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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
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
vii
List of Archives
ix
Abbreviations and Acronyms
xi
List of Figures
xiii
xiv LIST OF FIGURES
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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Language: Finnish
Kirj.
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.
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.
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.