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Oil will go up ‘ballistically’ if unrest shifts to Saudi Arabia, says Marc Faber
INTERNATIONAL. Marc Faber the Swiss fund manager and Gloom Boom & Doom editor sees oil prices extending their bull run despite the 15% run-up this year alone.
In an optimistic scenario demand for oil will rise as the global recovery takes hold, and in a pessimistic scenario prices still go up if the Middle East unrest spreads and crude production is curtailed. In both cases, he says, you should be long energy and energy related shares.
Speaking to CNBC today, Faber said: ” I think long term you should be exposed to energy in either scenario….if you are extra bearish and believe that War World III is going to start soon, as I believe, or in an optimistic scenario”.
Addressing the fundamentals of the oil market, Faber said: “What we had over the last couple of years is essentially a reduction in demand from the developed world, the US, Western Europe and Japan, and continued growth in emerging economies.
“So, if you take a very optimistic view of the world, namely a global economic recovery, demand in the Western World will pick up and demand in the Emerging World will continue to rise strongly, so from a very optimistic point of view you should be long oil,” he recommended.
On the flip side, “in a very pessimistic scenario you have to assume that unrest will shift to Saudi Arabia and other countries in the gulf and at that stage the production is curtailed and in that case obviously oil will go up ballistically.”
Brent crude futures could hit US$200 a barrel if political unrest spreads into Saudi Arabia, Societe Generale said on Monday.
Under what the bank called Geopolitical Scenario 3, “unrest spreads to Read more…
Kuwait is the Spear Pointing at the Heart of Saudi Arabia
Despite the reassurances and promises of change and trinkets for the masses, the front page news continues to reflect that Bahrain is the most dangerous situation for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The reasoning is that the Shi’a will spread their unrest into the Eastern Provinces along the rich oil producing regions of the nation and interrupt the flow of oil operations and embolden the Iranian regime to create mischief against their historic foe. In my opinion, this is a reach as the spear pointing towards the heart of the Kingdom is in Kuwait, a nation which has escaped the mainstream media’s attention up until this point in time.
The reason Bahrain is so key can best be summed up by the United States military interests in the region based there. Unfortunately for the media, the true story is the same one people realized in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Kuwait is the key to destroying the stranglehold the Saudi royal family has held on the Persian Gulf and the revolutionary movements of the region have understood this for twenty years now. When the Iraqi regime was crushed by the U.S. this decade the focus shifted from expelling the various monarchies in the Gulf region to using terror to expel the American “occupiers” as our nation was so labeled. When the strategy of state sponsored and funded terrorism failed, the revolutionaries and Read more…
Eyewitnesses: 30 tanks spotted en route to Bahrain from Saudi Arabia
Bahrain–Eyewitnesses have reported seeing an estimated 30 tanks being transported into Bahrain from Saudi Arabia on Monday night at around 6:45pm local time. The tanks were sighted along the King Fahd causeway, which links the small island-nation of Bahrain to Saudi Arabia.
Commuters traveling along the 25-km causeway were held up due to the presence of “15 tank carriers carrying two tanks each heading towards Bahrain.” Civilian eyewitnesses could not, however, confirm whether the tanks belonged to the Saudi military.
The presence of Saudi military hardware in Bahrain is considered Read more…
Wikileaks, Bahrain and Saudi: Concerns over Rising Food Prices Spread
Bahrain, which saw deadly protest this month, is eager to control the price of food according to Wikileaks
Rising food prices have been at the centre of the recent riots to hit the Arab world and so it comes as no surprise that many Arab nations are working hard to avoid similar food price rises.
According to the Wikileak revelations, Bahrain increased government subsidies in an effort to off-set rising prices for lower-income families in 2008 and has promised more generous subsidies recently. Even so, this hasn’t stopped political turmoil as the tiny Gulf state has been rocked by explosive protests this month that left seven dead and hundreds injured when troops opened fire on protesters.
Bahrain, which has a population of just over 1 million, has struggled with rising Read more…
Suspected Terrorist Had NYC in His Sights
A 20-year-old Saudi student arrested in Texas on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack with explosive chemicals had looked at New York City as a possible target.
Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, attending college near Lubbock, Texas, was charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.
“It is war … until the infidels leave defeated,” the chemical engineering student wrote in online postings.
Federal prosecutors said he had researched online how to construct an improvised explosive device using several chemicals as ingredients.
Court papers said Aldawsari had been researching New York City, including viewing real-time traffic cameras online that showed the city.
