Oil

Abu Dhabi fund draws scrutiny in U.S.

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The headquarters of the InvestmAbu Dhabient Authority. The authority has a high profile in the emirate, but its secrecy is drawing scrutiny in Washington. (Charles Crowell/Bloomberg News)

Abu Dhabi has about 9 percent of the world’s oil and 0.02 percent of its population. One result is a surfeit of petrodollars, much of which is funneled into a secretive, government-controlled investment fund that is helping to shift the balance of power in the financial world.

After decades in the shadows, the fund, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, is turning heads on Wall Street and in Washington by making high-profile investments in the United States and elsewhere.

Known as ADIA (pronounced ah-DEE-ah), the fund recently formed a small team that is now buying big stakes in Western companies. This unit masterminded ADIA’s $7.5 billion investment in Citigroup, the largest U.S. bank, in November. It has also taken a large position in Toll Brothers, one of America’s biggest home builders.

“There is an idea that Abu Dhabi should not be the underdog of the map,” said Frauke Heard-Bey, a historian who has written a book about the political emergence of the United Arab Emirates. “They have the money to buy companies that are ailing, and why should they not? Why not make a mark?”

ADIA is the largest of the world’s sovereign wealth funds, giant pools of money controlled by cash-rich governments, particularly in Asia and Middle East. But Abu Dhabi, the wealthiest of the seven Arab emirates, says little about its fund. Few outsiders know for sure where ADIA invests, or even how much money it controls. And secrecy breeds hyperbole; some estimates of the fund’s size exceed $1 trillion.

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Ben Bernanke’s high-wire act

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Fed chief, in first of two days of testimony on Capitol Hill, acknowledges troubling signs about economic growth but also raises concerns about inflation.

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) — For Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, running the central bank has become an increasingly challenging high-wire balancing act.

All of Wall Street was watching the Fed chairman on Wednesday when he headed to Capitol Hill to outline the trio of challenges facing the Fed: an economy at risk of falling into a recession, topsy-turvy financial markets and the rising risk of inflation.

“We do face a difficult situation,” Bernanke told members of the House Financial Services Committee, marking the first day of his two-day semi-annual hearing on the Fed’s monetary policy. “The challenge for us is to balance those risks and decide at any given time which is more serious.”

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Oil hits record

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The price of oil increases dramatically and will continue to do so.

Oil hits record as OPEC rebuffs Bush http://www.azstarnet.com/business/228364

All this fits into the plan to crash the economy, destroy the value of the Dollar, take away your money and to keep all of you in a survival mode.

There has been found enough oil in Alaska to keep the US economy running for 200 years!

Lindsay Williams, an ordained Baptist minister for 28 years, is witness that this is true.

Visit his homepage: http://www.lwoil.com/index.php and read his book: The Energy Non-Crisis

Why would they do that? To earn more money? Yes, but those guys already have enough money! It’s now all about power.

They want to control you utterly and totally.

10-Year U.S. Strategic Plan For Detention Camps Revives Proposals From Oliver North

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Editor’s Note: A recently announced contract for a Halliburton subsidiary to build immigrant detention facilities is part of a longer-term Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of “all removable aliens” and “potential terrorists.” Scott is author of “Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). He is completing a book on “The Road to 9/11.” Visit his Web site at http://www.peterdalescott.net.

The Halliburton subsidiary KBR (formerly Brown and Root) announced on Jan. 24 that it had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build detention camps. Two weeks later, on Feb. 6, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced that the Fiscal Year 2007 federal budget would allocate over $400 million to add 6,700 additional detention beds (an increase of 32 percent over 2006). This $400 million allocation is more than a four-fold increase over the FY 2006 budget, which provided only $90 million for the same purpose.

Both the contract and the budget allocation are in partial fulfillment of an ambitious 10-year Homeland Security strategic plan, code-named ENDGAME, authorized in 2003. According to a 49-page Homeland Security document on the plan, ENDGAME expands “a mission first articulated in the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.” Its goal is the capability to “remove all removable aliens,” including “illegal economic migrants, aliens who have committed criminal acts, asylum-seekers (required to be retained by law) or potential terrorists.”

There is no question that the Bush administration is under considerable political pressure to increase the detentions of illegal immigrants, especially from across the Mexican border. Confrontations along the border are increasingly violent, often involving the drug traffic.

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