Category: Investing

There have been regular calls to boycott Saudi Arabia because of the country’s well-documented history of human rights abuses. But anyone trying to do that will have a hard time if they’re also trying to avoid the country’s international investments.

Over the past six years, these have increased substantially. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — that is, its state-owned investment fund — now holds shares in of all of the following companies: Amazon, Google, Visa, Microsoft, Disney, Nintendo, Uber, PayPal and Zoom, among many others.

It also owns the holiday company, Carnival, English Premier League football teamNewcastle United, a controversial professional golf tournament, and it has a significant relationship with BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager. In fact, every time you buy a caramel mocha latte at Starbucks, or play the online game World of Warcraft, you are supporting Saudi investments, too.

Saudi Arabia took an 80% stake in the English football club in late 2021

Radical changes

The reason why Saudi Arabia has a stake in all of these well-known names is its Public Investment Fund, or PIF for short.

Most countries have sovereign wealth funds and Saudi Arabia is no exception. The PIF was first established in 1971, but up until relatively recently, the Saudi fund had mostly made low-key domestic investments and was not a big international player.

That all changed around 2015 when Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, often simply called MBS, began to consolidate the kingdom’s wealth under his own name. MBS made the PIF central to his plans to modernize the country and diversify its economy away from oil.

In 2016, the fund first made global headlines for investing $3.5 billion (€3.1 billion) into ride-sharing company, Uber. 

In 2019, Karen Young, a senior researcher at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, noted that the PIF’s new role in the Saudi economy was “unprecedented” in a report for the Washington-based Project on Middle East Political Science.”It is the central engine of growth in the new Saudi Arabia, as envisioned by MBS. State resources are directed to feed the PIF and state assets are being sold to raise cash for the PIF.”

Besides giving MBS a way to change things fast and make money quickly, the PIF also provides the Saudi prince with “a very strong hand against internal dissent or alternative ideas about the appropriate role of private enterprise,” Young argued in the 2019 report.

Major ambitions

According to the fund’s publicity materials, the ultimate goal is for the PIF to become the largest and “most impactful” sovereign wealth fund in the world by 2030, with assets worth $2 trillion. It currently has around $608 billion, more than four times as much as it …….

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/will-saudi-arabia-use-billion-dollar-international-investments-for-political-goals/a-63268257

$225 Million in Training Grants Awarded Today; American Rescue Plan Investments for Community Health Workforce Total Over $1.1 Billion

Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is awarding $225 million in American Rescue Plan funds to train over 13,000 Community Health Workers (CHWs). In response to the acute need to expand the health care workforce and address pandemic-related burnout, the American Rescue Plan provided historic investments. Among these investments, President Biden’s American Rescue Plan provided a total of over $1.1 billion for community health, outreach, and health education workers—the largest ever one-time investment in the nation’s community health workforce. These investments are expected to deploy over 40,000 people in community health, outreach, and health education roles over the coming years. This investment will build on the roughly 50,000 CHWs who were already working in American communities before the pandemic.

CHWs are an evidence-based, cost-effective public health workforce to improve population health and strengthen health systems. Particularly for underserved communities, CHWs, as well as outreach and health education workers, serve as trusted messengers and advocates helping to facilitate communication between individuals and health care providers. They also play a key role in addressing pre-existing health inequities that were exacerbated by the pandemic.

President Biden understands the importance of investing in a modern public health workforce, and his Administration continues to deliver on his campaign promise to expand the community health workforce. Although there is more work to do to secure and build upon this progress, the American Rescue Plan strengthened our public health system during the pandemic and is building capacity for the future.

Today’s announcement builds on other critical American Rescue Plan investments in our community health workforce, including:

• Rapid deployment of over 14,000 community outreach workers (including CHWs) through over 150 national and local organizations to deepen COVID-19 vaccine confidence, increase vaccination rates, and serve as trusted messengers in underserved communities. Examples include:
  • The Association of Asian/Pacific Community Health Organizations used American Rescue Plan funds to establish the CHW Workforce Collaborative (the Collaborative). The Collaborative has since hired, trained, and deployed more than 250 CHWs who speak over 36 Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander languages in 12 continental U.S. states and Hawaii.
  • The Communities RISE Together initiative, supported by WE in the World and the Public Health Institute, is using American Rescue Plan funding to recruit, hire, and train CHWs to work with Black, Native American, Latinx, Asian American/Pacific Islander, immigrant/migrant, and low-income older adult populations in 200+ counties across the country. RISE partners train and engage vaccine ambassadors and promotors to serve as trusted messengers and connect community members with vaccines and well-being needs, while working to address underlying drivers of health inequities.
• Jurisdictions …….

  Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/09/30/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-american-rescue-plans-historic-investments-in-community-health-workforce/