Kent Conrad: “In 42 months. I was teaching back home in North Dakota at one of the universities, and I asked the students there: Does…”

“In 42 months. I was teaching back home in North Dakota at one of the universities, and I asked the students there: Does it make a difference, should you care, does it matter to you that we owe Japan almost $700 billion? Does it matter we owe China over $160 billion? Does it matter that we have borrowed over $60 billion from South Korea? They said it matters. I said: How do you think it matters? They said: If there is a military confrontation of some kind, maybe that affects our ability to do things we might think is in the national interest because we owe them so much money. On trade, can we really call their hand when they are treating us unfairly in trade relationships when we owe them hundreds of billions of dollars? And what are the consequences here if all of a sudden we do return to economic growth and we have borrowed all this money and we have to start paying it back, what is the effect on interest rates here? That is what frightens the International Monetary Fund. That is what concerns people such as Chairman Greenspan.”