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The Real Oil Shock: How Oil

Transformed Money, Debt, and Finance


Ryan C. Smith
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Ryan C. Smith

The Real Oil Shock


How Oil Transformed
Money, Debt, and
Finance
The Real Oil Shock
Ryan C. Smith

The Real Oil Shock


How Oil Transformed Money, Debt, and Finance
Ryan C. Smith
San Francisco, CA, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-07130-0 ISBN 978-3-031-07131-7 (eBook)


https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07131-7

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Acknowledgments

Just as every work in the social sciences is built on a web of support and
scholarship, this book was made possible thanks to the help and guidance
of many. The Real Oil Shock was thanks to all of them.
I’d like to begin with my Ph.D. supervisors at the University of
Glasgow, Jeffrey Fear, Duncan Ross, and Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol,
for accepting me as a candidate, their generous support for my project
through my doctoral research, and guidance when access to sources and
world events threatened to derail my dissertation. Their deep knowledge
of business and finance, history, and instruction in the gritty details of the
craft closely guided my work through the years of my Ph.D.
My talks with Professor Fear on business history and cartel dynamics
framed my analysis of OPEC’s place in the petrocapital process. His
advice on the changing language seen for new techniques and technolo-
gies directed how I traced the development of financial practices during
the tumultuous 1970s.
Regular conversations with Professor Ross on the particulars of
banking and finance were essential in shaping my understanding of their
internal operations. Particularly, his recommendation to pursue the North
Sea Oil connection through the Bank of Scotland led to one of the most
fruitful avenues of exploration for my dissertation research.
Discussions with Professor Mourlon-Druol and participants in the
EURECON research project on financial market integration gave me
invaluable perspectives on the role of regulatory agencies during modern

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

globalization. His training in the latest archival research techniques gave


me the tools for gathering and processing the primary source materials at
the core of this research.
Professor Catherine Schenk’s advice was invaluable for understanding
the vagaries of tracking interbank operations and their interactions with
the critical Eurocurrency market. Her advice in Switzerland was especially
helpful for tackling the often diffuse and indirect development of financial
derivatives in bank archives.
Historical research is nothing without the archive. As such, I’d like
to thank the professionals at the Bank of England, the NatWest Group,
Barclay’s, and HSBC. Your rich arrays of source material formed the
bedrock of my research. I’d especially like to thank Dr. Snjezana Cirkovic
at the OPEC Research Library, Marcia Cavalinhos at the Bank for Inter-
national Settlements, and Hanieh Smerecka at the Bank of Scotland. Dr.
Cirkovic facilitated an invaluable glimpse into the worlds of OPEC and
OAPEC through your formidable collection of organizational and central
bank reports. Marcia Cavalinhos’ knowledge of the personal collections
that made up the bulk of the BIS’ materials provided critical insights into
the minds of the regulators confronting petrocapital. Hanieh Smerecka’s
deft navigation of the Bank of Scotland’s comprehensive records guided
my research to a deep wealth of material on banking practices during the
1970s.
My first steps toward researching the relationships between finance and
oil were taken under the guidance of my MA mentors Maziar Behrooz,
Sarah Crabtree, and Anthony D’Agostino. Their geopolitical, globally
oriented, and economically grounded perspectives shaped my trajectory
as a historian, laying the intellectual groundwork for this book’s entire
line of research and questioning.
My friends and colleagues at the University of Glasgow helped make
western Scotland into a home away from home. Their perspectives and
support through the ups and downs of graduate studies helped ground
me during the challenges that inevitably come with Ph.D. research.
I wish to thank my closest friends, my partner, and my family for their
care and support throughout my academic journey. I especially want to
thank my partner, for her irreplaceable love and support from getting me
into graduate school to completing my dissertation under lockdown, and
my parents, for their help in sustaining my academic career and always
finding new ways to stimulate my intellectual curiosity. I could not have
done this without them.
Contents

1 Introduction 1
2 Understanding Money and Finance 7
3 It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times 25
4 When Oil Shocked the Globe 45
5 A Monetary Revolution 69
6 Private Sector Takes the Control 99
7 A New Global Debt Cycle 115
8 Adapting with Derivatives 137
9 Revolution and Oil Shock 169
10 The Crash of 1982 199
11 Conclusion 217

Works Cited 223


Index 239

vii
List of Archives

Bank of England London, England, United Kingdom


Bank of Scotland Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Bank for International Basel, Switzerland
Settlements
Barclay’s Bank Manchester, England, United Kingdom
Hong Kong Shanghai Banking London, England, United Kingdom
Corporation
Midland Bank London, England, United Kingdom
National Westminster Bank Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Organization of Petroleum Vienna, Austria
Exporting Countries Research
Library
Public Library of US WikiLeaks
Diplomacy

ix
Abbreviations and Acronyms

ARAMCO Arab-American Oil Company


BIS Bank for International Settlements
CBoT Chicago Board of Trade
CEA Commodity Exchange Authority
CFTC Commodity Futures Trading Commission
CME Chicago Mercantile Exchange
G7 Group of Seven
GDP Gross Domestic Product
IMF International Monetary Fund
OAPEC Organization for Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries
OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
OPEC Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries
SIPRI Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
UAE United Arab Emirates

xi
List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 The global petrocapital process, 1973–1982 (Note Data


for this figure was collected from primary source archives,
including the Bank of Scotland, the Bank of England,
the Bank for International Settlements, and the OPEC
Research Library in conjunction with secondary literature
such as Mahmoud El-Gamal and Amy Myers Jaffe’s,
“Oil, Debt, Dollars, and Crisis”) 3
Fig. 2.1 Bank assets vs G7 GDP, adjusted for inflation (Note
Data for this figure was collected from Chapter V: The
International Credit and Capital Markets of the BIS
Forty-Fifth, Forty-Seventh, Fiftieth, and Fifty-Fourth
Annual Reports and the OECD Online Database
in nominal value) 10
Fig. 2.2 Correlation of inflation and price of oil (Note Data
for this figure was collected from the OECD’s Consumer
Price Index monthly data and the World Bank Pink Sheet
monthly commodity price data from September 1971
to December 1974. Both sets of monthly data were
calculated for correlation in Microsoft Excel and mapped
on a scatter plot) 20
Fig. 2.3 Average crude oil price per barrel, 1970–1973 (Note
Data for this figure is from the World Bank Pink Sheet
monthly historical commodity price database) 21

xiii
xiv LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 3.1 World average annual GDP growth percentage (Note


Data for this figure was collected from the World Bank’s
online databank) 26
Fig. 3.2 United States quarterly balance of payments, 1960–1971
(Note Data for this figure was collected from the OECD
Online Database for historical quarterly balance
of payments data by country) 33
Fig. 3.3 Government currency reserves, 1959–1972 (Note Data
for this figure was collected from the OECD Online
Database for historical monthly currency reserves data) 34
Fig. 3.4 US balance of payments and inflation rate, 1960–1971
(Note Data for this figure was collected from the OECD
Online Database for historical quarterly inflation rates
and balance of payments data) 36
Fig. 3.5 Map of global commodity flows, 1945–1973 (Note This
figure was created by the author) 38
Fig. 3.6 OPEC members (Note This figure represents the 1973
members of OPEC as per the OPEC General Secretary’s
1973 Report from the OPEC Research Library in Vienna,
Austria) 42
Fig. 3.7 OAPEC members (Note This figure represents the 1973
members of OAPEC as per the OAPEC General
Secretary’s 1973 Report from the OPEC Research
Library in Vienna, Austria) 43
Fig. 4.1 Price of oil per barrel in current prices, 1971–1974 (Note
Data for this figure is from the World Bank Pink Sheet
monthly historical commodity price database) 47
Fig. 4.2 Oil market spot prices per barrel in current US dollars,
1978–1980 (Note Data for this figure is from the World
Bank Pink Sheet monthly historical commodity price
database) 50
Fig. 4.3 Global average oil production (Note Data for this figure
is taken from the British Petroleum Statistical Review’s
oil production database) 52
Fig. 4.4 Global energy consumption (Note Data for this figure is
taken from the British Petroleum Statistical Review’s oil
production database) 52
Fig. 4.5 OPEC percentage breakdown of overall production (Note
Data for this figure is taken from the British Petroleum
Statistical Review’s oil production database) 55
LIST OF FIGURES xv

Fig. 4.6 Saudi Arabia national accounts, adjusted for inflation


(Note Data for this figure was collected from the Saudi
Arabian Monetary Authority’s Annual Statistics reports
from 1970 to 1983) 57
Fig. 4.7 Emirate of Kuwait GDP by sector, 1972 prices (Note
Data for this figure was collected from the Central
Bank of Kuwait’s Annual Reports from 1977 to 1981
from the OPEC Research Library in Vienna, Austria) 58
Fig. 4.8 Saudi national accounts bank service charges adjusted
for inflation (Note Data for this figure was collected
from the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority’s Annual
Statistics reports from 1970 to 1983 adjusted to 2010
prices) 62
Fig. 4.8 Gross borrowings by region, 1973–1983 (Note Data
for this figure was collected from Chapter V: The
International Credit and Capital Markets of the BIS
Forty-Fifth, Forty-Seventh, Fiftieth, and Fifty-Fourth
Annual Reports) 62
Fig. 4.9 Reported bank assets by external position, 1974–1982
(Note Data for this figure was collected from Chapter V:
The International Credit and Capital Markets of the BIS
Forty-Fifth, Forty-Seventh, Fiftieth, and Fifty-Fourth
Annual Reports and adjusted for inflation using Morgan
Friedman’s Inflation Calculator at westegg.com) 66
Fig. 5.1 Reported bank assets by external position, percentage
breakdown (Note Data for this figure was collected
from Chapter V: The International Credit and Capital
Markets of the BIS Forty-Fifth, Forty-Seventh, Fiftieth,
and Fifty-Fourth Annual Reports. The category “Middle
East” in the BIS data refers to all non-OPEC Middle
Eastern countries) 73
Fig. 5.2 Reported bank liabilities by external position, percentage
breakdown (Note Data for this figure was collected
from Chapter V: The International Credit and Capital
Markets of the BIS Forty-Fifth, Forty-Seventh, Fiftieth,
and Fifty-Fourth Annual Reports. The category “Middle
East” in the BIS data refers to all non-OPEC Middle
Eastern countries) 74
xvi LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 5.3 Growth of international lending, adjusted for inflation


(Note Data for this figure was collected from Chapter V:
The International Credit and Capital Markets of the BIS
Forty-Fifth, Forty-Seventh, Fiftieth, and Fifty-Fourth
Annual Reports and adjusted for inflation to 2010
prices using Morgan Friedman’s Inflation Calculator
at westegg.com) 75
Fig. 5.4 Saudi currency reserves, 1964–1982 (Note Data for this
figure was collected from the World Bank’s online
databank for annual currency reserves data by country) 76
Fig. 5.5 US Federal Reserve discount rate, 1977–1978 (Note
The data for this figure was collected from the St. Louis
Federal Reserve online database) 82
Fig. 5.6 Estimated size of the Euromarket, adjusted for inflation
(Note Data for this figure was collected from Chapter
V; International Credit and Capital Markets of the BIS
Forty-Fifth, Forty-Sixth, Fiftieth, and Fifty-First Annual
Reports and adjusted to 2010 prices) 88
Fig. 5.7 Users of Euromarket funds, percentage breakdown
(Note Data for this figure was collected from Chapter
V; International Credit and Capital Markets of the BIS
Forty-Fifth, Forty-Sixth, Fiftieth, and Fifty-First Annual
Reports and adjusted for inflation to 2010 prices using
The Inflation Calculator by Morgan Friedman
at westegg.com. BIS data began referring to all OPEC
members as, “Oil Exporting Countries” beginning
in 1974) 89
Fig. 5.8 Sources of Euromarket funds (Note Data for this figure
was collected from Chapter V; International Credit
and Capital Markets of the BIS Forty-Fifth, Forty-Sixth,
Fiftieth, and Fifty-First Annual Reports and adjusted
for inflation to 2010 prices) 90
Fig. 7.1 Growth of international loan Syndications, Bank
of Scotland (Note Data for this figure was collected
from the Bank of Scotland Record of the Minutes
for 1973 to 1982 from the Bank of Scotland
collection at the Lloyds Banking Group plc Archives
(Edinburgh). Values have been converted to US dollars
where necessary) 124
LIST OF FIGURES xvii

