[KarlInOhio]

How much of this was just China getting sick of paying American banks a percentage for processing the orders? If you buy one car you go to the dealership, if you buy a thousand you call the manufacturers directly instead of letting the dealer skim a little for every car.

[balls]

I don’t think disintermediation is China’s strategy, after all, they don’t need to be concerned with the middleman failing. The middlemen they have been going through are “too big to fail” - effectvely backed by the full faith and credit, to the extent that China allows it to exist, of the US treasury. They want to extract value directly from 0bama in the front-end negotiations asap; i.e. right now, before November elections.

[dennisw]

Unlike China-
Our own Federal Reserve does not buy Treasuries direct although it could exert pressure to do so. Instead it buys through the primary dealers (huge prominent banks and a few Wall Street firms) This is about a 4 billion dollar gift each year to their buddies (primary dealers) That really should be going back to the Federal Gov't the way all FR profits go after deducting for its substantial operating expenses