Infinite Unknown

KUWAIT CITY: Stock markets in the Gulf states yesterday ended 2008 sharply lower as the energy-dependent economies were battered by the global financial crisis while oil prices plummeted. Most of the seven markets witnessed their worst year ever with the bourse of the bustling Dubai shedding almost three quarters of its value and the Saudi market, the largest in the Arab world, slumping by more than half.

Related interview:
- Lindsey Williams: The Dollar And The US Will Collapse; Saudi Arabia And Dubai Will Fall; US Will Be Third World Country; The Greatest Depression Is Coming
- More Gulf industrial projects at risk after Dow

More than $515bn were wiped off of their market value as their capitalisation stood at just $600bn compared to $1.116 trillion at the end of 2007. “It was a year of contradictions as share prices rose sharply in the first half but nosedived in the second half similar to the oil price scenario,” Kuwaiti economist Hajjaj Bukhdur said.

“The impact of the global financial crisis on the Gulf economies was much deeper than initially thought. Gulf stocks slumped even more than bourses in the West where the crisis began,” Bukhdur said. The Saudi Tadawul All-Shares Index (TASI) dropped 56.5 percent to close the year at 4,802.99 points, down from 11,175.96 points at the end of 2007. It was pulled down by a sharp slide in the leading banks and petrochemicals sectors.

Kuwait Stock Exchange, the second largest in the Arab world, shed 38 percent to finish the year at 7,782.60 points, almost a four-year low. However, it was down 50.3 percent from its all-time high set in late June. In the United Arab Emirates, the Dubai Financial Market slid 72.4 percent to close at 1,636.29 points, near its four-year low.

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Tags: Dubai, Economy, Financial Crisis, GDP, Gulf Cooperation Council, Gulf States, Kuwait, Oil, Oil Prices, Saudi Arabia, Stock Market

From the article: “They said the investment was too large at a time of falling oil prices.”

Connect this to what Lindsey Williams said in his interview with Alex Jones:
Lindsey Williams: The Dollar And The US Will Collapse; Saudi Arabia And Dubai Will Fall; US Will Be Third World Country; The Greatest Depression Is Coming

Scrapping the Dow venture with Kuwait’s Petrochemical Industries Co. may leave the U.S. company short of cash it planned to spend on the $15.4 billion acquisition of Rohm & Haas Co. The Kuwaiti government was been under pressure from opposition lawmakers to scrap the deal, which they said was overpriced and came at the wrong time.

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Tags: Dow Chemical., Economy, Government, Kuwait, Oil, Oil Prices, Politics

• States and companies target developing nations
• Small farmers at risk from industrial-scale deals

Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies.

The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, has warned that the controversial rise in land deals could create a form of “neo-colonialism”, with poor states producing food for the rich at the expense of their own hungry people.

Rising food prices have already set off a second “scramble for Africa”. This week, the South Korean firm Daewoo Logistics announced plans to buy a 99-year lease on a million hectares in Madagascar. Its aim is to grow 5m tonnes of corn a year by 2023, and produce palm oil from a further lease of 120,000 hectares (296,000 acres), relying on a largely South African workforce. Production would be mainly earmarked for South Korea, which wants to lessen dependence on imports.

“These deals can be purely commercial ventures on one level, but sitting behind it is often a food security imperative backed by a government,” said Carl Atkin, a consultant at Bidwells Agribusiness, a Cambridge firm helping to arrange some of the big international land deals.

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Tags: Abu Dhabi, Cambodia, China, Economy, Egypt, Environment, Food, Food Prices, food supply, Government, Indonesia, Kuwait, Libya, Madagascar, Politics, Qatar, U.N., Ukraine

One hundred riyal notes at a bank in Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital. The US has asked four oil-rich Gulf states for close to US$300 billion to help it curb the global financial meltdown, Kuwait’s daily Al-Seyassah has reported.
(AFP/File/Hassan Ammar)

KUWAIT CITY (AFP) - The United States has asked four oil-rich Gulf states for close to 300 billion dollars to help it curb the global financial meltdown, Kuwait’s daily Al-Seyassah reported Thursday.

Quoting “highly informed” sources, the daily said Washington has asked Saudi Arabia for 120 billion dollars, the United Arab Emirates for 70 billion dollars, Qatar for 60 billion dollars and was seeking 40 billion dollars from Kuwait.

Al-Seyassah said Washington sought the amount as “financial aid” to face the fallout of the financial crisis and help prevent its economy from sliding into a painful recession.

The daily said the United States plans to use the funds to help the ailing automobile industry , banks and other companies suffering from the global financial turmoil.

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Tags: Banks, Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, Kuwait, Meltdown, OPEC, Politics, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, U.S.

As stocks slid Sunday in Kuwait, a group of investors showed up at the Seif Palace, where they were met by the police, and tried to demand government intervention. (Gustavo Ferrari/AP)

The global economic crisis extended its reach into the Gulf states Sunday, as Kuwait suspended trading in shares of a major bank and the Saudi authorities announced a plan to help citizens receive credit.

The Central Bank of Kuwait halted trading in Gulf Bank, one of the country’s largest lenders, after a customer defaulted on a derivatives contract. The central bank said it would “strongly support the bank’s financial position” and protect depositors, to assure the public that Gulf Bank’s business “will not be affected.”

The central bank also said it was moving toward guaranteeing deposits at local banks. Many other countries have already taken that step, putting lenders in countries with no guarantee at a disadvantage.

In Saudi Arabia, always sensitive to potential unrest, King Abdullah said that 10 billion riyals, or $2.7 billion, would be placed in an account in the Saudi Bank of Credit & Saving to enable the bank to help hundreds of thousands of citizens get loans for family needs including marriages and home repairs.

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Tags: Economy, Financial Crisis, Government, Kuwait, Middle East, Oil, Oil Prices, Politics, Saudi Arabia

By Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, is forthcoming from Random House in March, 2008.

06/04/08 “ICH’ — - April 5, 2008. Today the London Telegraph reported that “British officials gave warning yesterday that America’s commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the US-backed Baghdad government. A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran’s intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian militiary facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment.”

The neocon lacky Petraeus has had his script written for him by Cheney, and Petraeus together with neocon warmonger Ryan Crocker, the US governor of the Green Zone in Baghdad, will present Congress next Tuesday and Wednesday with the lies, for which the road has been well paved by neocon propagandists such as Kimberly Kagan, that “the US must recognize that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war against it in Iraq.”

Don’t expect Congress to do anything except to egg on the attack. On April 3 the International Herald Tribune reported that senators and representatives have made millions of dollars from their investments in defense companies totaling $196 million. Rep. Ike Skelton, the Democrat chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is already on board with the attack on Iran. The London Telegraph quotes Skelton: “Iran is the bull in the china shop. In all of this, they seem to have links to all of the Shi’ite groups, whether they be political or military.” Continue reading »

Tags: Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, attack, Basra, British, Cheney, Congress, Crocker, George Bush, Green Zone, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Middle East, NATO, Palestinians, Petraeus, Saddam Hussein, Syria, Taliban, Tehran, Vladimir Putin