Fig. 7.2 Bank of Scotland international exposure, 1973–1982


(Note Data for this figure was collected from the Bank
of Scotland Record of the Minutes for 1973 to 1982
from the Bank of Scotland collection at the Lloyds
Banking Group plc Archives (Edinburgh). Loans
were then organized by country receiving the loan
and converted to US Dollar value with the resulting data
mapped in QGIS) 126
Fig. 7.3 Bank of Scotland syndicated lending by area of investment
(Note Data for this figure was collected from the Bank
of Scotland Record of the Minutes for 1973 to 1982
from the Bank of Scotland collection at the Lloyds
Banking Group plc Archives [Edinburgh]) 127
Fig. 7.4 Percentage of syndicated loans finance with Eurocurrency
credits (Note Data for this figure was collected
from the Bank of Scotland Record of the Minutes
for 1973 to 1982 from the Bank of Scotland collection
at the Lloyds Banking Group plc Archives [Edinburgh]) 128
Fig. 8.1 Central bank rates, 1970–1974 (Note Data for this figure
was collected from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
online database and the Bank of England’s historical
interest rates online database) 144
Fig. 8.2 Government bond rates, 1967–1982 (Note Data for this
figure was collected from the IMF International Financial
Statistics Reports from 1968 to 1981) 144
Fig. 8.3 Eurodollar interest rate (Note Data for this figure
was collected from the National Westminster Bank
Interest Rate Committee Market Intelligence Reports
from February 1971 to October 1974 from the NatWest
Group Archives in Edinburgh, Scotland) 150
Fig. 8.4 US Federal Reserve Interest Rates, 1967–1969 (Note
Data for this figure was collected from the Federal
Reserve Bank of St. Louis online database) 154
Fig. 8.5 Interest rates for bank instruments (Note Data for this
figure was collected from the National Westminster
Bank Interest Rate Committee Market Intelligence
Reports from February 1971 to December 1975
from the NatWest Group Archives in Edinburgh, United
Kingdom) 161
Fig. 9.1 Estimated global oil production, OPEC vs non-OPEC
(Note The data for this figure is taken from the British
Petroleum Statistical Review’s oil production database) 170
xviii LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 9.2 Oil market spot prices, inflation adjusted US dollars


per barrel (Note The data for this figure is taken
from the British Petroleum Statistical Review’s oil
production database) 171
Fig. 9.3 Petrodollar-debt cycle (Note This figure is an illustration
by the author of the process described by Jeffrey Frieden
in “Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the 20th
Century” generated in QGIS) 172
Fig. 9.4 Petrodollar-debtor capital flows (Note Data for this figure
was collected from primary source archives, including
the Bank of Scotland, the Bank of England, the Bank
for International Settlements, and the OPEC Research
Library in conjunction with secondary literature such
as Mahmoud el-Gamal and Amy Myers Jaffe’s, Oil, Debt,
Dollars, and Crisis generated in QGIS) 174
Fig. 9.5 Inflation and the Volcker Shock (Note Data for this
figure was collected from the Federal Reserve Bank of St.
Louis online database and the OECD online database
on monthly inflation and interest rates) 175
Fig. 9.6 Saudi oil exports by region (Note Data for this figure
was collected from the Saudi Arabian Monetary
Authority’s Annual Statistics reports from 1970 to 1983) 176
Fig. 9.7 OPEC arms purchases, 1973–1979 (Note Data for this
figure was collected from the SIPRI annual arms sales
database broken down by arms purchaser) 180
Fig. 9.8 Iranian arms expenditures by type of weapon system (Note
Data for this figure was collected from the SIPRI annual
arms sales database for Iran broken down by weapons
system type) 184
Fig. 10.1 Kuwaiti Central Bank monetary survey, millions
of nominal Kuwaiti dinars (Note Data in this figure
was collected from the Central Bank of Kuwait Annual
Reports for 1977 to 1983 from the OPEC Research
Library in Vienna, Austria) 201
Fig. 10.2 Bank of Scotland syndicated lending exposure by area
of activity (Note Data for this figure was collected
from the Bank of Scotland Governing Board Minutes
for 1973 to 1982 from the Bank of Scotland archives) 212
Fig. 10.3 New international lending by area of activity (Note
Data for this figure was collected from the Bank
for International Settlements Forty-Fifth, Forty-Seventh,
and Fiftieth Annual Reports) 213
List of Tables

Table 2.1 Correlation data of inflation and the price of oil 19


Table 4.1 OPEC investible surplus, 1974–1982 60
Table 4.2 Growth of global economy and size of international
finance, 1975–1983 64
Table 4.3 Correlations, global growth and international finance,
1975–1982 65
Table 5.1 Euromarket growth and volatility 85
Table 7.1 Bank of Scotland international loan syndications,
1973–1982 122
Table 8.1 Central bank interest rate volatility 146
Table 8.2 Central bank rate correlations 147
Table 8.3 Correlations of central bank bond rates 149
Table 8.4 Interest rate volatility on financial instruments 158
Table 8.5 Financial instrument correlations 160
Table 9.1 OPEC investible surplus in billions of nominal USD 173
Table 9.2 Global energy consumption, 1973–1983 177
Table 9.3 Percentage of GDP spent on arms 181
Table 10.1 GDP Percentage change for Middle East OPEC
members, 1979–1983 200
Table 10.2 Arab-owned foreign assets in billions of dollars 201
Table 10.3 OPEC investible surplus in billions of nominal USD 205
Table 10.4 Capital flows between BIS area banks and selected
regions, 1973–1983 206

xix
CHAPTER 1

Introduction

We are living in a world that has been shaped by the demands of oil and
finance. Under the neoliberal capitalist order these two sectors enjoyed
central roles in setting the pace of the global economy. Shocks in the
price of oil, as recent events like the record-high oil prices experienced
following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine have reminded us, tend not
to stay confined to the fuel pump and radiate throughout our economic
system. One particular avenue of influence that is often not seen but is
widely felt is the reinvestment of oil profits in global financial markets.
This question was first thoroughly examined in Mahmoud el-Gamal and
Amy Myers Jaffe’s Oil, Dollars, Debt, and Crises: The Global Curse of
Black Gold which traced the relationships that formed the endogenous
petrocapital cycle, which is the reinvestment of the profits reaped by
oil exporters in financial markets and how this changed global credit
and financial markets. The Real Oil Shock builds on their earlier work
by digging deeper into the birth of this process in the Oil Shocks of
the 1970s. It will do this by examining how OPEC’s windfall capital
fundamentally changed financial markets, practices, and the creation of
money.
What The Real Oil Shock is examining is not a new phenomenon
in economic history. The human experience abounds with instances
where dramatic redistributions of wealth and resources created signif-
icant changes in the existing social and economic order. An excellent

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1


Switzerland AG 2022
R. C. Smith, The Real Oil Shock,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07131-7_1
2 R. C. SMITH

example comes from the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Exploita-


tion of gold, silver, and other precious metals in the Americas provided
the Spanish monarchy with an enormous windfall of liquid capital. This
was spent by the Spanish monarchy on projects of the state, fighting
wars, and expanding their influence in Europe. This put increasing quan-
tities of Spanish doubloons in circulation outside of domestic markets.
Spanish gold had become the capital for Dutch, English, and French
merchants for financing their own commercial, industrial, and colo-
nial enterprises whose activities were the foundation of early modern
capitalism in Europe.1
The same can also be said for the investment of oil money and
the beginning of the neoliberal world order beginning in 1973. That
year saw the onset of the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Coun-
tries (OPEC) Oil Embargo that saw the price of oil quadrupled nearly
overnight. For OPEC’s members, this meant an unprecedented wind-
fall as one of the largest wealth transfers in history poured new revenues
into their coffers. Their reinvestment of approximately $143.8 billion in
nominal value between 1974 and 1982 in New York, London, and Swiss
financial markets transformed international finance, spurred the global-
ization of capital, and made the dramatic growth experienced by finance
during the neoliberal period possible. This endogenous petrocapital cycle,
which was first described in detail by Mahmoud el-Gamal and Amy Myers
Jaffe and is depicted in Fig. 1.1, came to dominate the global capitalist
economy. It also directly laid the foundation for the debt cycles which
came to characterize the neoliberal world beginning with the 1982 Debt
Crisis and tipped the balance between public sector and private sector
control over the creation of money, a process which Mary Mellor refers
to as the privatization of money.2
Including petrocapital as a critical component of neoliberalism’s rise
both complements and contrasts the larger arguments over the origins of
this period of economic history. Most of the main explanations, partic-
ularly the neoclassical, monetarist argument of the inevitable frictions
brought on by state economic intervention, the neo-Keynesian assertion
of neoliberalism as a deliberate attack on regulated capitalism, the Marxist
analysis of neoliberalism as a response to falling rate of profit triggered
by global reindustrialization, and International Political Economy (IPE)
analysis which views this process as a part of larger shifts in the capitalist
world, tend not to make the connection between oil, finance, and the
privatization of money creation. Through examining this missing link, The
1 INTRODUCTION 3

Fig. 1.1 The global petrocapital process, 1973–1982 (Note Data for this figure
was collected from primary source archives, including the Bank of Scotland,
the Bank of England, the Bank for International Settlements, and the OPEC
Research Library in conjunction with secondary literature such as Mahmoud
El-Gamal and Amy Myers Jaffe’s, “Oil, Debt, Dollars, and Crisis”)

Real Oil Shock will provide a materialist, global explanation for the envi-
ronmental transformation of world capitalism that began with the 1973
Oil Embargo and the birth of a new global debt cycle that lies at the heart
of modern financial history.
Petrodollars were more than just a source of capital for investment.
They were a pool of assets accumulated by a historic global transfer of
wealth which substantially re-oriented critical international capital flows.
As the petrocapital cycle grew, its influence over financialization became
more extensive and systemic. This was thanks to what Carlo Edoardo
Altamura calls the privatization of processing petrocapital, which was the
failure of regulatory authorities to effectively take control over resolving
the balance of payments crisis triggered by the 1973 Oil Embargo. This
4 R. C. SMITH

slip in control gave the private sector free reign to define the petro-
capital process according to their needs and priorities. OPEC’s windfall
capital also laid the groundwork for many business practices and market
conditions which are often taken for granted by international finance like
international loan syndication, swaps, and financial futures. Their central
role is further reinforced by the fallout of the 1979 Oil Shock, which trig-
gered global economic contraction, political chaos for OPEC’s Persian
Gulf members, and the unraveling of the 1974–1982 global debt cycle.
The ultimate result was the more liquid, internationalized financial system
that sits at the heart of the neoliberal economic world.3
The inherent structural instability in this arrangement is a central
theme for understanding this critical period. The petrocapital recycling
era was created by the sudden, total disruption of the capitalist economic
order of the 1950s and 1960s which had been constructed by the
United States in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. This
order developed while the United States held an overwhelmingly domi-
nant economic position and was vulnerable to the disruption of the Oil
Embargo because of the postwar recovery of Western Europe & Japan
and thanks to its dependence on cheap, reliable flows of commodities
from the colonized and decolonizing nations of the Global South. This
upheaval also guaranteed the petrocapital system that existed between
1974 and 1982 would depend on a similar state of imbalance, namely that
OPEC would continue to effectively set the tone for the global oil market
and that finance could maintain consistent operations despite fluctuations
in petrocapital investment. In the end, these structural flaws were greater
than the sum of any innovations or responses to the petrocapital recycling
problem. Even the collapse of this order with the Global Debt Crisis of
1982 did little to alter this new trajectory which had already laid the
foundations of globalized debt, created more liquid channels for moving
finance internationally, and thus ensured the material for accelerating the
growth of private sector money creation would remain central to the new
economic order.
This case will be made by analyzing archival materials retrieved from
the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Bank of England, and
several other British banks with varying degrees of involvement in the
petrocapital cycle. Their central role in processing the global redistribu-
tion of petrocapital deposits makes British banks a useful body of source
material for measuring changes to market conditions, bank practices, and
financial realities. The range of material, from the relatively regionally
1 INTRODUCTION 5

and locally focused Bank of Scotland to the highly global Barclay’s Bank,
makes it possible to determine how extensively these changes were pene-
trating one of the largest nodes of global finance. Even though these
British financial actors were not the largest beneficiaries of the petrodollar
cycle, they nonetheless provided a highly informed, active perspective on
how finance was changing between 1973 and 1982.
Throughout this work I will be regularly referring to two different,
connected events which are both popularly known as the Oil Shocks of
the 1970s. These, specifically, are the 1973 OPEC Oil Embargo and the
1979 Oil Shock that followed the Iranian Revolution of the same year.
Both are often referred to generally as shocks as a reflection of their signif-
icantly negative consequences for capitalist core powers like the United
States and their European allies. This work will, instead, be referring to
OPEC’s dramatic price increases and production cuts in 1973 as the Oil
Embargo while the decrease in Persian Gulf production that followed the
Iranian Revolution of 1979 will be referred to as the Oil Shock. The
reason for this difference is to be more precise in the coming analysis and
to emphasize a critical distinction between the two events. The Oil Shock
of 1973 was a direct product of deliberate action by OPEC’s members
and as such will be referred to as the Oil Embargo of 1973. The Oil
Shock of 1979, by contrast, was the result of a grey swan event in the
form of the Iranian Revolution. Its origins are deeply connected to the
Oil Embargo and while there were growing signs of Iranian instability,
there was nonetheless significant confidence among financial actors and
foreign policy thinkers that OPEC’s members would remain a stable, vital
part of the changing world. The Iranian Revolution was, in this context,
foreseeable but highly unexpected which sets the Oil Shock of 1979 apart
from the Oil Embargo.

