MIDDLE EAST FALLING

Non-Oil Business Sectors in Trouble

The United Arab Emirates’ central bank doubled its economic stimulus program to $70 billion to counter deteriorating business conditions in this key Middle East commercial and financial hub.
Oil prices have collapsed and recent surveys show non-oil sectors of the region’s two largest economies shrinking at dramatic rates.
Saudi Arabia’s purchasing managers’ index fell from 52.5 in February to 42.4 in March. A reading above 50 signals business expansion while numbers below 50 point to contraction.
This is the first time Saudi’s index has fallen below 50 since the survey began in 2009.
The UAE’s index dropped for the third consecutive month, sliding from 49.1 in February to 45.2 in March.
The two economies rely heavily on tourism, which has disappeared with the closure of airports and hotels and cancellation of airline flights, and state spending. With the loss of oil revenues and tourist cash, governments are cutting nonessential expenses.
“The closure of airports…and work-from-home policies” the countries have mandated “are likely to extend the downturn,” said David Owen, an economist at IHS Markit.
TREND FORECAST: Throughout the Middle East, particularly oil rich nation’s that are going bust as oil prices plunge and their main revenue stream dries up, there will be growing civil unrest.
Knowing that when “all else fails, they take you to war,” to divert the people’s attention away from the economic crises, we forecast rising tensions among nations in the region.
Should conflicts explode into warfare, oil prices will spike and the sharp increase in prices – on an already depressed global economy – will inflict severe economic pain on both consumers and nations, such as India, which imports some 80 percent of its energy needs.
 U.S. Blocks IMF Virus Aid Loan to Iran
 

The Trump administration has vetoed the International Monetary Fund’s planned $54-billion loan to Iran, which the country says it needs to deal with the virus epidemic.
Administration officials claim Iran’s government has billions of dollars already at its command and that Iran’s leadership has a “long history of diverting funds allocated for humanitarian goods into their own pockets and to their terrorist proxies,” one senior Trump administration official asserted.
Despite calls from humanitarian groups to let the loan go through, the Trump administration says it won’t budge on the issue.
TRENDPOST: With the American people brainwashed to hate Iran since its dictatorial ally, the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was overthrown in 1979, the economic terrorism waged against its people by the American government is supported by the majority of politicians and the general public.