I swear this is scary

[arn710]

Oh my bad I forgot that jimmyjabber from bodybuilding.com represented the country's views on the subject.

SAD

Find me a prominent politician calling for sanctions over this

[ZenBowman]

Yep, Trump is a Jihadist shill. Sad.

Even more cucked than Hillary.

I want to see candidate Trump re-assert himself, the one who loudly called them out; not this limp wristed version of the man.

[SillieBazzillie]

Find me a prominent politician calling for sanctions over this

You're joking right? EVERY politician but the idiot Trump is saying we need to sanction the Saudis over this.

Dude just stick your head back in the sand. You clearly don't mind terrorist sponsoring countries grabbing people living in this country who write for our free press and going all SAW on them.

But hey, lying Sarah Sanders got yelled at in a restaurant! rabblerabblerabble

SAD

[Cleveland33]

You're joking right? EVERY politician but the idiot Trump is saying we need to sanction the Saudis over this.

Dude just stick your head back in the sand. You clearly don't mind that terrorist sponsoring countries grabbing people living in this country who write for our free press and going all SAW on them.

SAD

Again - why demand a reaction before knowing what actually happened?

[ZenBowman]

Find me a prominent politician calling for sanctions over this

Rand Paul.

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article...op-arming-them

Paul would still have been the best choice for POTUS.

[SillieBazzillie]

Again - why demand a reaction before knowing what actually happened?

Everyone knows what happened. Or is this Trump I'm talking to who supposed it could have been some "rogue" mystery man?

lmfao.

[Cleveland33]

Everyone knows what happened. Or is this Trump I'm talking to who supposed it could have been some "rogue" mystery man?

lmfao.

he hasn't even been declared dead by the state department. calm your jets.

Jesus. If a solider had been taken hostage and executed and Trump issued a bombing run you'd be LIVID

[FFailed]

Is this the first time Saudi Arabia has ever done anything bad? Shouldn't people have been outraged over them for years now?

[DA_MOSS]

Rand Paul.

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article...op-arming-them

Paul would still have been the best choice for POTUS.

Also says he's been calling for them to stop arming them for over a year now; not specific to this

[arn710]

You're joking right? EVERY politician but the idiot Trump is saying we need to sanction the Saudis over this.

Dude just stick your head back in the sand. You clearly don't mind terrorist sponsoring countries grabbing people living in this country who write for our free press and going all SAW on them.

But hey, lying Sarah Sanders got yelled at in a restaurant! rabblerabblerabble

SAD

I'm going to ask again

The Saudis already said there would be serious repercussions if we sanction them. Are you ok with that?

[SillieBazzillie]

he hasn't even been declared dead by the state department. calm your jets.

Jesus. If a solider had been taken hostage and executed and Trump issued a bombing run you'd be LIVID

Not true at all. Taking anyone associated with America should be met by an Israeli like response. IDGAF who the president is or what party they're from. Like Obama was a weak bitch when it came to NK keeping that dude who ended up dying.

[jimmyjabbar]

I'm going to ask again

The Saudis already said there would be serious repercussions if we sanction them. Are you ok with that?

They shouldnt have that much control over us. This is America; some ham fisted threats from a chithole of a country shouldnt stop us from sanctioning them.

[SillieBazzillie]

I'm going to ask again

The Saudis already said there would be serious repercussions if we sanction them. Are you ok with that?

Please tell me you're kidding. ARE WE BEHOLDEN TO THE SAUDIS NOW?? What possible leverage do they have over us? And if you say oil, if they stop selling us oil, it hurts them worse and don't we produce enough of our own?

What is it with you guys? You're perfectly willing to take on China but you're scared of freaking Saudi Arabia?

WTF?

[Cleveland33]

Not true at all. Taking anyone associated with America should be met by an Israeli like response. IDGAF who the president is or what party they're from. Like Obama was a weak bitch when it came to NK keeping that dude who ended up dying.

That's different. He was an American.

This guy was a Saudi killed by the Saudis...

[Xinroth]

What we "can" do:

-Rethink our Alliance with KSA. at the risk of losing Arms sales, billions in military contracts, & oil imports of which our modern renewable technology can make up in a few years time if interest is materialized into action. The U.S already owns the Middle East and has bases on every country surrounding KSA/Iran so neither won't do chit to retaliate. KSA will be the biggest loser here. We'll stop supplying weapons for them to bomb the living chit out of Yemen, which brings me to point 2.

