Oil, Dollars, Debt, and Crises
Oil, Dollars, Debt, and Crises studies the connections between past and present oil crises, financial crises, and geopolitical conflicts to offer new insights into the driving forces that keep bringing the world to the brink of economic catastrophe. It shows how the world's growing dependence on oil has created a repeating pattern of banking, currency, and energy-price crises. This book shows the reader a more complex picture in which transfers of wealth to and from the Middle East result in a perfect storm of global asset and financial market bubbles, increased unrest, terrorism, and rising costs for energy.
Praise for Oils, Dollars, Debt, and Crises
"A boldly original and provocative display of the mutual amplification since the 1970s of a global energy price cycle, a global finance cycle, and geopolitical turmoil in the Middle East into a supercycle that is 'endogenous and self-perpetuating.'"
― Clement M. Henry, the University of Texas at Austin
"In today's geostrategic environment, few threats are more perilous than the potential cutoff of energy supplies. Unfortunately, recent experience provides us little reason to be confident that market rationality will always win the day where petro-politics is concerned. El-Gamal and Jaffe offer a timely analysis of the potentially perilous interaction of oil insecurity, mounting U.S. debt, and Middle East geopolitical conflicts. They argue that the future stability of the dollar and financial markets remains very much tied to the fate of oil, a sobering reflection on a key challenge to U.S. foreign policy and international financial diplomacy. Scholars and statesmen alike should take note of the provocative analysis in oil, Dollars, debt, and Crises."
― Senator Richard Lugar, Ranking Minority Member, U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee
"Oil, Dollars, Debt, and Crises is compelling reading, not simply because it clearly explains the global curse of 'black gold.' It also weaves together the interdependent relationships binding the inherently cyclical foundations of the petroleum sector with global currency dislocations, wealth transfer adjustments impacting emerging markets, radical income disruptions in countries that produce Oil (and other commodities), and the domestic and international repercussions for geopolitics and global violence. No other study articulates so pointedly the core global issues that impact today's global political economy. It takes the combined talents and analyses of two leading scholars from the overlapping professions of economics, Middle East studies, and energy studies to be able to provide the general public, scholarly professionals and policymakers alike with this seminal, pioneering study of the issues at the heart of today's globalized world."
― Edward L. Morse, Managing Director at Louis Capital Markets, former Chief Energy Economist at Lehman Brothers and publisher of Petroleum Intelligence Weekly