By David J. Jonsson
Monday, May 28, 2007
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."We are witnessing how nation states are increasing using nationalization as a tool for world control of energy production, energy transportation, basic products and financial assets for control. It appears that the actions of Russia and China combined with pawns the Islamist states and the Leftist governments in Latin America are coordinated in their actions. Initially the nationalizations were occurring within the countries, and recently these actions have extended into the EU and the U.S.
In many cases the immediate result has the increased rewards to the sellers of EU and U.S. companies to the foreign state owned entities. The EU and U.S. investors, the populous and their compliant governments fail to realize the long term implications of the sale to the totalitarian regimes.
The funding of these foreign totalitarian Islamist, Marxist and Communist states has come from the disastrous financial performance – balance of trade, outsourcing and fiscal deficits and energy dependence on Islamist and Marxist states. The actions have been further facilitated by the banks and financial advisors seeking immediate financial gain. These actions have also led to acceptance of Shariah law applied to the financial sector as a step toward gradual Islamization of the countries.
Who are the players and what are the recent actions?
Living in Bubble Land
We live in a virtuous circle world predicated on the belief that credit will continue to sustain economic growth. The total outstanding value of all derivatives has surged to over $400 trillion in 2006; rising a third since 2005, from a total of $297 trillion, says the Bank of International Settlements. When a market grows almost 40 percent in a single year to $415 trillion, regulators are bound to get a little nervous. The guardians of financial stability are all too aware that many of these securities haven't yet had to prove their ability to withstand a shock.
Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley commenting on the May 22 Jack Crooks Daily Forex Commentary:
"China's equity bubble is an offshoot of this same problem. Washington's China bashers appear to be drawing on the same game plan of forced currency revaluation that wreaked havoc on the Japanese economy in the 1990s. As was the case with the endaka (strong yen) of the late 1980s, Yuan appreciation is now taken as a given by domestic and international investors - only questions of degree and timing remain unanswered. There is an eerie similarity between currency-driven outcomes in the two equity markets. In both cases, one-way currency bets turned equities into the asset of choice for the "hot money" of liquidity-fueled investors. Is it a coincidence that China's A-shares began their recent run only a few months after the pegged-currency regime was abandoned in July 2005? Similarly, was it a coincidence that the Japanese equity bubble emerged in the late 1980s in the aftermath of a Plaza accord that steered the yen/dollar cross rate from 254 in early 1985 to 145 in early 1990? Given the lack of alternative assets in a still undeveloped Chinese financial system, the equity bubble may be even more of a foregone conclusion in China than it was in Japan."
Where is all this liquidity coming from? East Asian emerging economies are mostly creditor nations. Moreover, much of their accumulation of external assets is in official hands. By February of this year, the foreign currency reserves of east and south Asian countries had reached $3,280bn, up by $2,490bn since the beginning of 1999. If a substantial part of the world economy is generating huge current account surpluses, somebody else has to run offsetting deficits. The result will be toward increased protectionism. It also leads to the goal of the nationalization. Finally, it compels US monetary authorities to sustain easy monetary policy, in order to offset the leakage from domestic demand caused by the huge current account deficits. These trends are not desirable or sustainable.
Last year, for example, the biggest source was China. In the 12 months that ended in January, China accumulated $259 billion in reserves, bringing its total then to just over $1.1 trillion. Cash is flooding into the economy. Foreign-exchange reserves rose by a record $136 billion in the first quarter to $1.2 trillion, the most in the world, the central bank said. The rise in assets is fueled by exports that are so cheap that foreign exchange reserves are growing at a rate of $1 million a minute. The recycling of most of those reserves into U.S. Treasury bonds is a major factor keeping U.S. interest rates low. And that has helped the private-equity groups pursue a wealth of corporate operations that once might have seemed out of bounds.
