Recently, there has been a lot of discussion on social media about Europe selling off U.S. Treasuries to counter the United States. It must be said that such views lack basic financial and geopolitical common sense. Europe's holdings of U.S. Treasuries can be roughly divided into two categories: one is official sectors (central banks, finance ministries, sovereign institutions), totaling about $2.5–3 trillion. These funds are highly cautious, with a slow adjustment pace, mainly serving as reserves and risk management tools rather than political weapons. If used as political weapons, the U.S. has many countermeasures (which will be discussed later), while Europe does not have many options. The second category is the private sector (banks, insurance companies, pension funds, funds), which is larger, about $3.5–4.5 trillion. However, this portion of funds is almost impossible to mobilize politically. For European banks, insurance companies, and pension funds, U.S. Treasuries are among the few assets that can meet scale, safety, and duration matching simultaneously. How would they explain the losses from selling Treasuries to investors? Tell them it’s a patriotic (continental) cost? To counter the so-called European selling of U.S. Treasuries, the U.S. does not need to "hard handle" the Treasury market. Once the situation escalates, U.S. countermeasures are far more than just interest rate adjustments: from dollar liquidity and clearing systems, to technological and military-industrial chain advantages, to conditional security commitments and strategic ambiguity—these are systemic-level measures with low visibility, repeatability, and stronger constraints on Europe. In 2019, Turkey purchased Russia’s S-400 missile defense system. U.S. sanctions against Turkey only involved banning the F-35 sale and freezing intelligence cooperation, but immediately re-priced Turkey’s sovereign risk in the international financial markets. The result was: the lira depreciated sharply at multiple stages, government bond yields rose, and CDS (credit default swap) spreads widened significantly, severely exacerbating Turkey’s economic crisis. The U.S. security alliance (protection) is essentially an implicit sovereign credit enhancer. Imagine the U.S. downgrading a certain ally within the alliance system? Or using the nuclear umbrella to threaten them? How much damage could that cause to the respective country? Placing such scenarios on European countries—whether it’s the deeply entangled Germany and France, the rescue-dependent PIGS countries, or the Nordic countries heavily reliant on financial support for their energy industries—can they withstand America’s asymmetric retaliation?

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HighAmbitionvip
· 5h ago
2026 GOGOGO 👊
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