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View Poll Results: Do we have the right strategy for SA?
Yes we're good 3 11.54%
No we need a much harder line 11 42.31%
Good for now, but we need to be ready for regime change 7 26.92%
Something completely different is needed 5 19.23%
Voters: 26. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 02-10-2004, 10:20   #16
Roguish Lawyer
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Dave:

Another fantastic post. Looking forward to the next installment.

One thing is quite clear to me: we need to reduce our dependence on Saudi oil ASAP. Drilling in the ANWAR is the place to start, IMO.
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Old 02-10-2004, 11:18   #17
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Quote:
Originally posted by Roguish Lawyer
One thing is quite clear to me: we need to reduce our dependence on Saudi oil ASAP. Drilling in the ANWAR is the place to start, IMO.
I have a better idea, how about we sack up and go and take back the oil that was nationalized from us in the 50's, 60's and 70's.
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Old 02-10-2004, 18:16   #18
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This is a problem that not only manifests itself in SA, but the entire world. The Islamic militant/fundamentalist movement is one that we need to have an expanding/dynamic strategy to deal with, so that we can respond to 'opportunities' that present themselves on a global basis. The extremist Islamic global game board would best be addressed by having a light, fast moving group of assets that can react/respond to the fruit of our expanding intelligence, and run down the BG's where and whenever they pop their little heads up. Gee, that sounds like something our SF/SOCOM/Intel folks might like doing..........more of!

ButÉ

We also need to be smarter in our dealings with this part of the world, rather the world in general. We have treated this problem, militant Islamic, as a secular one when in fact it is a spiritual/religious one. The dynamics involved in religious motivated insurrections and violent actions based upon fanatic fervency remove the 'logic' from the equations, and thereby redraw the lines of confrontation to the individual combatant level. As everyone here knows itÕs almost impossible to stop a determined individual with the goal of destroying a target if that individual has no provision in their plan for their egress/survival. Which is the most ominous part in Robert BaerÕs report/analysis of Saudi Arabia and the House of Saud. The analysis given by Baer as to vulnerabilities in SA applied to the global arena is over whelming in scale if we apply similar methodologies to it. This sounds very similar to what David Steele has been saying regarding the State of Warfare and needs in intelligence gathering.

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Old 06-26-2009, 15:17   #19
nmap
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I wonder - could the current economic situation, along with population growth, have created a problem in Saudi Arabia? More pointedly, is the money running low, with all which that implies?

LINK

Saudi Arabia’s Algosaibi Said to Owe $9.2 Billion (Update2)


By Zainab Fattah and Camilla Hall

June 26 (Bloomberg) -- Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers Co., the Saudi family holding company whose Bahraini bank has defaulted, owes 34.6 billion Saudi riyals ($9.2 billion) to more than 100 banks, two people familiar with the situation said.

The Algosaibi group held a meeting with creditors in Bahrain June 24 to ask for a grace period of 90 days to investigate the debt, said one person involved in the talks, who declined to be identified because the information is confidential. A spokesman for the company, which bottles Pepsi Cola in Saudi Arabia and holds stakes in lenders including Saudi British Bank, had no immediate comment when contacted by Bloomberg News.

The size of Algosaibi’s liabilities “strikes the markets as a surprise,” said Luis Costa, an emerging-markets debt strategist at Commerzbank AG in London. “This is a problem when it comes to buying anything originated from the Middle East, how to properly measure the leverage of players there.”

Algosaibi said June 11 it had discovered “substantial irregularities” within its financial services arm after The International Banking Corporation BSC in Bahrain defaulted on debt. An Algosaibi spokesman said last month that Maan al-Sanea, the Saudi billionaire who owns a stake in HSBC Holdings Plc, managed TIBC. A spokesman for Saad Group, al-Sanea’s holding company, denied he had a management role at the bank.

The Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency on May 28 froze the accounts of al-Sanea, according to a person who read the central bank’s circular. Five days later, Saad Group, which is based in Al-Khobar in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern province, said it was restructuring debt because of “a short-term liquidity squeeze.”

Ratings Downgrade

Moody’s downgraded Saad by five levels to below investment grade before withdrawing the rating because of a lack of “adequate” information about the company’s finances.

Al-Sanea, who married into the Algosaibi family, ranked No. 62 among the world’s richest people by Forbes in March, with an estimated net worth of $7 billion.

Algosaibi is setting up steering groups for each of its four financial divisions to figure out how to repay debt.

Banks that provided at least $64 billion to Saudi borrowers in the past five years as record oil prices spurred economic growth for the world’s biggest crude exporter now risk losses because the country’s first recession in a decade is threatening the wealth of some of the most powerful families.

BNP, Citigroup

International banks hold 30 percent of the debt of Algosaibi’s four financial divisions, TIBC, Saudi Arabia-based Money Exchange, Bermuda-based Algosaibi Trading Services, and Bahrain-based Algosaibi Investment Holding, according to the two people, who are involved in the talks to restructure the debt. Another 30 percent is owed to Saudi-based banks and the remaining 40 percent to banks from the other five members of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Algosaibi borrowed $700 million in May 2007 through a three-year loan arranged by banks including Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Arab Bank Plc, BNP Paribas SA, Lloyds Bank Plc, Mashreq Bank, NBD Bank NA, Qatar National Bank and WestLB AG, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

BNP Paribas and Citigroup Inc. provided about $500 million each in syndicated loans to companies owned by al-Sanea and the Algosaibi family, according to a document obtained by Bloomberg News. The banks top a list of 37 creditors that provided $5.6 billion in syndicated loans to units of Saad Group.

To contact the reporter on this story: Zainab Fattah in Dubai on zfattah@bloomberg.net; To contact the reporter on this story: Camilla Hall in Dubai at chall24@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 26, 2009 07:35 EDT
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