Oil, Dollars, Debt, and Crises The Global Curse of Black Gold [Hardcover]

This book explains the links between past and present oil crises, financial crises, and geopolitical conflicts.Oil, Dollars, Debt, and Crises studies the links 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.Oil, Dollars, Debt, and Crises studies the links 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.Oil, Dollars, Debt, and Crises studies the causes of the current oil and global financial crisis and shows how Americas and the worlds growing dependence on oil has created a repeating pattern of banking, currency, and energy-price crises. Unlike other books on the current financial crisis, which have focused on U.S. indebtedness and American trade and economic policy, Oil, Dollars, Debt, and Crises 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 geopolitical conflicts, and eventually rising costs for energy. Only by addressing long-term energy policy challenges in the West, economic development challenges in the Middle East, and the investment horizons of financial market players can policy makers ameliorate the forces that have been causing repeating global economic crises.1. The challenges of resource curses and globalization; 2. New Middle East: childhood 197384 and adolescence 198595; 3. Road to the status quo: 19962008; 4. Globalization of Middle East dynamics; 5. Dollars and debt: the end of the dollar era?; 6. Motivations to attack or abandon the dollar; 7. Resource curses, global volatility, and crises; 8. Ameliorating the cycle; Conclusion.From the Foreword by James A. Baker III, Former U.S. Secretary of State