Reply #6: Hey, Malaise, thank you for this post. I am bookmarking it. Nothing like a visual

[Peace Patriot]

such as this to help us really grasp our situation.

I've heard people say, alternately, "China," or, "Not China, Japan," about who holds the most US debt paper. Also Saudi Arabia (not on the chart at all). So the China vs Japan thing is settled. It's both. And Saudi Arabia is not in the picture, as a major US debt holder.

The one that surprises me the most is Brazil. Its center-left president for many years, Lula da Silva, is closely allied with South America's leftist leaders (in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay), one of whose primary goals is independence from US economic domination. (Thus, for instance, Venezuela led the way on creation of the Bank of the South--regional control of development/finance, with social justice goals--and Brazil and others have led the way on creation of the new South American common market, UNASUR.) So-o-o, it surprises me to see that Brazil has bought into so much US debt, and helped finance its oil war in Iraq, which is immensely unpopular in South America.

Da Silva will be meeting with Obama quite soon--and da Silva has the specific and stated purpose of improving Obama's understanding of leftist democracies such as Venezuela and Bolivia (about which there has been such incredible disinformation from the Bushwhack State Dept. and the corpo/fascist press). The corpo/fascist press likes to paint Latin America as a beggar when it comes to Washington. Brazil's ownership of $130 billion of US debt paper says otherwise. So does Venezuela's $42 billion in international cash reserves--the result of good management by the Chavez government. Venezuela is in good shape, while the US is essentially bankrupt. The pundits are not kidding when they talk about world "realignment," but they often omit the realignment to the democratic left that has taken place in South America (--except to demonize it).