Wednesday, March 25, 2009

China to buy more U.S. debt:
President Barrack Obama says the country "will recover from this Recession."
President Obama presented a sober assessment of the state of the economy in his prime time news conference Tuesday, but he insisted his administration has a strategy in place to "attack this crisis on all fronts." President Obama says the country "will recover from this recession." "It took many years and many failures to lead us here. And it will take many months and many different solutions to lead us out. There are no quick fixes, and there are no silver bullets," he said. "We'll recover from this recession, but it will take time, it will take patience, and it will take an understanding that, when we all work together, when each of us looks beyond our own short-term interest to the wider set of obligations we have towards each other, that's when we succeed," he said. The president defended his budget, which has come under criticism for its hefty price, saying the plan he proposed is "inseparable" from the overall strategy for economic recovery.
BEIJING, China-- China, holder of nearly $1 trillion in U.S. debt, will keep buying Treasuries, but will keep a close eye on their value just the same, a Chinese government official said. "Investing in U.S. Treasury bonds is an important component of China's foreign currency reserve investments," said Hu Xiaolian, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China. "We are naturally relatively concerned with the safety and profitability of U.S. government bonds." Hu's comments came at a briefing Monday ahead of the Group of 20 financial summit in Britain scheduled for early next month. The G-20 nations represent 85 percent of the world's gross domestic product. China has an estimated $2 trillion in foreign reserves and is the United States' largest creditor, having bought more than $1 trillion of its debt. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao expressed similar concerns about the state of the U.S. economy and President Barack Obama's economic plan earlier this month. "We have loaned a huge amount of money to the United States," Wen said at a news conference in Beijing on March 13. "Of course, we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I'm a little bit worried. I would like for you [a western reporter] to call on the United States to honor its word and stay a credible nation and ensure the safety of Chinese assets." Washington is spending trillions of dollars in an attempt to shore up the the U.S. economy, including a stimulus package, bailouts of top U.S. industries and the purchase of billions of dollars in bad bank assets.

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