Assimilation into the Borg

These sovereign wealth funds, such a danger, eh?

The European commission is due to unveil its first proposals on how to deal with the government-controlled funds tomorrow. José Manuel Barroso, the EC president, said he wanted agreement this year on a global code of conduct for the funds.

Tomorrow's proposals will ask the funds to adhere to a set of principles and "voluntary guidelines" governing their assets and activities.

"We will not propose European legislation, though we reserve the right to do so if we cannot achieve transparency through voluntary means," Barroso said yesterday during a trip to Norway.

The commission's move is an attempt to head off the risk of a protectionist backlash as well as to address the inscrutability of the funds' activities. The aim, Barroso said, should be a pact between the fund-owning countries and target countries on "a set of principles for transparency, predictability, and accountability".

I'm really not sure that this bureaucrat has quite understood matters. The sovereign wealth funds belong to the States which own them. States which, we might note, are not members of the European Union and are thus not either responsible for paying Sr. Barroso's wages nor subject to his whims.

So where does matey get off telling other people what they may or may not do with their own money?