Someone was grifting money into British real estate.
Putin warned Tokayev not to invite foreign investment into Kazakhstan.
You bring up a very interesting topic. The free flow of money.
In the current propaganda cycle it is seen a positive. Country X is able to buy products in country Y. And country Y imports raw material from country X which it doesn't have. Both win.
From the outside it looks as classic economic liberalism as proposed by Adam Smith in
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations hence many conservatives love this idea.
In practice the world is completely different today. Most important is that banks can create money from thin air. (
very different from the time of Smith, we don't have money today, we just have debt paper) What happens is that within a few years of opening up the foreign investors (with this fake money) buy up all major production assets in a country. As we see in many Eastern European countries after joining the EU.
Short term it is a boost of wealth, and of the money they can buy products from other countries. Hence the first years after liberalizing is good. After becoming part of the international money market system.
In Western media Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is always portrayed as good they portray it as bringing knowledge, skills and technology.
In practice it's moving to
Feudalism, that an elite, we all know the names, own all crucial properties and the fruits of those properties. In many cases it's not in industries that the countries get seduced by. Companies will now flow in to bring knowledge and skill and boost the economy as promised. But in practice, land, residential and commercial property and raw materials industry get bought.
Leading to a feudalistic system. Which we are in. A few own all crucial properties and the state works with its police and law apparatus as their servants protecting their wealth.
Adam Smith himself write about this in "Theory of Violence and the Political-Economics of Development".
Smith characterized the
feudal world as violent and predatory, with little overall growth as we had the last 20 years. Most people lived at subsistence, with minimal degrees of trade, division of labor, and specialization and exchange.
While they say freedom and liberalism, it means Feudalism in the traditional sense as written down by Smith.