-Travel ban on KSA citizens, royalty, diplomats. etc. Your mental gymnastics will laugh at this, but it is a valid way of putting pressure on the Saudi government when their citizens get cucked and can't travel here for work/vacation and future terrorist attacks.

-Stop giving them weapons. back to point 1.

Not a citizen.

christ did you guys cream your pants when American (citizens) children were killed in Yemen with a drone strike by Obama, so you can attack him and democrats for their idiocy? Or was it OK because it was a 'product of war' and their dead daddy was an AlQaeda guy?

I'm going to ask again

The Saudis already said there would be serious repercussions if we sanction them. Are you ok with that?

What are they gonna do? It's not like they can just hijack some planes and run them thru our buildings.

[iifymbro]

Not true at all. Taking anyone associated with America should be met by an Israeli like response. IDGAF who the president is or what party they're from. Like Obama was a weak bitch when it came to NK keeping that dude who ended up dying.

Lol at you completely disregarding the greater tactical/strategic foreign policy involved with a country like S.A, let's just reactively chuck a bunch of sanctions at them what could possibly go wrong

[FFailed]

What we "can" do:

-Rethink our Alliance with KSA. at the risk of losing Arms sales, billions in military contracts, & oil imports of which our modern renewable technology can make up in a few years time if interest is materialized into action. The U.S already owns the Middle East and has bases on every country surrounding KSA/Iran so neither won't do chit to retaliate. KSA will be the biggest loser here. We'll stop supplying weapons for them to bomb the living chit out of Yemen, which brings me to point 2.

-Travel ban on KSA citizens, royalty, diplomats. etc. Your mental gymnastics will laugh at this, but it is a valid way of putting pressure on the Saudi government when their citizens get cucked and can't travel here for work/vacation and future terrorist attacks.






christ did you guys cream your pants when American (citizens) children were killed in Yemen with a drone strike by Obama, so you can attack him and democrats for their idiocy? Or was it OK because it was a 'product of war' and their dead daddy was an AlQaeda guy?

umm excuse me sir that is extremely racist

[Xinroth]

umm excuse me sir that is extremely racist

Ayyy shieeeeeet I forgot 'Racism' is worse than torching gays and stoning women in public. My gripe with the original travel ban is that it didn't include KSA and the other filthy gulf countries.

[arn710]

Please tell me you're kidding. ARE WE BEHOLDEN TO THE SAUDIS NOW?? What possible leverage do they have over us? And if you say oil, if they stop selling us oil, it hurts them worse and don't we produce enough of our own?

What is it with you guys? You're perfectly willing to take on China but you're scared of freaking Saudi Arabia?

WTF?

You didn't actually answer the question

I'm going to answer yours since I'm a reasonable person unlike you apparently. We do a lot of military business with them. If those contracts are gone, big defense contractors are going to suffer and Americans are going to be out of work.

If they cut oil production, oil prices are going to rise significantly. While we're nearly energy independent, its still going to have a significant effect on gas prices and that's going to have a measured effect on our economy

How many people need to suffer because one journo got snatched up?

[kingmanaverage]

Again - why demand a reaction before knowing what actually happened?

What's unclear about the situation?

I thought misc hated radical Islam, but apparently it seems they're ok with the Saudis going around murdering people for criticising their retarded nation, as long as they benefit from Saudi oil. Not saying the Us should go to war but I definitely think sanctions should be put in place.

[vickissick07]

Failure was not an option.

It was July 1974. A steady predawn drizzle had given way to overcast skies when William Simon, newly appointed U.S. Treasury secretary, and his deputy, Gerry Parsky, stepped onto an 8 a.m. flight from Andrews Air Force Base. On board, the mood was tense. That year, the oil crisis had hit home. An embargo by OPEC's Arab nations-payback for U.S. military aid to the Israelis during the Yom Kippur War-quadrupled oil prices. Inflation soared, the stock market crashed, and the U.S. economy was in a tailspin.

