expropriation of American property and appears to have dropped the matter of the war debt entirely. However, it is one thing for government decision-makers to let go of government debt, however questionable that is.

And it is entirely another thing for individual citizens to press their claims. Some U.S. investors tried to sue the Chinese government in the 1980s and 1990s. However, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act makes it very hard for any U.S. citizen to sue a foreign government in U.S. courts because the law generally says that U.S. courts do not have jurisdiction.

The law usually only allows the jurisdiction of U.S. courts if a foreign government waives its immunity, commits a tort or seizes property. Recent additional exceptions have been added for terrorism. China lost an initial summary judgment for failing to appear in court but, with the urging of the U.S. State Department, later appeared in court and successfully argued that U.S. courts did not have jurisdiction.

Today, the Chinese bonds held by U.S. investors may be worth as much as $750 billion, according to Jonna Bianco, president of the American Bondholders Foundation, who estimates the value of bonds held by investors worldwide may be $10 trillion, including interest and penalties for default.

Bianco, who is doing media interviews on this topic, is not happy about China reneging on this debt while purchasing American banks and AMC movie theaters.

Via Special Guests:

Jonna Bianco, president and founder of the American Bondholders Foundation (ABF) says that if China is the economic superpower the world believes it is, they should now begin paying back this debt to its American bondholders and the American people. Instead, China is ignoring these obligations and buying things like banks and movie theaters on American soil.

“Is it not enough that the bulk of our manufacturing base has shifted over to China placing millions and millions of Americans out of work? Is it not enough that China continues to provide ammunitions and weaponry to our enemies that are killing American troops overseas? Is it not enough that China continues to steal our intellectual property/trade secrets/patents making knock off products that they dump around the world costing American Businesses billions and billions of dollars in losses? Is it not enough that China has continued their cyber warfare attacks against American people, businesses and the American Government? Is it not enough that China continues to manipulate its currency? Is it not enough that China continues massive unfair trade practices? Is it not enough that China continues to support the North Korean and Iranian Nuclear Programs which continue to threaten the safety and future of America? At what point will Americans say....ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!! No More! We must stop the double standards that China has and make them pay their bills!

It appears that both the Bush and Obama administrations have refused to press this issue. That said, the American people were bilked by their own government in 2009 to the tune of $787 Billion in stimulus and now, if reports are true that the Obama administration could forgive China's debt to Americans, we could be bilked again for about the same amount.

In fact, in an email response I received from Bianco about how much we owe China vs. how much they owe us, she replied:

"China owes the U.S. including its bondholders more than we owe them by far!"

More on this subject at American Bondholders Foundation.

Bald-Faced Evil: 'Doctors' in India feeding aborted female fetuses to Dogs

This report is so despicably unbelievable that I wouldn't have posted it except for the fact that it comes from an extremely reliable source.

Via LifeNews:

In a news story that sounds like it is more out of a bad science fiction movie than reality, a newspaper in India reports doctors in one city are so desperate to hide evidence that they are doing sex-selection abortions that they are feeding the remains of aborted girl babies to dogs.

Sme physicians in the city of Beed, India are engaging in the practice, according to India Today, which spoke with Varsha Deshpande of Lek Ladki Abhiyan, an NGO working against the practice. Maharashtra’s Public Health Minister Suresh Shetty also admitted to the newspaper that he had heard of reports of the practice taking place.

LifeNews quoted India Today:

A person even saw a foetus being fed to the animals. This is known to everyone in Beed, but the police are not taking action as Munde is influential,” Deshpande said.

She added that some other doctors in Beed kept dogs for the same purpose – to avoid the hassle of disposing of the bodies.

Health Minister Shetty said: “I have heard of the practice but have no evidence.”

He added that since the local police seemed to be under a lot of “pressure”, he had decided to ask the crime branch to investigate the latest case.

When it comes to the most evil acts on planet earth, this has got rank in the top three.

h/t GWP

Report: Boehner holding up Fast and Furious Investigation out of fear that Holder will play Race Card

Scoff at the headline all you want but that is straight from the same guy who claimed to have a source back in February that told him House Speaker John Boehner was the one holding up Issa's investigation into Fast and Furious. Sipsey Street's Mike Vanderboegh proved to be correct about that just last month. That takes care of the 'who' when talking about the person responsible for preventing Issa from doing his job. How about the why? Now, Vanderboegh has quoted a source he trusts "implicitly" which seems to answer that question.

Via Sipsey Street:

"They (the GOP leadership) don't think that they will suffer for failure to follow through. They're scared of Holder's race card. . . they're scared of Trayvon. They think if they let Issa fail, that it will only be a story in the blogosphere for a day . . . that they can weather it. . . . They exert pressure behind the scenes on those weak-kneed bastards (GOP congressmen), promise them shit and when the vote happens it will only look like Issa's case was weak. . . It will be his fault, not theirs."

Boehner is scared of the Trayvon case? Really? So are the likes of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and the Black Panthers determining the course of a Congressional investigation into what could be the most felonious and far-reaching scandal in the history of presidential administrations?

When Vanderboegh posted back in February that Boehner was putting the leash on Issa, the Oversight Committee chairman's office denied the charge. Whether Issa's office was duped by Boehner, defending him, or just playing it close to the vest makes little difference. The credibility is on the side of the man with the source who proved to be correct, which is what makes this new charge so outrageous.

Essentially, if true, Boehner is deciding to prove Holder right about the United States being a "nation of cowards."



Another curious dynamic at work may serve to give Boehner an out and it has to do with reports that Issa doesn't have enough votes in his own committee to issue the contempt charge.

The Oversight Committee has 40 members, 23 of which are Republicans. This obviously means that only 21 votes are necessary to find Holder in contempt of Congress but the Hill has reported that only 16 members (all Republicans) have committed to vote 'yes.' Two of the other seven Republicans remain uncommitted and the remaining five refuse to comment on their position. Of those five, there are two in particular whose silence is curious.

One is Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-PA), who has been one of the most aggressive members during committee hearings. He was part of one of the most compelling exchanges to date, with former ATF Special Agent in Charge, William Newell.

The other congressman, whose refusal to commit may be easier to explain - especially if the Trayvon Martin case is a factor - is Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL). Not only is Mack's district in the state where Trayvon was killed but he's in the middle of a tight Senate race with incumbent Bill Nelson. The irony is that if such considerations are behind his silence, he's probably the wrong guy for the job.

What makes Mack's silence even more disturbing is an exchange he had with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton back in October. At a House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing, Mack exposed Clinton's role in Fast and Furious by pointing out that if the State Department issued the DOJ a waiver to allow guns to cross the border into Mexico, Hillary was on the hook. If the DOJ did so without getting such a waiver, Holder was on the hook. To this day, there appears to have been ZERO follow-up but what it does reveal is that Mack knows how deep this scandal goes and he appears to be playing politics instead of doing the right thing.

Here is that exchange:



If the Fast and Furious investigation ends up going nowhere, it'd be like having the biggest fish in the lake on your line, knowing it, and cutting it loose before you land it. Then, despite doing so, you continue to fish.

What's the point?

If the investigation dies, the Oversight Committee should just shut its doors.

For a list of uncommitted Republican Congressmen on the Oversight Committee, click HERE.

Either way, we're getting much closer to learning why John Boehner cries so much: