■"Saudi Arabia Looks Past Oil: Enriched by Record Prices, The Nation Seeks to Diversify," by Jad Mouawad, New York Times, 13 December 2005, p. C1.

The government (which gets 90 percent of its revenue from oil) and oil account for roughly two-thirds of Saudi Arabia's GDP.

During past oil booms, the House of Saud promised to get smarter and do more for the private sector, but there's good evidence this time that the new king, who has spoken openly of constitutional monarchy within a generation's time, is serious.

Saudi Arabia's stock market is attracting capital from abroad, and it just joined the WTO after 12 years of negotiations, "a move expected to give a powerful push to the country's private sector."

Good. Over 80 percent of the workers in that private sector are guest workers from abroad, which doesn't exactly jibe with a huge youth bulge that either gets busy with jobs or something worse.

A "structural shift" is occurring, says one Western financial observer.

As the piece notes, "The government has relaxed foreign ownership laws, loosened credit rules, liberalized the telecommunications market, passed a new capital markets law and created regulatory agencies to oversee these changes."

Amazing.

Any regional experts calling this by 2005 prior to our invasion of Iraq?

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