BusinessWeek reports that there are worries in Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere that the U.S. has become an economic underachiever and the "weakest link in the global economy." The International Monetary Fund went so far as to warn in its most recent World Economic Outlook that one of the biggest uncertainties is "whether the global economy will be able to decouple from the U.S. were the latter to slow down more sharply." And this in part explains why such a close American ally as Kuwait feels the need to unhook its currency from the U.S. dollar, as the Persian Gulf emirate announced Sunday. That link has been dragging down Kuwaiti purchasing power as the dollar sank against the euro and other currencies, and the move to sever that dinar-dollar relationship is one other Gulf countries are thought to be looking at as well. Most Persian Gulf oil producers -- long allied with a protective U.S. -- are moving closer to China and its neighbors, a trend exemplified earlier this month by the East-meets-Mideast conference in Riyadh co-hosted by Saudi Arabia and Japan. The actions of Russian, Iranian and Central Asian players in the petroleum business have also raised questions about the dollar.
Not long ago, Islamic Finance was widely regarded as a specialized, if not obscure, backwater of global banking. On May 23, 2007 the Financial Times published an outstanding special FT Report – Islamic Finance. The lead article By Roula Khalaf and Gillian Tett, Financial Times was: Backwater sector moves into global mainstream.
The UK, now home to two Islamic banks, is vying to become a center for Islamic finance. Sukuks, or asset-based Islamic bonds, are being marketed to international investors.
The new demands for the recycling of capital flows caused by the rise in the oil price have fueled an unprecedented economic boom in the Middle East. These events have been met with innovation in the provision of Islamic financial products, offering ingredients, for the first time, for a larger scale industry.
The history of modern finance is littered with numerous examples of financial booms and busts, where financiers have dashed en masse into new immature, fragmented and opaque markets - producing subsequent scandals when it emerges that a host of shaky business practices underpinned this investment mania.
And while no major scandals involving the Islamic finance sector have come to light so far, the boom in the industry has occurred amid a much wider credit bubble in global financial markets.
"Right now we have a credit bubble - you can sell almost anything to anybody, including in the Islamic finance world," says one investment banker. "People should certainly be asking hard questions about financial practices in the Islamic finance sector."
In 2006 I wrote the book Islamic Economics and the Final Jihad: The Muslim Brotherhood to the Leftist/Marxist - Islamist Alliance in which I wrote about the history and expansion of the use of Islamic Economics as a weapon for world domination. The concepts for Islamic Economics were further developed in my article from the Global Politician on December 20, 2006; Islamic Economics and Shariah Law: A Plan for World Domination.
The Plan involves the incremental acceptance of basic tenants of Shariah law as applied to all aspects of life--the Islamic "Way of Life". This implies the desire to incrementally change the laws and ultimately the Constitution of the U.S. It is already leading to the change of the laws in the UK.
Andrea Williams writing in the Financial Times on April 26, The implications of Islamic bonds are far-reaching, commented on the article in the Financial Times of April 23 UK to issue west's first Islamic bonds. Shariah compliant bonds have hitherto been issued by the governments of Pakistan and Malaysia and also by corporate issuers around the world, but never by a western state.
"The [UK] government may be attracted by the prospect of money from Muslim investors, but it seems it has not considered the implications of using bonds that comply with Shariah law. Shariah law does not simply prohibit interest and finance speculation; it stipulates that money must not be used for a purpose incompatible with Islam."
"This could include any number of areas of the financial market, such as alcohol and cigarettes, clothing, food, media (which produces gossip), and animal welfare (which promotes the welfare of non-halal animals). It would also mean this money could not be used in the furtherance of many individual freedoms, or in the promotion of any idealistic or political worldview other than Islam (including secular democracy)."
"The government appears to be overlooking the implications of allowing a proportion of UK government finance to be determined by a law not recognized in the UK. It is of particular concern that there has been no parliamentary scrutiny of this issue. For example, if these bonds are introduced, it is not clear who will be the arbiter of any disputes. The bonds are religious agreements, and disputes that arise will often involve a question of interpretation of Shariah law."
There is no question that many Muslims whether they are Sunni or Shiite decry terrorism and are loyal Americans; however, most Muslims subscribe to the Muslim total "way of life" and desire to have the whole world under Islamic rule and the will of Allah. Combining a "way of life" into an economic system is proving to be more powerful than any other in having a global impact and spreading Islam on a global basis.
