"America to press for restrictions on potent sovereign wealth funds"

"Bunch of wankers miss the point", really.

If e.g. Saudi Arabia or Russia or some other evil foreign country buys up a shed load of 'vital US assets', which country is then more dependent on the co-operation and friendship of the other?

If said evil foreign country declares war or something*, all the Americans have to do is to expropriate their US-based assets, ergo, this sort of thing makes it less likely that an evil foreign country will declare war on the USA.

So from the American point of view, this is a win-win. There's money coming in and American influence on other countries' foreign policy is strengthened**.

* Whether military, political or economic warfare.

** See also Venezuala. They have expropriated foreign owned oil interests, without provocation. Why should the USA or the UK now give a shit what happens down there? All they have to do is wait until Chavez has completely fucked things up and he gets replaced by somebody more sensible, then Big Oil can buy the stuff back for cheap in exchange for getting the oil industry back on its feet. Seeing as Big Oil plan decades ahead, I suppose this is just a minor inconvenience for them.