Since 1971 OPEC is bullied to sell Oil exclusively in US dollars resulting in friction between 1.8 billion Muslims and the West;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock
http://qz.com/562128/isil-is-a-revolt-by-young-disaffected-m...
The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia’s U.S. Treasury Holdings
141–150 of 154 posts
Re: The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia’s U.S. Treasury Holdings
#142There's a book called confessions of an economic hit man - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit... Essentially U.S. helps impoverished nations with infrastructure and other aid, but saddles them with debt in order to control them politically or otherwise. The interesting part was when it came to Saudi Arabia, which had so much money it didn't need to take on debt to develop their infrastructur…
Where were you? I was in SA from 79-95 as a kid in various Aramco compounds, mostly RT and DH.
Riyadh, but wasn't in aaramco or military. We lived in the middle of the city. Small 5 villa compound. Saudi neighbors.
Re: The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia’s U.S. Treasury Holdings
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The interesting part was when it came to Saudi Arabia, which had so much money it didn't need to take on debt to develop their infrastructure. That's not entirely accurate. Saudi Arabia was extraordinarily poor prior to Standard Oil of California's oil finds there. US companies financed most of Saudi Arabia's initial oil infrastructure build out, including the technology that made it all possible in the first place…
The initial wells and basic infrastructure. But everything built since the 70s-80s, ie 95+% of the country, was financed directly. The amount of money swimming around that country put any overseas investment to shame long ago.
^^^
Re: The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia’s U.S. Treasury Holdings
#144There's a book called confessions of an economic hit man - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit... Essentially U.S. helps impoverished nations with infrastructure and other aid, but saddles them with debt in order to control them politically or otherwise. The interesting part was when it came to Saudi Arabia, which had so much money it didn't need to take on debt to develop their infrastructur…
I'd love to hear more. Where you married? What was it like for you spouse? If not, what was the dating scene like in 82? Did you travel around any? What are the most interesting parts of the country? Did you ever make it to Mecca? How good are you at recognizing family names and power connections? Did that come with time? How did people in different parts of the country view each other? I just returned from a week in…
No dating scene whatsoever haha. Restaurants all segregated family / single males. No movie theatres. Entire country dry no alcohol.
The most amusing of all would be safe ways and grocery stores would turn into night club entrances as all the women would be shopping so guys would drive by the entrance and hold up signs with their phone numbers on them. So front of Safeway on a weekend night would be all these sports cars, benz's Etc. Too funny.
Jeddah a lot more lax than Riyadh.
Can't get into Mecca unless you're Muslim. We took a wrong turn on a road trip one time and were stopped and made to turn around.
Check points outside every city. If you were a female and didn't have written consent from your husband you weren't allowed to leave the city.
Re: The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia’s U.S. Treasury Holdings
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course one must note that experience in foreign policy may not be as important as the outcomes achieved during that experience.
The Iranian nuclear deal?
That was during Secretary John Kerry's tenure.
Hillary has threatened war to enforce the deal, which is something...[0]
[0]http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/sep/9/hillary-clint...
Re: The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia’s U.S. Treasury Holdings
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> hence austerity in the form of government bailouts. I don't follow your point here. "Austerity" and "government bailout" are antithetical.
Am fairly sure he meant the government bailouts of banks. There's been quite a few recently.
But that's by definition the opposite of austerity.
Re: The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia’s U.S. Treasury Holdings
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Americans are better aligned with the largely Shi'ite Muslim Persians than with Wahhabbist (Sunni) Muslim Arabs. Note that this has almost nothing to do with relations between the governments of the U.S. and Iran. On the axis of prince to ayatollah, I prefer the ayatollah. On the axis of theocratic absolute monarchy to theocratic constitutional republic, I prefer the republic. Supporting the Shah was a mistake. Suppo…
"support" personal and economic freedoms for all people is code for what policy, exactly? Because the word is vague on its own, and in the way in which you're using it. This sounds like a very interventionist foreign policy, otherwise what else could "support" mean, if it's at all a meaningful statement? I also think you severely underestimate the strength of entrepreneurship as a social class, in that area of the wo…
"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." --T. Jefferson
It means you leave people alone, unless you have a mutually beneficial trade to offer them. If a country has no entrepreneurial class, you look to make money elsewhere.
