strunkenwhite
Well-known member
I dispute that Japan is a good example of this. From a brief search it appears that a little over 100% of its GDP worth of debt is held externally (by foreign debtholders), and this has been steadily increasing for at least a decade. The US has a little under 100% of its GDP worth of debt held externally, and this has been more or less stable over the same period of time. Japan could only "win" this comparison by having even more debt held domestically than the US does. If you mean debt held not only domestically but by the government itself, the Bank of Japan at 43% of Japan's total beats out the US at 22% of its total, but this is offset by Japan's total debt being twice as large in relation to GDP.Be the primary holder of your debt. If your country holds its own debt, you're not going to default on it; Japan has something like 260% debt to GDP but this isn't much of an issue because the overwhelming majority is held by the Bank of Japan itself. Japan isn't going to call the debt collectors on itself, logically, and the same holds for China.
China is probably a much better example.
Sure, but it would be misleading to mention this without also mentioning that the US gold reserves are still the largest in the world and almost as large as #2, 3, and 4 combined.The U.S. has [...] also not been acquiring Gold like other central banks.