Monday, October 31, 2022

Oil CEO's Attempt To Forge A Truce Between Saudi Arabia And The Biden Administration

 Gasparino at the New York Post, October 29:

Some of Wall Street’s top CEOs spent the last week on a diplomatic mission to ­Saudi Arabia. It wasn’t touted as diplomacy, of course. The financiers who attended the Future Investment Initiative in ­Saudi Arabia, known as “Davos in the Desert,” are a well-scripted bunch who prefer to keep their dealings private whenever possible.

Tough luck. Word leaked to me that what went down was vastly more important than seminars on climate change or whatever else the globalist crowd likes to virtue-signal about.

Rather, I am told by people with knowledge of the matter that the real reason so many top CEOs attended the conference was to forge a truce between the Saudis and the Biden administration. The ongoing and very public bellicosity between the two longtime allies is bad for business, both the CEOs’ and that of the US.

True, Saudi Arabia is a big Wall Street client looking to further modernize its economy through investment-banking deals, while it turns to our financial sector to manage its riches. But the growing consensus among the people who run the US financial system is that having the Saudis as an enemy is among the biggest geo­political and economic mistakes of the mistake-prone Biden administration.

It will embolden the aims of our common enemy, the terrorist regime in Iran, and drive the Kingdom further into the hands of our rivals, Russia and especially China. (Reps from China flooded the conference this year, I am told, and not because they like the desert heat). Plus the bickering will do nothing to satisfy our ­energy needs and save Sleepy Joe Biden’s presidency.

For the unacquainted, what goes down in Riyadh every year for ­almost a decade is very similar to the more established World Economic Forum confab in Davos, Switzerland. Running the show in Riyadh is a more controversial host than milquetoast globalist WEF chief Klaus Schwab.

It’s the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman — known by haters and admirers alike as MBS. When MBS (now just 37) became the Kingdom’s de facto ruler a few years ago, he was in charge of a country with enormous oil wealth and vast economic potential....

....MUCH MORE, he goes deep.

The OPEC production cuts are due to start tomorrow and relations between the Saudis and the U.S. are as bad as they've been in a very long time.

As noted a few weeks ago:

The O'biden administration has never much cared for the Saudis, much preferring the Iranians.
(the O'Biden moniker comes from the time in March 2020 the then-candidate said "I’m An ‘OBiden-Bama’ Democrat")

Fortunately the relationship between the Sunnis and Shia are not quite as fraught as they were in 2016: 

Pakistan Threatens To Wipe Iran Off the Face of The Earth If Saudi Arabia Threatened