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Source: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1222017499135&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The Financial Crisis and the Arab World
[Jerusalem Post] Jonathan Spyer - The seven stock markets in the oil-rich Gulf states shed around $150 billion of their capitalization in the course of the past week. The Arab world may well prove particularly vulnerable to the world economic downturn since a disproportionately large amount of Arab wealth is invested in global stock markets. The Kuwait Investment Authority, for example, placed a $2b. investment in Merrill Lynch last year. Merrill Lynch, of course, no longer exists. Instead of investing in education and in industry, money has been gambled on the stock markets, or invested in glittering real-estate projects, built by foreign labor and using foreign know-how. The writer is a Senior Research Fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center, Herzliya.