Writes Greg Privette:

Lew,

I also read the news stories about the Saudi’s threatening to sell US “assets” (as in treasury debt) if the 28 pages are released. For one thing doesn’t this pretty much make it obvious what is in there? Just maybe not the details and magnitude.

The other thing that may have been forgotten is this is not the first time the Saudi’s have done this type of thing. The only difference is the last time it was done without announcing the reasons and the media never tied one event to another. I remember just a short while after 9/11 when the identity and some background on the perpetrators had become known. It turned out that most, if not all of them were here on long expired temporary visas of one form or another. The State Dept. came under a good bit of attack by the media for simply allowing people to stay indefinitely on short term visas without making any attempt to locate and deport them. In response to that criticism and the cry for greater security the State Department began announcing various measures to tighten up the process for issuing visas and stated that the changes would result in a very time consuming process to get visas. They announced that the new rules would apply to travelers from all, or rather, almost all Middle Eastern and North African countries. The media, to my surprise actually began to point out that the one country who was exempt, Saudi Arabia, was also the source of ¾ of the known perpetrators. They continually brought this up during State Dept. press conferences and it was regularly mentioned in articles even in the mainstream media. After a while the State Dept. capitulated to media pressure and agreed it would be necessary to apply these new rules to the Saudi’s. This time the Saudi’s made no overt threat as they have now. However a short time after the announcement it was revealed the Saudi’s had sold off I believe about 200 billion in US securities in one day and transferred it to Euro backed assets. At the time the news of this transaction was reported mainly in the Money or Business sections of the news and I don’t remember anyone in the media suggesting the two events might be related. That was only a few years into the monetary experiment known as the Euro and it was still trading I think at about 1.2 Euro to the dollar. During the one day the Saudi’s made the transfer the dollar lost about 10 cents to the Euro. The amazing part was all the talk of tightening visa requirements for the Saudi’s just disappeared over night from the main stream media. Sound of crickets. I think the signal had clearly been sent and clearly received.

In many of the current articles the opinion seems to be the Saudi’s would never actually sell all 750 billion as this would wreck their economy. First, why would moving from one foreign asset to another necessarily wreck their economy? It would seem to me the main damage would be to the reserve status of the dollar. The only way this would likely do significant damage to their economy is if the US retaliated by cutting off all financial and military aid to them. Second this position assumes that the crazed rulers of the Saudi Kingdom care anymore about possible hardships imposed on their subjects due to their whims than do the crazed rulers of any other country. Any hardship will never be felt by the ruling bunch or their supporters. Also as is the case with all the countries our government meddles in the rulers tend to be in a can’t lose situation. Their economy is apparently already beginning to tank. If they follow through with the threat and their economy tanks further they can blame it on the steps they took to punish the Great Satin and ride a wave of patriotic support. Or if it somehow leads to open revolt the rulers simply leave the country with all their wealth much of which I’m sure is probably already in foreign accounts and property. They can certainly come here. It would be easy since their visa process is still quick. They could probably even get the US tax payers to foot their relocation expenses as “refugees”.