Notes
1. Ernesto Bassi, “Much More Than the Half Has Never Been Told:
Narrating the Rise of Capitalism from New Granada’s Shores”, The Latin
Americanist, Vol. 61, No. 4 (December 2017), 529–531.
2. Jeffrey Frieden, Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth
Century, W. W. Norton and Company (New York, NY: 2006), 364–
367; Mahmoud A. El-Gamal and Amy Myers Jaffe, Oil, Dollars, Debt,
and Crises: The Global Curse of Black Gold, Cambridge University Press
(Cambridge, UK: 2010), 1–3; Mary Mellor, Debt or Democracy: Public
6 R. C. SMITH

Money for Sustainability and Social Justice, Pluto Press (London: 2016),
8–11.
3. Carlo Edoardo Altamura, European Banks and the Rise of International
Finance: The post-Bretton Woods Era, Routledge (London & New York:
2017), 2, 27–28.
CHAPTER 2

Understanding Money and Finance

The emergence of the petrocapital cycle during the 1970s was a devel-
opment which relied on multiple historical contingencies to come about
which include, but are not limited to, changes in how money was created,
financialization, and the Great Inflation of the 1970s. Each of these
developments were essential components and consequences of the new
petrocapital cycle. There are many competing arguments and explanations
for each of these phenomena and unraveling what they suggest is neces-
sary for explaining why and how the petrocapital recycling processes of
the 1970s facilitated the transformation of the global capitalist economy.
The explanations for money creation and privatization, financialization,
and inflation will each be addressed in detail in this chapter along with
how they are insufficient in fully explaining this period.
Understanding the explanations for how money is created is essen-
tial for understanding how petrocapital impacted global finance and its
relationship to the concept of money privatization. There are three main
theories of the role of finance in economics and how it relates to the
creation of money. These are fractional reserve theory which is also known
as credit multiplier theory, intermediation theory, and credit creation
theory. Fractional reserve theory, which was dominant between the 1930s
and the 1960s, argues that all money creation is a product of state institu-
tions. Banks exist to redistribute money through accepting deposits and
extending lines of credit. Under fractional reserve theory, this capacity is

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 7


Switzerland AG 2022
R. C. Smith, The Real Oil Shock,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07131-7_2
8 R. C. SMITH

based on the value of all deposits and assets held by banks and cannot
exceed a certain degree of leverage which is set by regulatory authorities.
Intermediation theory, which has been dominant since the 1960s, argues
that banks also have no direct role in money creation and instead exist
solely to redistribute capital through depositing and lending.1
Credit creation stands in stark contrast to the intermediation and frac-
tional reserve theories of money and banking. Credit creation theory,
according to Richard A. Werner, was the dominant theory of banking and
money prior to the 1930s and has since enjoyed a significant resurgence
in interest following the 2008 Financial Crisis. This theory argues banks,
state-owned and private, create money through the process of extending
lines of credit and loans potentially completely out of nothing. These
loans then become money after they are withdrawn and used by the recip-
ient of the new line of credit. Mary Mellor further argues this process
of credit creation requires the creation of an equivalent amount of debt,
meaning all new credit requires new debts or assets to be acquired. Wern-
er’s work with a Bavarian banking cooperative provides a specific example
of this process in action. Werner applied for a loan of e200,000 from this
cooperative. He then examined the bank’s documented reserve assets and
found there was no significant change after the loan was deposited in his
account and was approved after thirty-five minutes of processing. This,
based on Mellor’s arguments, suggests new debts were now counted as
assets which would balance out any net negative impact on bank reserve
assets. In effect, this means all money that is created by private sector
activities is ultimately based on bank lines of credit and the corresponding
debts associated with those loans.2
This is the foundation of what Mary Mellor refers to as the privati-
zation of money. According to Mellor, the privatization of money was
a significant change in the control over money creation from state-
controlled banks and institutions to privately created bank debt extended
as money. This swing in the monetary balance of power was accomplished
thanks to the increasing capacity of the financial industry to extend credit,
securitize assets, and expand debt loads to unprecedented heights. By
doing so, argues Mellor, private sector finance successfully usurped the
long-unchallenged monopoly on money creation long enjoyed by state
institutions. According to Mellor, credit creation began reaching critical
mass in the late 1960s and accelerated as finance’s ability to process debt
expanded. This capacity found ideal conditions to flourish and exceed the
abilities of states thanks to the neoliberal revolution that has defined the
2 UNDERSTANDING MONEY AND FINANCE 9

neoliberal period and structural changes to the global economic order


which include the collapse of Bretton Woods, the slowdown of industrial
output in the capitalist world following commodity price increases, and
the globalization of credit markets.3
This moment in time directly ties the petrocapital boom years of
the 1970s to the privatization of money. Even though Bretton Woods
introduced further volatility and uncertainty in markets, it alone did
not significantly alter the quantity of resources available to international
finance even as it increased the variety of opportunities. Processing petro-
capital, by contrast, provided a significant quantity of deposits that came
in conjunction with the historically unprecedented demand for credit in
the wake of the 1973 Oil Embargo. Handling these new flows of capital
generated unprecedented quantities of new lending, a process which fits
squarely within the assumptions of the credit creation model. What partic-
ularly brings petrocapital and privation of money together is what Carlo
Edoardo Altamura refers to as the privatization of capital flows. This
refers to the failure of state and non-governmental organizations like the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organization for Economic
Development (OECD) to decisively respond to the 1973 Oil Embargo
and effectively left the private sector in control of processing petrocap-
ital funds. This transformation of money happened just as international
finance was entering a period of dramatic transformation.4

Financialization
The 1970s was a time of enormous change and transformation for the
international financial system. This process, which is known as finan-
cialization, is an umbrella term that includes the development of truly
global credit markets, the rise of new financial instruments to facilitate the
movement of capital, and the dramatic expansion of the influence of the
financial sector in international economics. The world of finance changed
dramatically in these tumultuous years with international lending soaring,
markets swelling in size, and new financial instruments leaping onto the
global stage. This transformation was, without any doubt, necessary for
the privatization of money creation and the emergence of the neoliberal
world order.5
One effective way of explaining the nature of this change is comparing
the scale of international bank assets to the gross domestic product of
the G7 nations, as shown in Fig. 2.1. As shown in Fig. 2.1, from 1974
10 R. C. SMITH

to 1982 the overall size of all bank assets tracked by the BIS increased
substantially compared to the seven largest economies on the planet. In
1974 bank assets came in at a total of $214 billion which was slightly
more than the smallest of the G7, Canada, whose GDP was $151 billion.
In 1979 the situation was completely different with bank assets valued at
an estimated $1.110 trillion, an amount making it larger than the second
largest economy on the planet, Japan, whose GDP in that year was $911
billion. This explosion in value greatly exceeded the rate at which the
combined GDP of the G7 grew during this period. The G7’s collective
growth rate, from 1974 to 1979, was overall an increase in nominal size
of 68% and an inflation-adjusted increase of 7%. When compared to BIS
reported nominal bank assets expanding by 418 and 73% in inflation-
adjusted value during the same period there is no question the growth of
financial assets on a global scale was happening at a meteoric rate.
There are three broad theories on why this rapid increase of financial
activity and innovation began during the 1970s. These are the neoclas-
sical, Marxist, counter-globalization, and international political economy
(IPE) theories. Neoclassical theory claims the main causes of financial
innovations in this period were the result of technological develop-
ments, new methods of business organization, and the emergence of new
markets. All these developments created an ideal environment for the

Fig. 2.1 Bank assets vs G7 GDP, adjusted for inflation (Note Data for this
figure was collected from Chapter V: The International Credit and Capital
Markets of the BIS Forty-Fifth, Forty-Seventh, Fiftieth, and Fifty-Fourth Annual
Reports and the OECD Online Database in nominal value)
2 UNDERSTANDING MONEY AND FINANCE 11

surge in financial innovation. For the Marxist argument, the inevitable


declining rate of profit in capitalist accumulation which claims declining
returns on capital investments following decades of economic boom
times forced capitalists to find new means of accumulating surplus value
through financialization. For the neo-Keynesian or counter-globalization
position, financialization was due to the rise of the neoliberal economic
ideology. Such works put deregulation and changes in government policy
at the center of the conversation, alleging these were the key factors in
the explosion of global financialization.
The neoclassical position argues financialization was largely the product
of the deregulation of the financial sector, now unburdened by state inter-
vention, fueled a dramatic period of intellectual and economic innovation.
For theorists who focus specifically on finance, the Oil Embargo and Oil
Shock are everything from a simple catalyst and barely mentioned source
of wealth to one more symptom of the increasing economic deteriora-
tion of the 1970s. Some neoclassicists do argue the Oil Embargo of 1973
helped break the increasingly unsustainable postwar consensus, paving the
way for deregulation and free flow of capital and they often place it as less
critical than the downfall of the Bretton Woods monetary system with
the 1971 Nixon Shock. Financialization was also the predictable, unavoid-
able consequence of the contradictions between government intervention
in the economy and the distortions it wrought that could only end
with capital breaking free once again. These flaws manifested in growing
inflation throughout the 1960s which culminated in stagflation and
commodity prices spikes like those associated with the 1973 Oil Embargo.
The biggest driver for new financial innovations like portfolio invest-
ment theory and the derivatives trade was the accumulated knowledge
of American financiers and academics which guided a process of contin-
uous innovation who now had the freedom to experiment. This heavily
intellectual process leaves the Oil Embargo, Oil Shock, and petrodollars
largely unmentioned and unexplored.6
One aspect which features prominently in both economic history and
the process of financialization is the Eurocurrency market. This was
an international money market which was formed by surplus American
dollars that had been invested and deposited in European banks. These
deposits were used to create credits which were lent in a largely unreg-
ulated, stateless money market. This market, which became critical for
handling the petrocapital recycling process between 1974 and 1982,
12 R. C. SMITH

developed thanks to the specific conditions of postwar regulatory envi-


ronments. Here, Bretton Woods enters the equation again as the key
turning point that, “freed money from the ‘straightjacket’ of gold stocks”
while the Oil Embargo, Oil Shock, and petrodollars receive little discus-
sion beyond their role in contributing to the volatility of the 1970s It
was this devaluation, neoclassicists argue, and not the significant material
changes unleashed by the 1973 Oil Embargo that made the era of finan-
cialization, money privatization, and the neoliberal order happen. Even
though it is true the Eurocurrency market played a significant role in
these developments, its deep relationship with petrocapital was a much
more critical component to its role in furthering financialization during
the 1970s than anything Richard Nixon did. This logic even extends to
the Global South, with emphasis given more to monetary policies and
balance of payments conditions than changes in the conditions facing the
underlying commodities that drove economic activity.7
Technological change is also a key part of the story. The 1970s did see
the emergence of information and computer technology as a factor in the
administration of global finance. One of the first such examples was the
1973 founding and rapid growth of the Society for Worldwide Interbank
Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) which made near-instantaneous,
global communication between financial institutions possible.8 Daniel
Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw provide the most effective description of how
this impacted financialization:

