Oh yes, MBS knows exactly how to bait the Donald — lay out the glitter, crank up the shine, and let the man marinate in gold-plated excess. Bling, bling, and even more bling. In a perverse way, it mirrors Trump’s old campaign promises: investment supposedly flooding back to America, American industry rising from the grave, and the good old U.S. of A. selling its wares to the planet once more.
But does this grand Saudi bling parade actually contain anything of substance? We’re meant to believe that thirty meager billion is pocket change for a country that literally farts money, but I’m not so easily impressed. MBS has a problem — a big one — and he’s acutely aware of it. Oil will not carry his fortunes forever. Not because the black goo is going out of fashion to “save the planet.” That delusion is dying a deserved death. No, the real storm gathering over Riyadh comes from an unlovely roster of problems: the further rise of shale, a global recession tightening like a vice, the end of China’s insatiable thirst, and — the quiet horror nobody anticipated — Saudi oil fields showing signs of running low.
It’s wise to take announcements from that corner of the world with a full tankerload of salt. But that requires thinking long-term, and the long-term is not exactly the natural habitat of real estate developers.And what defines a real estate developer? The quick deal. The big score. The fantasy that if you just grind on fumes long enough, the big payday will show up — somehow, somewhere, someday. And it usually does. Until the day it doesn’t.