In the old days countries threatened each other by sabre-rattling - moving armies, positioning navies, making physical threats. In the past few days we have seen the modern way to intimidate another power.
The Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, expressed concern about his country's $US1 trillion ($1.5 trillion) holdings of US government bonds."We've lent a huge amount of capital to the US, and of course we're concerned about the security of our assets. And to speak truthfully, I am a little bit worried."
That was all it took.
It marked a threshold moment in relations between the current superpower and the potential one - Beijing demonstrated that it is prepared to use its financial power over the US as an instrument of pressure.
US officials, including Barack Obama himself, hastened to reassure the Chinese over the weekend."Not just the Chinese Government, but every investor can have absolute confidence in the soundness of investments in the US."
Wen's remark was not random. It was made in answer to a pre-approved question at his annual news conference. It came just as his Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, was in Washington to negotiate with the US the approach the two countries would take to the Group of 20 summit in London on April 2.
And it emerged a few weeks after Hillary Clinton went to Beijing and explicitly called on the Government to keep buying US bonds - the Obama Treasury is hoping to sell the world another $1.7 trillion in treasuries this year to pay for the US Government's deficit.
In other words, the US, the world's biggest debtor, finds itself unusually vulnerable. And China, the world's biggest creditor, is newly powerful.
[Being that this nation is bankrupt, our 'leaders' are literally selling us to the devil for their personal political expediency.]
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