to the yen but the answer to your literal question is "no." If the rest of the world adopted the yen as its currency, that would have no effect on private property ownership in the United States.

    And remember just bc the bank forecloses on your property does not mean they own it - they still have to offer it for sale usually at a public sale and the buyer at the sale would own it. The bank would bid only if no one else offered enough to cover the bank's loss on the loan. So -and this may be what you are getting at - if the dollar was devalued vis a vis the yen so the Chinese could outbid everyone else, they would end up owning the property. But this would be better than having the bank buy it at a lower price.

    So while the oversupply of foreclosed homes is still a real problem and we may see a double dip on housing prices as a result, I wouldn't worry about the Chinese.

or commit a kind of fraud when they lend your money.

      A true bank deposit is not a bailment or trust of the deposited money. Rather, you part with title to your money and  the money you deposit becomes owned by the bank. The transfer creates a debtor creditor relationship between you and the bank. This is all spelled out in the Depositary Agreement between you and the bank.

   So, as between you and the bank, the bank is free to do whatever it wants with the money and consequently if the bank chooses to lend it or spend that is not a violation of your property rights or fraud because you have agreed to this.

       Of course, state and federal regulation restricts what the bank can do with that money but fed regs allow the bank to lend out more deposits than it keeps on hand as reserves.

     Now a different situation occurs when you place securities, jewels or just money in a bank safety deposit box. For this type of account, the bank cannot lend the funds at all and must return the exact money you put in the box. So you would be right as to this kind of bank service but not a deposit agreement.

I don't have any links, just what is going through my head.  Could this happen?

The farmer sells his land to the real estate developer, the real estate devoleper goes in put roads and divides up lots and subdivisions.  Houses are built and sold to the buyer which borrows money from the bank on these scam ballon loans, house is foreclosed and now owned by the bank.  So the bank owns all this propery.  So what happens if the world's currency is no longer the dollar, but changed to the Yen once the Chinese realize that the dollar has no value because we are the only government that can print our own money?  If that happens, would the Chinese be the owers of private property in our country?  Scary thought.  I hope we aren't making room for the chinese with all these foreclosed homes.  Maybe I just think too much.

Thanks, Madison

What you are talking about happens only with a violation of private property. We live in a mixed economy, where property rights are upheld in general, but violated fairly often.

Bankers especially do not operate in a free market. They are regulated by a central bank which tries to control interest rates and the supply of money for a whole bunch of purposes. Our banking system also functions on fractional reserve, which is a violation of the original legal principle of deposit. Demand deposits, like checking accounts, are supposed to be available for withdrawal at any time. But banks only keep a small reserve to serve the needs of those people who want to withdraw their money.

Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles by Jesus Huerta de Soto

Your checking deposit is like the safety deposit in that you are sue the money availableny time you ask for it. The large number of bank failures are exactly that, failures to pay back people's deposits. They failed in the contract. Continuing to operate in a way that has shown to result in repeated failures like that is fraud. And this is a fundamental cause of the business cycle. It is the reason we have been saddled by a central bank that continues to cause the booms and busts which our economy suffers again and again.

Madison, I don't know of a single currency that can't be printed by some government somewhere.

But that's neither here nor there. So long as there is a demand for US dollars, the US dollar will have value. So long as most of the world's oil is traded in dollars, then the US dollar will be in demand all over the world.

They don't have to wait until the bank goes bankrupt. All anyone needs is cash.

If you are cooking up "Obama is Running up the deficit to sell land Chinese", who am I stop the conspiracy theory.

Google Chinese owned companies you will get your answer.

Have fun!

I hope you realize that the yen is the Japanese currency, and the Chinese currency is the yuan.

and yes the bank does own any real estate it forecloses on, at least temporarily, but the Chinese would only own real estate in this country that it held mortages on, or any actual mortages that it owned that defaulted.

Most of the debt the Chinese own here is Government debt, T-bills and the like which are "full faith and credit" of the US government, there is no way for the Chinese to "forclose" on the US government short of going to war. So feel free to get a good nights sleep. lol