Owing Money
People worry a lot about the national debt and who holds it. Often (online) I see people saying, "They're going to buy us!" This I do not really understand.
Suppose you owe someone money. But you have bigger guns than they do, and on top of that you make more money per week with less effort than they can. And you live 7,000 miles away from each other.
Obviously it would be bad for the relationship to go south, because you want to borrow money and the other person wants to lend it. But who really has the power in this situation? The lender, not the borrower, is the one taking the greater risk.
