Saturday, December 27, 2014

A question for Ilargi

Now, you all know that I am kind of a fanboy of Ilargi and Stoneleigh over at the Automatic Earth.

I do like the Debt Rattle part of the process there.

But sometimes I would love a little more.....so I am going to ask questions here.

Here is the headline in the "Debt Rattle"

• Saudi Arabia Maintains Spending Plans in 2015 Despite Oil Slide (WSJ)

So, since this is a paywall link to a status quo economic cheerleader , I ignore it and go poking over to the "Grey Lady" and find this.....the applicable quote is:

The Finance Ministry said the "budget was adopted under international economic and financial conditions that are challenging." The 2015 budget reflects an expected cut in revenues of around $88 billion from 2014, mostly due to the slump in global oil prices.

So, the Saudi's dip into the big pot-o-dollars and start spending them.....looks as though they have enough to cover bad oil prices for 6-8 years, which I firmly believe will not be the case.

But what will be the effect of spending all these dollars?  What will spending these dollars do to the value of the dollar as they start flooding the market?

BTW:  Here is a $$-SDR conversion


1 comment:

russell1200 said...

Take the headline of the WSJ article and google it. A non-paywall version will appear. The same works for the financial times. Note, the WSJ had this at the end:
"The expected 2015 deficit is unlikely to pinch the country. The IMF estimates that Saudi Arabia has about $750 billion in foreign-exchange reserves built over the years from oil-sale revenue".

Compared to the amount of margined money, and the virtual (held as derivatives, bank accounts, etc.) it is a drop in the bucket.