Posted on 11/28/2007 4:15:21 AM PST by thackney
Flush with petrodollars, oil-producing countries have embarked on a global shopping spree.
With a bold outlay of $7.5 billion, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is about to become one of the largest shareholders in Citigroup. The bank had already experienced the petrodollar's clout this month when another major shareholder, Prince Walid bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, cleared the way for the ouster of its CEO, Charles Prince.
Meanwhile, the Dubai stock exchange is in talks for 20 percent of a newly merged company that includes Nasdaq and the operator of stock markets in the Nordic region. Qatar might compete for the same deal.
Dubai in late October also bought part of Och-Ziff Capital Management, a major hedge fund in New York. Abu Dhabi this month bought a stake in Advanced Micro Devices, the chip maker, and in September bought into the Carlyle Group, a private equity giant.
Experts estimate that oil-rich nations have a $4 trillion cache of petrodollar investments around the globe.
"These are tiny countries, but they have to place collectively over $5 billion a week from their oil revenues," said Edward Morse, energy economist of Lehman Bros.
The boom in oil prices in the last five years has convinced oil producers to set up or expand "sovereign wealth funds" as vehicles to invest in the West, in their own economies and in emerging markets in a far more aggressive way than in the past.
Other petrodollar investments are made through government-owned corporations, private corporations and private individuals like Prince Walid, who owns large shares not only of Citigroup but also of News Corp., Procter & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard Co., PepsiCo, Time Warner and Walt Disney.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Banking western style is against Muslim beliefs. Why would a muslim country buy into this unless they are seeking more control over the west.
My opinion of Dubia is that they worship dollars more than the Koran.
Every time you fill up with $3+/gal. gas, just think of that $70 fill-up being pumped into the bank accounts of jihadis who want to kill you and your children. Then ask yourself how we ever let ourselves get into this horrible situation. Shame on our feckless government, the worthless Energy Dept., and most of all, shame on we the sheeple, who are paying for our own slaughter.
I”M not the one driving a Crown Vic and I never was or will be! And, I’m not the one living in a house the size of an airport terminal.... I wouldn’t be even if I COULD afford it!
Maybe because they realize that their country's oil is not going to last forever, and it would be really smart to invest enough of the oil profits to create a "critical mass" that would allow their people to maintain their standard of living even without the oil.
>> Maybe because they realize that their country’s oil is not going to last forever...
What YOU said.
What’s more... I’m hopeful that $100/bbl oil will motivate alternatives to foreign oil (more domestic oil, nuclear, more coal, alternative energy, and so on).
So hopefully the Arabs’ revenue will throttle down even before their oil runs out.
“Maybe because they realize that their country’s oil is not going to last forever, and it would be really smart to invest enough of the oil profits to create a “critical mass” that would allow their people to maintain their standard of living even without the oil.”
I might buy that idea if they weren’t building giant tree shaped islands.
“My opinion of Dubia is that they worship dollars more than the Koran.”
I’d agree with that but don’t say that over there or you will be ROPd.
Obviously they are optimists - they see the barrel as half-full.
And they could go on for a long, long time, because the location of the United Arab Emirates makes them well-situated for trans-Eurasian goods trade. People often forget that the prophet Muhammed himself was a trading merchant, so the Arabs have a LONG history of economic trade; in fact, the spread of Islam was as much in the economic interest of the Arabs as political conquest.
“People often forget that the prophet Muhammed himself was a trading merchant, so the Arabs have a LONG history of economic trade; in fact, the spread of Islam was as much in the economic interest of the Arabs as political conquest.”
Yeah they had to sell all those slaves somewhere.
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