Research Catalog

Title

The hidden hand of American hegemony : petrodollar recycling and international markets / David E. Spiro.

Author

Spiro, David E.

Publication

Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1999.

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Holdings

Details

Description

xiv, 177 pages : illustrations; 25 cm.

Summary

• "Between 1973 and 1980, the cost of crude oil rose suddenly and dramatically, precipitating convulsions in international politics. Conventional wisdom holds that international capital markets adjusted automatically and remarkably well: Enormous amounts of money flowed into oil-rich states, and efficient markets then placed that new money in cash-poor Third World economies. This massive reallocation of wealth is labeled petrodollar recycling."--BOOK JACKET.
• "David Spiro has followed the money trail, and the story he tells, based on interviews and a painstaking accumulation of fragmentary evidence, contradicts the accepted beliefs both in the particulars and in broad outline. Most of the sudden flush of new oil wealth did not go to poor oil-importing countries around the globe.
• Instead the United States made a deal with Saudi Arabia to sell it U.S. securities in secret, a deal resulting in a substantial portion of Saudi assets being held by the U.S. government. With this arrangement, the U.S. government violated its agreements with allies in the developed world. Spiro argues that American policy makers took this action to prop up otherwise intolerable levels of U.S. public debt.
• In effect, recycled OPEC wealth subsidized the debt-happy policies of the U.S. government as well as the debt-happy consumerism of its citizenry."--BOOK JACKET.

Series Statement

Cornell studies in political economy

Uniform Title

Cornell studies in political economy.

Subject

• Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
• International Monetary Fund
• Balance of payments > Arab countries
• Investments, Arab
• Petroleum products > Prices
• International finance
• United States > Foreign economic relations

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 159-167) and index.

Contents

1. Explaining Petrodollar Recycling -- 2. Defining the Principles of Allocation -- 3. Making Markets Work -- 4. The Failure of International Institutions -- 5. Competing for Capital -- 6. The Interpretation of Hegemony.

ISBN

080142884X (cloth : alk. paper)

LCCN

99022900

OCLC

ocm41039837

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries