the article I linked to above, the claim is that China needs US debt to keep increasing, because there's simply nothing else in the world big enough to spend all those US dollars on. And that's true, in a sense, if you believe that money has intrinsic value . Of course, China is smart enough to know that it doesn't. ...which is where it gets even stranger. Even though China knows money is worthless, they keep shipping their perfectly valuable manufactured goods to us in exchange for worthless pieces of paper . (2) How dumb is that ? Not dumb. Brilliant. Our whole theory of economics is based on two axioms, one of which is that human wants are unlimited . But we're starting to figure out that's not really true. As a society, we're slowly realizing that more consumption doesn't lead to more happiness. So what does? For a lot of people, maybe the secret to daily happiness is just this: a stable job and the feeling that you're doing it well and helping society. By exporting stuff to us by the crapload - and "oh darn, poor us, we're such victims " denominating their wealth in US dollars - they ensure that they have jobs and happiness. We're the helpless, unproductive, soulless consumers. Call it victory by superior philosophy. (3) Footnotes (1) Of course, our manufacturing industry also uses a lot of energy, and high energy prices are bad for them too. But that's true for everyone's manufacturing