Who loves ya, baby?

The United States may be hurtling towards a fiscal cliff at the end of the year. But if the U.S. is Thelma then China is Louise. Despite continued fears about another debt ceiling debacle at the end of this year, China is buying U.S. Treasury debt like it's going out of style ... or like it's Facebook stock.

The Treasury Department released its latest figures on foreign holdings of U.S. debt Tuesday morning. There is a lag -- the most recent numbers are from March. But China added to its massive position in Treasury bonds. It now holds $1.169 trillion in U.S. bonds, up $14 billion from February.  China had been net sellers of debt for five straight months last fall after Standard & Poor's stripped the U.S. of its AAA credit rating. But the increase in March is the second time this year China has bought more Treasuries.

China seems to realize that even though politicians on Capitol Hill are unlikely to take a long enough break from campaigning to actually do anything important until after the election, the fiscal situation in the U.S. is still far less dire than Europe's. At this point, I'm not sure there are enough lollipops in the world for even the late Greek-American acting icon Telly Savalas to pull a Kojak and love Greece and the rest of the eurozone, baby.

Sure. it must be painful for China to own so much Treasury debt with long-term yields once again approaching all-time lows. But the U.S. is still the safest of the safe havens. The euro is starting to show some cracks, having broken below the key $1.30 level. Gold has lost its luster. Unless China actually does want to invest in Facebook, Treasuries seem their best bet -- even with the 10-year yielding a puny 1.78%.

Still, our second largest foreign creditor, Japan, scaled back its Treasury holdings a bit. Japan was a net seller in March. But that is only the second time since last July that Japan has sold Treasury debt. Japan owns $1.083 trillion in U.S. debt, up from $885 billion in July. So if the U.S. is Thelma and China is Louise, I guess that makes Japan the poor truck driver that got blown up at the end of the movie.

Newt Gingrich's long-foundering presidential run is finally over, but the former House speaker's efforts to pay off his campaign debt are likely just beginning.

The Gingrich campaign, as of the last reporting period, owes $4.3 million to creditors, including pollsters, staffers, consultants, lawyers and event venues.

The campaign owes Moby Dick Airways, an air charter company, more than $1 million. Another $450,000 is owed to a security firm called Patriot Group. Tech darling Twitter is on the list for $12,700.

The total amount owed may already be dropping. Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond told CNNMoney on Thursday that the campaign paid off around $500,000 in April, payments that won't show up until the next monthly Federal Election Commission filing.

It is common for campaigns to go into debt, but Gingrich has dug quite the hole. After all, his campaign raised just over $22 million while he was a candidate. Raising money now will be even harder. It is possible that some creditors won't be paid for years.

But there are plenty of ways to pay down the debt. As of March 31, the campaign had $1.2 million in cash on hand. Some of that might be paid to creditors. Mitt Romney, the party's presumptive nominee, might be persuaded to help Gingrich retire the debt, as President Obama helped Hillary Clinton do in 2008.

The campaign might also rent out its voter mailing lists to other candidates in exchange for a fee, a strategy that candidates have used in the past, including Clinton, who also auctioned time with her husband in order to retire campaign debt.

But the debt is likely to linger. According to its latest filing, the Clinton campaign is still in debt almost four years after closing up shop. At the end of March, the campaign owed research and consulting firm Penn, Schoen & Berland some $245,000.

Gingrich isn't the only 2012 candidate with bills to pay. Rick Santorum is almost $2 million in debt, but has $1.8 million in cash available. And Jon Huntsman has creditors, but around $4 million of his $5.5 million debt are loans from the candidate himself to the campaign.

Tim Pawlently, one of the first Republican contenders to drop out, has already paid off his debt. But he is lucky. It's more common for campaign debt to endure for years. Rudy Giuliani, the 2008 hopeful, still owes creditors $1.5 million, including $236,000 to Verizon Wireless and $107,000 to AT&T.

The poor are finding it even tougher to escape from the lowest income ranks these days.

Most of those in the poorest income quintile spent all or nearly all of the period between 1996 and 2006 stuck in place, according to a new report issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Those who did advance didn't move far.

The research, conducted by senior economist Katharine Bradbury, shows that economic mobility has also slowed in recent decades. Those in the poorest fifth of the income pie were more likely to stay there between 1996 and 2006 than they were in the previous two 10-year periods.

"Most of the long-term poor are stuck at the bottom, most of the long-term rich have a strong grip on the top, and each of these two groups is somewhat more entrenched than the corresponding groups 20 years earlier," she wrote.

The spread between the rich and poor has also widened, as income inequality increases. The difference in median income between the highest and lowest quintiles was $80,500 during the 1996-2006 period. That's nearly $30,000 more than it was two decades earlier.

This stagnation means that not only is it harder for individuals to climb the economic ladder, but it's also more difficult for poor parents to raise their children's prospects, Bradbury said.

After winning primary votes in Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island on Tuesday night, Mitt Romney bid adieu to his Republican opponents and turned his attention to President Obama and the general election.

In his victory speech, Romney argued that the president's economic policies have failed, and invoked Ronald Reagan's famous query to voters: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Here's what Romney said:

Four years ago Barack Obama dazzled us in front of Greek columns with sweeping promises of hope and change.  But after we came down to earth, after the celebration and parades, what do we have to show for three and a half years of President Obama?

Is it easier to make ends meet? Is it easier to sell your home or buy a new one?  Have you saved what you needed for retirement? Are you making more in your job?  Do you have a better chance to get a better job?  Do you pay less at the pump?

If the answers were "yes" to those questions, then President Obama would be running for re-election based on his achievements … and rightly so.  But because he has failed, he will run a campaign of diversions, distractions, and distortions.  That kind of campaign may have worked at another place and in a different time.  But not here and not now.  It's still about the economy … and we're not stupid.

Of course, individual voters are likely to produce a variety of answers to Romney's question. Polling suggests around 20% of Americans say their family's financial situation is better now than four years ago, while 37% say it's worse and 43% say it's about the same.

But let's shift from Romney's focus on household finances to the economy at large. Benchmark economic indicators can tell us a lot about the economy Americans were living with 3.5 years ago.

In October 2008, Obama was still one month away from defeating John McCain in the general election, but the economy had already been in a recession for a full year. In the fourth quarter, the economy contracted at an astounding 8.9% clip. The economy shed 489,000 jobs in October, followed by losses of 803,000 in November, 661,000 in December and a whopping 818,000 in January, the month Obama assumed office.

For much of October, 2008, the Dow Jones Industrial Average traded below 9,000 points. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq weren't doing any better. Things were really bad.

Here is a small sample of newspaper headlines from those dark days:

Jobless Rate at 14-Year High After October Losses

U.S. job losses worst since 1974 as downturn deepens

No quick end seen to spiraling U.S. job cuts

Manufacturing Index Shows Sharp Decline

Persistent Anxiety Over Tight Credit Sends Stocks Plunging

No leap of faith is required to say the economy at large is without doubt in better shape today than it was in late 2008. The economy is growing, not contracting. Jobs are being added, not lost. More credit is available.

And thus it seems the real argument Romney should be making is whether Obama's policies have produced the best possible results. There are plenty of areas for critique. The housing market is still sputtering along, and the government's efforts to remedy the situation have had limited success. Job gains have been less robust than past recessions. Economic growth remains sluggish.

On the campaign trail, Romney often offered this more nuanced critique. It's not as flashy. It doesn't make for the best soundbites. But it also doesn't require mass amnesia amongst the electorate as to what the economy was really like in late 2008.

(Update: An earlier version of this story said that 43% of Americans did not know if their family's financial situation is better now than four years ago. In fact, 43% of Americans said their family's financial situation is about the same.)

