Like Wearing a Bullseye in a Firing Range

What's wrong with this picture? Aside from being Situation Normal:

...Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is poised to launch a bid to transform the global politics of oil by seeking a deal with consumer countries which would lock in a price of $50 a barrel.

A long-term agreement at that price could allow Venezuela to count its huge deposits of heavy crude as part of its official reserves, which Caracas says would give it more oil than Saudi Arabia.

"We have the largest oil reserves in the world, we have oil for 200 years." Mr Chávez told the BBC's Newsnight programme in an interview to be broadcast tonight. "$50 a barrel - that's a fair price, not a high price."

The price proposed by Mr Chávez is about $15 a barrel below the current global level but a credible long-term agreement at about $50 a barrel could have huge implications for Venezuela's standing in the international oil community.

According to US sources, Venezuela holds 90% of the world's extra heavy crude oil - deposits which have to be turned into synthetic light crude before they can be refined and which only become economic to operate with the oil price at about $40 a barrel. Newsnight cites a report from the US Energy Information Administrator, Guy Caruso, suggesting Venezuela could have more than a trillion barrels of reserves.

A $50-a-barrel lock-in would open the way for Venezuela, already the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, to demand a huge increase in its official oil reserves - allowing it to demand a big increase in its production allowance within Opec.

Venezuela's oil minister Raphael Ramirez told Newsnight in a separate interview that his country plans to ask Opec to formally recognise the uprating of its reserves to 312bn barrels (compared to Saudi Arabia's 262bn) when Mr Chávez hosts a gathering of Opec delegates in Caracas next month...

Iran's the Bu$hCo drumbeat for this $election.

Syria's in 2008.

That would put Venezuela in 2010.

"Cause Chavez just won't kiss and make up with Dear Leader like those nice Saudi boys do...

In other news, speaking of being at Ground Zero:

General Motors announced a deal today to sell a majority stake in its financing arm, GMAC, to a group of investors led by Cerberus Capital Management. The initial sale is for $7.4 billion, with $10 billion expected by closing and a total of $14 billion over three years, a G.M. statement said.

The G.M. board of directors approved the sale in a meeting on Sunday. It is subject to regulatory and other approvals, but the companies expect to close the transaction in the fourth quarter of 2006...

GMAC has been a lone bright spot for G.M., providing badly needed income as it reported deep losses at its automotive unit. Last year G.M. lost $10.6 billion, which would have been even more had the company not earned $2.4 billion at GMAC...

Kind of like a drowning man selling his life jacket, isn't it? More bright ideas from the boardroom who responded to Peak Oil and the Katrina disaster with a line of new supersized SUVs.

...
The consortium[buying out GMAC] also includes Citigroup, Inc...

The involvement of Citigroup's a dead giveaway to what's going on.

Guess who's affiliated with Cerberus Capital Management?

What's Bigger Than Cisco, Coke, Or McDonald's?
Steve Feinberg's Cerberus, a vast hedge fund that's snapping up companies -- lots of them

Shares of Albertson's Inc. (ABS ) were soaring in mid-September on rumors of an impending bid for the Boise (Idaho) grocery chain. A pair of private-equity funds -- giant pools of capital just waiting to pounce on takeover targets -- had been circling, preparing offers that were said to top $16 billion. But then a new player showed up: hedge-fund group Cerberus. The Albertson's drama is still playing out. But even as Cerberus Capital Management LP pursues the grocer, it has been quietly discussing an offer for Morgan Stanley's (MWD ) aircraft-leasing business for up to $2 billion and negotiating for a big stake in Israel's second-largest bank, Bank Leumi. And it's still digesting a $2.3 billion purchase in May of Meadwestvaco Corp.'s (MWV ) paper businesses -- a deal that included 900,000 acres of forest.

Cerberus has been shopping up a storm for a year now, seemingly coming out of nowhere to build a corporate empire. With more than $16 billion of investors' assets on its books -- almost double what it had in 2003 -- it has bought 28 companies and snapped up stakes of at least 15% in an additional 15 over the past decade. According to BusinessWeek estimates, Cerberus controls companies that ring up at least a combined $30 billion in annual sales, more than McDonald's, 3M (AXP ), Coca-Cola (KO ), or Cisco Systems (CSCO ). With more than 106,000 employees, Cerberus companies have a bigger payroll than Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM ). Its trophies include 226 Burger King restaurants, the National and Alamo car-rental chains, building-products maker Formica Corp., and the old Warner Hollywood Studios, where blockbusters such as Basic Instinct were made. Its companies connect BlackBerrys, provide medical therapy, and set up military-base camps in Iraq.

The mind-boggling rise of Cerberus -- from a fringe vulture fund started with a grubstake of about $10 million in 1992 to a Wall Street powerhouse -- has been driven by its enigmatic boss, Stephen A. Feinberg, 45. Like other hedge-fund managers and buyout kings, Feinberg has a penchant for secrecy, although his is more developed than most. While co-founder William L. Richter deals with investors, and lieutenants such as former Vice-President Dan Quayle jet around the globe to seal deals, the mustached Feinberg keeps very much to himself in a nondescript office on the 22nd floor of a high-rise on Manhattan's Park Avenue...

The son of a steel salesman, Feinberg was born in the working-class town of Spring Valley, N.Y. He still describes himself as "blue-collar," even though he's a Princeton grad and took home about $50 million last year. "While other hedge-fund managers are collecting fine French wines and flying around in private planes, he drives a Ford truck and drinks Budweiser," says college roommate Jonathan Gallen, who runs his own hedge fund. Cerberus doesn't even have a Web site -- and it doesn't reveal exactly which companies it owns. Feinberg declined to be interviewed or photographed for this story, but dozens of current and former Cerberus executives, investors, and associates spoke with BusinessWeek, many not for attribution.

However six-pack his origins, Feinberg now moves in rarefied circles. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was an investor in 2001, according to government ethics disclosures...

Feinberg casts a wide net. Not content simply to trade securities the way other funds do or to assemble assorted companies for resale in the same way as many buyout firms, he's forging what looks more like an integrated industrial conglomerate than an investment firm. His secret weapon: a deep bench of 80 seasoned executives who troll the world for investment opportunities and stand ready to parachute in and run the companies he buys. Put all the elements together, says David M. Rubenstein, Carlyle Group co-founder and managing director, and "Feinberg may have perfected a new business model..."

Feinberg majored in politics, producing a senior thesis arguing that drugs and prostitution should be legalized. For the paper, he not only delved into theories about the appropriate role of government but also spent a summer interviewing cops, hookers, and pimps in New York City. Feinberg took the position to impress a professor who he perceived as liberal after receiving a bad grade arguing the opposite view in a paper the previous year, says a person close to him. Today Feinberg contributes to Republican causes. He and his wife Gisela sent $114,000 in the 2003-2004 election cycle to committees working to elect Republicans to Congress...

Feinberg's image has been softened somewhat in recent years, thanks partly to Quayle. A mutual friend, George Zahringer III, a senior managing director at Bear, Stearns & Co., introduced the two after Quayle dropped out of the 2000 Presidential race. Quayle agreed to work for Feinberg part-time and use his connections in Japan to clear the way for what became a 62% stake in Aozora Bank. Now, as Cerberus' chairman of global investments, Quayle goes to Japan and Germany at least five times a year each to "tee up eventual deals..."

Funny how the money flows to the same players time and time again.

No doubt what's good for GM is good for America. Just ask Darth Rumsfeld's junkyard dog, Cerberus.