Who's going to stop Obama? Perhaps the Chinese

Conservatives are now in the odd position of having to rely on the authoritarian regime in China to stop the American president from destroying free markets.

It's not that China has suddenly become a fan of free markets. It's that one of China's most important markets, the United States, will have to sell trillions of dollars in bonds to finance President Barack Obama's socialist objectives.

China has been the principal buyer of such bonds, and is raising questions about this nation's credit-worthiness. What happens if China stops buying? Where will Obama go to find new bond buyers?

If no one else steps up, even the U.S. Congress, not known to blanch at deficit spending, might choose to scuttle some or all of Obama's plans for socialized medicine, new entitlements such as college education, and further demonizing of the oil industry in pursuit of an ideal world average temperature to be determined by Al Gore.

As of December, China was holding $727.4 billion in U.S. bonds, almost 24 percent of the total outstanding. That's only a fraction of the borrowing the U.S. will have to arrange to finance Obama's program of loans, bailouts and new entitlements. If China stops buying U.S. bonds, the U.S. will have to raise interest rates to attract new buyers. That, in turn, would put upward pressure on other rates and inflict further damage on a U.S. economy already in recession.

In other words, China, still a nominally Communist country, has been handed powerful leverage against the United States, which is both a trading partner and an adversary on the world stage.

There is another side to this issue. In recent years, American politicians have badgered the Chinese, with the aim of persuading China to raise the exchange value of its currency. The Chinese have resisted, relying on the undervalued yen to underprice exports and gobble up world markets.

Now that the Chinese have the upper hand on the bond question, they will give short shrift to complaints about currency valuation. Look for more and more Chinese products on U. S. store shelves. China already is selling $202 billion more annually to the U.S. than the U.S. is selling to China.

If China stops buying U.S. bonds, who is going to finance a growing trade deficit with China?

One thing is clear: As the U.S. deficits pile up, with no end in sight, America's adversaries, especially China, gain leverage.

A sensible Congress would take that into account before it votes to spend more trillions of dollars that the government does not have. If it fails to do so, Chinese language studies may become the most popular courses on American college campuses. An employee, after all, wants to speak the boss's language.