Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Crazy Talk
by Dan Denning
The Rude Awakening
Wall Street, New York
Thursday, March 9, 2006 Dan Denning dicusses Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his country's nuclear testing program. ------------------------- - A situation so alarming even the French are starting
to talk tough,
- What does all of it mean for gold, for the dollar,
for oil, for America?
- The three most likely scenarios, John Lennon after
ten Budweiser's, the intricacies of cricket and much,
much more...
------------------------- Dan Denning, reporting from a pub (again) in Melbourne,
Australia... Just the other night, I found myself in one of my favorite
local haunts here in St. Kilda – a below-street-level pub
that officially goes by the name of George's Public Bar.
Unofficially, it's called the Snake Pit. But it's not as
sinister as it sounds. If you happen to pop in, you're sure
to find at least a few interesting characters, and, if
you're lucky, at least one interesting conversation. On the night in question, I deposited myself on a barstool
alongside a friendly lad from northern England. While I was
nursing a pint and watching a cricket match on the bar's
TV, the Englishman was chatting away about cricket, doing
his best to explain the game. But there were two problems: Cricket is like the Middle
East; the more you talk about it, the more confusing it
gets. Words don't clear things up with some subjects. The
second problem was that the more an Englishman from the
north drinks, the harder he is to understand. (Imagine John
Lennon after 10 Budweisers). After two pints, you might as
well be speaking different languages. After six pints, you
might as well not speak at all. But while it was still early – only two beers into the
night – we switched from cricket to this summer's soccer
World Cup. I made the following audacious prediction: "We
Americans will do better than you Limeys." "Eh?" "The American squad will advance further than the English
squad," I repeated. "Aw, mate. You've been drinking too much. That's crazy
talk, mate." "Maybe...and maybe. But you should never dismiss what a man
says just because you think he's crazy, mate."
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-------------------------
Crazy Talk
By Dan Denning A lot of people would like to dismiss Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
as a lunatic, as if that saves us the trouble of having to
figure out what to do with the current president of Iran
and his seemingly unstoppable nuclear program. Ahmadinejad
has certainly said the type of things that circumspect
world leaders try to avoid — namely that Israel should be
wiped off the map or moved to Alaska and that the Holocaust
may not have happened and that Iran could choose to use oil
as a weapon if the West tries to impose sanctions. Is he crazy? Or is it just crazy talk? I don't know. He's
claimed that for 28 minutes during a speech delivered at
the U.N. in September, he was surrounded by a halo of light
and that no one in the audience blinked while he spoke.
Later in November, speaking to a group of clerics in
Tehran, Ahmadinejad claimed that the main purpose of his
government is to pave a path for the return of Islam's 12th
Imam, Mahdi. Shia Muslims, from what I can gather, claim
that the 12th Imam disappeared in 941 and upon his return
will rule the Earth for seven years before a final last
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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Jacques Chirac What do we have here, then? The leader of a nation
determined to pursue its nuclear program and who believes
he is helping to usher in the end times is scary stuff, or
so it would appear. It is scary enough that it provoked
French President Jacques Chirac to make one of the most
remarkable statements in the last 50 years of public
diplomacy. In case you missed it, here's what Chirac said
at a speech delivered from a French naval base: "The leaders of states who use terrorist means against us,
as well as those who would consider using, in one way or
another, weapons of mass destruction, must understand that
they would lay themselves open to a firm and adapted
response on our part. This response could be a conventional
one. It could also be of a different kind...Against a
regional power, our choice would not be between inaction or
annihilation...The flexibility and reactivity of our
strategic forces would enable us to exercise our response
directly against its centers of power and its capacity to
act." More crazy talk? When this story was first reported, a lot of people
laughed. It's easier to make jokes about French power and
dismiss Chirac as a politically hobbled blowhard than
figure out what the comments really mean. What the comments
really mean is quite clear: France would consider a nuclear
attack against a state sponsor of terror, like Iran, that
aided or abetted an attack on French soil. Remember those
riots outside Paris last year? Do you think all of that discontent just went away? Do you
think that resentment from years of being frozen out of
official French life evaporated with a few thousand torched
cars and busted windows? No, I don't think so, either. I
wrote at the time that things would be quiet in France for
a while, but that it wouldn't surprise me if an outside
party calmly and quietly moved into France in an attempt to
organize the French rioters into a genuine and very
dangerous French intifada. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Bankrolling a French Rebellion Yet more crazy talk? Who could make that sort of thing
happen? Let's see, which country has bankrolled and
sponsored Hamas and Hezbollah? That's right, Iran. Would
Iran really try to export and bankroll a rebellion in
France? I can't say that I have any conclusive proof of it.
But knowledge of an attempt to do so seems like the sort of
thing that would prompt a man like Jacques Chirac, whose
country has billions invested in Iran, to publicly threaten
a nuclear strike. Now would be the time for another good joke to lighten the
mood. But we have to dig a little further to see what all
this means. The truth is, there are nations of the world
that might very well like to see Iran succeed in developing
nuclear power, and, later, a nuclear weapon. If you feel like things are rumbling out of control and
that something big and important is happening, well, then,
you're not alone. But what does all of it mean for gold,
for the dollar, for oil, for America? In fact, is there
more at stake than just the price of oil? Are the social
and economic structures that have defined the world since
the end of World War II about to collapse? What will
replace them? When I got back from my excursion to the Far East in late
2004 and sat down at my desk in London to write up the
story, I emphasized three major trends that would create
danger and opportunity for investors. First, the bull
market in energy (oil, gas, electric, nuclear) was going to
be one of the longest and strongest you and I would see in
our investment lifetimes. The big drivers are the growth in
demand from China and India. Second, the general rise of Asia into the developed world
was causing huge demographic and economic dislocations —
and creating enormous investment opportunities as Asian
economies began to consume as well as produce, to spend as
well as save. Third, I wrote that the rise of the East was accompanied by
the simultaneous collapse of the ruling currency regime of
the last 30 years, the dollar standard. This last point is
still so inconceivable to many people that they refuse to
entertain the possibility. Too much would have to change.
Too much wealth would be destroyed. Too many vacations
would have to be canceled. Yet the inexorable rise of gold
shows that this revolution in money is slowly but surely
eroding the dollar's status. The current situation with
Iran doesn't change any of those three main trends...But it
could accelerate them. [Joel's Note: People may have thought Dan was a little
crazy when he started banging on about a housing bubble a
few years back. Now we are starting to see some cracks form
in the market...but there is still one big factor that most
investors have no idea about. You'd have to be crazy
yourself to ignore this one. Check is out here: Your Home is Worth Less Than You Think
http://www.agora-inc.com/reports/DRI/EDRIFB05
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