Editor,

“I love debt,” Donald Trump told CNBC. “I’m the king of debt. I love playing with it.”

Guess how he plays with it? His companies have had four bankruptcies, the last of which cost his creditors a billion dollars.

About the national debt, he has proposed making a deal whereby creditors will get less than 100 cents on the dollar. That’ll fix the Chinese, right?

Except that the Chinese own only 8 percent of our debt. All foreign investments amount to only 34 percent. So who owns the other 66 percent?

The American people do, in Treasury bills, notes, bonds, TIPS (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities) and special State and Local Government Series securities.

The biggest chunk of the debt is owned by the Social Security Trust Fund. The Military Retirement Trust Fund and private pension funds own some of it. Whatever your retirement fund is, it likely owns government bonds, long believed to be the safest investment in the world.

So when Donald Trump claims that he knows better than anyone else how to handle debt, believe him when he says as president he would make a deal not to pay it in full. And be aware that you are one of the people he would not hesitate to cheat.

Ann Adams

Oak Harbor