Salient to Investors:
Fareed Zakaria said:
- The cold war between Russia and the West over Ukraine is worsening.
- Saudi Arabia will not build a nuclear weapon whatever happens with Iran’s nuclear program because it cannot – oil is 44 % and manufacturing less than 10% of GDP. Saudi Arabia could not openly buy a nuclear bomb due to Western retaliation and interception. Pakistan is unlikely to sell nuclear bombs to Saudi Arabia for fear of jeopardizing its own future.
- Saudi Arabia’s education system is backward and dysfunctional: ranks 73rd in math and science education v. Iran at 44th. Karen Elliott House says 1 of every 3 people in Saudi Arabia is a foreigner, 2 of 3 has a decent job, and 9 of 10 with private sector jobs are non-Saudi.
- Saudi Arabia is no danger of collapse due to strong finances and smart use of patronage, politics, religion and repression.
- The lesson of the last 10 years in Iraq and Afghanistan is that fixing the military side but not the political side is a mistake – the minute the US leaves or relaxes, the whole thing crumbles.
- The UN estimates that the average woman needs 2.1 children to maintain the population of a developed country. Every EU country is below the 2.1 level.
- Europe’s over-65s will increase to more than 25% and Japan’s to more than 33% of the population by 2050. Pew predicts double-digit percentage population drops for Greece, Portugal and Germany by 2050. France’s fertility rate is one of the best in Europe.
- Pew predicts America’s population will grow by 27 percent from 2010 to 2050 due to immigrants, who tend to have more children than native-born Americans.
- Japan expects to lose over 2 million people in the next 5 years, lose 20% of its population by 2050, and decline to 43 million people by 2110.
- The US will be demographically vibrant and growing for decades.
- Magna Carta was nullified in less than 3 months by Pope Innocent III at the request of King John.
David Rothkopf at Foreign Policy and Foreignpolicy.com said:
- The latest addition of US troops to Iraq is the illusion of action, and a mistake – insufficient because it does not call for trainers to go out into the field with troops, which works best.
- The emergence of Kurdistan as an entity will continue and ultimately be a good thing. Iran have seized a big chunk of Iraq, which it will not return, and which the US won’t get back.
Richard Haass at the Council on Foreign Relations said:
- Agree that the lesson of the last 10 years in Iraq and Afghanistan is that if you fix the military problem without fixing the politics behind it, then the minute the US leaves or relaxes the whole thing crumbles.
- The Middle East conflict will worsen. The move to send additional troops to Iraq won’t succeed because it does not change any of the politics of either Iraq or Syria. It is a baby step and a consensus decision from people who know the policy is not working but reject doing anything dramatic or decisive. Incremental adjustments tend not to work and will be overwhelmed by events beyond our control.
- IS will never be content until it has power over Saudi Arabia because it controls the two holiest cities of Islam.
Michael Porter at Harvard Business School said:
- The US has become by far the lowest energy cost nation – oil and natural gas add at least $430 billion to the economy every year, or the equivalent of a large state. Low energy costs are revitalizing the US petrochemical and plastics industries – in an advanced industrial country, energy plays a large part, labor not so much.
- US industrial electricity prices are half those of our major trading partners, gas prices a third.
- The oil industry is in denial about the earthquake and water problems, which are significant, but is getting more able to control most of the problems, and at low-cost.
Michael Specter at The New Yorker said:
- Luanda, Angola is the world’s most expensive city for expats because of oil – Angola is the second biggest center of oil in Africa after Nigeria. Angola oligarchs make Russian oligarchs look like pikers. Angola is a beautiful country with rich agricultural possibilities, an incredible coastline, but with very bad roads and infrastructure. The Chinese are building everything.
- Every major city in the developing world and our part of the world has a huge discrepancy between very rich and very poor people.
Watch the video at http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/category/gps-episodes/ or read the full transcript
at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1506/14/fzgps.01.html