If the Unocal deal to CNOOC doesn't go through....

Mr. Bennett points us here...

without any sense of irony.

"But you must understand, foreigners have much more information than we do. There's no real freedom to discuss these kinds of things here."

I mean, foreigners do - Chinese especially- have more information about the US than Americans do.

But, speaking of China, I really wanted to discuss this.

Right now, the world financial situation is poised on a knife edge.

Luckily, our Congress is at work:

... Yesterday, Representative Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, a Democrat of Michigan, won House passage of her amendment to the annual appropriations bill prohibiting the Treasury Department from recommending the sale of Unocal to Cnooc.

And last night, the House approved, by a vote of 398 to 15, a resolution stating that Chinese ownership of Unocal would "threaten to impair the national security of the United States" and that approval by Unocal's board of the bid should result in a "thorough review" by President Bush.

Now, I guess it's OK to buy Maytag, but if China doesn't get to buy something other than T-bills with its US dollars, it's not going to want to buy them forever.

It's going to want assets denominated in dollars. The cheerleaders of free trade put this mess in motion, and here we are: if you don't like Chinese control of a major oil company (as though you had any choice, ultimately, about what other nations do), you're a bit late to the game, because they're already there, and unlike you, they're much less likely to be using the stuff for an SUV to drive around the burb.

If you don't like it, and if you succeed in preventing this and enough other sales- a kind of economic Chinese exclusion act- then you'll no doubt reap a whirlwind when the dollar collapses, when the Chinese find a way to minimize their losses in dollars while getting out of dollars and maintaining at least some economic development.

There's this presumption that "They need us!"

What if that's wrong?