Islamic Economics is the stealth sword of Islam. It is more powerful than the Weapons of Mass Destruction and terrorism. It is immune to negotiation. The stealth sword is being applied for the Islamization of the West and the whole world. The goal is to create the "Islamic kingdom of God on earth." The implementation of Shariah law would have a dramatic affect on your life and that of the entire Western Civilization. Understand the nature of the evil and do not be blindsided.
The twentieth century has witnessed the emergence of an economic doctrine that calls itself Islamic economics. The doctrine is significant because it advances the sprawling and headline-grabbing movement known as political Islam, Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic Finance, or simply Islamism.
The movement is having a profound impact. The Islamic windows of major banks that incorporate the principles of Islamic economics represent the fastest growing sector. The banks, based on the principles of Islamic economics, raise billions of dollars in the form of Islamic bonds (sukuk) annually. Banking laws in Islamic and Western countries are changing to accommodate Islamic economic rules. The Dow Jones Islamic Stock Index and in April 2006, Dow Jones and Citigroup announced the launch of the first Islamic Bond Index. The Dow Jones Citigroup Sukuk Index is the first index that seeks to measure the performance of global bonds complying with Islamic (Shariah compliant) investment guidelines.
For a more complete discussion of the implications of financing with Sukuk bonds see my paper Structural Changes–Destruction Of The U.S. Dollar.
(Mawlana) Sayyid Abul A'la Al-Mawdudi (1903-1979), one of the chief architects of contemporary Islamic resurgence, was one of the most outstanding Islamic thinkers and writers of his time. Mawdudi is credited with bringing economics within the purview of religion in the mid-twentieth century. He had a broader goal of defining a self-contained Islamic order.
He sought to turn Islam into a complete "way of life." In his voluminous writing, Mawdudi exhorted that Islam is much more than a set of rituals. It encompasses, he argued, all domains of human existence, including education, medicine, art, law, politics and economics. To support this assertion, he laid the foundations of several Islamic disciplines, among them Islamic economics. Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), an Egyptian, Muhammad Baquir al-Sadr (Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr) (1931-80), an Iraqi, and Professor Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian, also made seminal contributions to Islamic economics.
The Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) was the main motivator behind setting up experiments in Islamic financing on a nationally and internationally workable scale. The theory and practical requirements needed to set up an Islamic banking system came from among the ranks of the Ikhwan.
"Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."--Muslim Brotherhood
I might add that according to the May 23, 2007 article by Edward Luce from the Financial Times in the article: Muslim Americans in line with US values:
In a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, one of America's most respected polling groups, found that America's 2.4m-strong Muslim community are far more assimilated and integrated into their adopted country than their counterparts in Europe.
Unfortunately, it shows that although American Muslims are assimilating and building prosperous lives they are not uniformly believers in America first. This has far reaching implications with respect to amnesty for Illegal immigrants. The protests, demonstrations and marches for granting amnesty include organizations from the Leftist and Muslim communities. "Nationalization by immigration" is by not uniformly believing in America First and is a form of setting up a nation within a nation.
People from 43 so-called "countries of interest" in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa are sneaking into the United States, many by way of Texas, forming a human pipeline that exists largely outside the public consciousness but that has worried counterterrorism authorities since 9-11.
These immigrants are known as "special-interest aliens." When caught, they can be subjected to FBI interrogation, detention holds that can last for months and, in rare instances, federal prison terms.
The 43 countries of interest are singled out because terrorist groups operate there. Special-interest immigrants are coming all the time, from countries where U.S. military personnel are battling radical Islamist movements, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and the Philippines. They come from countries where organized Islamic extremists have bombed U.S. interests, such as Kenya, Tanzania and Lebanon. They come from U.S.-designated state sponsors of terror, such as Iran, Syria and Sudan.
"What this survey shows is that Muslim Americans are largely assimilated, happy with their lives and moderate - mostly in contrast to Muslims in Western Europe," said Andrew Kohut, head of Pew. "They also reject Islamic extremism to a much greater extent than Muslim populations elsewhere in the world."
