Cornered with prospects of more market bubbles (a dot-com bust redux of 1999 and 2008 after a less than stellar performance of a networking platform that’s only, but, not merely, the sum of its user-generated antics), aspersions are quick to be cast out, like so many throwing-stars and there are the usual targets, scapegoats.
Revelations that, after several years of negotiations, the Chinese central bank has been afforded direct access to the Federal Reserve’s treasuries auctions without having to go through a middle man, a Wall Street bank, to complete the transaction—bidding on, buying US debt, have raised headline indignation. While it is a fact that no other bank, domestic or foreign reserve bank, has this special privilege and everyone else must use a Wall Street intermediary and that does raise some suspicion in itself (especially in light of another revelation involving military contracts and knock-off computing components), it does seem like a false-flag diversion to first question why buying up American liabilities is facilitated for China and deflates the underlying premises: even the transactions between the Federal Reserve and government agencies are brokered by major investment banks, charging a commission, and perhaps other institutions ought to wonder about the special privilege that these select middlemen have. Are the bankers of Wall Street less than trustworthy? Should the US manufacturing Would more public disclosure of any country’s debt-buying activities (mediated through a bank) cue market volatility or keep prices low for the bidding pool of a closed-auction? Should such a pyramid-scheme be any country’s or institution’s primary means of staying afloat, no matter what nation is buying? Looking for engineered snares and backdoors, regardless of who’s the trigger and who’s the trapper, and cyber-warfare is healthy and circumspect paranoia, but overshadows more basic questions that should be asked of America’s penchant for off-shoring—its defense and its public obligations.
