The Answer Was Four

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. government bonds. But, instead of buying more of those bonds as our skyrocketing national debt leads to more bonds being issued, China has been selling some of its U.S. government bonds this year. The Chinese are no fools. They know that all this unbridled spending-- even when it is called "investment"-- means that inflation is coming. That in turn means that the dollars with which U.S. government bonds will be paid off will be worth a lot less than the dollars with which the bonds were bought. Governments around the world have played this game for centuries, robbing those who trusted them enough to buy their bonds. Like Bernard Madoff, they call it "investment." Abraham Lincoln once asked an audience how many legs a dog has if you count the tail as a leg. When they answered "five," Lincoln told them that the answer was four. The fact that you called the tail a leg did not make it a leg.