Wednesday, March 01, 2006

When Kingdom Comes

There was a double rainbow in the sky for a few brief moments as pooch and I strolled through the morning showers. Thinking about the pot of gold at the end of it brought to mind all the fear mongering about the ports issue and about how much foreign involvement there really is in this country.

A headline that had caught my eye read "UK utility buys N.Y. electricity and gas distribution company". Scottish Power now owns what had been Portland General. A Belgium company owns the Food Lion chain. Alliances, be it ownership, partnership or investment are nothing new in this country and they're not going to go away. Though we may feel more comfortable with non-Arab involvement we have to recognize the tremendous wealth they control and they are going to be a force in world economics whether we like it or not. We best not cut off our nose to spite our face.

We really need to get past our Arabophobia. (My word.) There are the good guys. Let's look at HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talai Bin Abdul Aziz al Saud, a self made kazillionaire and the power behind Kingdom Holdings which is about to go public. He's known as the Buffett of Saudi Arabia, as in America's Warren Buffett. The two, by the way, are quite good friends.

I'd like to name just a few of the U.S. corporations in which Kingdom Holdings has investments: Amazon, AOL/Time Warner, Apple, Citigroup, Disney, e-Bay, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, Ford Motor Company, Hewlett Packard, Kodak, Motorola, Pepsi, Proctor and Gamble...

Kingdom Holdings is the largest single foreign investor in the U.S. Market. What would happen to any or all of the above listed companies if Kingdom was forced to pull out. Let's look at Citigroup alone in which they hold a ten BILLION dollar stake. Money like that doesn't grow on trees - at least not in my yard!

This is a man who got his Masters of Science at Syracuse University, is a huge supporter of womens' rights and hired the first female pilot in a country where women don't yet have the right to drive.

We owe it to ourselves to look beyond the rhetoric, demand that our politicians gather the facts and report them responsibly before rushing to draft legislation or tell us the sky is falling.

3 comments:

stebbijo said...

I buy all of my phone service through the UK. It comes with video, voicemail, long distance anywhere in the world and hours of time. I pay less than 50 bucks a month for this including my internet connection.

Word Tosser said...

Ah, gal, as always, you educate me on a regular basis...

Anonymous said...

consider the anguish HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talai Bin Abdul Aziz al Saud when Americans are no longer able to buy much of anything? If the dollar's collapse is realized as predicted, his US assets will plunge and the ripple will bring about the realization of how worthless paper money is.