The United States has created the best sovereign wealth fund ever.

At long last, Uncle Sam has got a sovereign wealth fund to call his own. And guess what? Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s new fund is better than anything yet cooked up by the governments of Kuwait, China, Singapore, Abu Dhabi or others that have sprinkled their taxpayers’ surplus cash around the world the past few years.

That’s not to say Mr. Paulson’s plan to help take on the crummier assets of U.S. financial companies in exchange for ownership claims will mint taxpayers a big dividend check. In fact, there’s a good chance we will lose money. But, hey, show us a sovereign wealth fund that’s made money for its people. With one or two exceptions—such as Singapore’s injection of money into Merrill Lynch—the investments made by these quasi-government funds over the past year are substantially underwater.

Yet the Paulson SWF has several unique advantages over, say, the China Investment Corp., the Kuwait Investment Authority, or the Government of Singapore Investment Corp. These are the huge funds that, earlier in the credit crunch, swooped in and invested—or helped to temporarily recapitalize—the likes of Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Blackstone, the London Stock Exchange and Barclays.

Their arrival created all kinds of hysteria in Washington and on Main Street. Politicians worried they would have undue influence over the flow of capital. Some called it a threat to national security. In consultation with the Treasury and others, the International Monetary Fund even went so far as to draft a code of conduct, a little blue book telling the emirs and mandarins running these SWFs how to play nice.

In response, the funds made it plainly clear they would never, ever seek to meddle in the affairs of the companies. They wouldn’t seek board seats, and they would under no circumstances seek control. This was even when the size of their investments amounted to more than one-tenth of their target’s outstanding stock—far more than activists like Carl Icahn usually invest, despite winding up with lots of board seats and sway over the companies he pursues. Where did all of this get the SWFs? Well, so far it’s brought them big losses.

So why will it be different this time for Uncle Sam’s SWF? The details of the U.S. version have yet to be hammered out. But let’s use the bailout of mega-insurer AIG as a guide. The Federal Reserve earlier this week lent the insurer $85 billion so that it could right itself, sell off its pieces, and unwind all of its fancy derivatives contracts.