“Libyan Rebels” Create Central Bank, Oil Company
Alex Newman
As analysts debate possible motives behind President Obama’s United Nations-backed military intervention in Libya, one angle that has received attention in recent days is the rebels’ seemingly odd decision to establish a new central bank to replace dictator Muammar Gadhafi's state-owned monetary authority — possibly the first time in history that revolutionaries have taken time out from an ongoing life-and-death battle to create such an institution, according to observers.
In a statement released last week, the rebels reported on the results of a meeting held on March 19. Among other things, the supposed rag-tag revolutionaries announced the “[d]esignation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi.”
The Gadhafi regime’s central bank — unlike the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is owned by private shareholders — was among the few central banks in the world that was entirely state-owned. At the moment, it is unclear exactly who owns the rebel’s central bank or how it will be governed.
The so-called Interim Transitional National Council, the rebels’ self-appointed new government for Libya purporting to be the “sole legitimate representative of Libyan People,” also trumpeted the creation of a new “Libyan Oil Company” based in the rebel stronghold city of Benghazi. The North African nation, of course, has the continent’s largest proven oil reserves.
The U.S. government and the U.N. have both recently announced that the rebels would be free to sell oil under their control — if they do it without Gaddafi’s National Oil Corporation. And the first shipments are set to start next week, according to news reports citing a spokesman for the rebels.
But the creation of a new central bank, even more so than the new national oil regime, left analysts scratching their heads. “I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising,” noted Robert Wenzel in an analysis for the Economic Policy Journal. “This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences.”
Global Research, April 14, 2011
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24308
