Word: sovereignity
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Early last Winter, when the west was suffering the first casualties of the credit crisis, sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) rode to the rescue, providing over $40 billion in capital to some of the largest of the faltering U.S. and European banks. The U.S. government - reluctant to bail out banks directly - welcomed this infusion, even though SWFs are investment arms of foreign governments and American politicians are often suspicious of outsiders acquiring stakes in key domestic assets. So instead of a bailout of financial institutions by American taxpayers, we saw a foreign-funded bailout...
...aggressively pushing China to open up its banking system and financial markets to U.S. companies, regulators have been reluctant to issue licenses for Chinese state banks to open branches on American soil. While this impasse may be resolved, Washington's protectionist stance might make Chinese banks and sovereign funds less likely to invest in U.S. firms...
...Across the Taiwan Straits. The two sides hadn't met since 1999, when Taiwan's then-President Lee Teng-hui's offended China by referring to their relations as "state-to-state." China considers Taiwan to be a breakaway territory and bristles at any reference to it as a sovereign government. "The resumption of talks is always encouraging," says Andrew Yang, head of the Taipei-based Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies. "Now a brief encounter between the two sides unveils a new historical chapter for cross-strait relations...
...audition for the role of villain in the world's financial markets, sovereign wealth funds would have pushed sub-prime mortgages close in recent months. Huge, government-controlled investment pools from Abu Dhabi to China have helped to rescue Wall Street banks left short by the credit crisis - and still managed to leave Western governments feeling spooked. Their worry: the funds - swollen with foreign-currency reserves or billions in profits from oil and gas - might be hiding dark political motives behind fuzzy financial aims...
...even the most conspiracy-minded find it hard to work themselves into a panic over Norway's Government Pension Fund-Global. That's not to say it's lacking in clout. With assets of $382 billion at the end of March, it's the world's second-largest sovereign wealth fund, trailing only the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which weighs in at about $875 billion. Norway's fund, flush with money from the nation's oil and gas, has stakes in 7,000 firms - from Google to Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Post to PetroChina. Astonishingly, the fund now owns about...