But once information began to flow more freely with improved and
less expensive phone service, fax machines, and computerization (and, of
course, with increased travel), entire economic systems became more trans-
parent. With speed and reach of new information technology, governments
can no longer keep up. As information flies around the world, people can
compare and contrast; they can trade knowledge instantaneously; they can
act upon it. Investors can make far more informed decisions no matter
where they sit.9

Regardless of what aspect they focus on, the shared consensus is very clear.
The development of financialization was driven on by a steady drumbeat
of an increasingly sophisticated, innovative industry which was effectively
responding to an increasingly volatile market, a position that is clearly
in alignment with Spiro’s treatment of petrodollar recycling as a brilliant
innovation in the face of adverse circumstances.
2 UNDERSTANDING MONEY AND FINANCE 13

Marxist theory centers their understanding of financialization on the


growing pressure of the falling rate of profit. According to his argument,
the postwar economic consensus crumbled because the existing economic
policy could not grapple effectively with the steadily declining profit
margins of the marketplace and was triggering inflation through public
spending. Under this framework, the Oil Embargo was triggered by such
spending and the price shock was caused by increasing inflation rather
than being a key catalyst for it. Financialization was the consequence of
anti-inflationary policies that made it possible for financial institutions to
scoop up the newly freed surplus value gained from cutbacks in labor
forces and manufacturing assets. For Marxist theorists and researchers
who point to the falling rate of profit, financialization was sustained by
this newly available surplus value. The ultimate picture is one of capi-
talism inevitably progressing toward financialization with specific events
only serving to accelerate an existing process. Some, like Francois Ches-
nais, come closer to the question of petrocapital by agreeing it was critical
for creating the modern debt cycle which was initiated by the recycling
of OPEC surplus wealth, but this is a consequence of the falling rate
of profit. Though the general tendency of rates of profit to fall is a
clear, observable phenomenon it does not on its own sufficiently explain
financialization or the oil price shocks of the 1970s.10
Most other advocates of neo-Keynesian theory are completely at odds
with the neoclassical line of reasoning. For these critics of neoliberal polit-
ical economy, the place of deregulation and state power plays a critical
role. One of the most well-known summations of this position is Naomi
Klein’s Shock Doctrine theory. She claims the deregulatory experiment
began on September 11, 1973 following the CIA-supported coup of
Chilean President Salvador Allende by General Augusto Pinochet. As
Klein claims, this process of deregulation required considerable polit-
ical violence and a sustained propaganda campaign which she calls shock
therapy. This model was then duplicated by British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher who used the Falklands War of 1982 and the Miner’s
Strike as a political shock to stymie her critics, implement policies of
deregulation, and usher in the privatization of critical state industries.11
For Klein and others who share their critique, it is essential to under-
stand the intellectual origins of these ideas which are often traced to the
United States during the Great Depression. The emphasis is often on
conservative think tanks, free market intellectuals like Milton Friedman,
and conservative politicians as the main vehicle for the dismantling of the
14 R. C. SMITH

Keynesian consensus in the United States. One especially central aspect to


these developments was the emergence of free trade agreements and their
associated institutions like the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs
(GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). These critics of
neoclassical arguments emphasize the development of a specific ideology
as the first motion in a chain of events ending with the ascension of
finance in the global economy over claims regarding the inevitable distor-
tions caused by state interventions in economic affairs. Unfortunately,
they all lack a clear explanation as to why financial actors had sufficient
means and resources to act on the opportunities offered by the wave of
deregulation that began with Pinochet’s military dictatorship.12
Each of these arguments has certain shortcomings in explaining the
financialization process. The neoclassical analysis treats the rise of finan-
cialization as mostly the product of innovations internal to the financial
industry while also showing something of a presentist bias where the
fact that financialization is the norm now means its rise was clear, easily
predicted, and the result of a steady, ongoing intellectual and economic
process. In doing so, they diminish the role of specific world historical
events outside the realm of business and focuses heavily on the importance
of actors in the developed world at the expense of OPEC’s members and
the broader Global South. Even researchers who are critical of financial-
ization’s effects fall prey to this problem with some neoclassicists implying
financialization was an inevitable consequence of a broader, necessary
deregulation of the marketplace. Marxist theory is even more diffuse,
focusing too heavily on class dynamics and is highly deterministic in
analysis with little discussion of contingent events. Neo-Keynesian theory
places most of its emphasis on political and intellectual developments at
the expense of the role played by the economic shocks of the 1970s in
bringing about these shifts. The consistent result is an understanding of
the financialization which references the broader volatility of the period
without specifically connecting developments like oil price volatility with
developments in the world of finance. Nothing better demonstrates these
shortcomings than the debate over inflation, the accepted greatest driver
of economic volatility in this period and critical factor in understanding
why finance developed as it did.
2 UNDERSTANDING MONEY AND FINANCE 15

Inflation
Understanding the causes of inflation during the 1970s is central to
understanding the volatile environment which was essential for making
financialization possible. This question is an especially fraught one
thanks to how hotly debated the causes of the Great Inflation of the
1970s continue to be, particularly because the clashing explanations for
this tumultuous period represent significantly different ways of under-
standing economics. The two main arguments on this subject are best
described as monetarism, which claims inflation was primarily a monetary
phenomenon that even extended to oil prices and is driven by exces-
sive public spending, and the cost-push model, while the other argues
that commodity price shocks, including the 1973 Oil Embargo, were
responsible for driving inflationary pressures during this period. If, as
is argued in the monetarist position, the causes of the Great Inflation
can be found in Bretton Woods and excessive state spending then the
role of primary petrocapital recycling would, by implication, be largely
limited to the direct consequences of such investing. If, however, the
commodity price-shock argument holds true then the effects of the Oil
Embargo must be treated as a fundamental shift in the global economy
with multiple second-order consequences for all aspects of the primary
recycling process extending beyond the direct consequences of specific
investment decisions.13
Resolving this question of the causes of inflation becomes critical for
understanding financialization thanks to the relationships between infla-
tionary patterns and interest rates in this period. Interest rates, particularly
short-term ones, tend to increase during times of higher inflation or tight
credit and decrease in times of stability or when easy credit is needed.
This pattern held somewhat true during the 1970s, both publicly and
privately, though its effectiveness was somewhat mixed in achieving the
desired result of reducing inflation. In the case of private banks, such
as National Westminster and Barclay’s, the incentive to reduce lending
and keep control of what limited assets they have in times of rising infla-
tion drives their own interest rates up in conjunction with central bank
rates. These rates had a direct impact on the cost of lending, return on
investment for money market operators, and the value of the growing
field of financial derivatives. On a more fundamental level, their volatility
during the 1970s was a key driver for the creation and adoption of these
instruments by financial actors.14
16 R. C. SMITH

One of the most succinct, modern expressions of the monetary posi-


tion can be found in Christopher A. Sims’ research on fiscal policy and
inflation in the 1970s. As Sims argues, “It is a standard result in equilib-
rium models that recognize the government budget constraint as part of
the model (sometimes called ‘fiscal theory of the price level’ or ‘FTPL’
models) that when rational, forward-looking agents believe that newly
issued nominal government debt is only partially backed by future taxes,
debt issue is inflationary,” a position which very clearly places the cause
of inflation at the feet of excessive deficit spending by state bodies. In
Sims’ case, the spate of deficit spending which occurred in the 1970s
was unprecedented in US history, creating monetary and fiscal uncer-
tainty. This supposition is supported by Sims’ analysis of flex-price models
which, according to him, provide a more thorough understanding of this
dynamic during the 1970s. The problem was the value of the deficit in
contrast to the value of all outstanding debt which reached its highest
level, 20%, in 1975. This ratio argument allows Sims to argue the numer-
ically larger Reagan deficits were less onerous as they were a smaller
percentage compared to outstanding US debts than was the case during
the 1970s, though the specificity of his claim and lack of repetition of
inflation during the 1980s casts doubt on the strength of his position.15
This case is also made for the United Kingdom by Jingwen Fan, Patrick
Minford, and Zhirong Ou who test the FTPL model against what they
describe as the UK’s 1970s expansionary fiscal policies which were thanks,
according to them, to a lack of clear monetary goals which effectively
guaranteed inflation would be the result. They describe British poli-
cies as aiming to achieve growth and reduce unemployment as much as
possible, goals which they claim will inevitably trigger inflationary pres-
sures, which dated back to Bretton Woods. The Bretton Woods system,
they claim, constrained British policy options and only provided devalu-
ation, which was only done twice prior to 1970, as an effective relief for
these problems. The breakdown of Bretton Woods ended these external
constraints, giving rise to a period where, according to Fan, Minford,
and Ou, UK monetary policy had no new nominal target to replace the
old Bretton Woods exchange rate. This failure led to a lack of effective
fiscal discipline, leading to a series of different policy measures ranging
from deposit limitations to price controls all of which failed to address
the underlying problem. Both their classic FTPL and Orthodox models
largely confirm these suppositions, providing support for the argument
2 UNDERSTANDING MONEY AND FINANCE 17

that insufficient fiscal discipline played a critical role in driving infla-


tion in the United Kingdom while mostly ignoring any role played by
energy and commodity price shocks. Given very real incidents like the
three-day workweek of 1973 imposed by disruptions to energy supplies,
this oversight unintentionally reveals a serious flaw in the monetarist
position.16
The commodity price argument, by contrast, asserts that price shocks
in multiple primary commodities, with the 1973 Oil Embargo as a partic-
ularly spectacular example, caused unexpected disruptions in economic
activity leading to widespread inflation. In this school of thought, the
main driver of inflation are the direct increases of the price of commodi-
ties that were critical for sustaining economic activity. In the case of oil
this was exacerbated thanks to how extensively it dominated the world’s
energy mix in terms of sources of energy for the economy. Haque,
Groshenny, and Weder’s analysis of this position is one of many studies
showing a clear relationship between commodity price shocks in the
1970s and inflationary pressures. In their research, which addresses the
question of whether 1970s US Federal Reserve policy was a destabilizing
influence, they utilize a Generalized New Keynesian analysis that incor-
porates positive trend inflation, commodity price shocks, and real wage
rigidity into their econometric models. The result, they argue, was an
environment where, "sticky wages and inefficient supply shocks gener-
ated a strong, negative correlation between inflation and the output
gap, thereby confronting the monetary authority with a difficult trade-
off. This trade-off inherently influences the parameter estimates of a
central bank’s interest rate rule.” Though they argue that this research
affirms that Federal Reserve policies did contribute to economic insta-
bility in the period, the evolution of its methods does not sufficiently
explain the drop in output growth volatility which seems more closely
linked to wage rigidity and demand shocks. From the standpoint of a
broader commodity price-driven perspective, this suggests these price
shocks played a more significant role in driving inflationary trends than
is argued for in monetarist arguments.17
Similar findings are presented by Ana Gómez-Loscos, María Dolores
Gadea, and Antonio Montañés. They demonstrate that commodity
pushed inflation, with oil as the most significant example, was most signif-
icant in the 1970s and this relationship declined over the course of the
following two decades. As they demonstrate, the GDP multipliers related
to oil were largely negative in the period of 1971 to 1983, showing that
18 R. C. SMITH

high oil prices were directly contributing to rates of inflation during this
period. This does, however, present a problem for the commodity price
argument. If oil and other commodity price shocks were significant drivers
of inflation during the Great Inflation, then such patterns should remain
consistent. This question of historical contingency is particularly illus-
trated by Victor Volcarcel and Mark E. Wohar. They argue that during
the 1970s the price of oil had a clear, measurable pass-through effect on
inflation due to specific structural conditions, such as the world’s current
energy mix. What this means is any increases in the price of oil were passed
on to the rest of the economic supply chain, a prospect with enormous
implications due to how dependent the global economy was on oil in this
period.18
Shiu Sheng-Chen provides further, market-specific explanations for
why this pass-through effect was much stronger during the Great Infla-
tion than it was in the decades that followed. Shiu claims that in the
1970s, specific elements of the oil market, such as the lack of any futures
on OPEC contracts, meant there were few, if any, effective mitigating
structures to soften the impact of significant price shifts on commodities
buyers. Shawkat Hammoudeh and Juan C. Reboredo offer similar obser-
vations regarding pass-through effect in this period. They claim these
historically contingent relationships were thanks to the growing depen-
dence of major oil-consuming, industrialized powers on oil imports from
OPEC member states. They claim this was thanks to the overall lack of
diversity in energy sources utilized by the economies of the 1970s, which
is discussed more in Chapter 4. These patterns of inflation and oil prices,
especially leading up to the 1973 Shock, are supported by the clear corre-
lations observed in inflationary spikes during this period as shown in Table
2.1 and Fig. 2.1.19
These arguments for a commodity-based understanding of the Great
Inflation are supported by additional primary data supporting their
broader arguments. As Table 2.1 and Fig. 2.2 show, oil price increases
and inflation closely correlated from the end of Bretton Woods until the
end of the Oil Embargo in early 1974. The point at which the correlation
breaks is after the embargo’s end, when the price of oil stabilized again,
and inflation continued to rise in some nations while falling in others.
Figure 2.2 further supports the contention that oil price increases led to
inflationary increases in the months leading up to the 1973 Oil Embargo
and during the Embargo itself by showing the steady, consistent increase
of oil prices during this period just as inflationary trends were beginning
2 UNDERSTANDING MONEY AND FINANCE 19

