Hitch on Hardball

Christian Gregory christian11 at mindspring.com
Fri Oct 18 16:18:22 PDT 2002



> There's a war premium in oil prices right now,
but I don't think that it matters much for pricing who "controls" the oil. It's a global and mostly competitive market where prices are set by spot and futures traders. I think Chomsky is right that the U.S. is hot to "control" the oil for strategic reasons - for leverage over Japan and the EU, mainly. If oil were quoted in a basket of dollars, euros, and yen, it might have an effect on our economy, but not a major one. And an important reason it's quoted in dollars now is that this is the biggest market, and the best place to invest the cash.
>
> Doug
>
So back to the original question. What are we talking about in terms of a vision of the ME? Palestinian statehood, a Kurdish state, democracy in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait? Israeli settlers moved by force (by generous monetary "incentive") out of the occupied territories? What else?

Christian



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