The Real Oil Shock: How Oil Transformed Money, Debt, and Finance

The rise of the global financial industry is treated by many economists as a critical component of the rise of neoliberalism. What few address is the role of the 1973 OPEC Oil Embargo and the 1979 Oil Shock in making modern financialization possible. Here, it will be demonstrated that the dramatic transfer of wealth from the industrialized, capitalist world to OPEC’s members triggered by the Oil Embargo and the Oil Shock created a vast pool of liquid capital. Oil prices inflation, as a resu...