First it was Citibank. Now it's
Barclay's and New York City's Chrysler
Building skyscraper. Muslim Arabs are buying
out collapsing Western banks and businesses
and gaining growing international
power. Banks and businesses
gasping for financial breath are up for sale
at basement prices.
"The possibility remains that more
Arab white knights will be sought to rescue
ailing financial institutions," wrote Dr.
Mohammed Ramady, a former banker and
Visiting Associate Professor at the King
Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in
the Financial Adviser magazine.
The Abu Dhabi Investment Council of the
oil-rich United Arab Emirates kingdom of Abu
Dhabi last November announced it was bailing
out the mammoth Citibank financial
institution, formerly headed by Bank of
Israel Governor Prof. Stanley Fischer, with
$7.5 billion.
Next in line was Britain's Barclay's
Bank, which raised $9 billion from investors
in the oil-rich kingdom of Qatar and in
Asian countries. The Abu Dhabi Investment
Council last month forked out approximately
$800 million for a 75 percent stake in New
York City's 1,046-foot-tall Chrysler
Building, which was the world's tallest
building for a year until the Empire State
Building surpassed it in the 1930's.
The purchase of American banks by
foreigners has been blocked in the past by
security and political considerations, but
the barriers have come down, wrote Dr.
Ramady. "How long this lasts is only a
matter of guesswork, as once again, the
specter of foreign takeovers of 'national'
symbols will be hard to accept," he added.
The latest American symbol to go down
the drain is the Anheuser-Busch beer brewer.
The Times of London wrote, "The weak dollar
and weak economy mean the United States is
up for sale. Arabs just bought part of
the Chrysler Building. Jeez, they even tried
to buy the ports a while back. Whatever
next? A hijab on the Statue of Liberty?"
The Australian editor-at-large Paul
Kelly wrote that the foreign
investments, headed by Arabs, signal a major
change in international power.
"The energy, financial and political
woes that grip the U.S. signal a decisive
shift in world power, mocking the liberal
delusion that Barack Obama or John McCain
can return American prestige and power to
its pre-Bush year 2000 nirvana," he wrote.
"There is no such nirvana. There is instead
a new reality: the
greatest transfer of
income in human history [and] the rise of
a new breed of wealthy autocracies that
cripple U.S. hopes of dominating the
global system and demands on the U.S. to
make fresh compromises in a world where
power is rapidly being diversified."
Flynt Leverett, former director of
Middle East Affairs on the National Security
Council, thinks that "the international
economic position of the United States has
deteriorated substantially since the new
millennium."
In the current issue of The American
Interest, Gal Luft, from the Institute for
the Analysis of Global Security, warned that
OPEC's Arab countries could potentially "buy
the Bank of America with two months' worth
of production and General Motors with
six days' worth."
The growing Arab takeover of American
businesses continues unhindered. The giant
Dow Chemical company and a Kuwaiti company
have agreed to set up world headquarters for
their joint petrochemical venture in
Dearborn, Michigan, which has a high
concentration of American Arabs.
The Abu Dubai Investment Council
years ago entered the international media
business, buying a nine percent stake in
Reuters News Agency, which usually reports
with an open anti-Israeli bias.
However, Abu Dhabi's' director of
international affairs, Yousef al Otaiba, has
reassured American officials that its
purchase of Citibank will not be used to
exert political pressure on the U.S. He
wrote the Treasury Department, "It is
important to be absolutely clear that the
Abu Dhabi government has never and will
never use its investment organizations or
individual investments as a foreign policy
tool."
