> It doesn’t help that China has essentially been spewing entirely fictitious accounting numbers for the last 20 years. It’s not even about padding an extra 10-15% anymore. There are journal articles out there claiming that Alibaba, a company as big as Oracle, is making up whole cloth 95% of it’s accounting statements. Ridiculous...

That can't be any good. The very foundation of modern nations is built on good accounting purposes. In fact, I read a book about how double entry accounting was one of the fundamental reasons for the growth of the British and later the American empire.

And yes while the deficit doesn't matter, good accounting absolutely does. Fudge those numbers and people lose trust in the system. That's how you create economic panics...