The Great American Liquidation Sale

As many people have been predicting China has begun to exert its decade of built up wealth on the world markets. First it made a bid for Maytag and now it has gun after the US energy company Unocal. These hostile takeover bids have been met with fear from Congress, but with not much else. Everyone is talking about protecting an energy company, but by doing this they miss the bigger picture.

The problem is two fold. First is not that the Chinese are taking over one company, the problem is that the Chinese are taking over a US company with money from the US. The second and more important issue that is overlooked is that the purchase of Unocal is a microcosm for the whole China and US relationship. The fact that China is now America's largest creditor is never mentioned by anyone. The same way that they have just put bids on two fairly large American companies; they will do to American giants like GM and Microsoft.

The PRC has realized that they do not need to beat us militarily (although they are making preparations in case they will have to), but can do it economically. They know that once they crash our economy we will not be able to fight them, and they will have a free hand at building their empire.