Debt downgrade weakens US stature abroad

"There's real fear that, given the mounting challenges facing the administration and the standoff in Congress, this could really weaken US influence and the US role in the world," says Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform in London. "For most Europeans, that's not a prospect they welcome." ...If they are left holding paper of diminished value, they have only themselves to blame, argues Tilford, the economist at the Centre for European Reform. China bought U.S. assets in part to hold down the value of its own currency, the yuan, and so prop up its exports. "No one has been forcing the Chinese to accumulate US assets," Tilford says.