Some interesting items this week...

For starters, here's something that would surprise most Americans: China actually holds only 9.5% of total U.S. treasury debt.  This means they simply do not have the leverage over the U.S. economy that is typically presumed.

Another misconception is that U.S. manufacturing must be doing well because hiring was up in 2010, and that increased productivity means everything is golden.  We debunked these claims, however.  In truth, U.S. manufacturing has a long way to go in order to recover 5.5 million jobs lost in the past decade.  Also, productivity data is misleading due to foreign labor inputs on assembly.  Read more about that here.

Lastly, we've been citing a new AAM chart that shows how lost manufacturing jobs mean lost revenue for the U.S. economy.