Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sits up a little straighter in his chair and begins to worry a little bit when he reads that the avuncular Wen Jiabao (Premier of China) says in a press conference “We [the People’s Republic of China] have lent a massive amount of capital to the United States, and of course we are concerned about the security of our assets. To speak truthfully, I do indeed have some worries.“

(Excursus: Your Maximum Leader loves the word “avuncular.” It is so rare to see it out there nowadays. You know what else? He doesn’t think he’s ever seen the adjective used to describe the leader of the PRC. Of course it was used to describe Joe Stalin… Perhaps the word has a more sinister secondary meaning he doesn’t associate with it?)

Let’s see… The nation that holds something like $1,400,000,000,000.00 in US Treasury bonds (according to the article) tells the world press that they worry that the US may not be “creditworthy” doesn’t seem like a good thing for the US. According to Reuters, the US Treasury Bond market fell in Asia after Wen’s comments. No surprise there.

Is anyone in Washington listening to this? It is not a good thing when your major creditor tells you that you probably want to take a look at how much debt you are taking on… Call it a friendly warning.

What is your Maximum Leader saying? Of course no one in Washington is listening. The President’s rump economic team is too busy trying to make the best of the current crisis to notice that the people financing the “making the best of the crisis” are politely asking them to not make too much of the current crisis.

Nope. This is no good at all.

Does anyone know when the next major auction of T-bills is taking place? One wonders if the market for long-term T-bills will be “soft?” (NB: thanks to the magic of Google… Long-term T-bills auctioned on March 19, 2009)

Carry on.