I got confirmation from my dear friend Dave Jacobs (the only man I have ever met that actually has a photographic memory), owner of Charles and Sons, Abe from Hatt Motors (a bonified exporter for the past 30 years) as well as Irwin Dillonburger (who as we all know in the wholesale business, will never teach etiquette for Emily Post, but is brilliant) from Malibu Auto, that the news you will read below is fact. There was none of the normal African buyers anywhere to be found at the sale. I didn't have one in the past two weeks in my lanes either. Let me explain a bit.
Skyline AA, Bordentown AA, and my lane late in the day when we are selling the “Low Line Sale” are all packed with buyers that export to Nigeria and the rest of West Africa. It’s over. What a disaster for us, the sellers. It is the last real export market that has been blowing wind in our sails. For many years they have been consistently buying slugs that don’t fit in the domestic market and therefore have given the hustler an edge.
The “edge” is a segment of cars that we can pay a smidge too much for (or at least the new car dealer thinks it’s too much) which gives us the “edge” to buy deeper into more desirable units we sell in our domestic market. So it is a ripple effect. Dave, for example, who sells in two different auctions, Skyline and Manheim, buys everything from new car dealers. He separates what units should go to what market. Sometimes one market is good and the other bad. But it allows flow or turn. The fact that this export segment has evaporated is like driving your car with three flats, it ain’t going anywhere. This is the disaster.
We already lost the Russian market last year. The Middle East market is not very deep, or deep enough that it makes a fundamental impact on our turn. This is the disaster. We are stuck looking at ourselves. The domestic market has to absorb everything and it simply can’t. This will cause WHOLESALE CONSTIPATION, which rolls backwards to the retail consumer. They have always been the indirect benefactor of the export market that we in the wholesale market have exploited.
For all of you guys that don't do any export business you are probably saying, who give a rats foot?, but it has a ripple effect. It allows me to source cars and sell to you because we have an irrational market somewhere else that gives us the edge when buying on the street and selling to you. The units we sell outside the country are our biggest profits...by far...buy multiples, which enables us to sell cars to you, that stay in the US, for much less money. Might sound stupid, but it's a natural grown fact.
Now, here is the News, read it and weep. It’s off Bill Warner’s private investigator crime blog:
USED CAR DEALERS LAUNDER CASH FOR HEZBOLLAH WHO SENDS CASH TO IRAN WHO FUNDS YASIN AL-SURI WHO FINANCES AL-QAEDA & TALIBAN AND THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON SINCE AT LEAST 2002 OR BEFORE.
TAMPA SUNNI & SHIITE USED CAR DEALERS LINKED TO THE SUPPORT OF TERRORISM, “THE CARS ARE THE CASH” AND THE FBI HAS KNOWN SINCE JUNE 2002.
DEA Complaint....Used Car Dealers in the USA launder millions for Hezbollah, Hezbollah is a Iran-backed Shiite Muslim group. Where is Iran backed Yasin al-Suri getting the millions he needs to help finance Al-Qaeda.....is it the "cars are the cash scam"?
The U.S. government said in the lawsuit filed in a Manhattan federal court that it seeks nearly a half-billion dollars in money-laundering penalties from some Lebanese financial entities, 30 U.S. car buyers and a U.S. shipping company.
Prosecutors said the $300 million was wired from Lebanon to the United States and used to buy used cars and ship them to West Africa. They said Hezbollah money-laundering channels were used to ship proceeds from the car sales and narcotics trafficking back to Lebanon.
The U.S. accusations came after an indictment in federal court in Virginia accused fugitive Ayman Joumaa of leading a drug conspiracy that provided income for Hezbollah, which has been designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization since 1997.
A Washington-based Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman, Lawrence R. Payne, told The Associated Press in February that Joumaa's organization laundered money using 50 used car lots in the United States. Cars were exported to Lebanon and West Africa.