Friday, April 15, 2011

Libyan Rebels Seek $2 Billion Cash Loan

Well, this explains the odd meeting I reported on earlier this week between Treasury Secretary Geithner, Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defense Gates. The damn Libyan rebels are broke and they want cash.

The rebels want to borrow at least $2 billion to buy food, medicine, fuel and perhaps weapons, reports Bloomberg.

Members of the so-called Libyan contact group said in a statement, according to Bloomberg, that they may create a “temporary financial mechanism” to finance the rebels using Libyan government assets frozen abroad.

Short-term loans are “an option on the table that we discussed”, Ali Tarhouni, the Interim Transitional National Council’s finance minister, said in an interview in Benghazi. The borrowing, which may be for as long as two years, could be repaid when Libyan assets are unfrozen, Tarhouni said. Reserves at the rebels’ central bank in Benghazi may not be enough to cover import needs for a month, he said.

The contact group includes the U.S., the U.K. and France.

5 comments:

  1. Who in their right mind makes a "loan" such as this? They can't predict the situation two days from now, let alone two years.

    This is a perfect example of the idiocy of politicians when spending other people's money.

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  2. Fielding Mellish will turn out to be the leader of the "Libyan contact group". We will need Marvin Hamlisch to write a catchy theme.

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  3. Let's not forget that US intelligence sources speculate that the usual terrorist groups are involved in the rebellion. Do we really want these folks taking a $2 billion cash donation and filtering it out to their cohorts in the rest of the MENA?

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  4. Robert, thanks for your leg work on this:

    http://peureport.blogspot.com/2011/04/libyas-rag-tag-group-of-corporate.html

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  5. A subtitle of this post could read: "Western Countries to Increase Oil Reserves"

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