石油美元并非免费午餐

The Cost To US Of 'Petrodollar Recycling'

With so many economic threats facing the U.S., consider for a moment an old worry: the fear that oil-producing nations wouldn't be able to 'recycle' all the money they were collecting, to the detriment of the global economy.

Angst about 'petrodollar recycling' made headlines in the 1970s. It's a worry that seems quaint today as the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority trades the proceeds of roughly 75 million barrels of oil -- about a week's worth of U.S. oil imports -- for a 4.9% stake in Citigroup.

Still, three decades ago there was genuine concern that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries wouldn't know what to do with the windfall from the first oil shock. And there was fear that oil-importing countries, especially in the developing world, might try to compensate for their growing oil-induced trade deficits by reducing other imports.

The International Monetary Fund set up special 'oil facilities' to lend to oil-thirsty developing nations that were that running up huge trade gaps. U.S. Treasury Secretary William Simon lobbied oil producers to deposit petrodollars in U.S. banks and discouraged them from direct investment in U.S. companies -- amid talk Iran might buy a stake in ailing airline Pan Am, which is now defunct.

OPEC, it turned out, went on a buying binge. The money it did save, before oil prices fell, went into government securities or bank deposits. Commercial banks, in turn, increased lending to Latin America and other de

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] 下一页