From Bloomie:
China, the U.S.’s largest creditor abroad, urged American lawmakers opposed to raising the debt limit by tomorrow to get out of the way. Tea Party Republicans’ response: mind your own business.
The U.S. must “shoulder its responsibility” as the world’s biggest economy and holder of the main reserve currency and “take concrete measures before Oct. 17 to avoid a default,” Deputy Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao said at a briefing with reporters yesterday in Beijing in which he referred to “the attitude of the Tea Party.”
That stalemate led to the first government shutdown since 1996 and has merged into a debate over the nation’s $16.7 trillion debt limit.
Lawmakers tied to the Tea Party didn’t appreciate the advice, even from a nation that holds almost a quarter of foreign-owned Treasuries — $1.28 trillion as of July.
“They need to stay out of our politics,” Representative Blake Farenthold, a Tea Party-backed Texas Republican, said in an interview. China’s criticism “almost sounds like a threat,” said Representative Ted Yoho, a Florida Republican. “For them to say something derogatory about the Tea Party, I take offense to that.”
…The Chinese are “attacking the wrong thing in this country,” Yoho said in an interview yesterday. The Tea Party is “standing up for fiscal responsibility, free enterprise, the Constitution and limited government.”
Perhaps but it’s doing so by threatening to not paying it’s creditors. That is, China.