"Thirteen per cent of American Muslims believe that suicide bombing is justified in some circumstances, which is sharply lower than comparable findings among European Muslims and those in Muslim-majority countries. However, the proportion of Muslim Americans under the age of 30 who believe suicide terrorism is sometimes justified rises to 26 per cent, compared with 35 per cent in Britain and 42 per cent in France."
Think about it: Thirteen per cent of all American Muslims believe that suicide bombing is justified in some circumstances. That is 325,000 of all American Muslims believing suicide bombing is acceptable in some circumstances. Then apply this to the EU and consider the potential risk to Eurabia. Remember 9/11. It was only 19 terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda that hijacked four commercial airliners on September 11, 2001.
The Leftist propaganda would have you believe that the cause of Muslims believing that suicide is justified is because of poverty should further look at the results of the poll. "Forty-two per cent rated their personal financial situation as excellent or good, compared with 49 per cent of Americans in total. Only 2 per cent of US Muslims are in the low-income bracket, compared with 22 per cent in Britain and 18 per cent in France and Germany."
"The survey, which screened 55,000 Muslim Americans, found the under-30s were far more likely than the older generations to describe themselves as Muslim first and American second and were far more likely to attend a mosque weekly."
"It found that African-American Muslims, most of whom are converts to the religion, were more radicalized than other Muslim Americans. Only 36 per cent had a "highly unfavorable" view of al-Qaeda, compared with 58 per cent among Muslims as a whole. "African-Americans are clearly the most disillusioned section among Muslim Americans - and they are also much more skeptical of American values," says Mr. Kohut."
"Muslim Americans account for just 0.6 per cent of the US population, compared with 5 per cent or more in France and Germany."
Jihad is considered a required religious duty for Muslims. Jihad is Islam's normal path to expansion.
On May 21, Beijing announced a deal that surprised the finance community, and it didn't involve commodities or the domestic currency. Instead, officials, on the cusp of creating an private investment arm, invested a significant amount in the private equity firm Blackstone Group LP. China will use $3 billion of its roughly $1.2 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves to buy a 9.9% stake in Blackstone, a move that coincides with Blackstone's planned $40 billion stock-market listing, as the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal report.
Central Huijin Investment Co., a state agency that has invested some of China's foreign exchange reserves to recapitalize domestic financial companies, loaned the US$3 billion to the new investment agency. Central Huijin's assets are expected to be merged into the State Investment Company, according to earlier reports.
According to the agreement, the investment in Blackstone will be below 10 percent of total shares in Blackstone after its initial public offering, which is expected to take place in mid-June.
"We don't want to trigger any review or approval procedure by the US government," said Jesse Wang, chairman of the China Jianyin Investment Ltd Co, which is owned by Central Huijin, the central bank's investment arm.
With approximately $200 billion in reserves, the new state investment agency will likely take aim at notable bellwether companies, with stock issuances that are more liquid. This may include investments in key branding items with access and connections to US consumers and distributions through domestic stores. However, a bulk of sentiment continues to side with the notion of energy and internationally related companies as the preferred target. One thing is for sure though, with a heavy investment in Blackstone, Chinese officials will be able to reach out to other investments, taking advantage of the firm's worldwide exposure.
In March, Oaktree Capital Management LLC Managing Director William Kerins predicted that private equity transactions in China will surge fivefold to an annual $10 billion in the coming years. Adding China to the shareholder roster means Blackstone, which hired former Hong Kong Financial Secretary Antony Leung in January, is better placed to grab a piece of that action.
The U.S. based on national security issues blocked the sale of Unocal to CNOOC, China's biggest offshore oil producer. Hence China is using Blackstone as the Trojan Horse of Blackstone to accomplish the goal. Remember this is a government investment not just a foreign private company making the investment.
Citgo, owned by Petroleos de Venezuela S. A. (PDVSA), operates about 13,000 service stations in the United States. This is the company owned by comrade Hugo Chavez who recently nationalized the assets of the foreign oil companies.