Deep pocketed Wall Street donors, many of whom are thought to favor Romney, are being warned by their firms to limit donations. Here's the Journal:

"[The Victory Fund] asks donors to give as much as $75,800, including donations to Mr. Romney's primary and general-election efforts and the Republican National Committee.

Some $40,000 of an individual's $75,800 contribution would go to state GOP accounts in Idaho, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Vermont—the legal maximum of $10,000 for each. These funds are intended to help the Romney presidential campaign.

Presidential candidates in the past have asked donors to give money to state parties to help fund their election effort. But Mr. Romney's inclusion of state campaigns has raised a red flag with some Wall Street firms because of new SEC rules enacted after 'pay to play' scandals.

Lawyers for investment companies have warned their clients that a donation to the Romney Victory fund could trigger SEC rules meant to bar investment advisers from influencing elections in states where they are trying to win business."

The Journal reports that the Romney campaign is working on a "workaround." CNNMoney has reached out to the campaign for more details about what that might look like, and will update when we hear back. SEC rules on pay-to-play, issued in 2010, are available here.

Good schools don't come cheap.

Want to live in a good school district? It'll cost you an extra $200k.

Home values are $205,000 higher, on average, in neighborhoods with high-scoring public schools versus schools with low scores, according to a new report issued by the Brookings Institution.

Homes in high-scoring neighborhoods typically have 1.5 additional rooms, and 30% fewer are rented, the study found. Housing costs average $11,000 more per year in areas with better schools.

Some of the areas with largest differences in housing costs also have the widest gaps in school test scores. The Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk metro area in Connecticut, for instance, has both the widest gap in test scores between higher-income and lower-income neighborhood schools and the largest difference in housing costs, at $25,000.

Not surprisingly, income has an impact on test scores. The average low-income student attends a school that scores at the 42nd percentile on state exams, while the average middle/high-income student goes to schools that score at the 61st percentile.

Poor students have become more concentrated in schools with other poor students since 1998, Brookings found. The average low-income student attends a school where 64% of fellow students are low-income, though they represent only 48% of all U.S. public school students. The percentage of economically integrated schools is less than 7%.

The long trek to the White House is never made alone. Instead, candidates pick up all manner of consultants, pollsters, advisers, press officers and wanna-be appointees along the way.

Mitt Romney, now considered his party's presumptive nominee, has his own team of four economic advisers. Harvard economist Greg Mankiw and Columbia Business School's Glenn Hubbard hail from academia.  Former Sen. Jim Talent and Rep. Vin Weber bring knowledge of Washington's hallways of power.

Hubbard and Mankiw are both prominent economists with solid academic reputations. And both should be comfortable brushing shoulders with Romney after leading George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers (at different times). Mankiw is the author of an extremely popular economics textbook. Both trend to the right politically, and are well respected by colleagues.

Talent, who represented Missouri in Congress, now works at the conservative Heritage Foundation. In addition to his campaign duties, Weber is managing partner of Clark & Weinstock, a Washington-based consulting and lobbying shop. The old D.C. hands bring experience and connections that Romney, having spent his career elsewhere, just does not have.

According to Romney, the group is meant to be more than mere figureheads. In his official introduction of the team last year, the former Massachusetts governor said the advisers had already been "instrumental in helping me to craft policies."

But advisers can also make trouble for a campaign if they stray off message or hold divergent beliefs. And this group of advisers, like all others, presents a few problem spots for the campaign.

Mankiw, the high-profile Harvard professor, has come to the defense of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his handling of the financial crisis. "Mr. Bernanke," Mankiw wrote in July, "has worked tirelessly to shepherd the economy through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and yet, for all his efforts, seems vastly underappreciated."

One of the people who seem to be, in Mankiw's words, unappreciative? Romney -- who has said he would be looking for a new central bank chief and has indicated he favors tighter monetary policy (Romney would have to wait until Bernanke's term expires in Jan. 2014 to replace him).

