Dear Log,
«Mr Buffett said in the last 10 years foreign powers and their citizens had accrued about $3 trillion worth of US debt and assets such as equities and real estate. At current rates, he predicted that in another 10 years' time the net ownership of the US by outsiders would amount to $11 trillion.Maybe that horrible foreign menace can actually decide it's time to install a decent government in the US, instead of the current threadbare gun-totin' affair."This annual royalty paid [to] the world would undoubtedly produce significant political unrest in the US. Americans ... would chafe at the idea of perpetually paying tribute to their creditors and owners abroad. A country that is now aspiring to an 'ownership society' will not find happiness in - and I'll use hyperbole here for emphasis - a 'sharecropper's society'."»
--"Buffett attacks American spending junkies"
Meanwhile, speaking of actual junkies instead of just metaphorical ones.
