Can the Saudis Really Pull This Off?
Saudi Arabia has launched a radical "Thatcherite" shake-up, stunning analysts with claims that it could break reliance on oil within a few short years.
We cheer the Saudi effort to liberate their economy on Thatcherite lines, and I would never underestimate the power of free markets unleashed. But as I've been saying since they launched their self-ruinous price war against America's frackers, this effort may be too little, too late. -- RDM
by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
April 30, 2016
Saudi Arabia has launched a radical ‘Thatcherite’ shake-up to an avert economic crisis and prepare the kingdom for the post-carbon world, stunning analysts with claims that it could break reliance on oil within just four years.
Prince Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, the country’s de facto ruler, vows to build a $3 trillion wealth fund and break onto the world stage as an investment superpower, the spearhead of an historic package of measures intended to bring the deformed economy kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.
“We have an addiction to oil. This is dangerous. I think that by 2020 we can live without it,” he tells Al Arabiya television.
It is an extra…