A few of Wall Street’s top CEOs spent the last week on a diplomatic mission to Saudi Arabia. It wasn’t touted as diplomacy, in fact. The financiers who attended the Future Investment Initiative in Saudi Arabia, referred to as “Davos within the Desert,” are a well-scripted bunch preferring to maintain their dealings private each time possible.
Tough luck. Word leaked to me that what went down was vastly more vital than seminars on climate change or whatever else the globalist crowd likes to virtue-signal about.
Moderately, I’m told by individuals with knowledge of the matter that the true reason so many top CEOs attended the conference was to forge a truce between the Saudis and the Biden administration. The continuing and really public bellicosity between the 2 longtime allies is bad for business, each the CEOs’ and that of the US.
True, Saudi Arabia is a giant Wall Street client trying to further modernize its economy through investment-banking deals, while it turns to our financial sector to administer its riches. However the growing consensus among the many individuals who run the US economic system is that having the Saudis as an enemy is amongst the most important geopolitical and economic mistakes of the mistake-prone Biden administration.
It’ll embolden the goals of our common enemy, the terrorist regime in Iran, and drive the Kingdom further into the hands of our rivals, Russia and particularly China. (Reps from China flooded the conference this yr, I’m told, and never because they just like the desert heat). Plus the bickering will do nothing to satisfy our energy needs and save Sleepy Joe Biden’s presidency.
Biden was reportedly blindsided when the Saudis and OPEC announced cuts to grease. Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
For the unacquainted, what goes down in Riyadh every yr for almost a decade could be very just like 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 couple of years ago, he was in command of a rustic with enormous oil wealth and vast economic potential.
Uneven record
He was also in command of maintaining the somewhat uncomfortable relationship with us due to his country’s often lousy record on human rights. There have been hopes the youthful recent leader would enact reforms, soften the Kingdom’s anti-Democratic impulse and modernize its economy away from its reliance on crude.
Let’s just say it hasn’t gone down exactly that way. The crown prince instituted some much-needed changes, reminiscent of expanding women’s rights. The Kingdom’s giant oil company, Saudi Aramco, is venturing beyond fuel into areas reminiscent of tech. The Saudis have continued to support Israel’s existence, albeit tacitly, and remain an enemy of Iran.
MBS also put a slew of individuals he deemed potential rivals under house arrest immediately after taking control. Then presidential candidate Biden campaigned in 2020 to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” nation since the Kingdom hasn’t shed its autocratic leanings, and since MBS is widely blamed for the assassination of a journalist critical of his regime, Jamal Khashoggi.
Many have criticized Biden’s lack of motion to get the US more energy independent. Getty Images
More recently, tensions have gone from bad to worse after our feeble leader sought to chop domestic oil production, traveled to the Middle East and begged the crown prince to extend supply. Biden thought he had a deal until MBS and OPEC announced cuts, prompting the administration to threaten sanctions and possibly more.
OK, I do know what you’re saying: This MBS is a foul dude. Wall Street likes him just for his money, his control of Saudi Aramco and the huge state pension fund. Each are growing gushers of investment-banking and money-management fees for the likes of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, BlackRock etc. — the exact same kind of people who find themselves telling the White House to back off.
Point taken, however the fat cats who went to Riyadh (JP’s Jamie Dimon, Goldman’s David Solomon, reps for giant private-equity and money-management firms) are also saying the world is crammed with bad actors. The Saudis are probably the most effective — and most strategically vital — of the bunch.
It’s a geopolitical reality that the Trump administration and prior presidents have accepted, however the progressive zealots currently in command of Team Biden won’t.
It’s also foolhardy. Biden’s scorched-earth approach to MBS is hurting the American consumer and the country’s national-security interests, and Wall Street executives make the purpose each to me and their contacts within the White House that our time could be higher spent completing pipelines if we actually need to lower the associated fee of fuel here at home.
On top of all that, the recent spat over oil production will not be the one-sided affair the White House and Dems are claiming. In private meetings with CEOs, the Saudis contend the oil-production cut was well-telegraphed irrespective of what Biden can have thought after his famous fist bump with MBS in July.
‘No selection’ on supply
OPEC’s move is a function of a long-standing desire to maintain prices from falling below $80-$90 a barrel. Because Biden keeps releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and with the world economy falling into recession, the Saudis say that they had no selection but to chop supply.
If the White House didn’t know that, Sleepy Joe should have been half-asleep during those talks, the Saudis say.
These are all points made by senior Wall Street executives to people within the Biden administration in recent days, I’m told. The Wall Streeters get that MBS isn’t any saint, but Sleepy Joe’s weak hand makes the crown prince a mandatory evil. Biden should take their advice and deal with some real enemies.