Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Underthinking Americas debt

Just to clarify, I am not dead. Well not completely, I just have had two concussions in the last month, which means that I am lucky to remember what I am doing, let alone try and over think what others are doing.

They make me wear a helmet, doing everything now.
So I apologise for this inconvenience and I hope you will all forgive me, and continue to follow underthinking I promise to be more diligent.
So one of the major events happening in the world is the fact that the Americans are very close to defaulting on trillions of dollars worth of loans. Who is giving these loans to start with?

I imagine Barak Obama heading down to Loan shark using Montana as collateral.
 I guess normally countries would borrow money from the world bank, but they are tied up at the moment.

Literally. With Handcuffs.
So where are these loans coming from, well apparently if you are a country, you just borrow money from other countries.

"Hey China, let me hold a dollar"
If we go to this website, we can actually see who the Americans owe the money to. The usual suspects are there, China, Russia, Japan, Switzerland all countries you associate with being relatively rich and able to lend money.
The odd one out in that list to me, is Mexico, America owes Mexico 20 Billion dollars. How does that even work? No wonder all the Mexicans are trying to get into America they are just trying to get their money back.

"Okay Pedro, when we get to America, we go to Washington and ask for our $20 Billion back"
World money always confuses me it seems every country owes every other country some amount of money. Having debt isn't a bad thing, its how people buy houses etc, the problem is when you can't pay the interest payments on your debt.
In the case of some one buying a house, the Bank just repossesses the house and sells it to try and recoup their debt.


I don't see this happening.

But America needs to raise some capital to service their loans, how could they do this?

1/. Presumably USA has debtors, shouldn't they just call in that debt for a start?


"About that money we lent you George (Greece) we are going to need it back"
2/. Sell some of their military assets?


I mean they have a lot of weapons, maybe they should sell some off to raise capital.

"...and SOLD! The Blackhawk helicopter goes to the man with funny glasses and weird haircut."
"Yesh!"
3/. Sell some of their land assets?

Maybe it is time to sell Alaska back to Russia
I mean they got it for a bargain back in the 1800's, and everyone know property prices have boomed since then, they are sure to back a profit. I guess they are glad Phil Goff isn't charge or World Bank imagine the capital gain tax on Alaska. But who would buy Alaska?

"Yip, over here"
4/. Sell other assets?


"Thanks for doing this, you will love Yugoslavia"
America has enough fame-whores, they could sell the fat one off.

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