Immediately after Standard & Poor’s rating agency announced its historic downgrade of U.S. sovereign debt last Friday, China’s official Xinhua news agency published a scathing editorial, excoriating the profligate western nation for its “debt addiction”. “The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone,” it thundered, as it reminded Americans that China was the largest foreign holder of their government’s debt. The implicit assertion behind this fierce outburst was that China, in stark contrast to ... (full story)