How Goldman Sachs Turned A $1.3 Billion Investment From Libya Into $25 Million In Less Than A Year (

Did we attack Libya to benefit Goldman Sachs?

I pose this question after reading this article at the Daily Bail - dailybail.com...

So Libya had about $50 billion laying around to try their hand in investing. After Qaddafi paid restitution to the Lockerbie bombing victims and made promises to destroy some weapons stockpiles, the US State Department gave US financial firms the ok to do business with the former rogue nation.

In one short year GS managed to take $1.3 billion of the Libyan Investment Authority and turn it into a measly $25 million. The reason given for the poor performance was the credit crisis of '08 but that hardly explains that amount of vanishing money.

GS scrambled to try to put together other offers fearing that news of the deal would scare other investors away .

Reading further at the Wall Street Journal I came across this offer that was made to the Libyan Investment Authority:

In May 2009, Goldman proposed that Libya get $5 billion in preferred Goldman shares in return for pumping $3.7 billion into the company, according to fund and Goldman documents. Goldman offered to pay the Libyan Investment Authority between 4% and 9.25% on the shares annually for more than 40 years, which would amount to billions of dollars more.

Source - online.wsj.com...

What does this have to do with invading Libya?

As of last June, the Libyan Investment Authority had assets of about $53 billion, according to a document reviewed by the Journal. This year, U.S. officials froze about $37 billion in Libyan assets, including some funds still managed by Goldman.

Are we attacking Libya so that Goldman Sachs can renege on their deal while the US gets to keep all that Libyan money on hand to help the ol' balance sheets? I have to wonder given the extreme amount of influence certain financial firms have with the White House and the seeming lack of reasonable answers to why we are there at all.

If "spreading Democracy" was really a big worry of the US we would have stepped in to help the Egyptian people to get out from under the heel of Mubarak. Egypt has been a long-time ally of Washington and keeping friendly relations with the country that owns the Suez canal would certainly be among our true strategic interests.

Of all the countries we are out to "Democratize" it strikes me odd that it would be Libya, one of the few nations with any real cash assets or connections with Goldman Sachs.

Thoughts?

Certainly intriguing and I'm sure one facet of the conspiracy as to why?
I've learned over the years that the problem/reaction/solution created crisis's usually have many benefits for the ones involved.

Maybe it's time we all realized that the reasons for war have never been good

They are just made out to supposedly be good to the people to win support for them

It's always about money money money...not democracy

That's pretty damn interesting. I wouldn't put anything past Goldman, but seriously doubt even Goldman could have envisioned the "Arab Spring". That is a HUGE friggin loss though, even if you bought indexes at the highs and sold at the 2009 lows you wouldn't have lost that much money. There had to be some serious leverage on top of some seriously bad investments and timing to lose that much so quickly.

reply to post by Asktheanimals


Good find. Banking has, in my opinion, as much or more to do with the wests desire to get rid of Gaddafi than their oil does.

I almost cant even write about it anymore. Im so frustrated with how blatant what we (the west, not just America) did down there. It outright thievery and the overthrow of a legitimate government and they are getting away with it because people just buy the whole humanitarian story hook line and sinker.

Goldman Sachs lost 98% of Gaddafi's $1.3bn investment......

First thing I thought too after reading this story in todays newspaper.
www.guardian.co.uk

reply to post by Asktheanimals


Bounty of war.

That's the reality of things here. US and Europe needs a bailout, Libyan money, oil and resources outside the sphere of the revolutionary regime, inside the sphere of a bogus war. That Golden Currency wasn't helping the US and EU bailout either, so that was a major factor too.

Qaddafi is a Military man, I expect him to have a big plan under his armpits. This will be interesting..

Let's not forget, the price of the war is reaching the billion dollar mark.

Even with this information, people in the US will still believe what is been told by the elite manipulated government and the corporate media.

We here in ATS were the first questioning what was going on with Libya and Qaddafi, but nobody wants to listen, they just want to here how mighty America is taking another dictator in the middle east.

No wonder our nation is falling on its butt, we are nothing but another bully country run by corporate entities and we the people are nothing but slaves.

reply to post by Asktheanimals


Investors large or small small have lots of choices of where to place their money. Each investment opportunity tells us right up front: Past profit is not a guarantee of future performance. Businessmen understand this and perform their due diligence before risking funds.

Lots of people lost a lot of money. I'm told Hollywood's Nicholas Cage handed $32 million to Bernie Madoff and that didn't work out too well. That $32M was a drop in the bucket of a $50 billion ponzi scheme. People get greedy and take risks. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.

Interesting find.

Freezing "enemy" assets is a tried and true method of instantly increasing a county's liquidity level.

Now, considering the dire budgetary situation in the U.S., and the very (VERY!) close ties between the White House and Goldman Sachs, this would not be a surprise to me.

That said, I am of the very cynical mindset that governments are actually agents of private enterprise (especially of the financial type) and that military action is always, primarily, to increase profit margin, as opposed to any "official" (usually very idealistic) reason given by the talking heads.

the Billmeister

p.s.
Check out this relevant post J.P. Morgan's hunt for Afghan gold which describes the intimate relationships between the pentagon and the financial institutions with regards to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Oh no it wasn't lost at all.
That money is probably sitting in some off shore account hidden from prying eyes.

Perfect way to launder money.
It was invested badly.
nudge nudge. wink wink.

Now that's a conspiracy.

A quick thought on this... I live in Lebanon, and our news over here shows you real events unfiltered. Libya has huge gold reserves, oil, and not a single debt to any nation. Given the current Obama administration is mainly wall street people, im not the least bit surprised that GS would have a hand in this. Also, crashing the dollar has many benefits for TPTB, not the least of which would be bringing the Amero to fruition. Also, i dont know if anyone knows much about the Syria situation, but we get unedited footage here considering Lebanese dont like syrians. so our media tends to show the gruesomeness of whats going on. Syria doesnt have much of anything, measly oil reserves, and a dictator on par with hitler. Yet the u.s has been turning a blind eye... Why is that?
The whole Libya situation smells to high heaven.

If "spreading Democracy" was really a big worry of the US we would have stepped in to help the Egyptian people to get out from under the heel of Mubarak. Egypt has been a long-time ally of Washington and keeping friendly relations with the country that owns the Suez canal would certainly be among our true strategic interests.


Thoughts?

I think the answer's quite clear

WWID?
(What Would Israel Do)?

They snap their fingers and we react like a mistreated dog

and I wasn't meaning to misdirect the thread by bringing up Israel but in my opinion, anything going on in the middle east where we are concerned always seems to fall back on them by way of "securing our allies" or some other BS.

Back on topic of the OP however, I think you've proposed a good solid theory for our actions to initiate against Libya and I'm sure a little digging might turn up some more info on this. In today's realm of bribes, kickbacks and Ponzi scheme's, there's no telling how deep this well goes or what exactly GS did with the funds. Simply blowing it on bad investments, hookers and booze though doesn't really seem to be the makings of military aggression don't ya think?