http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/04/joseph_stiglitz.html
China has been engaged in what might be called "vendor finance", providing the money that helps ... Americans to buy more goods than they sell. But this is a peculiar arrangement: a relatively poor country is helping to finance America's war on Iraq, as well as a massive tax cut for the richest people in the world's richest country, while huge needs at home imply ample room for expansion of both consumption and investment.