http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.co...ry-meltdo.html
Blog entry by Bruce Bartlett. Excerpt:
"But the most important reason why China will not retaliate the way conspiracy-mongers like Evans-Pritchard think is because the Chinese would suffer a massive capital loss if they tried to hurt us by dumping their dollars. That is because their dollars are not sitting around in wads of $100 bills, but fully invested in U.S. Treasury bonds. Bond prices go down when interest rates rise or there is a threat of inflation that would erode the value of the bond's principal.
If China started heavily selling its bonds, the added supply on the world market would cause interest rates to spike. If investors started to become concerned about our ability to finance our debts, it could cause the dollar to plummet, which would further depress bond prices. How much bond prices might fall under such a scenario cannot be estimated. But China would certainly suffer capital losses on its bond portfolio of tens of billions of dollars and possibly much more."