The Crisis They Want You to See
Baghdad says it cannot pay salaries while sitting on $93.7B in reserves. Twice before, this exact story ended at the exchange rate. We read the preparation.
Tuesday, August 4. Iraqi salaries running late is not news. Public workers in this country have waited on pay through most of the last decade, and the delays usually pass with an excuse about paperwork. What happened across the last 72 hours is different, and the difference is the whole briefing. Baghdad stopped excusing the delays and started explaining them, on the record, with numbers attached.
Government spokesman Haider al-Aboudi had already gone on television in the closing days of July to say it plainly: Iraq is in a liquidity crisis, and salaries will not arrive on time. Then the weekend supplied the detail. Health Minister Abdul Hussein al-Mousawi put the state's monthly salary and support bill at 10.8 trillion dinars, while Iraqi analysts put domestic revenue against it at 2.5 to 3.5 trillion. Financial analyst Mustafa Hantoush put what comes next on the record: "The government will be required to move toward a borrowing law worth 10 trillion dinars to guarantee the payment of salaries."
Yesterday we showed you 5 calendars maturing inside the same month. Today the treasury joined them. What follows is why we think the poverty story is doing a job, and who it is being told for. Also what it prepared Iraq for the last time it ran.