January 23, 2008

THE FUTURES MARKET:

Overseas Investors Buy Aggressively in U.S. (PETER S. GOODMAN and LOUISE STORY, January 20, 2008, NY Times)

For much of the world, the United States is now on sale at discount prices. With credit tight, unemployment growing and worries mounting about a potential recession, American business and government leaders are courting foreign money to keep the economy growing. Foreign investors are buying aggressively, taking advantage of American duress and a weak dollar to snap up what many see as bargains, while making inroads to the world’s largest market.

Last year, foreign investors poured a record $414 billion into securing stakes in American companies, factories and other properties through private deals and purchases of publicly traded stock, according to Thomson Financial, a research firm. That was up 90 percent from the previous year and more than double the average for the last decade. It amounted to more than one-fourth of all announced deals for the year, Thomson said.

During the first two weeks of this year, foreign businesses agreed to invest another $22.6 billion for stakes in American companies — more than half the value of all announced deals. If a recession now unfolds and the dollar drops further, the pace could accelerate, economists say.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 23, 2008 9:03 AM
Comments

So let's see...

Arab and Chinese government interests buy not only our financial companies, but into defense and technology companies as well, placing foreign goverment "agents" on (or gaining access to) our corporate boards.

Note that these boards and Companies are not really "American", but merely "corporate."

They follow money, not rights nor ideology. If shown that they could make profits by turning US citizens to Soylent Green and exporting the product, they would immediately start lobbying for legalization of such things.

A combination of McCain-Feingold and the ability of Google search algorithms to make any opposition "disappear," and everything can proceed as planned...
_____

Of course, I'm mostly kidding about all of that, particularly since the vast majority of all this investment is good news.

Just remember Big Government, Big Business, and Big (public and private) Union are not in conflict with each other. They are marching in lockstep to undermine what little is left of "Little Citizen."

Posted by: Bruno at January 23, 2008 10:51 AM

The insight of the Founders is that the Little Citizens are the most dangerous special interest.

Posted by: oj at January 23, 2008 1:23 PM

Last year, everyone, I mean NYT, worried about how China overtook the US in attracting the biggest amount of foreign investments. Should we be delighted that we have gained quite a bit of foreign investment dollars now? What is NYT worrying about?

When the US dollar was all time high, we worried about the US losing competitiveness, when the US dollar is all time low, we worry about the US losing her stores. When the weather was cold three decades ago, we worried about the coming ice age, when the weather warms up, we worry about global warming. Somebody surely worries a lot to create "news" stories.

Posted by: ic at January 23, 2008 6:05 PM
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