Looks like Saudi regime is in big trouble. They won't be able to balance their budget with oil prices so low and they won't be able to make payments to thousands of their princes. I did some searching and found few interesting data points: > For dozens of oil producers, the plunge in oil prices is devastating. No major oil producer can balance its budget at prices below $40; according to the International Monetary Fu…
I'm an Iranian who moved to the U.S. only a few years ago. Something most people here in the U.S. don't understand is that countries like Iran have a far different threshold of pain. Iran, as a result of sanctions had already entered starvation-levels of economic collapse. There are people who are sleeping in open graves. Yet, the regime is not backing down in any way. It hasn't change course at all.
Iran has a theocratic regime, and gets a lot of oil revenue, but is a fundamentally diversified and surprisingly self-sufficient economy. They have factories, an educated population, and they produce a fair number of things other than oil. Agriculture exists (if not self-sufficient).
Saudi Arabia is oil rich. The princes are oil rich. The wealthy are oil rich. Normal people are oil rich. It's oil, all the way down.
The country simply doesn't produce anything else. Most of the citizens simply don't work -- at all. There's no plan B.
Iran can fall back to "hard times" and a pre-oil-wealth economy. SA can't. There's nothing else there except sand and starvation. They aren't going to "grin and bear it".