Other nations might be tempted to emulate China's Trojan Horse investment strategy. In December, Dubai's DP World succumbed to U.S. pressure and sold six port terminals to American International Group Inc. for an undisclosed amount.
The terminals, in New York; Newark, New Jersey; Baltimore; Philadelphia; Tampa, Florida; and New Orleans, were uncontroversial while owned by London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co.
After DP World paid $6.8 billion (using sukuk bond financing) for the U.K. company in February 2006, the coastal access points suddenly acquired strategic importance. Clubbing together with a U.S. financial firm might have enabled DP World to hang on to those assets.
Yet while one Dubai company may have given up on U.S. ports, another one shows no signs of quitting the U.S.--or of giving up a contract with the Navy to provide shore services for vessels in the Middle East. The firm, Inchcape Shipping Services (ISS), is an old British company that last January was sold to a Dubai government investment vehicle for $285 million. ISS has more than 200 offices around the world and provides services to clients ranging from cruise ship operators to oil tankers to commercial cargo vessels. In the U.S., the company operates out of more than a dozen port cities, including Houston, Miami and New Orleans, arranging pilots, tugs, linesmen and stevedores, among other things. The firm is also a defense contractor which has long worked for Britain's Royal Navy. And last June, the U.S. Navy signed on too, awarding ISS a $50 million contract to be the "husbanding agent" for vessels in most Southwest Asia ports, including those in the Middle East, according to an unclassified Navy logistics manual for the Fifth Fleet and a press release from ISS.
Meanwhile on May 20, 2006 General Electric Co. (GE) and Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) have reached an agreement for SABIC to acquire GE Plastics for a price of US$11.6 billion. SABIC has previously acquired DSM Petrochemicals business in Europe and the Huntsman Petrochemicals business in the United Kingdom. The government owns about 70 percent of the stock, with the rest restricted to investors in Saudi Arabia and the five other states of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Buying the division will give SABIC a foothold in polycarbonates, easily worked plastics used in applications ranging from riot shields to compact discs. GE's proprietary Lexan plastic is used in roofs, lighting, walkways, windows and domes.
SABIC was established by Royal Decree in 1976 (1396/97 AH) - its task being to set up and operate hydrocarbon and mineral-based industries in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Public Investment Fund provides long-term loans to SABIC on highly concessional terms. The balance of SABIC's capital requirements come from SABIC's joint venture partners. In addition, SABIC can make use of normal commercial loans. With these sources of finance, SABIC is able to undertake industrial projects considerably in excess of its own authorized capital of 10,000 million Saudi Riyals.
Since beginning production, SABIC has held a 5% share of world petrochemical markets, and a larger market share in key products such as ethylene, ethylene glycol, methanol, MTBE and polyethylene. This will be significally increased with the acquisition of GE Plastics.
We forecast that annual production capacity will reach 51 million metric tons (mmt) in 2006 and 60 mmt in 2008.
Basic Chemicals, SABIC's largest strategic business unit, accounts for around 40% of the company's total production.
SABIC is the world's fourth-largest producer of polyolefins. It is the world's third-largest producer of polyethylene and the sixth-largest producer of polypropylene.
SABIC is also the world's single largest producer and exporter of granular urea (needed for production corn ethanol) and one of the world's top producers of olefins.
More than two-thirds of SABIC's production is exported; more than half of these exports go to Asia.
In April, the world's largest integrated oil and gas project called Sakhalin-2. had been wrested from Royal Dutch Shell. The Royal Dutch/Shell group of Europe and Japanese trading houses Mitsui & Co. and Mitsubishi Corp. ceded a majority stake in the joint project after Russia's resources ministry ordered a partial suspension of the project due to environmental concerns. The suspension was believed by some to be a pretext for the Russian government's efforts to secure Gazprom's leadership of the project.
On April 29, Gazprom eyes exclusive purchase of Sakhalin-1 gas: MOSCOW (Kyodo) Gazprom is negotiating for exclusive rights to buy all of the natural gas to be produced by the Sakhalin-1 international oil and natural gas project, according to a senior official of the partially state-owned gas monopoly.
