Citigroup and King Tut:
Prince al-Waleed Bin Talal al-Saud should not publicly express confidence in Citigroup- at least not for some time. He has been doing that cheerleading periodically since the share price was near $50, as far as I remember. And each time His Most Royal Highness’ public expression of confidence was followed by a further sharp decline in the share price. About ten days ago he did it again, and the price plunged soon after from $14-15 to just above $5- it became almost a ‘penny stock’. The prince apparently thought Citigroup had bottomed at about $5+, and he announced five days ago that he was raising his stake to %5 of the outstanding shares. It promptly sank below $4. Hopefully other Gulf sovereign funds did not take their cue from His Royal Highness, otherwise they'd be up the proverbial creek.

Monday, there was His Royal Highness again on TV, expressing confidence in Citigroup and its management, but I believe this time he had the billions of US federal bailout money to back him up. The cheerleader had some pompoms to shake. Without the bailout announcement this weekend the closing price would most likely have been about $2.5 instead of $5.95 on Monday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hopefully the curse of Citigroup is not like the curse of King Tut Ankh Amon, monosyllabized in the West as 'Tutankhamen', which caused the untimely(?) death of Lord Carnarvon (the money bag for the discovery). Howard Carter (the explorer) lived a few years more.

Citigroup is also plagued, like some other big financials and the big three auto-makers, with something that is much worse than an ancient curse: it is cursed with incompetent management. But Citigroup is finding out that incompetence is not all that bad, if you have friends in high places and a public that is desensitized to outrageous behavior by corporate leaders.

Cheeky pirates of East Africa:

Arab media report that Somali pirates have struck again by hijacking a Yemeni freighter in the Gulf of Aden- cheeky monkeys that they are. That must be a reaction to the announcement of several Arab state representatives in Cairo that they will work to keep piracy out of the Red Sea. Or maybe it takes a long time for the promised Jordanian agents to learn the necessary skills of swimming and how to operate their rubber dinghies provided by King Abdul.

Meanwhile, there are reports that the pirates have reduced their ransom demand for the Saudi tanker ($100 million of crude oil) to only $4 million. If the Saudi government waits until after Thanksgiving they might get an even better price. It is a fire sale over there!

Algerian women like their kicks:

An Algerian Salafi leader, head of the Muslin Clerics Society, has defended the apparently common practice of wife-beating in his country. He opposed calls for increasing punishment for wife-beating by saying that there are studies proving that “women enjoy being beaten up by their husbands”- he means they get a kick out of it.

The shaikh, a former cabinet minister of religious affairs, did not elaborate on other variations of the same theme: what about another man beating someone’s wife? Or what about a boyfriend beating up his girlfriend- assuming there are such things in the moderate New Middle East (or is it North Africa?) country of Algeria. It is possible that the venerable Salafi shaikh himself enjoys an occasional 'kick' from one or more of his wives.

More Gulf confusion:

Three days ago Iran hanged one of its citizens after convicting him of espionage for Israel. The businessman was convicted of spying and sabotage by importing bugged scientific devices into the country. There are hints that the whole thing was related to Iranian nuclear research. He has supposedly confessed to all charges, and who wouldn’t under the circumstances?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday the authorities announced that they have broken up an espionage network that had been “trained in Israel”. ‘Trained in Israel’ could be a code term meaning they were working through the Iraqi Kurdistan border, the Pakistani border, or the Azerbaijan border. Or maybe they were just a bunch of curious American reporters, bored after the end of the presidential campaign and out looking for news stories in mullah-land.

“The Bahrain Center for Human Rights has criticized the Bahrain government for hiring the U.S lobbying firm of Patton Boggs to counter widespread reports and impressions in the United States of continued discrimination against the Shi’aAafaq majority by the ruling Sunni oligarchy in the island nation. The working team will be lead by influential Democrat Thomas Hale Boggs.” He is still alive?

Recently Saudi media has been quite excited. Well, as excited as they can get- which is much more than, say, a few years ago. They have been giving much headline coverage to a new group of ‘Shi’a intellectuals’ who reportedly issued a manifesto recently that opposes Iranian hegemony on Shi’as of Arab countries. The Saudi media has been hinting for more than a year about some form of Shi'a grouping that would oppose Iranian influence, and this may be it. But is unlikely to work beyond preaching to the Wahhabi faithful: most Shi'as will probably look at them suspiciously as Saudi creations because they probably are- besides they are offshore 'intellectuals' preaching from Europe. No doubt most Arab Shi’as would resist any kind of outside hegemony, including Iranian- but I would think the best way to wean them away from Iranian influence is to stop discriminating against them in their home countries, starting with Saudi Arabia. The oligarchs should learn from the lessons of Lebanon before the 1980s and Iraq before 2003.

Saudi media has also been full of reports that Michael Jackson has secretly converted to Islam. That would be almost equivalent to regaining Jerusalem, or at best half of it, n'est-ce pas?

No word yet if his chosen faith is of the Wahhabi variety, but wouldn't that be great?

Cheers

mhg