Considering that Brazil holds about 0.42% of US treasuries, I also don't think the US is going to go into a panic if they whisper they might sell some, either....

Personal story: my dad was a financial idiot. No matter how much money he had coming in, he spent more. One time, I said to him "if you saved your money, and paid cash, you would save a lot that you are now paying in interest". His reply "I can't save anything, so, if I want something, I finance it, so I have to do without something else, because I need to pay the finance bill." When he died, I looked over his finances. He was taking cash advances on his credit cards, to make the minimum payments on his other credit cards, and the interest charges piled higher and higher.

Forget what Milton Friedman was preaching about "free trade" 45 years ago. Shinyland looks more like my dad, borrowing money to pay the interest on the other money it borrowed, than the utopia Friedman predicted.

Steve