Fed approves Chinese bank CCB to open office in US

Why does this scare me so much?

Because you have been brain washed? American banks operate all over the world, including China. As long as they adhere to domestic law, it doesn't matter much. Banks are facilitators, and Chinese banks are old-fashioned and reliable.

If we started protecting banking business, where would Visa, MasterCard, Diners Club, GE money lenders go? Trading on the Internet would die the death. So would gambling and swindles, too. Not everything is coming up roses.

It would not be scary at all if the American corporate community had not traded away so much of our financial and human capital to China, at bargain-basement prices. They have behaved, in complicity with our Congress, as if America were some backwater banana republic, desperate to enter the global marketplace.

The Fed needs to be revamped in a big way. Meanwhile, let's quickly get rid of the imbalanced influence of powerful lobbyists in our government.

No, I've been reading your comments on several threads, and it doesn't seem your brain has been excessively exposed to detergents, not more than one might reasonably expect by way of social conditioning. Having lived four years in the US, I was exposed to the same influences and it took me several decades to get it out of my head.

Fear is not a good emotion to bring to the table when it comes to business and trade, but it's there, and we let it influence our thinking. Our major corporations are global now, and each country has to make itself attractive to them. The US is still said to be the best place to do business and capital from all other nations has been flowing into that market. A third of our entire Oslo stock market was owned by non-Norwegians. Norwegians have a similar amount invested abroad. 150 billion dollars of our public oil fund was at one point invested in the US. And we are doing all right with globalization - some come some leave. In Europe a single model car may have components from many different countries, and so do the Airbus planes.

At the recent G20 meeting of the world leading economies, everyone agreed not to implement protectionist measures. Sound thinking. But we need to think about this: When capital, goods and services flow freely across borders, one important component stays home and watches TV. It is as if citizens have become the resource of a nation, owned "slaves" and not the free agents we like to think we are.