What does $200.00 bbl do to it, I wonder? "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
An adventure in Iran? Not for too long.
It was written written before today's prices, but it gives insight into where the Pentagon gets one aspect of its baseline theory.
What has changed since I completed this book in mid-2004? The world was then a less dangerous place. Thousands of Americans and tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had not yet died to settle empirically the question whether Iraq would become Singapore on the Euphrates or Yugoslavia with oil. North Korea's and Iran's nuclear ambitions were not yet so clear. Terrorism driven by an intolerant and totalitarian ideology had not yet metastasized so widely around the world. Climate change had not yet shifted from an apparent controversy to a broadly accepted global emergency. And the United States, the nation most responsible for creating these problems and best equipped to solve them, had not yet squandered so much reputation and goodwill.
Amory has blind spots in his analyses, but one has to respect the breadth of his efforts. (the above quote comes from the introduction to the Chinese edition.)
If anything in this study seems to you too good to be true, please remember Marshall McLuhan's remark: "Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity."
"Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity."
Sadly, only too true. Big discoveries imperil big vested interests. Often paradigm shifts are required for their potential to be realized. But we appear to be poised on the edge of such an event.
A letter to the editor of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette today said:
"Changed my voting. Now independent. Not voting for candidate when he, running mate or relatives have ever been in Big Oil....They stall. It is a conflict of interest. We don't need this."
Just one small sign of shifting attitudes. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
On July 1, the cost for refined fuel used by troops will jump from $127.68 a barrel to $170.94 - an astounding 34 percent increase in just six months and more than double what the Pentagon was paying three years ago.
One hundred years of poverty? As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
