For Americans who are wondering what’s the price of China using that huge foreign currency reserve to save the US’s butt, this article is must reading. Basically what the author is saying is that the US has to do a full on IMF structural adjustment. Cut spending drastically, reorient the economy for export, get rid of any spending that isn’t oriented towards exports, get rid of subsidies through the military and other BS, and so on.

The result of this would be the same as it was for many countries the IMF imposed its plans on: riots in the street as the US standard of living crashed through the floor in record time, probable food shortages (because prices would be too high) and China and other countries buying up all the companies in the US worth buying up. (Opening the economy to outside investment is how the IMF liked to describe it when they did it to other countries.)

Of course it’s a stupid plan, even if it’s understandable that China and other countries want the US to experience what it used to do to other people. Not because it’s inhumane, that never stopped the "international community" from beating some poor third world country bloody, no, because if the US has such a massive collapse in domestic demand it’ll ripple out into a Great Depression. And that’s not in China’s interest.

That said, China’s unwillingness to bail the US out of this without some solid quid pro quo is completely understandable. And Americans shouldn’t underestimate how little sympathy everyone outside the developed world (and even some inside) has for America’s problems. Especially since the immediate US policy response has been to cause a dollar drought which is hitting peripheral nations far harder than first world nations, and is going to cause huge crackups in many of them.