Table 2.1 Correlation data of inflation and the price of oil

Country Nixon Shock OPEC Price Oil Shock Petrodollar


War Recycling

Canada 0.600589783 0.755239497 0.300406279 0.505140588


France 0.772918754 0.802795567 0.77977924 −0.528192076
Germany 0.379686252 −0.022557219 −0.333795727 −0.110976421
Italy 0.871323277 0.474128434 0.696915113 −0.360133641
Japan −0.298888577 0.754592865 0.892762601 −0.357260868
United −0.498790169 0.700099697 0.711458425 −0.225364983
Kingdom
United States −0.299878844 0.783645635 0.872118277 −0.306870158
of America

Note Data for this table was collected from the OECD’s Consumer Price Index monthly data and
the World Bank Pink Sheet monthly commodity price data from September 1971 to December 1974.
Both sets of monthly data were calculated for correlation in Microsoft Excel. The periods covered
are the Nixon Shock, September 1971 to December 1972, the OPEC Price War, January 1973 to
October 1973, the Oil Shock, November 1973 to April 1974, and Petrodollar Recycling, May 1974
to December 1974

to increase. The main problem presented by this data is the point where
oil prices and inflation decouple, a pattern which suggests inflationary
conditions that were exacerbated by the escalating price of oil persisted
following its stabilization.
Further support for the oil price argument comes from historical devel-
opments between the downfall of Bretton Woods and the Embargo. Even
though this initial period does not show the sort of dramatic, rapid jumps
seen later in 1973 or in 1979 it does reinforce the causative link between
oil prices and inflation. As shown in Fig. 2.3 there was a consistent, steady
increase in the price of oil in the months leading up to the Shock itself and
during the final collapse of Bretton Woods. The first jump, at the end of
January 1971, follows the landmark Tehran Agreement. Under this agree-
ment OPEC’s members increased their share of the proceeds of oil to
55% and were given the go-ahead to implement an immediate price hike,
followed by further annual price increases. This jump, shown in Fig. 2.2,
represented a 26% increase in the price of oil which had remained largely
stable and, in some cases, declining for the entire previous decade. This
agreement did more than just increase the price of oil, it clearly shifted the
balance of power in the oil industry from the Western-owned oil majors to
the oil producing countries in the developing world. Throughout 1971
and 1972 there are additional upward adjustments, which were in line
20 R. C. SMITH

Fig. 2.2 Correlation of inflation and price of oil (Note Data for this figure
was collected from the OECD’s Consumer Price Index monthly data and the
World Bank Pink Sheet monthly commodity price data from September 1971
to December 1974. Both sets of monthly data were calculated for correlation in
Microsoft Excel and mapped on a scatter plot)

with the terms of the Tehran Agreement, but nothing significant until
the beginning of 1973.20
What changed at the beginning of 1973 was OPEC had entered an
internal price war. Price radicals, advocating increases to pay for devel-
opment projects, dueled with the price moderates who were seeking
to maintain stable revenues and not upset oil importers. While OPEC
member nations cited inflation as their main cause for concern, the data
in Fig. 2.3 shown in contrast to Fig. 2.2 suggests that OPEC’s members
were raising prices ahead of these inflationary increases. What further
weakened the moderate position, who were seeking to keep the markets
relatively stable and keep to the terms of the Tehran and Tripoli agree-
ments, was that all of OPEC’s members were caught in a prisoner’s
dilemma. Holding to the terms of these agreements would have worked
if none of OPEC’s members defected from their shared arrangements. In
2 UNDERSTANDING MONEY AND FINANCE 21

Fig. 2.3 Average crude oil price per barrel, 1970–1973 (Note Data for this
figure is from the World Bank Pink Sheet monthly historical commodity price
database)

contrast to the lost opportunities that came with holding to the terms of
these agreements defecting, in this case increasing oil prices, meant profit
without any real risk. Regardless of whatever the OPEC moderate powers
wanted the rewards of defecting were simply too lucrative to pass up.21
In the span of nine months, from the onset of the price war to the
eve of the Oil Embargo, the average price of oil jumped 30%. The impact
was not missed on the importing side of the equation. On May 29, 1973,
the Bank of Scotland soberly concluded, “As is well known, the world
is in the early stages of a major energy crisis.” This pattern of inflation
only accelerated when the Oil Embargo began in October of 1973 as
shown in Fig. 2.2. The Bank of England Standing Group on Oil Prob-
lems concluded on March 22, 1974, the rising oil prices were driving
inflation across the industrialized world. They further argued the reason
this was so devastating was because of the stable oil prices of the 1960s left
businesses and economic policymakers unprepared for this sudden shift in
the economic environment.22
These materials lend further support to a commodity price-shock
driven analysis, an explanation that is further reinforced by the develop-
ments in finance that will be explored further in later chapters. Though
22 R. C. SMITH

monetarist arguments have a broad, vocal cohort in support the bare


facts show that, at least during the 1974 to 1982 period, commodity
price shocks were a major player in driving the Great Inflation. The
evidence supporting commodity prices driving inflation is simply too
compelling to be dismissed as easily as monetarists often do, with clear
proof that price shocks directly preceded inflationary trends during this
period. Such an understanding of inflation, aside from the challenges
it presents to monetarist macroeconomic analyses, is part of why the
oil price shocks associated with the Oil Embargo and Oil Shock had
far-reaching consequences for global finance and the capitalist world.

Notes
1. Richard A. Werner, “Can Banks Individually Create Money Out of
Nothing? – The Theories and Empirical Evidence”, International Review
of Financial Analysis, Vol. 36 (2014), 2.
2. Werner, “Can Banks Individually Create Money Out of Nothing”, Vol. 2,
17–18; Mellor, Debt or Democracy, 9.
3. Mellor, Debt or Democracy, 9–11.
4. Altamura, European Banks and the Rise of International Finance, 34.
5. Altamura European Banks and the Rise of International Finance 24–27;
R.B. Johnston, The Economics of the Euro-Market : History, Theory, and
Policy, MacMillan Press Ltd. (London and Basingstoke: 1983), 20.
6. Kevin R. Brine and Mary Poovy, Finance in America: An Unfinished
Story, University of Chicago Press (Chicago: 2017), 346; Daniel Yergin &
Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World
Economy, Simon & Schuster (New York: 2002) 110–112, 138; Luis
Reyes, “The Link Between the Current International Monetary Non-
system, Financialization and the Washington Consensus”, Research in
International Business and Finance, Vol. 42 (2017), 432–434.
7. Paul H. Dembinski, Finance: Servant or Deceiver, Palgrave-Macmillan
(New York: 2009), 21–23; Stephan Haggard and Sylvia Maxfield, “The
Political Economy of Financial Internationalization in the Developing
World”, International Organization, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Winter 1996), 11.
8. Brine and Poovy, Finance in America, 316; Dembinski, Finance: Servant
or Deceiver, 23–25; Kay, Other People’s Money, 19.
9. Yergin and Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights, 137.
10. David McNally, Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and
Resistance, PM Press (Oakland, CA: 2011), 28–33; Englebert Stock-
hammer, “Financialization and the Slowdown of Accumulation”, Finan-
cialization at Work: Key Texts and Commentary, Routledge (Oxon:
2009), 212–216, 219; Francois Chesnais (2019), “Financialization and
2 UNDERSTANDING MONEY AND FINANCE 23

the Impasse of Capitalism”, The Japanese Political Economy, Vol. 45, No.
1–2, 85–88.
11. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Henry
Holt and Company (New York: 2007), 94–97, 170–172, McNally, The
Global Slump, 34.
12. Kim Philips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the
New Deal, W.W. Norton and Company (New York: 2009), xi–xii, 44–46,
115–116; Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 64–73; Rodrik, The Globalization
Paradox, 77; Yergin and Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights, 127–131.
13. Qazi Haque, Nicolas Groshenny, and Mark Weder, “Do We Really Know
that U.S. monetary policy was destabilizing in the 1970s?”, European
Economic Review, Vol. 131 (2021), 1–2.
14. Fernando Alvarez, Robert E. Lucas, Jr. and Warren E. Weber, “Interest
Rates and Inflation”, The American Economic Review, Vol. 91, No. 2,
Papers and Proceedings of the Hundred Thirteenth Annual Meeting
of the American Economic Association (May 2001), 219–220; Adusei
Jumah & Robert M. Kunst, “Optimizing Time-Series Forecasts for Infla-
tion and Interest Rates Using Simulation and Model Averaging”, Applied
Economics, Vol. 48, No. 45 (2016), 4371–4373.
15. Christopher A. Sims, “Stepping on a Rake: The Role of Fiscal Policy in
the Inflation of the 1970s”, European Economic Review, Vol. 55 (2011),
48–49.
16. Jingwen Fan, Patrick Minford, and Zhirong Ou, “The Role of Fiscal
Policy in Britain’s Great Inflation”, Economic Modelling, Vol. 58 (2016),
203, 205–206, 208–210.
17. Haque, Groshenny, and Weder, “Do We Really Know That U.S. Monetary
Policy Was Destabilizing in the 1970s?”, 1–2, 22, 23.
18. Ana Gómez-Loscos, María Dolores Gadea, and Antonio Montañés, “Eco-
nomic Growth, Inflation and Oil Shocks: Are the 1970s Coming Back?”
Applied Economics, Vol. 44 (2012), 4576, 4581, 4587; Victor J. Volcarcel
and Mark E. Wohar, “Changes in the Oil-Price Inflation Pass-Through”,
Journal of Economics & Business, Vol. 68 (July–August 2013), 39–40.
19. Shiu-Sheng Chen, “Oil Price Pass-Through into Inflation”, Energy
Economics, Vol. 31, No. 1 (January 2009), 126,132–133; Shawkat
Hammoudeh and Juan C. Reboredo, “Oil Price Dynamics and Market-
Based Inflation Expectations”, Energy Economics, Vol. 75 (September
2018), 488–490.
20. Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, Free
Press (New York: 2009), 563–564.
21. Yergin, The Prize, 572–574.
22. Bank of Scotland, GB1830 BOS/1/2/1/78, Record of The Minutes
1971–1974, Minutes of the Weekly Board, 28 December 1971–25 June
1974, May 29, 1973, p. 2603, Bank of Scotland collection at the Lloyds
24 R. C. SMITH

Banking Group plc Archives (Edinburgh), United Kingdom; “Aide-


Memoire: A Comparison of Oil Prices and Other Prices in World Trade”,
Page 2, World Energy Crisis: B/E Standing Group on Oil Problems,
3A112/1, Bank of England Archive, London, United Kingdom.
CHAPTER 3

