In Search of the Perfect Investment

Tech stocks are doing well this morning. There’s a rumor someone will buy Square for $55. As the rumors get floated, so the stock rises. It’s $38.66 this morning.

From Friday. Worth repeating

Phishing gets even weirder

A friend needed to wire money. He asked for their wire instructions. They came by email. They were wrong. They had been hacked. The hacked instructions were changed to benefit the hacker’s bank account. My friend called to verify the wire instructions — like some banks do  — only to find that the email had been changed. Lucky he checked. He would have lost several million dollars.

My motto of 50 years; CHECK. CHECK. CHECK. If you receive wire instructions via email, you should always verbally confirm those instructions on the phone with the source/beneficiary to ensure it’s going to the correct account.

Thanks to Amy Zeng and Shannon Marshall of the J.P.Morgan Private Bank for all the help explaining how to effectively fight phishing and for protecting me, a happy client.

They embezzled $100 billion in the past three years

That’s what the headlines say was taken in Saudi Arabia. It’s much more. Trust me.

They’ve grounded lots of princes and rounded up 208 “high-profile” people.

This has nothing to do with corruption — this is the Crown Prince’s excuse for getting rid of rivals. It’s a palace coup.

Back in the 1970s I was in the telecom business. The Saudis were buying lots of phone equipment. If you wanted to bid, you had to add 15% to your bid for payoffs and bribes. It was standard — the way you did business in Saudi Arabia. Everyone did it.

It’s still standard. Nothing has changed.

According to Google and Wikipedia, there are 15,000 members of the royal family in Saudi Arabia, all princes/princesses or better. Part of this is because Saudi Arabia practices polygamy. (Not just four wives, as many as you want.) The founder of modern Saudi Arabia had roughly 100 children, 45 of them sons. His youngest was born 52 years after his firstborn. (Think about that for a moment.) Saud bin Abdulaziz al Saud had 115 children.

The country’s finances are run like the personal checkbook of the King, who makes all decisions, including paying money to shut his rivals up. Sadly,with the price of oil down, finances are down, but people are up. The Princes are still having babies.

Saudi Arabia has been stable, though it’s repressive. Recently it went to war in Yemen, which it’s successfully destroying. Now it’s rattling sabers with Iran. The 32-year old Crown Prince is impetuous. This weekend’s Economist had this fascinating piece:

IN A kingdom where change comes only slowly, if at all, the drama of recent days in Saudi Arabia is astounding. Scores of princes, ministers and officials have been arrested or sacked, mostly accused of corruption. Many of those arrested are being held in the splendour of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh. About $800bn-worth of assets may have been frozen. At the same time a missile fired from Yemen was intercepted near Riyadh, prompting Saudi Arabia to accuse Iran of an “act of war”.

Upheaval at home and threats of war abroad make a worrying mix in a country that has, hitherto, held firm amid the violent breakdown of the Middle East. The world can ill afford instability in the biggest oil exporter, the largest Arab economy and the home of Islam’s two holiest sites.

At the centre of the whirlwind stands the impetuous crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, son of the aged King Salman. The prince has staged a palace coup-or perhaps a counter-coup against opponents seeking to block his sweeping changes (see article). Either way, at the age of just 32, he has become the most powerful man in Saudi Arabia since King Abdel-Aziz bin Saud, who founded the state. All this may be the precursor to profound reforms that the country needs. The danger is that it will just lead to another failed one-man Arab dictatorship.

Casting himself as a champion of the young, Prince Muhammad (known as MBS) understands that his country must reinvent itself to deal with the end of the oil boom, a burgeoning and indolent population, and a puritanical Wahhabi religious ideology that has been a Petri dish for jihadism. He has set out ambitious plans to harness private firms to reform the state and wean the country off oil. He has also eased some social strictures, promising to end the ban on women drivers and restraining the religious police. He speaks of returning to a “moderate Islam open to the world and all religions”.

All this is welcome. But the way the prince is going about enacting change is worrying. One reason is that his ambition too often turns to rashness. He led an Arab coalition into an unwinnable war in Yemen against the Houthis, a Shia militia, creating a humanitarian disaster. He has also sought to isolate Qatar, a gas-rich neighbour, succeeding only in wrecking the Gulf Co-operation Council and pushing Qatar towards Iran. With fewer constraints, he could become still more reckless. He is rattling the sabre at Iran over the war in Yemen, and may be challenging it in Lebanon. During a visit to Riyadh, the Saudi-backed Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri, announced that he would step down, and denounced interference by Iran and its client militia, Hizbullah (see article). What precisely the Saudis intend to do in Lebanon is unclear. But many worry about a return to violence in a country scarred by civil war and conflicts between Hizbullah and Israel.

Another concern is the economy. Prince Muhammad’s plan for transformation relies in part on luring foreign investors. But they will be reluctant to commit much money when someone like Alwaleed bin Talal, a prince and global investor, can be arrested on the crown prince’s say-so. Last month Prince Muhammad made a pitch to foreign investors for a new high-tech city filled with robots, NEOM. The glitzy event took place in the same hotel complex that is now a prison.

A third cause for disquiet is the stability of the monarchy. Saudi rule has hitherto rested on three pillars: consensus and a balance of power across the sprawling royal family; the blessing of Wahhabi clerics; and a cradle-to-grave system of benefits for citizens. Prince Muhammad is weakening all three by concentrating power in his own hands, pushing for social freedoms, and imposing austerity and privatisation.

Much of this had to change. He could seek new legitimacy by moving towards greater debate and consultation. Instead, space for dissent is disappearing and executions are rising. The anti-corruption campaign is being carried out with little or no due process to determine who is guilty of what. Many ordinary Saudis are cheering for now. But the arrests look like Xi Jinping’s purges in China, not the rule of law. As he meets resistance and his base narrows, the crown prince may rely increasingly on the security apparatus to silence critics. That would only repeat the mistakes of republican Arab strongmen: socially quite liberal, but repressive and ultimately a failure.

Many have predicted the fall of the House of Saud, only to be proved wrong. The most likely alternative to its rule, flawed as it is, is not democracy but chaos. The country would fragment and, in the scramble for its riches, Iran would extend its power, jihadists would gain a new lease of life and foreign powers would feel compelled to intervene.

The world must fervently hope that Prince Muhammad’s good reforms succeed, while urging restraint on his bad impulses. President Donald Trump is wrong to cheer the purge on. The West should instead counsel the prince to act with caution, avoid escalation with Iran and free political life at home. Prince Muhammad may be heeding the dictum of Niccolò Machiavelli that it is better for a prince to be feared than loved. But this advice comes with a rider: he should not be hated.

Please don’t invest in Saudi Arabia — as if I need to tell you that.

Still mulling bitcoin

I continue to feel uncomfortable, but intrigued with bitcoin and the zillion other cryto-currencies vying for my wallet. I was fascinated to receive this unsolicited email this morning:

 

My rule is Don’t Trust Nobody. So I checked Amazon.

But I did find:

I did a Chat with Dell:

They don’t accept tulip bulbs, either.

Favorite recent New Yorker cartoons

Harry Newton, who admires the Gold Star Kahn family. Towards the end of Khizer Khan’s new book:

he writes:

“I am an American patriot not because I was born here but because I was not. I embraced American freedoms, raised my children to cherish and revere them, lost a son who swore an oath to defend them, because I come from a place (Pakistan) where they do not exist.”