One good question now is, why do the Chinese continue to buy the debt of the United States? THe Chinese are establishing a second petroleum reserve and are going to buy $80 billion of gold. The must be expecting devaluation of the dollar. That is probably a good guess since it appears that the US is going to have to borrow much more than the $1.8 trillion that has been advertised. I think that more money than projected will be needed in future years because Obama's tax increases will not poduce the revenue that the government projects.