The Sheik’s Hands Are on New York’s Last Icon

WASHINGTON – A little more costly than the $24 the Dutch once paid the Lenape Indians 400 years ago, the island of Manhattan now returns to put up a “for sale” sign on its most prestigious buildings, including the Art Deco architecture monument from the 1920s, the Chrysler Building. But instead, this time it is the Arab’s turn to buy it and the White men must sell it in order to recover the dollars spent on the Emirates’ and Sheiks’ barrels of oil.

75% of the tallest skyscraper built of bricks in the world, the totem that Chrysler erected to its glory between 1925 and 1930, will be bought by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi through a company investment. This hits the prominent symbolism of a building that, for the past 80 years has marked Midtown Manhattan like no other building, has been the magnet that attracts every visitor.

Its position, the tip and the aluminum rays that illuminate during sunset, have told the story of global primacy and the pride of the United States and Manhattan for generations, throughout the Depression and the wars, until the eradication of the Twin Towers seven years ago.

However, the U.S. dollar does not count the nostalgia and the glory, and the money now comes from overseas, from East or West. The Chrysler Building was saved on its death bed by Lee Iacocca through a loan during the 1980s, when Reagan was in power.

Now it has been abandoned by the Daimler Benz, a terrible German-American marriage, which, like the other Detroit car companies, ended in debt. On the skyscraper, which has not been owned for a very long time, the same “for sale” sign is hung like those hung in front of American homes. Actually it is a sold off because the 800 million dollars that the Emirate of Abu Dhabi paid for the two thirds of the building are the real deal.

During the 19th Century, the disastrous hallucinations that people like Paul Wolfwhitz, the 2003 Iraq War ideologist, and his apostles of the “preventive war” have promised that this would be the new American Century. However, this is becoming the century of sales.

The Arab “petrodollar” has arrived at the beginning of last winter, in order to avoid the wreck and the insolvency of Citibank on the biggest world map and to make millions of dollars transactions in the veins of the most notorious business companies and of investors such as the Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs, after the failure of Bear Sterns.

At the same time, the Chinese Central Bank continued picking up mountains of ‘paper’, which were the goods of the treasure or the American obligations to keep the consumption floating.

Now comes the moment of real estate sales. The Chrysler Building enters the wallet of the Emirate Khalifa bin Zayed through groups of Euro Americans, which he finances. Months later, the General Motors building and three others in Manhattan were sold for $3 million and $950 million, which comes to a million each, which seems to be the current price to acquire skyscrapers in New York.

The Equity financial building has already been sold to Kuwaiti and Saudi associates and to investors from Qatar, rolled up in society; whom lend each other funds and sell property in order to keep floating on a black sea of petrol.

It is no news that Manhattan periodically organizes end of season sales during financial crises and recession. During the years in which the Yen was omnipotent, such as the Euro is now, the Japanese from Mitsubishi were cheated by Rockefeller and bought the Rockefeller Center for $2 million in 1986, which they tried to get rid of later.

The “Manila Butterfly”, Imelda Marcos, once she got tired of buying 5 thousand pairs of shoes and 900 handbags, spent $150 million on the two New York’s second category buildings: the old New York Herald headquarters and the Crown Building.

But she was reluctant when offered to buy the Empire State Building, which remains the highest of the island. “To not exaggerate”, she said. Donald Trump and Hidei Yokoi bought it instead, selling it back in 2002 to Malkin. With its 102 floors; the last totem of Manhattan remains the property of an American.

It is the massive disembark of the Arabs from the Gulf who are decided to clear up symbolic property such as the Chrysler Building with the same American money. It is a fact that just a few years ago, in post 9/11, should bring up some media reaction, such as when it stirred a scandal when Bush tried to give New York ports to a Dubai company.

In 2005, when the agreement was concluded and then canceled due to recession and Arabs, Wall Street was traveling at high quota, the real estate market was baked, and banks and businesses were swimming in an ocean of liquidity. And thinking that 70 million dollars for an apartment on 5th avenue seemed reasonable.

During the American summer of 2008, after bleeding 1000 million dollars in a war with no end, the car companies are compelled to offer buyers, who save them from the unsold and from doubled gas prices since last year, gas coupons at a fixed rate for 2 years.

At this point, the Arab dollars are great to help keep on going. The Lenape Indians are us and the new colonizers are not those who speak Dutch, but those who speak Arabic.