Following up on Mish

He points out that Britain could not posibly buy all that US debt for internal purposes:

Chart stolen from Mish

A simple search yields this from the Irish Times:

Britain's goods trade deficit with the rest of the world unexpectedly deteriorated in November to hit a record high, driven by imports of oil and aircraft, official data showed on today.

The figures will raise concerns about the rebalancing of the economy towards exports in response to sterling's relative weakness, as well as casting doubt on the scale of trade's contribution to fourth-quarter economic growth.

China is using British currency to mask their purchase of US debt.