It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst


of Times

The world before petrocapital transformed money and finance was a very
different place from the present economic order. The core of the capitalist
world of the 1950s and 1960s was enjoying a sustained, unprecedented
boom period which is sometimes referred to today as the Golden Age of
Capitalism. Reconstructing the industrial powers of Western Europe &
Japan gave the United States an unparalleled opportunity to effectively
remake the capitalist core according to their desires. Much of the Global
South, similarly, saw years predominantly American wartime development
and investments all meant to maximize their capacity to feed the war’s
enormous demand for raw materials. These years of consistent growth,
which as shown in Fig. 3.1 first fell below 4% in 1974, were fueled by the
seemingly endless productive capacity of the United States which made
recovery and reindustrialization possible. This combination of industrial
economies in recovery, the abundance of American manufacturing, and
reliable flows of commodities from the Global South that made these
boom years possible.1
The period stretching from 1945 to 1975 has long been celebrated
among the capitalist core powers, consisting of the United States, their
allies in Western Europe, and Japan, as a time of prosperity, optimism, and
boundless possibility. Such boom times are remembered as the Glorious
Thirty Years in France, the Miracle on the Rhine in Germany, and the
miraculous economy in Italy. Even the more prosaic US and Japanese

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 25


Switzerland AG 2022
R. C. Smith, The Real Oil Shock,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07131-7_3
26 R. C. SMITH

Fig. 3.1 World average annual GDP growth percentage (Note Data for this
figure was collected from the World Bank’s online databank)

terms for these years, respectively the postwar economic expansion or the
time of high economic growth, are understood as referring to an era of
unmatched abundance and material security. These attitudes were firmly
based in fact, as shown by years of consistent growth, expansion, and
increasing per capita incomes demonstrated in Fig. 3.1. All this economic
expansion unfolded within a framework of the new macroeconomic insti-
tutions and approaches that made up the postwar economic consensus,
an umbrella term that includes economic schools of thought like Anglo-
American Keynesianism, French dirigisme, German ordoliberalism, and
the Japanese keiretsu model.2
What especially sets this period apart from other economic boom
periods is how relatively evenly the wealth was distributed with rising
wages consistently correlating with growth in productivity. This was
thanks to an array of social democratic welfare state reforms, a clear
economic consensus for state intervention in private sector activities, and
highly robust trade union movements. Though these different economic
models had different approaches to managing a capitalist economy, they
all treated expansive social welfare programs, support for organized labor,
3 IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES, IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES 27

and active state intervention in the private sector as essential tools for
keeping the functions of capitalism stable, productive, and beneficial
to society. Private interests, in exchange, now had the guarantee of an
affluent population that could afford to regularly consume their products
and keep the market growing.3
One especially critical aspect of this world order was the tight controls
placed over the movements of capital and currency across national bound-
aries. This was all mediated under the auspices of the Bretton Woods
Agreement, an international accord reached in the final years of the
Second World War which came to be the name of this new financial order.
It consisted of a combination of a national-level regulatory consensus
between capitalist powers and a new array of international institutions
like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank that had
been established to help prevent a new Great Depression. Understanding
this economic order, its structural flaws, and responses to major challenges
helps explain why the petrocapital cycle unleashed by the Oil Embargo
and Oil Shock would ultimately empower finance with the capacity to
displace the Bretton Woods system.4
It is important to emphasize the postwar economic consensus was not
the result of a single, shared economic program but was a collection
of several different schools of economic thought. The most signifi-
cant, in the capitalist core powers, were Anglo-American Keynesian
economics, German ordoliberalism, the Japanese keiretsu system, and
French dirigisme. Though they all, generally, supported a combina-
tion of state intervention in economic affairs, support for labor rights,
and funding for expansive social welfare states, each had their own
approach to managing national economies. Generally speaking, these
differences can be summarized in terms of whether their approach was
more market-centric or state-centric, with Keynesianism and Ordoliber-
alism emphasizing creating an effective, socially stable market system in
contrast to the more state-driven dirigisme and keiretsu systems which
emphasized the role of the state as the main coordinator of market activity.
For the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and
New Zealand, the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes reigned
supreme. Keynes argued the role of the state in the economy was to
actively intervene in times of recession and depression to help stabilize
economic output, soften the impact of any downturns, and stimulate
market recovery. This relief could be extended by the state through fiscal
policy, direct spending, and even public control of critical industries and
28 R. C. SMITH

by central banks through monetary policy actions intended to encourage


lending and investment. Though Keynes advocated for a far greater
degree of state involvement in economic affairs than was acceptable to
classical economists or the German ordoliberals, his project’s aim was
preserving capitalism by curbing its excesses and resolving the problem
of the business cycle by direct state intervention. Keynes’ theories were
directly utilized by the architects of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and
Clement Atlee’s welfare state. In 1944, Keynes played a direct role in
shaping the postwar economic order through his involvement in negoti-
ating the terms of the Bretton Woods Agreement and helping develop
the monetary order that would come with peacetime. Keynesian-style
systems, unlike German ordoliberalism, included features like emergency
price controls and publicly owned companies along with subsidies, tax
relief, and publicly sponsored projects. Even within this set of tools there
was a broad range of possible applications that fell under the Keynesian
umbrella, as shown in the contrast between the United Kingdom’s nation-
alizations of the rail, healthcare, water, and electricity sectors and the far
more limited degree of public ownership in the United States during the
same period.5
German ordoliberalism, the economic philosophy that guided the
form of the German social market economy, was like Keynesianism
though distinct in how ordoliberals saw themselves as the compromise
between socialism and capitalism. According to ordoliberals, the primary
economic role of the state is maintaining the right legal environment for
encouraging healthy competition. Their main purpose is to ensure such
competition remains in alignment with market principles and any moves
to monopoly or oligopoly need to be actively curbed to maintain the
overall health of the economy. One key component was maintaining a
robust social welfare state that secured the population against economic
hardship and provided a baseline of consistent spending. Ordoliberalism,
in contrast to the other economic theories which shaped the postwar
consensus, argued against direct state involvement in economic affairs.
Ordoliberals argued the state’s role in economic affairs was providing
a safe environment for fair competition and not to direct the actual
processes of the economy through measures such as publicly controlled
businesses. This refrain from direct state involvement in economic affairs
was a marked contrast between the ordoliberals and the other economic
models which flourished under the Bretton Woods system. That said, they
drew a strong distinction between their position and classical economics in
3 IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES, IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES 29

arguing their top priority was securing social justice through the market-
place instead of simply encouraging competition for the sake of profit
alone.6
These market-centric theories contrasted with the more state-
controlled approaches employed in Japan and France. In the case of
Japan, the keiretsu system which emerged after the end of the Second
World War empowered the state as an active coordinator of economic
activity and development. Under this system, conglomerates descended
from the wartime zaibatsu corporations worked directly with policymakers
and union leaders to arrive at the best possible economic outcomes for
all parties. The nerve center of this task was the Ministry for Interna-
tional Trade and Industry (MITI), which collected information on all
economic activities and served as the hub of Japanese macroeconomic
policymaking. Surrounding MITI were the keiretsu conglomerates, from
whom this system gets its name, whose diversified structures and broad
economic footprints incentivized stability of revenue over maximizing
profits. This was further assisted by the central role played by the Bank of
Japan in funding the postwar recovery with low-interest loans. Thanks to
this policy, businesses were structured first and foremost to service their
outstanding debts and planned for the long-term to ensure their solvency.
Although the keiretsu system was ultimately capitalist and market-driven,
the central position enjoyed by the state in setting overall policy stands in
marked contrast to Keynesian and Ordoliberal theories which placed the
state in the more limited roles of adjudicator and stabilizer.7
Like postwar Japan, French dirigisme placed the state in a central
role in economic affairs. In the case of dirigiste economics, the goal
was to rebuild the French economy to a level that could effectively
compete with highly advanced economies like the United States. This was
done by a combination of state indicative planning, which incorporated
government-gathered information with inducements such as subsidies
and targeted tax relief, state sponsorship of national champion indus-
trial groups, and outright public ownership of services like electricity, gas,
airlines, and rail. The national champions system was an especially potent
example of the logic of dirigisme. Under this system, specific industrial
groups like Renault received support and preferential treatment from the
French government in a bid to help them scale up sufficiently to be glob-
ally competitive with American, German, and British industrial concerns.
This included national champions in unprofitable times so they could
maintain their long-term plans, growth, and capacity. Like the postwar
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Kettuniemellä kirkkoherraa valittiin
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Title: Kuinka Kettuniemellä kirkkoherraa valittiin

Author: Paul Ferdinand Leino

Release date: October 7, 2023 [eBook #71826]

Language: Finnish

Original publication: Helsinki: G. W. Edlund, 1900

Credits: Tuula Temonen

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KUINKA


KETTUNIEMELLÄ KIRKKOHERRAA VALITTIIN ***
KUINKA KETTUNIEMELLÄ KIRKKOHERRAA VALITTIIN

Kirj.

Kustaanpoika [Paul Ferdinand Leino]

Helsingissä, G. W. Edlund, 1900.

I.
Eräänä sunnuntai-aamuna syyspuoleen vuotta oli tavallista
enemmän kirkkolaisia kokoontunut Myllymäen matamin tupaan, joka
vähän matkaa kirkosta oli mäen rinteellä. Matamin kahvipannu
kiehua porisi liedellä, valmistaen mieluista juomaa saapuneille
vieraille, joista toiset istuivat, mutta jokunen vielä seisoi. Oikeastaan
oli matamilla kaksi pannua, toinen suurempi, josta kaadettiin
tavallisille vieraille, ja oli useimmiten heti valmiina ja toinen pienempi,
jonka herkusta vaan paremmat pääsivät osallisiksi. Nyt oli se
pienempi pannu joka oli tulella, josta voi päättää, että vieraat
kuuluivat parempaan luokkaan matamin kirjoissa.

Matamilla itsellä, joka oli vanhanpuoleinen ihminen, oli täysi työ


korjata emäntäin tuomisia talteensa. Tässä mieluisassa toimessa oli
hänen kielensä ahkerassa liikkeessä ei yksin kiittämään ja
siunaamaan hyviä emäntiä heidän tuomisistaan, vaan myös
kertomaan heille kylän tuoreimpia uutisia.

Matami oli, näet, paikkakunnan tunnetuin puhetorvi, jolta ei


pienemmätkään asiat seurakunnassa saaneet jäädä salaan. Ollen
luonnostaan vähän utelias eli oikeimmin tiedon haluinen, oli hänen
helppo seurustelemalla erilaisten henkilöin kanssa saada asioista
tietoa niin etäältä kuin läheltä. Hänen hyvä sydämensä vaati jälleen
häntä joko kuiskaamaan tietojaan ystäväinsä korvaan tai muuten
ajan ratoksi niistä puhumaan tuttavilleen, joita hänellä oli ympäri
seurakuntaa. Kun hän myös kokemuksesta tiesi, kuinka helposti
puhuttu asia, monen suun kautta kulkeissa, voi kadottaa jotain
alkuperäisyydestään, oli hänen tapanansa lisäävillä selityksillä
turvata kertomaansa.

Sanotun takia oli matami sekä suosittu että pelätty, erittäin


järvikylissä, joista oli totuttu käymään kirkkokortteeria hänen luonaan
ja sentähden ymmärrettiin panna arvoa matamin kahveelle ja
uutisille.

Nyt oli, niinkuin jo sanottiin, tavallista enemmän kirkkolaisia


kerääntynyt matamin tupaan. Oli asioita, joista haluttiin tietoja.
Seurakunnan vanha, rakastettu kirkkoherra oli kesällä lyhemmän
taudin jälkeen ummistanut väsyneet silmänsä kuolon uneen. Hänen
paikkansa oli vielä täyttämättä. Oli siis tärkeä kysymys, kuka oli
hänen jälkeensä seurakunnan esipaimeneksi saatava.

Sanomalehdissä oli nähty, että pyrkijöitä siihen oli moniaita: oli


kirkkoherroja ja oli kappalaisia. Kuinkas olisikaan voinut toisin käydä!
Olihan Kettuniemi tunnettu suureksi ja varakkaaksi pitäjäksi, joka
kyllä miehensä elätti. Kannatti siis monen hengen miehen hakea
sinne toivossa, että ehkä pääsisi vaihettamaan pienen kyrsänsä
suurempaan leipään. Sillä kuuluihan hyvä kirkkoherran paikka myös
jokapäiväiseen leipään, jota sanan jälkeen sai rukoilla ja tässä
ajassa etsiä.

