It is economic judo being worked on China, India, Russia, the ME and all of those other suckers who bought our debt (lent us money). They thought they were gonna get a nice return on their investments. Nope. We will just inflate away that possibility. And as we are one of the lowest or lowest saving nations on the planet with the largest economy. It will work until we have to fight the repo man. Then it could go all wobbly. But who cares about that. That is for the next administration to worry about....
Umm.... Perhaps you are unaware of the fact that only 25.52% of the national debt is held by foreign entities. "All those suckers" happens to be the US citizens. Think bank reserves, investment trusts, credit unions, etc etc. It would be unwise to default on the major holdings of every bank and credit union in the US.
Actually, ah, the US government has never once defaulted on a single payment on t-bills. Fiscal 2008 is projected at $412 Billion in interest payments on t-bills. Believe it or not, t-bills historically never paid great interest. No one invests in t-bills to make a great return on their investment. The primary reason why they are so popular (excluding legally mandatory purchases) is their historical reliability. Miss a payment, no one is buying them. And expect lawsuits out the ying yang, that likely would succeed. Trust me, they'd loot your savings account directly before they miss payments on t-bills.
But let's say "soak 'em foreigners". The top foreign holders of US t-bills are China (652.9b), Japan (585.5b), and UK (360.2b). Next closest country is Brazil, quite down the list investment wise (134.5b). Japan and UK are among our closest allies. Cutting them off would be a bad idea. China, well... Cutting off trade with China would be mighty interesting. Considering how much money they're kicking back to the politicians.
Not sure why you think India (12.2b), Russia (80.9b) are major holders. They're not even close. Heck, Luxembourg has almost more in holdings than India and Russia put together. OPEC holds 187.7b, but that includes 6 non-ME countries.