Officially, Simon's two-week trip was billed as a tour of economic diplomacy across Europe and the Middle East, full of the customary meet-and-greets and evening banquets. But the real mission, kept in strict confidence within President Richard Nixon's inner circle, would take place during a four-day layover in the coastal city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The goal: neutralize crude oil as an economic weapon and find a way to persuade a hostile kingdom to finance America's widening deficit with its newfound petrodollar wealth. And according to Parsky, Nixon made clear there was simply no coming back empty-handed. Failure would not only jeopardize America's financial health but could also give the Soviet Union an opening to make further inroads into the Arab world.

It "wasn't a question of whether it could be done or it couldn't be done," said Parsky, 73, one of the few officials with Simon during the Saudi talks.

At first blush, Simon, who had just done a stint as Nixon's energy czar, seemed ill-suited for such delicate diplomacy. Before being tapped by Nixon, the chain-smoking New Jersey native ran the vaunted Treasuries desk at Salomon Brothers. To career bureaucrats, the brash Wall Street bond trader-who once compared himself to Genghis Khan-had a temper and an outsize ego that was painfully out of step in Washington. Just a week before setting foot in Saudi Arabia, Simon publicly lambasted the Shah of Iran, a close regional ally at the time, calling him a "nut."
U.S. discloses Saudi Arabia's Treasuries holdings for first time

But Simon, better than anyone else, understood the appeal of U.S. government debt and how to sell the Saudis on the idea that America was the safest place to park their petrodollars. With that knowledge, the administration hatched an unprecedented do-or-die plan that would come to influence just about every aspect of U.S.-Saudi relations over the next four decades (Simon died in 2000 at the age of 72).

The basic framework was strikingly simple. The United States would buy oil from Saudi Arabia and provide the kingdom military aid and equipment. In return, the Saudis would plow billions of their petrodollar revenue back into Treasuries and finance America's spending.

It took several discreet follow-up meetings to iron out all the details, Parsky said. But at the end of months of negotiations, there remained one small, yet crucial, catch: King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud demanded the country's Treasury purchases stay "strictly secret," according to a diplomatic cable obtained by Bloomberg from the National Archives database.
Buying bonds and all that was a strategy to recycle petrodollars back into the U.S. ... it's always been an ambiguous, constrained relationship. — David Ottaway, Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington

With a handful of Treasury and Federal Reserve officials, the secret was kept for more than four decades-until now. In response to a Freedom-of-Information-Act request submitted by Bloomberg News, the Treasury broke out Saudi Arabia's holdings for the first time this month after "concluding that it was consistent with transparency and the law to disclose the data," according to spokeswoman Whitney Smith. The $117 billion trove makes the kingdom one of America's largest foreign creditors.

Yet in many ways, the information has raised more questions than it has answered. A former Treasury official, who specialized in central bank reserves and asked not to be identified, says the official figure vastly understates Saudi Arabia's investments in U.S. government debt, which may be double or more.

The current tally represents just 20 percent of its $587 billion of foreign reserves, well below the two-thirds that central banks typically keep in dollar assets. Some analysts speculate the kingdom may be masking its U.S. debt holdings by accumulating Treasuries through offshore financial centers, which show up in the data of other countries.

Exactly how much of America's debt Saudi Arabia actually owns is something that matters more now than ever before.

While oil's collapse has deepened concern that Saudi Arabia will need to liquidate its Treasuries to raise cash, a more troubling worry has also emerged: the specter of the kingdom using its outsize position in the world's most important debt market as a political weapon, much as it did with oil in the 1970s.

In April, Saudi Arabia warned it would start selling as much as $750 billion in Treasuries and other assets if Congress passes a bill allowing the kingdom to be held liable in U.S. courts for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to the New York Times. The threat comes amid a renewed push by presidential candidates and legislators from both the Democratic and Republican parties to declassify a 28-page section of a 2004 U.S. government report that is believed to detail possible Saudi connections to the attacks. The bill, which passed the Senate on May 17, is now in the House of Representatives.

Saudi Arabia's Finance Ministry declined to comment on the potential selling of Treasuries in response. The Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency didn't immediately answer requests for details on the total size of its U.S. government debt holdings.

"Let's not assume they're bluffing" about threatening to retaliate, said Marc Chandler, the global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman. "The Saudis are under a lot of pressure. I'd say that we don't do ourselves justice if we underestimate our liabilities" to big holders.