Mankiw has also argued for hiking the gas tax, a policy position that surely ranks among the least popular of all time.

Hubbard, meanwhile, is a major proponent of a large-scale mortgage refinance program designed to prevent foreclosures and heal the housing market. Romney argues the best medicine for the troubled sector is no medicine -- market forces should be allowed to run their course.

Hubbard, Mankiw and Weber have all spoken favorably of the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan. That means they would be willing to accept more federal revenue as part of a broader deficit reduction plan. But Romney famously raised his hand during a primary debate to say he would reject any deal that raised taxes, even if the ratio of spending cuts to tax hikes was 10 to 1.

Even with these differences, there are vast swaths of policy where the advisers and candidate are on the same page. Hubbard helped design the Bush tax cuts, and his fingerprints are all over Romney's recent proposal to cut marginal income tax rates by 20%. And the campaign, even while battling for primary votes, stayed away from outside-the-mainstream plans like Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax scheme and other Tea Party-infused policy ideas.

If the Romney camp were to succeed in getting their man a seat in the Oval Office, Hubbard and Mankiw would provide a solid base of advisers to build on. And there, should the economists remain on board, divergent views can become an asset.

President Obama, for example, didn't shy away from putting people with different policy ideas in prominent positions. Team of Rivals, anyone?

One of the biggest knocks on Mitt Romney this election cycle is that his policy proposals have lacked specificity -- especially when it comes to how much the government should tax, and what programs it should spend that revenue on.

But on Sunday, a few new details were revealed as reporters were able to eavesdrop on a closed Romney fundraiser.

We know Romney wants to cut income tax rates by 20% across the board, scrap the Alternative Minimum Tax, eliminate the estate tax and chop the tax rate paid by corporations from 35% to 25%.

All that tax cutting means the government will be taking in far less revenue. Romney has pledged to make up the difference by limiting deductions, exemptions and credits currently available to top-level income earners. But he hasn't lifted the curtain on which deductions he is planning to curtail.

Similarly, Romney has been criticized, even by conservatives, for lofty rhetoric about cuts to government spending that hasn't been accompanied by a substantial list of programs and agencies that will actually receive less funding.

Now the candidate is getting a tiny bit more specific about his plans.

Reporters stationed outside a fundraiser in Palm Beach, including one from the Wall Street Journal, were able to catch part of the candidate's backyard pitch while standing on a sidewalk outside the venue.

According to the Journal, Romney "said he would eliminate or limit for high-earners the mortgage interest deduction for second homes, and likely would do the same for the state income tax deduction and state property tax deduction."

On the spending side of the ledger, the former Massachusetts governor put the Department of Housing and Urban Development, once run by his father, on notice. "That might not be around later," Romney said.

And while the Department of Education might be "a heck of a lot smaller" under a Romney administration, the candidate said he was "not going to get rid of it entirely," the Journal reported.

Even with these additional details, much remains a mystery. On spending, Romney has said he would cap spending at 20% of GDP, immediately reduce non-security discretionary accounts by 5% and pursue a balanced budget amendment. With federal spending currently at around 24% of GDP, that means huge cuts.

On the campaign trail, Romney most often says he wants to cut funding for relatively small programs like Amtrak, the National Endowment for the Arts, foreign aid, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Title X family planning.

He does detail a few bigger ticket items, like a 10% reduction in the size of the federal workforce and modification to Medicaid that would turn it into a block grant program.

But those cuts don't add up to anything near his headline goal. The result, at the moment, is an economic policy plan with significant gaps.

There is, of course, a political advantage to maintaining radio silence on these matters. Behind every specific budget cut is a constituency that benefits from government funding. Same thing with eliminating a tax deduction -- that means somebody, somewhere, is paying higher taxes.

On Monday, the Romney campaign said we shouldn't consider the details overheard by reporters to be an official position of the presumptive nominee. Instead, a Romney campaign official told CNN that the candidate was "tossing ideas out" and not "unveiling policy."