UK's trade minister

The United Kingdom's trade minister, Lord Davies, has flown to Saudi Arabia with the intent of persuading two defaulting Saudi conglomerates, the Saad Group and Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Bros (AHAB) to stop giving preference to local banks over British banks in terms of the restructuring of their loans.

Earlier this year, as it happens, Lord Davies faced a good deal of pressure to resign his office over a now-forgotten scandal that involved his supposed excessive coziness with the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. That appears to be all settled, or perhaps just forgotten, now.

Here's a link from that forgotten era of February 2009.

Such things forgotten, Davies is now expected to head off unsatisfactory results in the Gulf. Results so unsatisfactory, in fact, that the Times of London says this morning that the two defaulting Saudi firms could "do as much damage to the Gulf's bruised financial reputation as the Dubai shock of ten days ago."

The two conglomerates involved are not in a position to present a united front, so if Davies is clever he may be able to make use of the tensions between them. Specifically, AHAB has accused the chairman of Saad of a fraud that could amount to $10 billion.

Win Ben Stein's Cheapened Money

Ben Stein, the droning voice of Ferris Bueller's teacher, fancies himself an economist, like his father, Nixon adviser Herb Stein. When he's not a game show host, or an anti-Darwinian propagandist.

Ben has recently posted on Yahoo!Finance a column about why the US and all the other major industrial nations should print money like mad. All the dangers are on the "deflationary" side, he says. There's no danger in the other direction, from inflation/reflation. So ... let's go for it!

Hey, sort of like Zimbabwe, right? How's it working out there?

Here's Ben's column, just so you won't think I'm inventing a straw man!

And here is a fine take-down of Ben's nonsense, by the economics junkie, who rightly says that the Stein column is "so utterly wrong" that somebody had to call him out.

Good work, EJ.

Also, over at Portfolio, Felix Salmon has a semi-regular feature, his "Ben Stein Watch," in which he tilts with this windmill pretending to be a giant. I recommend that.

Now that I check, I see that this is the fourth mention of Stein's economic views I've made in the brief history of this blog. So just follow the tag if you've got the stomach for more. Thanks.