These buildings are significant architecturally, but they re not important in the sense of having any ability to manipulate the economy, be militarily strategic, etc.You can think of it as taking advantage of the weak dollar to pay down the US debt. Our balance of trade is in deficit because we consume more than we produce. This is us selling something to bring that into balance. It just happens to be a building or two.Some of that money makes it to the government via capital gains taxes, and every dollar of that is a dollar that we don t have to borrow to pay off our massive budget. Arguably, that s the worst side effect of this deal: it lets Congress claim that they came closer to balancing the budget and therefore they can spend more money next year.We should take it as a signal, like when you have to pawn something to make rent. You know it s time to either get a third job, or cut back your expenses to the absolute minimum. We ve had plenty of signals to the same effect, but they re always in abstract terms, like more digits on the national debt clock. This is more concrete, and I hope somebody takes notice this time.The Italians don t have a particularly huge trade deficit with the US ($22 billion, a fifth that of Canada and a tenth that of China) and we actually have a positive trade balance with the United Arab Emirates (who actually exports very little to us directly.) Even the Saudi trade balance is only $25 billion (much of that money ending up in the UAE one way or another, where they buy lots of goods from the US.)Nonetheless, it s clear that with a net balance of trade a quarter of a trillion dollars in the hole, and unable to produce a positive balance for literally decades, we ve been living off our internal wealth for quite some time, and we ve racked up massive debts doing it.Selling off luxuries, like beautiful old buildings, can be made more palatable by thinking of it as selling high: it costs them a lot now. It s trading in the Lexus. The real thing to be worried about, though, is that if we don t fix it we re going to be pawning our wedding ring soon, and that hurts a lot more.
These foreign investors are actually doing us a large favor. They are bringing money back into our economy and purchasing these massive pieces of real estate before the insitutions are forced to fold from lack of funding.Are they going to take over the US? Absolutely not. How could they? If anything, they re mostly proving that America can still be a good business investment.So what should we be worried about? The reasons that the dollar has sunk so low in the first place to make sales like these so attractive to foreign investors. Our economy s in the craphole! And our politicians are doing very little to resolve these problems - especially for the lower and middle class. People are losing their homes, losing their jobs, losing their health coverage. All because of Washington incompetence.That s our real problem. And that we ve let it get this far, we deserve to have a few of our landmarks auctioned off to the highest foreign bidder.
that was buying all of the American Businesses. People thought that at the rate they were buying things up, they would own the country by 2000... and it didn t happen. China and many Middle East governments, people, and businesses are finding themselves with a huge number of dollars because of the trade deficit. They do need more goods so they use the money to buy investments. Overall, it is good for us for them to do this. They are moving our dollars back into the U.S. They will have a vested interest in our being a successful economic power. To my mind, they are just sending our paper back home to us.
and you consider this a travel question? i m more concerned about you...
And what s wrong with that Arabs r the best!