Moscow, Russia. A key component of asymmetric warfare holds that you buy the debt of your enemy and cash it in and destroy their economy at just the right time,if this is true, Americans should loose just a little more sleep as Putin truly does all, and doubles down on American debt.
This March, the Russian Federation bought $13.5 billion dollars of US government bonds known as “Treasury securities.” Russia’s total holdings of US debt have now increased to nearly $100 billion, according to recently released US Treasury Department data that is causing stomach churn at the CIA and over in Treasury Intelligence.
It’s the third straight month of buying from Russia. A key reason is that Russia is restocking its foreign reserves, which declined dramatically when oil prices crashed last year to their lowest level since 2003. Thanks to surplus income, Russia is not only buying huge amounts of gold, but large amounts of US debt, just as its ally China has been doing for years.
Back when the price of oil started to drop in late 2014, Russia’s economy and currency went down with it. US and European economic sanctions against Russia didn’t help its economy either, but Russia has survived the sanctions quite well and the bear is back buying US debt with a vengeance.
The Russian ruble hit an all-time low in early 2016 when oil prices fell to around $26 a barrel.The ruble’s crash could have been worse had the Russian government not spent lots of its US dollar holdings to keep the currency afloat. Before oil prices crashed, Russia’s debt holdings hovered around $150 billion. They fell to $66.5 billion in 2015. By contrast, the current American debt is $19 TRILLION dollars.
Itis believed that Russia and China hold maybe a trillion each in US debt, but experts caution there is no way of truly knowing how much either has put away to cause America a rainy day. Something that keeps American intelligence up, late into the night.