Why I Love To Blog -- Reason #4,783 -- November 6, 2017

Updates

November 7, 2017: $33 billion? (See original post below.) Chicken feed. Prince Salman is after $800 billion which rounds to $1 trillion. From The WSJ.

The Saudi government is aiming to confiscate cash and other assets worth as much as $800 billion in its broadening crackdown on alleged corruption among the kingdom’s elite, according to people familiar with the matter.

Several prominent businessmen are among those who have been arrested in the days since Saudi authorities launched the crackdown on Saturday, by detaining more than 60 princes, officials and other prominent Saudis.

The country’s central bank, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority, said late Tuesday that it has frozen the bank accounts of “persons of interest” and said the move is “in response to the Attorney General’s request pending the legal cases against them.”

This comment at the article:

-- Prince Abdulaziz bin Fahd, the youngest son of late King Fahd, has reported died in a gun-battle with Saudi security forces while resisting arrest.
--Prince Turki bin Mohamed bin Fahd,son ofKing Fahd's eldest surviving son has reportedly fled to Iran to seek asylum. Link here.

Original Post

Every month for quite some time I've been posting Saudi Arabia's foreign reserve account. It's been dropping about $5 billion/month -- maybe as little as $3 billion (lately) to as much as $8 billion (early on). It was hard to put that into perspective.

Today, Bloomberg has this story: Saudi corruption purge snares $33 billion of net worth in Riyadh.

Thirty-three billion dollars works out to about one-half year of lost foreign reserves for Saudi Arabia. From the linked article:

• three of the kingdom's richest people are under arrest
• the list includes Prince Alwaleed bin Talal: #50 on Bloomberg's Billionaires Index, ith $19 bilion
• also being held, the kingdom's second- and fifth-wealthiest people
• also, and this is a biggie, a name many Americans might recognize: Bakr Binladin, a scion of one of the country's biggest construction empires -- a brother of that monster, Osama bin Laden

Wow.