Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse
Saudi Arabia is not going to collapse anytime soon. The thesis (budget deficit of $98B budget leads to political instability and collapse) simply doesn't make sense when you look at their finances. Some facts:<p>* Saudi Arabia has one of the lowest debt-to-GDP ratios in the world, last year at only 1.6%. Their credit rating is A+ to AA; they can easily issue more debt.<p>* Has $640B of assets overseas<p>* Has $10 trillion of proven oil reserves, even at today's oil prices<p>They easily have enough money to handle this. An oil downturn like this won't wreck the country. Heck, there are a half-dozen countries in much worse positions that are way more likely to collapse than Saudi Arabia (i.e. North Korea, Greece, Argentina, Ukraine, Venezuela, Brazil). You could write an article like this for each of them. It's not hard to find problems in any country.<p>I'm guessing the authors are not happy with Saudi Arabia's treatment of political dissidents, and wrote an article to match.