Recycling Asian Money

One of the bright spots in today's gloomy reporting is the following:

"Shares of Bank of China dropped 6.4 percent in Hong Kong after the South China Morning Post newspaper reported that the bank is expected to announce a "significant writedown" in U.S. subprime mortgage securities, citing unidentified sources. In Shanghai, the bank's stock declined 4.1 percent."

At times, I have been depressed at the spectacle of Americans rampantly running through their cash while savvy foreigners wait to pick up the pieces. It's nice to note that Asians haven't become entirely successful in their U.S. investments. They sure weren't in the 1990's, when Japanese invested huge sums in U.S. projects that went bust. Now it's the Chinese, trying to switch some of their cash from staid government debt into higher reward vehicles and getting screwed.

So this is how capitalism recycles cash. They sell us everything from shoes to lampshades and we sell them bad investments. Maybe this will work if they're really slow on the uptake.