Does anyone else get the sense that President Obama's trip to China was, in part, an unpleasant trip to meet with our bankers?

For years, the United States has had the most bankable credit on earth. The past year has been noteworthy for a steeply escalating demand for credit by the United States government, perhaps to a point that there are valid concerns about repayment.

Bankers who get nervous about repayment don't lend any more money. Some of them even call loans due, especially if covenants are not being kept. Here are two signals that the Chinese have taken President Obama to the woodshed on credit and are stipulating specific though informal covenants:

1. Copenhagen climate talks: No deal, we're out of time, Obama warns. This has already happened. China could not want less to do with climate change agreements than if it were run by Dick Cheney. The politics of Copenhagen were leaning in the direction of signing treaties requiring the transfer of wealth from industrialized nations to poor nations. And the world's emerging industrial superpower wants no part of that.

2. No (or next to no) health care bill. This hasn't happened, yet, and a health care bill should be unstoppable with a Democratic filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Sure it will be made to look like internal politics, but if America gets little done on health care then there is a good possibility that its bankers in Beijing are behind it. Our nation's public debt soared 77% during the Bush administration and may double during the Obama administration; China is not going to put up with our going another gazillion dollars in the hole.

So far the President is showing some resolve and putting a good face on things. But when your bankers realize you are up to your eyeballs in alligators, your ability to accomplish an agenda gets swamped. Show no discipline, and eventually your bankers will provide you with some.

Has the United States maxed out its credit card?