Headline of the Day
The Main Driver of Inflation Is a Murderous Maniac in Riyadh
It appears that the House of Saud is working with the rest of OPEC to keep oil supplies low because Biden has not yet had a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud.
Personally, I think that Biden should arrange a meeting, but not with him, but with Kamala Harris. Their positions are equivalent, and it would probably be humiliating for the the Saudi psychopath:
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is enacting revenge on Democrats in general and President Joe Biden specifically for the party’s increasingly standoffish attitude toward the kingdom — by driving up energy prices and fueling global inflation.
Biden himself seemed to allude to this at a town hall event with CNN last month, during which he attributed high gas prices to a certain “foreign policy initiative” of his, adding, “There’s a lot of Middle Eastern folks who want to talk to me. I’m not sure I’m going to talk to them.”
Biden was making a not-so-veiled reference to his refusal to meet with the crown prince and acknowledge him as Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler due to his role in the grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October of 2018. The move came after Biden vowed during a debate with President Donald Trump to make MBS, as he’s known, “a pariah” and represented a stark departure from Trump’s warm relations with the desert kingdom and the crown prince.
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In June 2018, heading into the midterms, Trump requested that Saudi Arabia and its cartel, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, lower energy prices by increasing output, and the kingdom complied. Prices bottomed out in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic, and usage sank to record lows. Prices surged once the pandemic waned and the economy reopened, and this August Biden requested that OPEC again increase output.This time MBS refused, angry at having yet to be granted an audience with Biden and contemptuous of the U.S. pullback from the war in Yemen. As one of his first pieces of business, Biden had ordered the end of American support for Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s war, though caveated it by barring only the backing of “offensive operations.” Saudi Arabia nevertheless received it as a grievous blow.
It is clear that MBS is a dangerous and self-destructive figure, and it is also clear that the absolute monarchy in Riyadh is going to fall sooner rather than later.
The only question is how orderly such a transition will be, and how peaceful it will be, and with MBS calling the shots, it’s going to make the Russian Revolution look like a tea party.
There really isn’t anything that the US can do to prevent or manage this transition, so the only option now is a greater distance from the House of Saud.
