The Times reports that panicky American investors are repatriating their capital, and the Chinese haven’t hit the brakes on buying up American debt, either. That’s exacerbating the impact of the financial crisis globally by soaking up liquidity that could finance debt elsewhere. In other words, money is still flowing uphill, largely because high ground is safer when the water’s rising in the valley.
But capital from emerging markets is increasingly flowing towards developed economies as well, where it is busy buying up assets. 2point6billion reports:
A recent KPMG survey entitled – ‘Emerging Markets International Acquisition Tracker’points out that emerging-to-developed deals now represent 47 per centof the developed-to-emerging total, compared with 23 per cent in thesecond half of 2006. This signals a significant shift in global fundflows, demonstrating that capital doesn’t just flow from richer moredeveloped nations investing in more developing nations as istraditionally thought. However large Asian infrastructure andtechnology companies are more aggressively bidding for westerncompanies that are currently drowning in debt, but have a large stableframework.
In other words, not only is China nationalizing the U.S. government, it’s also nationalizing the private sector. Okay, I’m exagerrating, but you get the picture.