Libya: Connect the dots and you get a giant dollar sign

[JohnyCanuck]

By Russ Baker

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In 2009, the same year Megrahi was released, Qaddafi, faced with stiff ongoing Lockerbie payments, began pressing oil companies to pay more to help cover his debt.

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Now why would Qaddafi be desperate for cash? The article didn't say. But if I'm connecting dots correctly, I'd say that you have to read another paper, then link the two.

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In early 2008, Libya’s sovereign-wealth fund controlled by Col. Moammar Gadhafi gave $1.3 billion to Goldman Sachs Group to sink into a currency bet and other complicated trades. The investments lost 98% of their value, internal Goldman documents show.

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Is it any surprise that just as this banking disaster unfolded, Qaddafi in 2009 turned desperately to the Western oil companies, which were doing well by Libya, and wanted them to pay more royalties to fund the Lockerbie settlements? Settlements he perhaps should not have had to pay in the first place?

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/russ-baker/36639/libya-connect-the-dots-and-you-get-a-giant-dollar-sign

[dipsydoodle]

1. internal Goldman documents show...

Wonder if they also show that they kept about $170 million commission on their own bright idea which went wrong ? Could even have been designed to go wrong from the outset. Soc Gen pulled a similar stunt on another billion.

In this case I guess the giant dollar sign was U$A.

[Shagbark Hickory]

2. Oh it wasn't for the people to be free you mean?

:sarcasm:

[JohnyCanuck]

3. Plus ça change...

Plus c'est la même chose, as the French would put it.

As Baker says in his article from the OP. "That the corporate media cannot see what is going on here, or refuses to see, tells us how far we have NOT (my emphasis /JC) come since the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution."

The link to fair.org in my sig line also has some interesting background info on the Gulf of Tonkin scam used to suck naive Americans into supporting another deadly but very profitable (for the MIC) war.

[Distant Observer]

4. Global Oil and Finance?? Not Religious Freedom for Islamic militants?? I 'm SHOCKED, SHOCKED!