Surging oil prices have given Middle East producers renewed financial muscle. More worryingly for some Western leaders, they are showing a confidence, bordering on brazenness, to exercise that strength by buying up stakes in key industries throughout the world at a time when the financial power of Western banks has been neutered by subprime and the credit crisis.
The most recent and visible of the conduits for those investment outflows, the sovereign wealth funds SWF are accused of being opaque with their financial reporting and investment strategy, and of pursuing political as well as commercial ends. The government of Abu Dhabi even felt compelled to write reassuring letters to...
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