We have to finance trade deficits some way, either by borrowing or by selling assets. Seeing how the dollar has been steadily losing value for a few years (I guess the rest of the world isn't buying the Bush PR team's picture of a strong economy), maybe them foreigners don't want to lend us any more money if we're going to pay them back in inflated dollars. They don't seem to be interested in snapping up the over-priced real estate that the artificially low interest rates inflated, either. So instead, they buy U.S. companies, like Jaguar.

This is what you get when the economic policy of the federal government is borrow and spend, not only by the government, but also by consumers.

If the car dealer in Florida, home to a disproportionate share of real estate and home mortgage speculators, doesn't want an Indian company to buy Jaguar, maybe he can line up some debt financing so he and his friends can buy Jaguar.

They're dumping dollars because they think our economy is bad, and the dollars aren't worth they used to be. They are interested in buying companies like Jaguar because it's a fire sale, and Jaguar isn't really even a US company (it was based in the UK before being acquired by Ford).

Most companies that are being acquired are multi-nationals not dependent on just the US economy. There are also many companies now getting bailouts from the foreign governments because they are getting a really good deal -one that American investors aren't being offered.

Man! C'mon people! Jaguar was a founding member of the old, unlamented British Leyland. It used to use Lucas electrical gear, for God's sake! No one--no one--would have specified headlights by the "Prince of Darkness" (Lucas, Ltd. in their bad old days) unless they were under the thumb of Parliament. The company was originally called Sivler Swallow. Who but the British would name a sexy car that? Jag is as British as Her Majesty.

For that matter, Ford may have been founded here, and might still be owned mostly by Americans, but it has been a major factor in the car markets of Britain, Germany and Australia (for starters) for so many decades that we really have no particular claim on it any more. People all over the world have owned, loved, hated, conceived their children in the back seats of, Fords. Furthermore, I don't think even Ford ever built a Jaguar in the U.S.

Hey, Toto. We're not the center of the universe any more.

Sorry, Tom. You didn't deserve that. You were neither the first nor the worst. And yes, I know Ford is still headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, U.S.A. And yes, I meant Silver Swallow.

But still--how are we capable of still sounding so insular when we have been scooping up or founding world companies for nearly a hundred years? There are literally millions of Fords in the world that Americans would never recognize as such, never appeared on the U.S. market, never were American cars. Did you know that when you say "Ford Falcon" to an Australian, the picture he or she gets in the mind's eye is what you would call a Mustang?

Just because Dearborn controlled Jag for a time does not make it American. Jags are full of Connally hides and burled walnut, not Texas hides and fake burled oak made from Saudi oil and recycled Pepsi bottles. Even Ford, much as they messed up about what made Jag popular, knew better than de-Britify it that much. Was Chrysler German during the period when it was controlled from Stuttgart?

One thing about my rant I will stand by forever--we really, really aren't the center of the known universe. Life does go on about us and, yes, without us.