who will own america after the fire sales, page-10

The US will own the US...only on a somewhat smaller scale.

I don't know if you're old enough to remember the fear-mongering in Australia during the 1980's regarding the Japanese. Headlines regularly worried that they were buying up all of our industries and land.

Well, everntually they got into trouble and we bought most of it back for cents in the dollar.

And we were just small fry: they were buying huge slabs of the US, Britain and Europe, as well.

They were burned badly, retreated and went into a decade-long recession. We, the Yanks, the Poms and the Continentals all got their land and companies back.

The US banks are using the Sovereign Wealth Funds in the same way they used the pension funds and superannuation funds, who bought up MBS's, CDO's CDS's and CDO-Squared's. They are using the same salesmen to sell it (incidentially, the best salesmen that money can buy, which means the best salesmen in the world). It's no great leap to think they can convince the SWF decision-makers, if they were able to convince pension fund trustees worldwide.

If the current trend follows the 1980's, you can bet that in a few years' time, the management (with some backing from local US entrepreneurs) will buy their companies back for a pittance, leaving the SWF's to lick their wounds and eat their losses.

However, the trick is not knowing what will play out. It's in knowing when it will play out.

How much money can the big US banks smooth-talk away from the SWF's, before they catch on to the game - in the same way pension fund trustees have cottoned onto it?