The US has no moral authority to demand imitation. It just has money--lots and lots of money. And it lets its own businesses spend their own money relatively freely, so long as they obey most of the laws and regulations and pay most of the taxes and make sufficient campaign contributions.
So that leaves only two acceptable foreign policy sticks. You have the embargo, and you have the boycott. And you have only one carrot--access to all the money held by your country's consumer market and philanthropic donors.
The US could decide, for instance, to boycott all goods and services produced in whole or in part by children under the age of 16 years, or by prisoner or slave laborers. This would, of course, require detailed provenance records for all goods entering US ports, and voluntary certification inspections for facilities listed in those records. And it would make all goods imported to the US more expensive. And it would put a lot of child laborers out of work, even if they really do need to be working to survive. If you are an international supplier, you only need to imitate US working conditions if you want to export to the US. If you do want access to the market, you can't get there with kids, convicts, or slaves.
This is slow. Apartheid ended 35 years after the first international boycott campaign, and the actual impact of the boycott is debatable. Israel has shrugged off a boycott for a long time, because the US actively undermines it. The US embargo against Cuba never produced any meaningful result, after many long decades.
In contrast, you can charge in, guns blazing, topple a regime, eradicate its bureaucracy, and stir up its internal politics with a bayonet, then go home by the end of your presidential term. But it isn't going to earn you many friends.
Re: The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia’s U.S. Treasury Holdings
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is no reason the U.S. should be allies with the House of Saud. There is a very good reason: 1) The US needs a stable oil supply 2) The US needs global stability, for which the world needs a stable oil supply. 3) A stable oil supply requires a stable Persian Gulf region. 4) Leverage and influence with the most powerful nation in the Persian Gulf (with the possible exception of Iran, an enemy of the U.S.), is v…
And why is Iran an enemy of US?
I can't tell if you're genuinely asking, but Iran is widely considered one of the largest sponsors of state-funded terrorism in the world. Lots of self-flagellating Americans like to ask about the US/Saudi Arabia, but Iran's IRGC and esp. Quds Force are famous for their successes in cultivating and logistically supplying terror groups (think Hamas, Hezbollah) - if the US took such an intense and long-term view of the ME I think the world would be different.
Re: The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia’s U.S. Treasury Holdings
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few years ago I read a good book on the collapse of the USSR (can't remember the title, too lazy to go back and find it right now). One of the major factors that the author identified was glasnost ("transparency"), which I'm old enough to remember being talked about on the news at the time. Basically, his thesis was that it was the transparency, after a generation of buildup of really nasty official secrets, that u…
There is a theory that Perestroika and Glasnost were responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union, but to me that seems unlikely. The Soviet Union was bound to collapse, because it's mandate, by definition, was limitless expansion of communism. When the government could no longer coordinate production, Perestroika and Glasnost were last-ditch efforts to bring the Soviet Union more in line with Western norms. Unfo…
What does TS mean?
Re: The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia’s U.S. Treasury Holdings
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is no reason the U.S. should be allies with the House of Saud. There is a very good reason: 1) The US needs a stable oil supply 2) The US needs global stability, for which the world needs a stable oil supply. 3) A stable oil supply requires a stable Persian Gulf region. 4) Leverage and influence with the most powerful nation in the Persian Gulf (with the possible exception of Iran, an enemy of the U.S.), is v…
And why is Iran an enemy of US?
The US toppled their democratically elected government a while back and the Iranians (rightly) hold a grudge and are highly suspicious of any US foreign policy.