From the video in another post, Ali Tarhouni is now the person from the National Transition Council of New Libya. Being in charge of both the restarting the oil business and overseeing the $170 billion in assets in the Libyan treasury means he is the man with the real power at the moment.
He is described as an exile who hadn’t lived in Libya for 40 years, and from the video it’s pretty obvious from his English that he has lived in America. So let’s do some research and what motivates him
Well, that wasn’t hard at all. Prior to becoming this really powerful person, he was a professor at the University of Washington (state)
http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/uw-faculty-member-ali-tarhouni-named-finance-minister-by-libyan-opposition-1
He holds a doctorate in economics and finance from Michigan State University. He’s taught at UW since 1985 (meaning no real-world experience in anything).
His wife Mary Li (doesn’t sound Libyan) works in the Washington State attorney general’s office.
http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/ali-tarhouni-reflects-on-decision-to-leave-uw-help-lead-libyan-opposition
He left Libya while a student after being identified as a trouble maker. That’s a bit odd – I thought Qadaffi murdered everyone who opposed him. While teaching at UW, he has made it clear it wanted Qadaffi overthrown, and quickly endorsed the “no fly” zone.
He was appointed to the job (by whom?) in March, before there even mas much of an organized opposition. He left Libya in 1973, was stripped of his Libyan citizenship and put on a hit list. (Libya must not have tried very hard to kill him).
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014592498_tarhouni25m.html
He’s been active in the exile movement, attending conferences and staying in touch via Skype (indicating this was NOT a spontaneous revolution).
He isn’t a professor – he’s a lecturer, and taught his class wearing bluejeans, and often sat on the corner of his desk, discussing current events and how it related to economics…
In the Real News piece that you posted I found the tidbit near the end interesting (i.e. that Italy[fronting for Russia’s Gazprom] is attempting to supplant Tarhouni with their own puppet).
I had read the same thing earlier (or maybe heard it on the news).
I worked at NASDAQ with a guy very much like him.
The guy was a genuinely nice guy – an academic who ran the economics group, looking at trading patterns, market efficiency, statistics, etc… When the guy running NASDAQ (who was basically an SEC appointed stooge) retired, there was a big power vacuum. He got the job by default – nobody else wanted it. NASDAQ doesn’t pay the kind of wages for management that Wall Street does – so anyone with a clue doesn’t work for NASDAQ, unless they are an insider planted by one of the big firms.
So he became our leader – I knew him fairly well from personal contact. The broker dealers quickly sized him up as a know-nothing egghead. Every day they were beating up each other in brutal combat, and he had no idea how to do even the basic jobs in the securities business.
I think it likely Mr Tarhouni doesn’t even know what SWIFT is, and he’s now running the Libyan Central Bank. Someone is gonna kick his ass big time. He has no clue how little he actually knows.
My friend from NASDAQ is now running some outfit in Oregon hiking in the mountains to teach people how to get into touch with their inner self, or some similar idea.
I’m not excluding myself from my generalization. I’m doing this now 🙂 I was shocked at how often I would go into very important meetings and be the only person that understood what was going on or could see the “big picture” of how NASDAQ was going to compete in the future (or not).
That’s about the time I decided that there was no future for me there, and one of the managers above me made it clear my ideas were not welcome – so I left to start FindAnISP.com and doubled my income the next year….