Note to wingnuts worried about China takeover: #nationaldebt

Only, it's China's debt, not ours.

Technically, it's not national debt, because it's at the local/regional level, but it's more than $1.65 trillion, in an economy still far smaller than ours, and with a government that provides fewer services than ours.

And, most of that is from "financing vehicles." Does this sounds familiar?

By the end of 2010, provincial, municipal and county-level governments had 6,576 financing vehicles. Three provinces, 29 municipal cities and 44 counties had more than 10 vehicles each.

Kind of like Texas Gov. Rick Perry's economic development fund? Or a Wall Street hedge fund? Or a bit of both?

Meanwhile, as bubbles continue to swell over there, Premier Wen Jiabao is worried inflation will break a 4 percent target.
Inflation there is supposed to get about 6 percent by the end of July. Meanwhile, speaking of those bubbles, China's economy is supposedly slowing down now. I'll bet that the unofficial growth rate, after subtracting out inflation, is near zero right now.

There's also the question if Chinese officials, like their Western economic governance counterparts theoretically, can "soft land" their economy out of rising inflation. I'm skeptical.

Somehow, I don't think Beijing is going to magically buy out the US of A.