In a bid to ensure that they grab the portfolio of the Federal Government's Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF), Wall Street titans - Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase - are already courting top government officials for the management of the Fund.

The New York Times disclosed this Tuesday, saying that the Fund was expected to buffer the Nigerian economy from volatile commodity prices and impose fiscal

Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, had said that the Federal Government was considering the recruitment of the management team for the Fund through a transparent process.

She had said the government, which was targeting the best qualified Nigerians within and outside the country, had commenced with the engagement of KPMG to drive the process. Okonjo-Iweala had revealed that advertisements calling for applications from interested Nigerians would soon be published in The Economist and Financial Times of London.

In fact, Okonjo-Iweala had stated that KPMG was expected to conclude a shortlist of the candidates by mid- November.

New York Times quoted the Minister of Trade and Investment, Dr. Olusegun Aganga, who helped to create the proposal, to have said: "The country is at a point of inflection, and what we do in the next few years will set the pace. It's a land of opportunities, which unfortunately has not been tapped well."

According to the American-based newspaper, by saving and investing the petro dollars, Nigeria hoped to break the resource curse.

"The nation, which derives 80 per cent of its revenue from oil, created the sovereign wealth fund to buffer its economy from volatile commodity prices and impose fiscal discipline. The government so far has set aside $1 billion for the fund, and it could funnel as much as $2.5 billion a year, if oil prices remain high," it added.

On his part, a research associate at the University of Oxford, who studies sovereign wealth funds, Ashby H.B. Monk, noted: "One of our biggest problems in civil society is the time horizon that we're operating on - whether election cycles or quarterly reports. The idea of a sovereign fund is to give government bureaucrats an opportunity to make long-term policy knowing that the buffeting winds of capitalism won't blow them off course."

Aganga added: "It's important that we have some savings for the future generations. It just makes sense for your economy. You're completely exposed otherwise."

Meanwhile, Chairman of the Nigeria Governors' Forum (NGF) and Governor of Rivers State, Mr. ChibuikeRotimi Amaechi, has said state governments are willing to partner the Federal Government in the implementation of Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) if they are given the latitude to access their funds and make individual contributions to the common purse.

Amaechi said this Tuesday while speaking at a colloquium titled: "Jurisprudence, Democracy and Rule of Law" held at the state House of Assembly, Port Harcourt, to commemorate the Supreme Court judgment that ushered him into office in October 2007.

Speaking against the backdrop of the suit instituted on Monday by the NGF against the Federal Government at the Supreme Court seeking to block the latter from the operating the SWF, he said: "The rule of law eliminates completely the rule of man. Governors agree that the Federal Government should save but the law has to be respected. What the Federal Government has done is merely kidnapping of our money."

He explained that the SWF, "like all things in the country", must fall within the ambit of the law.

"Section 80 of the constitution was talking about Consolidated Revenue, and it also says that the executive authority of a region shall extend to the execution and maintenance of the constitution of the region and to all matters with respect to which the legislature of the region has for the time being power to make laws but shall be so exercised as not to impede or prejudice the exercise of the executive authority of the federation or to endanger the continuance of Federal Government in Nigeria," he said.

He said the Federal Government was being economical with the truth in its bid to liberalise the downstream sector, arguing that it had spent N1.264 trillion, which is more than the N264 billion that was appropriated to it by the lawmakers for this year's budget.

He said this is the question the lawmakers should be asking the executive arm of government at the national level, pointing out that beyond the argument of oil, subsidy is also the argument about corruption which takes place at the top and trickles down to permeate the entire society.

In his presentation, constitutional lawyer, Prof. Itse Sagay, applauded the Supreme Court judgment that ushered in Amaechi as signalling the supremacy of the rule of law as unassailable.

He enumerated the guiding principles of the judgment as ushering in of a new operational philosophy of law, nourishing of the democratic culture and making courts to shy away from the constraints of technicality.

Similarly, Prof. Adele Jinadu, who also spoke at the occasion, observed that some had argued that the Supreme Court judgment on Amaechi versus INEC and two others usurped the rights of the voters, adding that "we must resort to government bylaws instead of government of rule of men."

http://allafrica.com/stories/201110261085.html

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan Chase - Seems one of them may benefit from this fuel subsidy removal.

Afterall, wont some of the money not be diverted into the so called SWF?

This money needs to be invested in Nigerian projects not foreign ones. Into power plants or roads from ports so we can generate IGR, jobs, and export revenue. This SWF better not mess up.

They need our money to shore up their sfps,most of their investors will not look the other way next time if the difference btw negative balance and a profit is gain from revaluation of existing liabilities.
Supervising minister supervising the transfer of Nigeria wealth into the hands of those who have depleted  pension funds of millions of people all over the world.
Aganga where are the jobs?

Nigerians beware,it's on d news that Goldman sachs is involved in a corruption case with the british govt.The case is heavy.Aganga used to work bfor them,let's keep,a,watchfull eyes on this.

No real surprises here.

These investment banks spare no expense uncovering new money trails.

Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world
AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).

"Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. "Our analysis is reality-based."
Read more -- http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html#bx283545B1
[quote][/quote]

I concur eGuerrilla - I recall below Rollingstone article about Goldman Sach - it's long but worth the read.

The Great American Bubble Machine
From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression -- and they're about to do it again


Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405