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Topic: Middle east buying up the world
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| UGoGirl | Posted – 11/29/2007 6:48:29 PM | show profile Poor guys, so much cash and it's got to go somewhere. *** Oil Producers See the World and Buy It Up WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 ? Flush with petrodollars, oil-producing countries have embarked on a global shopping spree. ...Experts estimate that oil-rich nations have a $4 trillion cache of petrodollar investments around the world. And with oil prices likely to remain in the stratosphere, that number could increase rapidly. In 2000, OPEC countries earned $243 billion from oil exports, according to Cambridge Energy Research Associates. For all of 2007 the estimate was more than $688 billion, but that did not include the last two months of price spikes. ?If you look at gulf countries, they have a total common economy that is about the size of the Netherlands,? said Edward L. Morse, chief energy economist of Lehman Brothers. ?These are tiny countries, but they have to place collectively over $5 billion a week from their oil revenues. It?s not an easy thing to do.? ... New York Times |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 11/29/2007 6:50:51 PM | show profile Continued... *** ..."The oil-producing countries simply cannot absorb the amount of wealth they are generating," said J. Robinson West, chairman of PFC Energy. "We are seeing a transfer of wealth of historic dimensions. It is not just Qatar and Abu Dhabi. Investment funds are being set up in places like Kazakhstan and Equatorial Guinea." Precise figures of the global picture in petrodollars are not easy to come by, in part because the big investors in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere are not obliged to disclose their portfolios or activities. ...The decline in the dollar has also introduced new uncertainties into predicting petrodollar investment patterns. C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute of International Economics, said that while some countries in the gulf were trying to diversify their investments away from the dollar and into euros and pounds sterling, the Saudis were trying to quell that trend out of fear that the dollar will decline further and diminishing the value of their assets. A measure of discord over the dollar was apparent at the OPEC meeting in Saudi Arabia this month. Iran and Venezuela, the two biggest political foes of the United States among the oil producers, complained that oil was being sold in a currency whose value was eroding by the day. |
| chucho | Posted – 11/30/2007 4:39:32 AM | show profile And your point? A little anecdote: a friend of mine -- a godless, heathen Pakistani who was raised in Saudi Arabia, whose dream job would be to work for the Canadian or US governments to infiltrate mosques in North America and to root out Islamic radicals -- pointed out that, in case you haven't noticed, the Arabs are really good with money. It's like the Jewish stereotype. It seems that some of them do have a kind of Midas Touch (Carlos Slim, Latin America's richest man and on the top 10 list of the world's richest men, his parents are Lebanese). The fact that some of this pertol money is being invested abroad is actually good thing -- or at least better than them NOT investing it abroad (and in the West rather than China). I think what Americans hat so much about this is rooted in a kind of pride and racialist attitude. And it doesn't help that Arab men often behave like pigs. But the fact of the matter is that the United States has been promoting globalization, free trade and oil-based economies that depend on consumption growth. Now that the rest of the world is catching on, it feel a little a Pandora's Box, don't it? Well, don't blame non-consumerist liberals like me -- we've been warning about the effects of promoting such policies for decades. And we were called commies, and protectionists, and now what: the "socialist" euro is worth more than the dollar and America's dominance is quickly being overrun by the emerging economies. Live with it. I don't have debt, no major expenses, don't spent a lot of money, and I don't drive 50 miles a day to commute to work. So none of this affect me. |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 11/30/2007 9:57:55 AM | show profile The point is that this is another way to appeal to people's (racists and fearful) instincts. If people say, I don't give a shit if I drive a Hummer because I can afford the gas, maybe those rednecks will say but hell no, I don't want those dirty Arabs taking over my country. I guess in this instance I am looking for results. If people don't think global climate change and the depletion of finite resources will radically change our world, then perhaps they'll at least think about the rich arabs. And that will provide a motivation to tax the hell out of oil and gas so we can invest more in ourselves and get off the stuff. |
