Egypt update

Just a brief update on the situation in Egypt with the IMF forcing the Egyptian military to, surrender a significant portion of its stake in the Egyptian economy. Now everyone knows that the Egyptian economy has been completely dominated by the army for many, many years, controlling at least 80% of the economy is in the military's hands. Now they've been getting loan after loan after loan from the IMF since they had the biggest loan back in, what was it, 2016, 2017, something like that. Now they're getting another loan because, obviously, they're dealing with a serious financial crisis, economic crisis, currency crisis, food shortage crisis, inflation crisis. So they need another bailout from the IMF.

All along, they've also been getting bailouts from the Khaleid, from The Gulf, from Saudi Arabia and The UAE. Now one thing that I didn't actually know in the last video that I did about Egypt, with regards to the forcing of the military to surrender its stake in the economy or some of its stake in the economy and to privatize was that the Saudi Arabia and The Emirates actually pushed for Egypt to accept the IMF conditions because The UAE and Saudi Arabia want to buy those assets. All of those state controlled military controlled assets that are being, auctioned off or that will be auctioned off, they've already done from the Egyptian telecom company, they've already given up, I think, 20%, and then they gave up another 10%, recently. And many state assets, many military controlled assets are going to be privatized and are gonna be made available to foreign investors, well as, of course, private sector Egyptian investors. But The Gulf, UAE, and Saudi Arabia want to buy those.

They said, we've been putting money into Egypt for years now, billions and billions of dollars, and we wanna get some of that money back. We wanna get a return on our investment. The regime of Sisi could not have existed without Gulf money, and now the Gulf is saying, we supported you. Your regime exists because of us. Now you have to pay us back.

So there may not be the conflict. There will be some conflict, of course, within the military who don't wanna give up their stake, but they're not in a position to negotiate that. They're not in a position to say no because their benefactors have been the Emiratis and the Saudis from the beginning of this regime. Their paymasters in the Khaleid are now saying, okay. We've given you all of this money.

Now we want those companies. We're not just gonna pay for you to continue to have a stake. We want control. And further aid and assistance from Saudi Arabia and from the Khaleed, they've already said it's gonna be conditional now. It's not gonna come with no strings.

They said every time you ask us for more money, we're gonna ask you for some concessions, and we're gonna ask for giving us a greater stake in your economy. Now, overall, I have to say, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think it's certainly better than handing over control of your economy over to western multinationals. I would rather those assets be under the control of other Muslim nations than to be under the control of the IMF or under the control of foreign western multinationals and foreign investors. I don't think that there will be a breakdown in the Egyptian government as a result of this because they have no option.

The ones that are sustaining their existence through financing and funding are the ones who are now saying you have to give us something back. So they're not in a position to oppose it. They're not in a position to object. They're not in a position to defy it. What the ramifications will be in terms of the Egyptian government remains to be seen.

Because if the Egyptian military is now going to be subordinated to the Khaleid, it's hard to tell exactly which way that's gonna go, but of course, it's gonna be very bad for the Muslim Brotherhood. Not that it can necessarily get much worse for them than it already is. But overall, Insha'Allah, it will end up being a positive thing or at least anyway, not so negative of a thing as it would have been had these assets gone under the control of western multinationals.