The Art of Foreign Investment
“Lets you, and me, and all your money that’s in all our banks talk.”
- a hypothetical French prospectus
With its economy struggling like many others in the European Union, France is in bad need of foreign investment. And it’d like it to be in cash. And it’s already got that cash.
In what even by diplomatic standards seems to be an incredibly cynical effort, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg have headed to Libya to announce that they are “ready” to start releasing some seized Libyan assets to the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, and that they think it’d be swell if that sovereign wealth fund invested those assets in French businesses.
“France is committed through me to immediately begin unfreezing the funds of the Libyan Investment Authority estimated at $1.865 billion,” Fabius told Libya’s parliament, while Montebourg pointed out France can get them a really good deal on a refinery in Normandy.
All told France seized $8-$9 billion in Libyan assets last year, and has only given Libya $1.8 billion so far. The addition $5 billion or so above and beyond what was given was not mentioned, likely because France didn’t have anything juicy to sell them for that part of the money yet.
Putting aside the implied shakedown going on here, it would seem like Libya, which was pounded with airstrikes by France and other NATO members just a year ago, would have a lot of other uses for that money other than buying Norman oil refineries. With Libya’s oil-rich economy looking to rebound and the French economy staggering along at an estimated 0.3 percent annual growth, it seems like the sovereign wealth fund would also find their own nation a better return on investment.
The Art of Foreign Investment – Antiwar.com (blog) | Libtech
November 12th, 2012 at 10:03 pm
[...] The Art of Foreign InvestmentAntiwar.com (blog)… oil refineries. With Libya's oil-rich economy looking to rebound and the French economy staggering along at an estimated 0.3 percent annual growth, it seems like the sovereign wealth fund would also find their own nation a better return on investment.France eyes Libya deals after unfreezing $2 billion assetsYahoo! News (blog) [...]
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November 13th, 2012 at 8:17 am
[...] The Art of Foreign Investment Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again. — Ronald Reagan [...]
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John Watson
November 15th, 2012 at 5:07 am
Did they simply seize Libyan assets?
They certainly wanted to steal them.
OK, it was Sarkozy who was the Butcher-in-Chief and not Hollande who, incidentally looks very much like a real butcher.
One could have expected a word of apology from the French Authorities., but then the French are White people.
All the same, I can't help admiring the absence of decency of these people; they are just like those rapists who go back to the house of the woman they've raped to ask for for food.
coda.fm
November 16th, 2012 at 3:53 am
Top information again, thanks a lot.
Ammie
November 16th, 2012 at 9:38 am
All the same, I can't help admiring the absence of decency of these people; they are just like those rapists who go back to the house of the woman they've raped to ask for for food.
Hide Behind
November 16th, 2012 at 8:51 pm
Buisness as usual, nothing more nothing less.
They will be asking the very people they and their allies put into office.
What in history would make anyone expect not just the French government but its citizanry from acting any differently.
No where in their colonial history have they not acted as exploiters driven by a rewritten history as leaders of euro culture with some inbred belief that their culture deserved the right to act
superior.