For Sale: These United States

Some Americans are outraged about illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican border, but the New York Times' Maureen Dowd thinks that the breech of some financial boundaries are of greater concern. "Who’s going to own the American economy?" she asks, pointing to oil-rich countries taking advantage of the weak dollar to snap up US assets.

Dowd notes that Citigroup and Merrill Lynch have had to beg foreign investors for bailouts and notes that President Bush was holding few economic cards on his Middle East trip. She agrees with Warren Buffett's view that "we are giving ourselves a party to feed our appetite for oil and imported goods and paying for it by selling off the furniture." (More US economy stories.)