>Yep, the name of the game has changed. It's still "all your {insert asset} are belong to us", it's just that we don't bother, in most cases, to establish a regime. We just pwn the current one by bribing them with the money from the loan that will keep their country in debt forever. So we don't really need to be an empire, nor a country, to do that. We can be IMF, or just a bank. Consortium sounds nicer. And somehow, there's the whole international legal system to guarantee that we'll either make money on them, or that we'll own their asse..ts forever.

That is changing right now - with the $ falling and the US deficit and rising resource prices.
Gulf war 1 worked, Gulf war 2 was lousy in this regard as well - look at the distribution of cost.

regards

thomas