He's a conspiratorial madman with apocalyptic visions of his beloved country being internally subverted by traitors – traitors who must be expunged. His long-winded diatribes expose his arrogance and buffoonery. But Moammar Gadhafi's similarities to Glenn Beck don't stop there.
As it turns out, they share an investment strategy. Neither man is willing to risk his supremacy on the twists and turns of world currency markets. Great men like them are into the classics. Gold.
While Beck promotes gold on TV, radio and online, Gadhafi is sitting, Scrooge McDuck-style, on an estimated 143 tons worth of gold. The Financial Times notes, deadpan, that's enough "to pay a small army of mercenaries for months or even years."
Why yes it is: $6.5 billion at current prices. Hard as it may be to know the going rates of African mercenaries, 143 tons of gold is probably enough to entice the most risk-averse of security companies.
It also helps Gadhafi work around that pesky U.S. and United Nations asset freeze, which has cost Gadhafi more than $30 billion. The FT reports he may have spirited his gold to southern Libya, in reach of Chad and Niger, where he could sell it out of view of the world's watchful eyes. (Still, don't miss this great Washington Post piece on how the U.S. asset freeze on Gadhafi came together.)
I have no idea what Beck's position on Gadhafi is, and came away even more confused after I read this stream-of-consciousness rant. But he can surely adopt at least a grudging respect for a fellow goldbug.
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