Mutta valitettavasti oli ne, jotka olivat hakeneet Kettuniemelle,


siellä tuntemattomia pappismiehiä. Täytyi sentähden mennä niistä
utelemaan Myllymäen matamilta; sillä jos joku, niin ainakin hän, tiesi
ottaa asioista selvää eikä pannut kynttiläänsä vakan alle.

Matami, joka oli tullut emäntäin runsaista tuomisista hyvälle


mielelle, oli kiitollisuuden osoitteeksi alkanut enempi kuiskaamalla
kuin ääneensä emännille kertoa mitä Hietamäessä oli tapahtunut ja
paljon hänellä olikin siitä kerrottavaa. Täytyipä hänen kesken
kertomistaan huokatakin, niin Jumala paratkoon, osoittaen sillä
hurskasta mielenlaatuaan, sillä matami kuului rukoilevaisiin. Viimein
lopetettuaan kääntyi hän toiseen puhe-aineesen ja kysyä tokasi
ääneensä:

Ette suinkaan hyvät ystävät vielä ole kuulleet, että meille


kirkkoherraksi hakeneet ovat huonoja pappeja?
Mitä te, matami kulta, nyt puhutte? vastasi siihen Laurin emäntä,
lyöden ihmetyksestä käsiänsä yhteen. Sillä sellainen uutinen oli
hänestä samoin kuin toisista kuulijoista yhtä odottamatonta kuin
hämmästyttävää.

Niin, niin, kyllä se on totta. Sen on minulle sanonut maisteri


Krypqvist, joka on sen kuullut — ja matami kuiskaa sen emännille.

Mutta sehän on synti ja häpeä, että huonoja, kun on näin suuri ja


hyvätuloinen seurakunta, muistutti Järvenpään emäntä, tuntien siitä
oikeutettua harmia, ettei hengen miehet ymmärtäneet paremmin
arvostella Kettuniemen suuria tuloja.

Sanokaas muuta, hyvä emäntä, mutta kai siinä on Herralla hänen


erityinen tarkoituksensa seurakuntamme hyväksi, huokasi matami.

Niin oikein, matami, mitäs meidän tarvitsee mennä ojan ylitse


vettä hakemaan, kun meillä itsellä on valmis kirkkoherra maisteri
Krypqvistissä, joka on oman seurakunnan kasvannaisia, huomautti
Järvenpään isäntä.

Niinkö se isäntä sen asian tuumii, vaikka kyllä minä olen kuullut,
että moni muu on samoin tuuminut. Ja kun se siksi tulee, niin pian se
maisteri on sen kirkkoherran tutkinnon lukenut, selitti matami, joka
hyvin tunsi maisterin suuren kyvyn.

Tätä vastaan ei toisilla ollut mitään muistuttamista, sillä olihan


matami suoraan puhunut heidänkin ajatuksensa. Mitä enemmän sitte
asiasta keskusteltiin, sitä selvemmäksi kävi matamille ja toisille, että
maisteri oli parhaiten sopiva Kettuniemen paimen sauvaa
kantamaan ja häntä sentähden pyydettävä neljänneksi.
Tyytyväisenä keskusteluun ja saatuihin tietoihin rupesi Järvenpään
väki kiirehtimään kirkkoon. He olivat tänään aikoneet ripille ja täytyi
sentähden rientää rippisaarnaan. Toisilla kirkkolaisilla ei ollut
sellaista kiirettä. He jäivät matamin kanssa puhelemaan siksi kuin
soitettiin yhteen. Sillä olihan niin hauskaa istua hänen tuvassaan ja
kuunnella, mitä uutta matami vielä tiesi kertoa.
II.

Joku aika edellämainitusta keskustelusta Myllymäen matamin


tuvassa, oli sanomalehdissä luettavana vaaliehdoitus Kettuniemen
kirkkoherran virkaan. Korkea-arvoinen Tuomiokapituli oli
ensimmäiselle vaalisijalle asettanut Pohjakylän kappalaisen H.
Pitkäsen, toiselle Polvijärven pastorin K. Forssin ja kolmannelle
Lammen kirkkoherran A. Alanderin. Herätti jotain huomiota että
Alander, vaikka oli paljoa nuorempi pappi kuin pari muuta hänen
hakukumppaniaan, kuitenkin pääsi heidän edelleen kolmannelle
vaalisijalle. Mutta selitettiin, että sen teki hänen korkeimmat
arvolauseensa, jotka hän oli suorittamissa tutkinnoissa saanut.

Vaaliehdoitus antoi, niinkuin helposti voi ymmärtää paljon puheen


ainetta. Erittäin pohdittiin sitä ahkeraan ja monipuolisesti Myllymäen
matamin ystäväin kesken. Ei siinä piirissä oltu lainkaan hyvillään
siitä, että kirkkoherra Alander pääsi vaaliehdolle. Tosin ei häntä
enempää kuin toisia vaalipappeja lähemmin tunnettu, että olivat
enempi kaukaa ja siihen asti nimeltäänkin olleet outoja. Mutta tuo
Alanderin koroitus toisten edelle, ei se ennustanut hyvää. Jos sen oli
vaikuttanut hänen suurempi oppinsa ja taitonsa, niin kuka takasi,
mitä hän olikaan miehiään! Hänestä saattoi vielä tulla vastusta sille
tuumalle, että maisteri Krypqvist saataisiin neljänneksi. Asia oli siis
arveluttavaa laatua, joka pani miettimään niiden, jotka neljättä
ajattelivat.

Pian alkoi sitten ikäänkuin ihmeen kautta Kettuniemellä levitä


monenlaisia huhuja vaalipapeista. Mistä ne saivat alkunsa? Mitenkä
ennen tuntemattomista miehistä ruvettiin tietämään yhtä ja toista? Ja
kuinka juuri sellaista, jota ei voinut katsoa miksikään suositukseksi
asianomaisille? Sitä kyseltiin ja tiedusteltiin. Ja vastauksia saatiin
monenlaisia.

Mikä kertoi jonkun Lammen ukon ajelleen nahkain ostossa


Kettuniemellä ja että hän olisi puhunut Alanderista. Mikä jälleen tiesi
erään naapuriseurakuntalaisen vuosi takaperin matkustelleen
sukuloimassa Polvijärvellä ja siellä oppineen tuntemaan Forssin.
Tältä naapuriseurakuntalaiselta oli sitten tieto Forssista levinnyt
Kettuniemelle. Mikä kertoi jotain muuta yhtä todenmukaista. Lopulta
ruvettiin arvelemaan, ehkä huhujen alkulähde olikin jossain kirkon
läheisyydessä, josta ne paikkakunnalla hyvin kehittyneen juorupostin
kautta levisivät ympäri seurakuntaa.

Ensimmäisestä eli Pitkäsestä tiesi huhupuheet kertoa, että hän oli,


jollei juuri rampa, niin siksi sairaalloinen, ettei hän nykyisessäkään
pienessä paikassaan kyennyt virkaansa hoitamaan, vaan täytyi pitää
apulaista. Kun hänellä vielä kuului olevan suuri ja köyhä perhe, niin
oli selvää, ettei Pitkäsestä voinut olla Kettuniemen suuren ja
hyvätuloisen pitäjän paimeneksi.

Forssista jälleen tiesi huhu kertoa, että hän oli kiivasluonteinen ja


kova järjestyksen mies, jonka kanssa ei ollut hauskaa joutua
tekemiseen. Vielä tiedettiin, että hän nykyisessä paikassaan oli
pakottanut seurakuntaa tarpeettomasti muuttamaan toiseen
paikkaan ja uudesta rakentamaan hyvässä kunnossa olleen
virkatalon. Ettei Kettuniemellä oltu mihinkään kovaan järjestykseen
totuttu, niin ei aiottu vastaisuudessakaan sellaiseen taipua. Kun
lisäksi oli juuri kysymyksessä vanhan rappiolle joutuneen
variksenpesän siaan rakentaa uusi kirkkoherran talo, niin oli
luonnollista, että kaiken mokomin tahdottiin välttää kiivasta
kirkkoherraa.

Kolmannesta eli Alanderista huhuttiin, että hän oli


vapaakirkollinen, löyhäuskoinen, hihhuli ja tiesi mitä kaikkea hän oli.
Oli ihan selvää, että niin vaarallinen mies oli kaikkein vähemmän
sopiva kirkkoherraksi Kettuniemelle, jossa oli opittu arvossa
pitämään vanhaa jumalisuutta ja — polvirukousta.

Näytti siis siltä, kuin ei yhdelläkään vaalipapeista olisi ollut suuria


toiveita tulla kysymykseen arvoisain Kettuniemeläisten keskuudessa.
Sillä valita tieten jotakuta sanotuista papeista, eihän sitä voinut
keltään vaatia. Täytyipä vähän ihmetellä, että juuri he olivat
sattuneet hakemaan Kettuniemelle ja pääsivät vaaliehdolle. Mutta
arvatenkin oli se tapahtunut Herran erityisestä tarkoituksesta,
niinkuin siitä hurskaasti oli selitetty ja parasta oli siis mukaantua
siihen.

Tosin löytyi niitä, jotka eivät tahtoneet oikein uskoa edellä


kerrotuita huhuja, vaan vielä väittivät niitä keksityiksi ja vääriksi.
Mutta tällaiset epäilijät olivat pieni joukko verrattuna niihin, joita
saattoi mielensä mukaan nenästä vetää, joten heidän väitteensä
jäivät heikoksi huudoksi Kettuniemen korvessa.

Erityisen hedelmällistä maata löysivät juorupuheet järvikylissä,


joiden asukkaat olivat enemmän vanhoilla-olijoita ja sentähden
omatakeiseen asiain tutkimiseen vähemmän kehittyneitä. Ei siellä
ryhdytty huhuja tarkemmin pohtimaan, vaan otettiin niitä vastaan,
jollei kaikkia täytenä kultana niin uskomista ansaitsevina. Sellaiset
jälleen herättivät heissä, jotka entisestään pelkäsivät kaikkea uudelta
vivahtavaa niinkuin syntiä, pelkoa ja vastenmielisyyttä erittäin tuota
huhun leimaamaa löyhäuskon hihhulipappia vastaan. Ei sellaisesta
ollut heidän opettajakseen, jotka ahkeroivat vakavaa jumalisuutta ja
tahtoivat elää ja kuolla »vanhan virsikirjan uskossa».

Näin vakuutti paitsi muita Kuivaniemen vaari, jonka sanalla oli


suuri merkitys järvikylissä. Sillä tiedettiinhän yleensä, että hän oli
vuosikymmeniä harrastanut polvirukousta ja parannusta ja ahkeraan
kirjan lehtiä käännellyt. Kyllä hän tiesi autuuden asiat paremmin, kuin
moni liperi-kauluksellinen pappi, ja voi sentähden varoittaa, että
poikkeaminen nöyrältä rukouksen tieltä helposti löydetylle uskon
tielle vei harhaan ja onnettomuuteen.

Mitä jälleen hihhuli, jota myös Alanderista huhuttiin, tarkoitti, siitä


ei yleensä Kettuniemellä oltu oikein selvillä. Sellaisia ei, nimittäin,
ollut vielä sinne ilmaantunut, eikä tiedetty lähipitäjissäkään niitä
löytyvän. Mutta että hihhuli tarkoitti jotain pahaa, joko uskon luopiota
tai muuta senkaltaista, sitä ei moni epäillyt. Rannan Kyöri, joka oli
matkustellut työnansiolla monessa seurakunnassa ja siten nähnyt ja
kuullut enemmän kuin muut, oli kyllä valmis, niinkuin sellaisten tapa
usein on, selittämään minkä asian hyvänsä selväksi. Mutta hänen
selityksensä, että hihhuli oli uskonnollinen hyppijä, joka hyppiessään
löi käsiänsä yhteen ja lauloi hih, huh, ei tainnut kaikkia tyydyttää.
Sillä mies oli tunnettu puheissaan vähemmän luotettavaksi ja että
hän oli suuri pilantekijä.
III.