The suspension was believed by some to be a pretext for the Russian government's efforts to secure Gazprom's leadership of the project.
The move suggests the possibility that Russia will take full control of the exporting rights for the natural gas produced by the project, which Exxon Mobil Corp. has led since the mid-1990s and in which Japanese stakeholders, including the government, hold a combined stake of about 30 percent.
On May 21, according to the Financial Times Moscow warns TNK-BP over gas licence: Moscow ratcheted up pressure on BP's Russian venture on Monday, warning that TNK-BP could see the license for its vast Kovykta gas field revoked within "a matter of days".
Oleg Mitvol, head of Russia's environmental watchdog, said his agency would open a probe on Wednesday into whether TNK-BP was meeting license terms to develop the east Siberian field – as a three-month deadline passed for production there to be boosted to 9 billion cubic meters in line with requirements. TNK-BP has said this target would be impossible to meet.
"If everything goes according to the law then [TNK-BP] should lose the license," Mr. Mitvol said, adding that a special commission would meet in "the next few days" to decide whether to revoke it.
Mr. Mitvol's comments came as talks intensified over state-controlled Gazprom taking a stake in the operation. Industry observers have seen the stand-off over Kovykta as part of a broader gambit to put pressure on TNK-BP's Russian shareholders to sell their stake to a state-controlled company as Moscow seeks to tighten its grip over the energy sector.
Moscow eyes tighter grip on energy routes according to the Financial Times of May 14. Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have called for a new pipeline to be built along the coast of the Caspian Sea to carry additional Central Asian natural gas exports north into Russia in a move that would tighten Moscow's control over energy routes out of the region.
The Beltrans gaz deal, which was 13 years in the making, will increase Gazprom's lock over gas networks to the west just one week after Russia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan agreed to expand shipments out of Central Asia via Russia in a blow to western governments' efforts to build alternative pipelines bypassing Russia.
Russia continues to tighten the energy noose on Europe as reported by the Financial Times of May 22, Pipeline set to tighten Russian grip on energy.
The Russian government yesterday approved plans for an oil pipeline that could enable the country to bypass Belarus and tighten Moscow's grip over much of Europe's energy supplies.
The proposal by Transneft, Russia's oil pipeline monopoly, to build a new 1m barrel per day spur across Russian territory to a key Russian oil terminal in the Baltic port of Primorsk will boost the terminal's capacity as a hub for supplies to Europe to 2.5m b/d.
The Leftist/Marxist – Islamist Alliance is utilizing the weapons of economics, energy and immigration to rest control of the Western world. The Alliance through their operatives in the U.S. and the EU has furthered the progress of world domination and Islamization though appeasement, open borders, lack of fiscal disciple and greed among the populous, government leaders, financial advisors and banks seeking near term gains.
The U.S. and its allies need to understand who the enemy is and their goals, and put forward a plan for survival of the freedoms and liberty we enjoy. Commercial interests, and not security, are driving our actions as they did then prior to WW II.
This image will not be improved by elites counted among the Leftist/Marxist – Islamist Alliance who have not only abandoned, but are attacking their own people, selling out their historical legacy to their worst enemies, and muzzling those who object to this. It is going to be interesting for future historians to unveil how many senior Western leaders or bureaucrats, bankers and corporate leaders have been bought and paid by petrodollars.
David J. Jonsson is the author of Clash of Ideologies —The Making of the Christian and Islamic Worlds, Xulon Press 2005. His new book: Islamic Economics and the Final Jihad: The Muslim Brotherhood to the Leftist/Marxist - Islamist Alliance (Salem Communications (May 30, 2006). He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in physics. He worked for major corporations in the United States and Japan and with multilateral agencies that brought him to more that fifteen countries with significant or majority populations who are Muslim. These exposures provided insight into the basic tenants of Islam as a political, economic and religious system. He became proficient in Islamic law (Shariah) through contract negotiation and personal encounter. David can be reached at: djonsson2000@yahoo.co.uk
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