Arabs prefer to invest their billions in Europe

Petrodollars leave America

The tension of the relations between the USA and the Arab world can be over either with a war or with a new model of the world community, where America would not be the only player.

The newspaper Gulf News that is published in the United Arab Emirates exposed the scale of outflow of the Arab capital from the USA. According to the information of the newspaper, banks and depositors from the United Arab Emirates withdrew some two billion dollars from American banks during the first half of the year 2002. Saudi Arabia withdrew 2.66 billion dollars. The newspaper advised that the majority of that money had been already transferred to West European banks and invested in real estate and stocks of the countries of the European Union.

It should be reminded here that the total assets of the six countries of the Persian Gulf are evaluated in the sum of 0.8-1.4 trillion dollars. About 75% of them are in the banks of the G-8 countries.

Experts say that the capital started flowing out prior to the exacerbation of the relations between the USA and the Arab world. Harsh statements and threats on the part of American officials only made the process go faster. The Gulf News wrote that the damage of Saudi investors in the USA after September 11 attacks made up 18%.

The American economy is not really attractive as it was a year ago. Especially for the countries that are included on the so-called axis of evil list. It is hard to imagine, what the American administration will have to do in order to suspend this growing process.

Most likely, the USA will not have enough money for a war of a grand scale. The whole escalation of aggression is to end up with another division of authorities between the USA and the Arab world.

Igor Vrazhina PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov