From the Lunatic Asylum: Tortured Calls to Expropriate Chinese Assets in the U.S.</h4> May 1, 2020 (EIRNS)—For the past month, a growing number of professional anti-China ideologues have been given space in Breitbart, the Washington Examiner, et.al., to promote the idea that the United States should expropriate China’s holdings of $1.1 trillion in U.S. Treasury bills, as “compensation” for China’s alleged responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic. That lunatic idea is now being promoted by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Anglo-Establishment outpost fittingly dubbed the “Temple of Doom” during the Cheney-Bush regime. The AEI published an commentary on April 28 by none other than the two co-authors of the infamous 2002 Department of Justice torture-justifying Iraq War memo under the Bush-Cheney regime, John Yoo, and his deputy, Robert J. Delahunty, titled “How To Make China Pay for COVID-19.” The authors review various measures by which China can be forced “to experience the full costs of its recklessness,” with both the coronavirus and its policies of “rapid economic growth.” In their view, sanctions are for wimps; real men would blow up the dollar and the world financial system to crush China, even if that would likely lead to nuclear war. They argue: “China’s expansion into foreign property renders it vulnerable. The United States could expropriate Chinese property in the United States. Conceivably, Washington could even cancel Chinese-held Treasury debt and using the proceeds to create a trust fund that would compensate Americans harmed by the pandemic. It could claim that in cancelling Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasury debt, the United States is only recouping China’s international debt cancelled by the Chinese Communist Party when it seized power in 1949.... “The United States could further strike a serious blow to Chinese economic interests by encouraging its allies in the developed and developing worlds to follow suit,” they add, specifically targeting the Belt and Road Initiative. The authors, “to be sure,” do recognize that “U.S. expropriations could roil the postwar economic system that Washington has cultivated since the end of World War II,” and that “cancelling Chinese-held U.S. debt could trigger severe disruption in the market for U.S. Treasuries, which could further undermine other financial markets.” No matter: The U.S. “can then set about the work of constructing a new international order that takes account of the new great power rivalry that may now replace the peaceful U.S. hegemony of the last eight decades.”

From the Lunatic Asylum: Tortured Calls to Expropriate Chinese Assets in the U.S.

May 1, 2020 (EIRNS)—For the past month, a growing number of professional anti-China ideologues have been given space in Breitbart, the Washington Examiner, et.al., to promote the idea that the United States should expropriate China’s holdings of $1.1 trillion in U.S. Treasury bills, as “compensation” for China’s alleged responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic.

That lunatic idea is now being promoted by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Anglo-Establishment outpost fittingly dubbed the “Temple of Doom” during the Cheney-Bush regime. The AEI published an commentary on April 28 by none other than the two co-authors of the infamous 2002 Department of Justice torture-justifying Iraq War memo under the Bush-Cheney regime, John Yoo, and his deputy, Robert J. Delahunty, titled “How To Make China Pay for COVID-19.”

The authors review various measures by which China can be forced “to experience the full costs of its recklessness,” with both the coronavirus and its policies of “rapid economic growth.” In their view, sanctions are for wimps; real men would blow up the dollar and the world financial system to crush China, even if that would likely lead to nuclear war. They argue:

“China’s expansion into foreign property renders it vulnerable. The United States could expropriate Chinese property in the United States. Conceivably, Washington could even cancel Chinese-held Treasury debt and using the proceeds to create a trust fund that would compensate Americans harmed by the pandemic. It could claim that in cancelling Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasury debt, the United States is only recouping China’s international debt cancelled by the Chinese Communist Party when it seized power in 1949....

“The United States could further strike a serious blow to Chinese economic interests by encouraging its allies in the developed and developing worlds to follow suit,”

they add, specifically targeting the Belt and Road Initiative.

The authors, “to be sure,” do recognize that “U.S. expropriations could roil the postwar economic system that Washington has cultivated since the end of World War II,” and that “cancelling Chinese-held U.S. debt could trigger severe disruption in the market for U.S. Treasuries, which could further undermine other financial markets.” No matter: The U.S. “can then set about the work of constructing a new international order that takes account of the new great power rivalry that may now replace the peaceful U.S. hegemony of the last eight decades.”

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