In recent years, Western governments have voiced concerns about Asian governments’ vast sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) investing in Western companies. Some called this "investment protectionism"
But as Western banks faced collapse, they were delighted to receive capital injections from Asian SWFs – and Western governments didn’t object. In a crisis, needs must.
Now, though, Asia’s SWFs are having second thoughts.
China Investment Corp, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, will no
longer risk investing in western financial institutions because of
concerns about their viability and a lack of consistency in their
governments’ policies, according to its chairman.
“Right now we
don’t have the courage to invest in financial institutions because we
don’t know what problems we will put ourselves into,” Lou Jiwei said.
Perhaps Western governments will realise that the only thing worse than receiving investment from Asia’s sovereign-wealth funds is being denied it.
Hello. Are you aware of the latest figures which show that the 1.34 million jobs created in the UK since 2001 have overwhelmingly gone to immigrants? And that the proportion of British-born people in work is the same as it was before?
Meanwhile the vast number of potential workers on welfare remains more or less unchanged.
What goes on in your head that allows you to rise above facts and fly on faith, I wonder?