Know Your Creditors

Until I read Jung Chang's Mao: The Unknown Story, I simply had no idea what an unbelievably murderous regime has run China since 1949.

On his invaluable Freedom,Democracy, Peace; Power, Democide, and War website, Professor R.J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii places the total number of murders by the People's Republic of China ("PRC") between 1949 and 1987 at no less than 76 million souls.

76 million human beings -- all killed by their own government, either directly, or indirectly via starvation, disease, and other consequences of PRC policy.

And those numbers don't include murders by the PRC government since 1987. Remember this guy?

I'm sure he is living peacefully in retirement somewhere in rural China.

Six feet under, that is.

In the pantheon of the world's fiends, the Communist Chinese have no parallel.

Hitler?

A freaking rookie.

Stalin?

A talented amateur.

Mao and his successors?

The no-fooling shiznit of human history -- thus far, at least.

If you have any doubts as to their sincerity, ask the men who faced Joe Chinaman across the MLR in Korea.

So what, you ask?

Remember this chart?

You know -- the one that shows the PRC (euphemized by the US Treasury as "Mainland China") holding $779 billion in US Treasury debt as of June, 2009.

Seems Mao's successors are the shiznit when it comes to being Uncle Sam's creditor as well.

Think SecTreas "Tax-Cheat Timmy" Geithner wouldn't do literally anything to keep the PRC buying those .gov promissory notes?

Think Timmy's boss, The Mighty Kenyan, has any more choice in the matter?

Who do you think is paying for the US military anyhow?

It ain't the US taxpayer -- that's for sure. That's what it means to be running annual deficits in excess of $1.2 trillion with two months remaining in the fiscal period.

You have to borrow money from other people -- other people whose interests (forgive the pun) may not align with those of your country and its citizens.

But hey -- what could go wrong by being $772 billion in hock to history's greatest mass murderers?

And a note to those sophisticates and nuance-mongers who would claim that all things Mao have been purged by the enlightened capitalists who run today's China:

I give you this photograph from last year's Olympic Games, as the Olympic torch entered Beijing.

Read Chang's outstanding work, and think about what it really means for America to be financially dependent on the ChiComs.

"Interesting times", indeed.

Sic transit gloria mundi.