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Geithner to reassure China on investment
 
 
 
 
 
 
 AFP - Friday, May 29
WASHINGTON (AFP) - - US President Barack Obama's top economic official will reassure China that its massive US bond holdings are safe despite Beijing's concerns about Washington's rising debt, officials said.
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"We are certainly attuned to the interest of our investors and we listen closely what they have to say," a senior US official said ahead of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's first visit to China on June 1-2.
"If the deficit issue comes up, we are fully prepared to discuss it," the Treasury official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
But he acknowledged that the Chinese leaders meeting Geithner would touch on Beijing's US Treasury bond investment holdings worth nearly 800 billion dollars as Washington faced market pressure for its mounting deficit and debt amid prolonged recession.
Being the top holder of the bonds, China is the largest creditor to the United States aside from being the world's largest holder of US dollars as a reserve currency, at nearly two trillion dollars.
Geithner, who took office on January 26, will meet Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao as well as Vice Premier Wang Qishan in his maiden Beijing trip since taking office on January 26.
In a rare expression of concern over Beijing's mega bond investments, Wen recently asked US economic planners to safeguard Chinese assets while People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan called for a new global currency as an alternative to the dollar.
"We have lent huge amounts of money to the United States. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets," Wen had said.
The Treasury official stressed that while China was a "very strong buyer of US dollar assets," US markets were among the most "stable, attractive and liquid" in the world.
Fears remerged in markets this week about rocketing US government debt and its impact on borrowing costs, pushing yields for US Treasury bonds higher and pulling down Wall Street.
As the Obama administration estimated a 1.841 trillion dollar budget deficit in fiscal 2009, former US Treasury undersecretary John Taylor expressed concern in a report Wednesday over the "exploding" federal debt.
He said in a commentary in the Financial Times that rating agency Standard and Poor's decision to downgrade its outlook for British sovereign debt should be a "wakeup call" for the United States.
US federal debt was equivalent to 41 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) at the end of 2008 and the Congressional Budget Office projects it will increase to 82 per cent of GDP in 10 years.
"With no change in policy, it could hit 100 per cent of GDP in just another five years," Taylor warned.
Obama himself warned at a town hall meeting two weeks ago about the "unsustainable" situation in which the United States relied on Chinese and other foreign money to bankroll its debt and deficit-ridden economy.
"At some point they're just going to get tired of buying our debt. And when that happens, we will really have to raise interest rates to be able to borrow, and that will raise interest rates for everybody -- on your auto loan, on your mortgage, so it will have a dampening effect on the economy," he told Americans at the meeting in New Mexico state.
Obama said "the long-term deficit and debt that we have accumulated is unsustainable," adding, "We can't keep on just borrowing from China, or borrowing from other countries."
The Treasury official acknowledged Thursday that the budget deficit was "going to increase sharply" as a result of aggressive measures to jolt the economy from recession.
But he pointed out that once recovery was firmly established and economic risks had dissipated, "we are going to walk back these measures and the deficit will decrease.
Obama came into office promising to talk tough with China on complaints from US lawmakers that China was manipulating its yuan currency and fueling the US trade deficit with the Asian giant.
Geithner is expected to underline Washington's concern over the need for greater flexibility in the yuan.
The Treasury official said Geithner would continue to press China to have a "flexible exchange rate" and an "autonomous monetary policy" as part of reforms to have "balanced growth."
 
 
 
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