Saudi Arabia, which has long provided free health care, gasoline subsidies, and routine pay raises to its citizens with its petroleum wealth, already faces a brutal fiscal crisis.

In the past year alone, the monetary authority has burned through $111 billion of reserves to plug its biggest budget deficit in a quarter-century, pay for costly wars to defeat the Islamic State, and wage proxy campaigns against Iran. Though oil has stabilized at about $50 a barrel (from less than $30 earlier this year), it's still far below the heady years of $100-a-barrel crude.

Saudi Arabia's situation has become so acute the kingdom is now selling a piece of its crown jewel-state oil company Saudi Aramco.

What's more, the commitment to the decades-old policy of "interdependence" between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, which arose from Simon's debt deal and ultimately bound together two nations that share few common values, is showing signs of fraying. America has taken tentative steps toward a rapprochement with Iran, highlighted by President Barack Obama's landmark nuclear deal last year. The U.S. shale boom has also made America far less reliant on Saudi oil.

"Buying bonds and all that was a strategy to recycle petrodollars back into the U.S.," said David Ottaway, a Middle East fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington. But politically, "it's always been an ambiguous, constrained relationship."

Yet back in 1974, forging that relationship (and the secrecy that it required) was a no-brainer, according to Parsky, who is now chairman of Aurora Capital Group, a private equity firm in Los Angeles. Many of America's allies, including the U.K. and Japan, were also deeply dependent on Saudi oil and quietly vying to get the kingdom to reinvest money back into their own economies.

"Everyone-in the U.S., France, Britain, Japan-was trying to get their fingers in the Saudis' pockets," said Gordon S. Brown, an economic officer with the State Department at the U.S. embassy in Riyadh from 1976 to 1978.

For the Saudis, politics played a big role in their insistence that all Treasury investments remain anonymous.

Tensions still flared 10 months after the Yom Kippur War, and throughout the Arab world, there was plenty of animosity toward the U.S. for its support of Israel. According to diplomatic cables, King Faisal's biggest fear was the perception Saudi oil money would, "directly or indirectly," end up in the hands of its biggest enemy in the form of additional U.S. assistance.

Treasury officials solved the dilemma by letting the Saudis in through the back door. In the first of many special arrangements, the U.S. allowed Saudi Arabia to bypass the normal competitive bidding process for buying Treasuries by creating "add-ons." Those sales, which were excluded from the official auction totals, hid all traces of Saudi Arabia's presence in the U.S. government debt market.

"When I arrived at the embassy, I was told by people there that this is Treasury's business," Brown said. "It was all handled very privately."

By 1977, Saudi Arabia had accumulated about 20 percent of all Treasuries held abroad, according to The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony: Petrodollar Recycling and International Markets by Columbia University's David Spiro.

Another exception was carved out for Saudi Arabia when the Treasury started releasing monthly country-by-country breakdowns of U.S. debt ownership. Instead of disclosing Saudi Arabia's holdings, the Treasury grouped them with 14 other nations, such as Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Nigeria, under the generic heading "oil exporters"-a practice that continued for 41 years.

The system came with its share of headaches. After the Treasury's add-on facility was opened to other central banks, erratic and unpublicized foreign demand threatened to push the U.S. over its debt limit on several occasions.

An internal memo, dated October 1976, detailed how the U.S. inadvertently raised far more than the $800 million it intended to borrow at auction. At the time, two unidentified central banks used add-ons to buy an additional $400 million of Treasuries each. In the end, one bank was awarded its portion a day late to keep the U.S. from exceeding the limit.

Most of these maneuvers and hiccups were swept under the rug, and top Treasury officials went to great lengths to preserve the status quo and protect their Middle East allies as scrutiny of America's biggest creditors increased.

Over the years, the Treasury repeatedly turned to the International Investment and Trade in Services Survey Act of 1976-which shields individuals in countries where Treasuries are narrowly held-as its first line of defense.

The strategy continued even after the Government Accountability Office, in a 1979 investigation, found "no statistical or legal basis" for the blackout. The GAO didn't have power to force the Treasury to turn over the data, but it concluded the U.S. "made special commitments of financial confidentiality to Saudi Arabia" and possibly other OPEC nations.

Simon, who had by then returned to Wall Street, acknowledged in congressional testimony that "regional reporting was the only way in which Saudi Arabia would agree" to invest using the add-on system.

"It was clear the Treasury people weren't going to cooperate at all," said Stephen McSpadden, a former counsel to the congressional subcommittee that pressed for the GAO inquiries. "I'd been at the subcommittee for 17 years, and I'd never seen anything like that."

Today, Parsky says the secret arrangement with the Saudis should have been dismantled years ago and was surprised the Treasury kept it in place for so long. But even so, he has no regrets.


http://www.chicagotribune.com/busine...531-story.html

[Xinroth]

Failure was not an option.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/busine...531-story.html

1) Link doesn't work
2) cliffs fgt

[vickissick07]

^ In case you're wondering why we can't just 'sanction' Saudi Arabia.......they can crash our damn economy thanks to past presidents that sold us out.

[Tears]

Oh look, war mongering libs want to war monger. Typical, nothing to see here, move along.

[deepfat]

What's unclear about the situation?

I thought misc hated radical Islam, but apparently it seems they're ok with the Saudis going around murdering people for criticising their retarded nation, as long as they benefit from Saudi oil. Not saying the Us should go to war but I definitely think sanctions should be put in place.

Not wasting time, money, and American lives on Saudi affairs. This is a thinly veiled attempt to goad Trump into doing something rash. A dissident journalist criticizes the Saudis and then goes into the Saudi embassy in Turkey like nothing is going to happen. "Welp, I'm just here to get my wedding paperwork, folks."

[vickissick07]

1) Link doesn't work
2) cliffs fgt

http://www.chicagotribune.com/busine...531-story.html

Im copying directly. That's weird.


Cliffs are that in the Nixon years we sold US dept in exchange for access to Saudi oil. Saudi owns a large portion of the US economy.

[Cleveland33]

christ did you guys cream your pants when American (citizens) children were killed in Yemen with a drone strike by Obama, so you can attack him and democrats for their idiocy? Or was it OK because it was a 'product of war' and their dead daddy was an AlQaeda guy?

No I am very much against drone strikes in anything other than American lives at risk.

BUT that doesn't change the fact that this guy was a Saudi citizen killed by the Saudi government. Sorry if I don't want to embroil us any longer or further in the Middle East because he lived in America.

[Nihiliste]

The US President, leader of the free world, is covering for Saudi Arabia, a country which is the root of Wahhabism / Islamic extremism, responsible for spreading this dangerous ideology to many other countries. A country whose citizens directly carried out the 9/11 attacks.

Putting the total absurdity of them not being on the US travel ban aside, they now tortured/killed/dismembered a US resident in a foreign country, merely because he kept criticizing them using his freedom of speech.

And Trump, along with many of his supporters, make tons of excuses / mental gymnastics to make this totally insignificant.

The same president and his supporters who are supposedly so tough on "Islamic terror", are covering for Saudi Arabia, a country that is literally the root of Islamic terror.

All this is happening in 2018.

What the fukk? srs

Khashoggi was a literal friend of Bin Laden, and was a muslim brotherhood agent agitating for regime change in Saudi. I don't give a **** about the internal politics over in the middle east.

The real question is why did we allow this guy to be come a US resident.

I do wish we would stop sending money and weapons to these idiots, but this is a transparent attempt to undermine the alliance Trump made with Bin Salman over the previously powerful Saudi camp associated with Alwaleed Talal. Also Turkey taking the chance to put the screws to Trump after he put the screws to them over the Pastor Brunson situation.

The media still doesn't care about our role in the Saudi-led genocide being perpetrated in Yemen.

[rectifryer]

Why does SA spend billions here if they hate us so much?

[Dave22reborn]

Yeah I'm not surprised conservatives see/saw it that way. If the Afghani war was just about that, we wouldn't be there still unless you have valid insight on as to why troops are still there besides guarding the opium poppy fields.




learn to read. And see below:

Another conservative with no reading skills.

here we are on page 2 (****ing lol at your poverty sub-50 post per pg) of a dude happy we're buttbuddies with a bunch of morons.





Annnnnnnnd that. You people act like a conservative can't be mad/disappointed that Trump isn't doing or saying jack chit when it comes to bullchit like this, when they would've been calling for any sort of sanctions if it was a liberal president.

The hypocrisy here...

Sanctions over one person being killed?