All is not well in the Kingdom of Sand and Oil.

Late this week Gen. David Petraeus, retired four-star Army general and former head of the CIA, appeared on CNBC and proclaimed that Saudi Arabia is “gradually running out of money.”

In the Thursday interview he addressed the on-again, off-again IPO of state-run oil company Aramco as well as Mohammed bin Salman's initiative to diversity the kingdom's economy over the coming decade to reduce oil dependency. Addressing the degree to which MbS' own success and survival is tied to the IPO, the ex-CIA director explained:

“It’s a fact that Saudi Arabia is gradually running out of money, they’d be the first to acknowledge that the sovereign wealth fund has been reduced, it’s somewhere below $500 billion now,” Petraeus, who's also currently chair of the KKR Global Institute, told the CNBC host as they spoke in Abu Dhabi.

I've heard that in the Arab world, and especially where money has been easy to come by and plentiful, there is no work ethic among the people, and in fact it is looked down on. 

If that is true, the King has his work cut out for him.  If no one wants to work and strive, there will be no real non oil industry to develop, as no one will want to work for it.  In a highly competitive world, that's not a recipe for success.  He'll need to change the culture.  Good luck with that, especially in a Muslim country that's steeped in fatalism.