The FBI said he also had looked up the Dallas home of Read more…
Saudi King Orders $37 Billion in Benefits to People To Quell Any Unrest
RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi King Abdullah returned home on Wednesday after a three-month medical absence and unveiled benefits for Saudis worth some $37 billion in an apparent bid to insulate the world’s top oil exporter from an Arab protest wave.
The king, who had been convalescing in Morocco after back surgery in New York in November, stood as he descended from the plane in a special lift. He then took to a wheelchair.
Hundreds of men in white robes performed a traditional Bedouin sword dance on carpets laid out at Riyadh airport for the return of the monarch, thought to be 87.
Abdullah left his ailing octogenarian half-brother, Crown Prince Sultan, in charge during his absence.
Before Abdullah arrived, state media announced an action plan to help lower- and middle-income people among the 18 million Saudi nationals. It includes pay rises to offset inflation, unemployment benefits and affordable family housing.
Saudi Arabia has so far escaped popular protests against Read more…
Google Earth finds Saudi Arabia’s forbidden archaeological secrets
An armchair archaeologist has identified nearly 2,000 potentially important sites in Saudi Arabia using Google Earth, despite never having visited the country.
David Kennedy, a professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Western Australia, used Google Earth satellite maps to pinpoint 1,977 potential archaeological sites, including 1,082 teardrop shaped stone tombs.
“I’ve never been to Saudi Arabia,” Dr Kennedy said. “It’s not the easiest country to break into.”
Dr Kennedy told New Scientist that he had verified the images showed actual archaeological sites by asking a friend working in the Kingdom to photograph the locations.
The use of aerial and satellite imaging has been used in Britain to locate Iron Age and Roman sites in Britain, as well as Nazca lines in Peru and Mayan ruins in Belize.
But few archaeologists have been given access to Saudi Arabia, which has long been hostile to the discipline. Hardline clerics in the kingdom fear that it might focus attention on the civilisations which flourished there before the rise of Islam – and thus, in the long term, undermine the state religion.
In 1994, a council of Saudi clerics was reported to have issued an edict asserting that preserving historical sites “could lead to polytheism and idolatry” – both punishable, under the Kingdom’s laws, by death.
Saudi Arabia’s rulers have, in recent years, allowed archaeologists to excavate some sites, including the spectacular but little-known ruins of Maidan Saleh, a 2,000 old city which marked the southern limits of the powerful Nabataean civilisation.
For the most part, though, access to ancient sites has been severely restricted.
Study: Coup possible in Morocco, Saudi Arabia too
Tomer Velmer
The first signs for the governmental instability in Egypt were detected as early as two years ago, according to a new study conducted by political scientists from Hebrew University.
The study, which will be published soon by the Journal of Conflict Resolution, was conducted by Prof. Tamir Sheafer and Dr. Shaul Shenhav. The researchers measured the “democratic gap” in about 90 democratic and non-democratic countries.
“The democratic gap is the difference between the democratic aspirations of a country’s citizens and the level of democracy given to them by the state’s institutions,” explains Prof. Sheafer.
According to the study’s findings, political stability will be in danger only in the case of a “negative democratic gap”. In other words, when the citizens’ expectations for democracy are unfulfilled, there is a higher chance that the citizens will Read more…
Saudis already have 2 Pakistani Nukes
It’s a story that pops up again and again. Saudi Arabia has acquired at least 2 functional Nuclear Weapons from cash strapped Pakistan. Certainly Saudi Arabia has the money to buy nukes from sources like France, China, Russia, North Korea and Pakistan or even India.
The worrisome thing is that Pakistani nukes may be on the move and the west has very little knowledge or control over it. Pakistan is the most dangerous country on earth. It has a population of 185 million and the majority of people there hate the west and hate Americans. Intelligence experts privately concede that the battle for Pakistan is over. They are now a de facto enemy of the U.S. Al Qaida, the Taliban and the Muslim Brotherhood have won. The ties between Read more…
Prince warns Saudi Arabia of Apocalypse
In a letter published by Wagze news agency on Tuesday, the Cairo-based prince warned Saudi Arabia’s ruling family of a fate similar to that of Iraq’s executed dictator Saddam Hussein and the ousted Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, calling on them to escape before people “cut off our heads in streets.”
He warned that the Saudi royal family is no longer able to “impose” itself on people, arguing that deviations in carrying out the religious concepts that make up the basis of the Saudi government “have gotten out of our hands,” so that the opposition views our acts as “interfering in people’s private life and restricting their liberties.”
“If we are wise, we must Read more…
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