Reply #51: Maybe. But dollars or euros are still money

[jobycom]

and China writing off a large chunk of money owed them would hurt their economy. You may be right, though, that they could devalue our dollar against their currency enough that the demand would hurt us worse than hurting them.

Still, they wouldn't want our total collapse. They like our consumers, they like our products. What they want is our subjugation. They want us to remain a viable market but for us to be under their economic control. Your scenario could achieve that.

What the world really wants, though, is a slow decline of American power, not a sudden collapse. We are too big economically, and we would cause another medieval era by collapsing all of a sudden. They want us to decline, but they want our wealth to spin off to other nations, so that we become just another nation, a bit weaker than the top tier nations, but our immense wealth isn't lost.

Which, obviously, is basically what Bush seems to be giving them.