Jos Kettuniemellä levisi alentavia huhuja vaalipapeista, niin kyllä sen


siaan tiedettiin hyvää maisteri Krypqvististä ja hänen mainettaan
toitotettiin. Hän oli kerrassaan herttainen mies, jossa ei löytynyt
moitteen syytä, vaikka suurennuslasilla olisi etsinyt. Kuinka
ystävällinen hän oli puhutella ja niin nöyrä ja alhainen! Millä
ahkeruudella hän selitteli sanaa kyläkunnissa ja kävi pitäjän matkoja
virkaveljensäkin puolesta! Kuinka harras ja sanarikas hän oli
polvirukouksissaan! Ja kuinka kauniisti hän saarnasi, höystäen
puhettaan tuon tuostakin vaikuttavilla sanoilla: »kalliit ystävät» ja
»rakkaat ystävät», milloin monikossa, milloin yksikössä! Aina kun
minä kuulen niitä sanoja — ja kyllähän niitä maisterin suusta sai
usein kuulla —, tuntuu niin hyvältä ja lämpöiseltä tässä rinnan alla,
vakuutti Mielevän emäntä, käsi sydämellä. Samaa tunsi ja vakuutti
moni muu, kun he kiittäissään maisterin kaunista saarnaa,
useimmiten eivät muistaneet siitä muuta, kuin nuo sydäntä
lämmittävät sanat.

Hyvin vaikuttavaa oli sekin, kun maisteri nuoruudestaan huolimatta


usein tapasi saarna-puheissaan käyttää lauseparsia: »minä olen
huomannut — —», »minä olen ilolla nähnyt» — — »se on minulle
tuottanut» — —, ja muita saman tapaisia. Sellainen osoitti, että
hänellä oli avoin silmä näkemään seurakunnan oloja ja että hän
antoi valkeutensa valistaa ihmisten edessä.

Valitettavasti löytyi Kettuniemellä sellaisia, jotka kyllä


säännöllisesti kerta viikossa kävivät Herran huoneessa, mutta, yhtä
säännöllisesti kallistivat päänsä kirjalautaa vasten ja nukkuivat
saarnan ajan penkeissään. Kuitenkin sai heiltä kuulla, kuinka
hauskaa oli silloin käydä kirkossa, kun maisteri saarnasi ja kuinka he
siitä tulivat rakennetuiksi. Kuinka tämä tapahtui, sitä luonnollisesti ei
käy lähemmin selittäminen, sillä se on sielutieteellinen salaisuus.
Mutta arvatenkin ruumiin, sanan vaikutuksesta, nukkuessa, sielu
valvoi ja nautti ruumiinkin osalta sanasta. Kun jälleen sellaiset voivat
puhua saarnan vaikutuksesta heihin, mitä sitten ne sanoivat, jotka
avoimilla silmillä ja korvilla olivat Jumalanpalveluksessa läsnä
maisterin saarnatessa tai muualla kuulivat hänen sanaa puhuvan!

Myös hautauspuheita oli maisterilla kyky pitää niin liikuttavia. Tosin


ei hänellä usein ollut tilaisuutta sellaiseen, sillä Kettuniemellä oli
tullut tavaksi, että ruumiit useimmiten haudattiin hiljaisuudessa, se
on, kelloitta, veisutta ja monasti ilman saattoväkeäkin. Viikon
kuluessa vietiin ruumiit, ulkonaisia menoja ja tapoja karttaen, väliin
kymmenenkin samaan hautaan. Hautausmaa oli, näet, seurakunnan
suhteen pieni, sentähden täytyi säästää maata ja käyttää
hautaustapaa, joka vähän muistutti silakkain latomista nelikkoon.
Tästä kai oli naapuriseurakunnissa syntynyt pilajuttu, että
Kettuniemellä oli vaan yksi arkku, jolla kaikki kuolleet, suuret ja
pienet vietiin hautaan. Kun ruumiit oli saatu kiireesti kuoleman
jälkeen — ei sentään ketään juuri samana päivänä, kun hän oli
kuollut — hautaan, niin ajateltiin, tottahan pappi ne sunnuntaina
löytää sieltä, kun hauta jätetään peittämättä ja siunaa löytämänsä.
Ja niin jäi monasti saattoväki lähimmäisistä omaisista asti pois ja
pappi suntion kanssa sai kahden toimittaa koko hautausmenon, joka
asian pakosta supistui lyhempään muotoon, mutta ei silti suntiossa
ja hänen lapiossaan herättänyt pahaa mieltä.

Ettei siis maisterilla usein ollut tilaisuutta hautauspuheiden


pitämiseen, voi sanotusta ymmärtää. Mutta sitä liikuttavammin hän
sitten puhuikin, kun siihen tilaisuuden sai. Seuraten tunnettua
kultaista sääntöä: »ei kuolleista muuta kuin hyvää», voi hän
toisinaan kuvaillessaan poistuneen vainajan autuaallista loppua ja
tulevaista onnea saada kyyneleet kuulijainsa silmiin.

Eipä ihme, jos Juorulan vanha piika oli valmis kenelle hyvänsä
vakuuttamaan, »ettei sellaista pappia, kuin maisteri oli, ollut koko
Suomenmaassa». Ulkomaiden oloja ei hän vielä lähemmin tuntenut,
sillä hän ollut matkustanut juuri ulkopuolella lavean Kettuniemen
rajoja. Muuten olisi hänen vertausalansa tullut ehkä hieman
laveammaksi.

Olisi luullut, että maisterin kaltainen mies, jonka kiitosta niin


suuresti ylistettiin, olisi saavuttanut seurakunnan yksimielisen
suosion. Mutta niin se tässä matoisessa maassa käy, ettei niin
hyvää, että kaikille kelpaisi, yhtä vähän kuin on niin huonoa, että
kaikki laittaisi.

Maisterin lahjoista, ahkeruudesta ja avuista huolimatta, oli


Kettuniemellä niitä, jotka eivät olleet häneen suostuneet, vaan
näyttivät ikäänkuin kaihtivan häntä. Tämä nyt kuuluu vähän oudolta.
Sentähden olikin sellaisen nurjamielisyyden johdosta paikkakunnan
sanomalehteen kerran syvämietteisesti kirjoitettu: »Tekisi mieli kysyä
teiltä: että mitä syytä te voitte tuoda sitä miestä vastaan». Sen
kirjoittajaksi, joka lähimmäistensä typeryyttä säälien ei halunsa
mukaan kysellyt, arveltiin erästä nousevaa tähteä paikkakunnan
naiskynäilijäin joukossa.

Maisteriin tyytymättömät valittivat, että hän saarnasi liian paljo


itseänsä, eikä käytöksessään aina ollut suora. Vielä tahtoivat he
väittää, että hän mielisteli rukoilevaisia ja enemmän kuin kohtuudella
olisi ollut sopivaa, etsei ihmisten suosiota.

Ettei tällaista puhetta järvikylissä, erittäin sen takaisissa uskottu,


vaan selitettiin sitä panettelemiseksi, oli sanomattakin selvää. Sillä
kävihän maisteri siellä täydellisyyden esikuvasta, jota miltei
epäjumalisuuteen vivahtavalla kunnioituksella katseltiin. Nähdä
sellaisessa jotain heikkoa puolta tai kuulla siitä edes puhuttavan, olisi
tietysti ollut sopimatonta, jopa luettu synniksi.

Varoa sai sitäkin, ettei sellaista ruvennut Myllymäen matamin


kuullen puhumaan, sillä kyllä puhuja silloin tiesi kuumaan saunaan
joutuneensa, josta ei ollut aivan helppo selvitä. Maisteri oli matamin
erityisessä suosiossa ja hänen pelätyn kielensä suojassa, jolla
matami hallitsi suurinta osaa seurakuntaa.

Mutta erimielipidettä oli nyt maisterista Kettuniemellä olemassa.


Sitä ei voinut kieltää, jollei näkevänä tahtonut silmiänsä ummistaa.
Kun toiset maisterissa näkivät jotain enemmän kuin tavallisen
ihmisen, ehkä enkelin, niin toiset jälleen huomasivat että enkelillä oli
syntisen ihmisen heikkouksia ja vielä sellaisia, joita hyvällä tahdolla
olisi voinut välttää.

Siitä huolimatta oli maisteria pyydettävä neljänneksi. Se oli


vähitellen tullut jonkunlaiseksi uskonkappaleeksi, jota ahkeraan
julistettiin kyläkunnissa samalla kuin kärsimättömästi kyseltiin, milloin
vaali oli oleva, jolloin toivo saataisiin toteentumaan. Pian saatiinkin
tietää, että vaalisaarnat Kettuniemen kirkkoherran virkaan oli
määrätty pidettäväksi kevättalvella.
IV.

Halulla ja uteliaisuudella odotettiin sitten, koska vaalipapit


saapuisivat Kettuniemelle osoittamaan kuntoaan ja — näyttämään
itseänsä. Huhujen kautta oli kyllä saatu heistä kuulla ja tietää
enemmänkin, kuin oikein suotavata olisi ollut. Mutta huhujen uutuus
rupesi vähitellen kadottamaan viehättäväisyyttään, samoinkuin
kesällä helle ensin miellyttäen käy ajan pitkään rasittavaksi. Vasten
tahtoa alkoi syntyä epäilystä, jos kaikki juorut olivat tosia tai
ainoastaan keksityltä, niinkuin enempi ajattelevaiset tahtoivat väittää.
Haluttiin sentähden omin silmin nähdä ja omin korvin kuulla, millaisia
miehiä ne oikeastaan olivat, jotka olivat hakeneet seurakuntaan
kirkkoherraksi.

Viimein vaikeni se sunnuntai, jolloin kappalaisen Pitkäsen tuli


saarnata arvoisain Kettuniemeläisten rakennukseksi. Päivä oli puoli-
pilvinen, sää leutoa ja keli, jollei juuri hyvä, niin mukiin menevä.
Väkeä oli sentähden saapunut seurakunnan vanhaan, kunnioitusta
herättävään kivikirkkoon runsaasti.

Kappalainen Pitkänen oli nimensä mukaan pitkä mies, mutta hyvin


laiha. Myös näytti hän sairaalloiselta ja väsyneeltä, joka vaikutti, että
häntä luuli vanhemmaksi, kuin hän oikeastaan oli. Hänen
esiintymisensä oli maltillista, nöyrää ja vaatimatonta. Tämä vaikutti
kuulijoihin, sillä Kettuniemellä oli totuttu panemaan suuri arvo
ulkonaiselle nöyryydelle. Erittäin nöyrä polvien notkistaminen
rukoilemisessa oli monen silmissä ei ainoastaan pettämätön
kristillisyyden todistus vaan myös sen korkein huippu, jota
hurskasmieliset mielellään kirkossa ja seuroissa suruttomain
ihmeeksi osoittivat. — Messupappi oli Pitkänen myös, mutta hänen
ääntänsä moitittiin matalaksi ja hänen puhettansa vähän
pitkäveteiseksi. Ei myös hänen saarnansa tyydyttänyt evankeelisia,
jota vastaan rukoilevaiset hyvillä mielin luulivat siinä huomaavansa
samaa vanhaa jumalisuutta, jota hekin harrastivat.

Niinkuin luonnollista oli, antoi Pitkäsen saarna ja muu esiintyminen


kielille työtä siksi viikoksi. Ahkeraan niistä asioista keskusteltiin
kyläkunnissa ja myötä- ja vastaan väiteltiin.

Vaalipapeilla on todella suuri etu siinä kohdassa, ettei heidän


tarvitse jäädä kuulemaan, mitenkä heitä työnsä jälkeen ensi-ajalla
arvostellaan eli niinkuin myllyssä jauhetaan. Sillä ei sellainen
kuuleminen, siitä saa olla varma, useinkaan olisi asianomaisille
hauskaa. Erittäin jos on mieliä edeltäpäin, niinkuin oli tapahtunut
Kettuniemellä, johdettu vaalipapeille epäsuosiolliseen suuntaan.

Toisella vaalipapilla, pastori Forssilla oli, kiero onni. Edellisenä


lauvantaina oli pyryttänyt taivaan täydeltä. Lumi oli tukkinut tiet ja
tanhuat umpeen, joten keli oli mitä huonoin. Tästä syystä oli kirkkoon
voinut saapua vähemmäksi sanankuulijoita.

Pastori Fors oli keski-ikäinen ja vilkasliikkeinen mies, jonka puhe


oli omituisen terävää. Hänen saarnansa oli tunteellista, mutta ettei
hän messunut, niin ei saarna herättänyt erityisempää huomiota. Kun

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