Stock Rising on "Rivers of Blood"

By: PhilStockWorld

"Libya is at a crossroads. If we do not agree today on reforms....rivers of blood will run through Libya.

We will take up arms...we will fight to the last bullet.

We will destroy seditious elements.

If everybody is armed, it is civil war, we will kill each other.

Libya is not Egypt, it is not Tunisia"- Saif al-Islam Kadhafi, 38 (Moamer's son)

The picture on the left is not Moamer Kadhafi (he wishes he still looked that good) or Saif - it's Vigo the Carpathian, who also promised "rivers of blood" but only actually managed to produce rivers of slime before the Ghostbusters put him back in the painting. Did Kadhafi steal his speech from the 1989 Ivan Reitman film or, perhaps, did he lift it from arch-conservative Enoch Powell's speech?  Powell warned that if the UK were to allow immigrants to have ordinary rights, that the streets of London would look like the set of Ghostbusters (I am paraphrasing slightly).

While the foundation Powell laid in England became the rallying cry for Conservatives in Arizona recently, when we see OTHER countries oppressing the rights of people we go nuts, right?  About 250 protesters have already been killed by Kadhafi's storm troopers but we're not worried about the rivers of blood - we're worried about the rivers of oil that are controlled by Libya, which pumps 2Mb a day out of their estimated 42Bn barrel reserves.

 

Libya boarders Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria - three more of the biggest African oil producers - and all with rioting citizens who are offended that they are beginning to starve while the top 1% of their country continue to live lives of wealth and splendor.  What the people do not realize is that, even if their leaders wanted to help them - they really can't.

 

The inflation that Ben Bernanke is shoving down the throats of the World (in place of food) is more than any government that can't print money can handle. Take poor Hosni Mubarack, for example.  It is reported he stole $70Bn from the Egyptian people over 30 years - that's $2.3Bn per year or what Lloyd Blankfein would call "Mid-year bonuses" but, rather than getting invited to the White House to set economic policy, poor Mubarack is shown the door by his people.

 

Even if Mubarack wanted to stay in power and even if he wanted to give back all $70Bn to Egypt's 80 Million people, that would only work out to $875 per person or 13% of their $6,347 per capita GDP.  That does not really help much when food inflation is running close to 40% - does it?  That would make it irrational for Hosni to do anything but take the money and run because what's broken in Egypt can't be fixed - even if he wanted to.  

Libya is in the same predicament, as is Sudan, Algeria, Nigeria, Angola...  What happens when people are starving while they see their leaders living lives of luxury?  They get pissed!  They demand CHANGE.  So Global leaders have the choice of step down or fix the problem.  There are really only two choices available to leaders who want to stay in power and address the situation where there is less money for food than there are citizens and that is A) Increase the amount of money the citizens have to buy food or B) Decrease the amount of citizens.  

When A is impossible (we can't even do it in this country) then why do we vilify Kadhafi for choosing B? 

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