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Newsletter #289

October 26-November 1, 2008

What's New on SUSRIS

West Asia and the Next President: More of the Same Won't Do - Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr.

"..The next president must adjust our policies to make them more effective. But he must also help Americans to persuade the world that we are still fitting partners in the pursuit of global prosperity and tranquility. Nowhere is this task more urgent than in the realm of Islam. In my travels in Arab and Muslim lands I find the same nostalgia for America as it was before 9/11 that one encounters in other parts of the world. No one likes how we now behave or what we have become, but they remember when we behaved with greater humility and when we more closely resembled what we aspire to be. They admire that America. They are ready to work with it, if it can be restored. The next president must restore that America. The world is ready to meet him halfway.."   [more]

Saudi Banking Health: Central Bank Governor Update

"..The governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), Hamad Al-Sayari, said yesterday that no Saudi bank faces liquidity problem and that the stock market downturn does not have anything to do with the country’s fundamentals but is due to people’s fear. Addressing a press conference here, Al-Sayari said SAMA expects the nonoil sector in the Kingdom to maintain the growth rate of the past year -- between 5 percent and 6 percent. "Government spending rose above 19 percent over the past nine months, while the volume of bank loans rose 39 percent in the third quarter of this year," Al-Sayari said. Hinting at the government's plan to go ahead with development projects in anticipation of a surplus budget this year, Al-Sayari said: "Economic growth will be strong by the end of the current year and in the next year, particularly in the nonoil sector."  [more]

In the News

Saudi Arabia to build its first women's university

"Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Wednesday launched the construction of the first women-only university in the conservative Islamic state. The Princess Noura Bint Abdelrahman University for Girls will offer courses in subjects like medicine, pharmacy, management, computer sciences and languages that women find difficulty in studying in normal universities where strict gender segregation is enforced. "We hope you will be able to open this modern university when it is finished in two years time in continuation of your support for the process of modernization and development," Finance Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf said in a speech addressing the king at the site outside Riyadh.."
  [more]

Wall St.'s Denizens Look East

Fahad al-Deweesh, a vice president at a Persian Gulf investment firm, is getting e-mails from old finance classmates at the University of Southern California he hasn't heard from in years, asking what the job market here looks like for Americans.. ..Overcoming a long-held wariness about living in the Middle East, growing numbers of U.S. investment bankers and other financial professionals are mulling moving their careers here, having lost their jobs or fearing that possibility. But Americans hoping to make the East their refuge in the global financial storm will find a few more obstacles than their job-seeking European peers, warn executives and recruiters: Many here are unhappy with U.S. financial and foreign policies, and dubious about what is still regarded as Americans' brasher way of doing business. One problem for Wall Street denizens hoping to relocate to the East is the broad perception that bad lending decisions by American bankers triggered the global financial crisis.. .."So, you've managed to screw up your banks, and now you've come to screw up ours?" a Saudi investment executive said of the attitude toward job-seeking Americans.."   [more]

Calendar

Middle East Institute 62nd Annual Conference
"US Middle East Policy: Pathways to Renewal"
November 20-21, 2008
Washington, DC

[details]

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