The Secret
Behind the Next Global Crash
By Pepe Escobar
January 22, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
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"Sputnik"
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The
World Economic Forum in Davos is submerged by a
tsunami of denials, and even non-denial denials,
stating there won’t be a follow-up to the Crash of
2008.
Yet there will
be. And the stage is already set for it.
Selected
Persian Gulf traders, and that includes Westerners
working in the Gulf confirm that
Saudi Arabia is unloading at least $1 trillion
in securities and crashing global markets
under orders from the Masters of the Universe –
those above the lame presidency of Barack Obama.
Those were the
days when the House of Saud would as much as flirt
with such an idea to have all their assets frozen.
Yet now they are acting under orders. And more is
to come; according to crack Persian Gulf traders
Saudi Western security investments may amount to as
much as $8 trillion, and Abu Dhabi’s as $4 trillion.
In Abu
Dhabi everything was broken into compartments, so no
one could figure it out, except brokers and traders
who would know each supervisor of a compartment
of investments. And for the House of Saud,
predictably, denial is an iron rule.
This
massive securities dump has been occasionally
corporate media, but the figures are grossly
underestimated. The full information simply won’t
filter because the Masters of the Universe have
vetoed it.
There has been
a huge increase in the Saudi and Abu Dhabi dump
since the start of 2016. A Persian Gulf source says
the Saudi strategy “will demolish the markets.”
Another referred to a case of “maggots eating the
carcass in the dark”; one just had to look at the
rout in Wall Street, across Europe and in Hong Kong
and Tokyo on Wednesday.
So it’s
already happening. And a crucial subplot may be,
in the short to medium term, no less than the
collapse of the eurozone.
The
Crash of 2016?
So a case
could be made of a panicked House of Saud being
instrumentalized to crash a great deal of the global
economy. Cui bono?
Moscow and
Tehran are very much on it. The logic
behind crashing markets, creating a recession and a
depression – from the point of view of the Masters
of the Universe above the lame duck President of the
United States — is to engineer a major slow down,
cripple buying patterns, decrease oil and natural
gas consumption, and point Russia on a road to ruin.
Besides, the ultra low
oil price
also
translates into a sort of ersatz sanction on Iran.
Still,
Iranian oil about to reach the market will be
around an extra 500,000 barrels a day by mid-year,
plus a surplus stored in tankers in the Persian
Gulf. This
oil can and will be absorbed, as demand is
rising (in the US, for instance, by 1.9 million
barrels a day in 2015) while supply is falling.
Surging
demand and
falling production will reverse the oil crash
by July. Moreover, China’s oil imports recently
surged 9.3% at 7.85 million barrels a day,
discrediting the hegemonic narrative of a collapse
of China's economy – or of China being responsible
for the current market blues.
So, as I
outlined
here, oil should turn around soon.
Goldman Sachs concurs. That gives the Masters
of the Universe a short window of opportunity
enabling the Saudis to dump massive amounts
of securities in the markets.
The House
of Saud may need the money badly, considering their
budget on red alert. But dumping their securities is
also clearly self-destructive. They simply cannot
sell $8 trillion. The House of Saud is actually
destroying the balance of their wealth. As much as Western
hagiography tries to paint Riyadh as a
responsible player, the fact is scores of Saudi
princes are horrified at the destruction of the
wealth of the kingdom through this slow motion
harakiri.
Would there be
a Plan B? Yes. Warrior prince Mohammed bin Sultan –
who’s actually running the show in Riyadh – should
be on the first flight to Moscow to engineer a
common strategy. Yet that won’t happen.
And as far
as China – Saudi Arabia’s top oil importer — is
concerned, Xi Jinping has just been to Riyadh;
Aramco and Sinopec signed a strategic partnership;
but the strategic partnership that really matters,
considering the future of One Belt, One Road, is
actually Beijing-Tehran.
The massive
Saudi dumping of securities ties in with the Saudi
oil price war. In the current, extremely volatile
situation oil is down, stocks are down and oil
stocks are down. Still the House of Saud has not
understood that the Masters of the Universe are
getting them to destroy themselves many times over,
including flooding the oil market with their shut-in
capacity. And all that to fatally wound
Russia, Iran and… Saudi Arabia itself.
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Meanwhile,
Riyadh is rife with rumors there will be a coup
against King
Salman – virtually demented and confined to a
room in his palace in Riyadh. There are two possible
scenarios in play:
1) King
Salman, 80, abdicates in favor of his son, notorious
arrogant/ignorant troublemaker Warrior Prince
Mohammed bin Salman, 30, currently deputy crown
prince and defense minister and the second in the
line of succession but de facto running the show
in Riyadh. This could happen anytime soon. As an
extra bonus, current Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, not
a royal, would be replaced by Abdulaziz bin Salman,
another son of the king.
2) A palace
coup. Salman – and his troublemaker son – are out of
the picture, replaced by Ahmed bin Abdulaziz (who
was a previous Minister of the Interior), or Prince
Mohammed bin Nayef (the current Minister of the
Interior and Crown Prince.)
Whatever
scenario prevails, the British MI6 is intimately
aware of the whole pantomime. And the German BND
might be. Everyone remembers the BND memo at the end
of 2015 that depicted Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman as a “political gambler” who is
destabilizing the Arab world through proxy wars
in Yemen and Syria.
Saudi
sources — for obvious reasons insisting
on anonymity — stress that as much as 80% of the
House of Saud favors a coup.
Yet the
question is whether a House reshuffle would change
their slow motion hara-kiri. The categorical
imperative remains; the Masters of the Universe are
ready to bring the whole world down in a major
recession basically to strangle Russia. The House
of Saud is just a pawn in this vicious game. |