Interesting Article on FT website

Since September, Middle Eastern and east Asian sovereign wealth funds have made a succession of investments in four US banks: Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch. Most commentators have been inclined to welcome this global bail-out: better to bring in foreign capital than to shrink balance sheets by reducing lending. Yet we need to recognise that these “capital injections” represent a transfer of the revenues from the US financial services industry into the hands of foreign governments. This is happening at a time when the gap between eastern and western incomes is narrowing at an unprecedented pace.

Edited to add links to explanations of the four deals in question:
Merrill Lynch, 12/25/2007
Morgan Stanley, 12/19/2007
Citi, 11/26/2007
Bear Stearns, 10/23/2007
What's most striking is the speed of the collapse - we're talking about 2 months for foreign interests to own 10% of four of the largest US investment banks.