[lbo-talk] Bush's War for an Oil Shortage

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Thu Jun 19 08:08:19 PDT 2003


From: "Alexandre Fenelon" <afenelon at zaz.com.br>

Charles: You mean because the US imports a lot of oil ? Perhaps you can spell out your economic reasoning chain on this a little more for me ( I'm not exactly a topnotch economist)

Alexandre:-Right. I think it is nonsense to think the USA wants to rise oil prices since the country not only is a big importer -(dependent on more than 50% imported oil for his necessities) but also runs a massive trade deficit (around 4% -of GDP). A worsening trade balance, coupled with the dramatic deterioration of the budget deficit can led to -really big troubles. Still, Europe and Japan would be even hardly hit by an increase of the oil prices (not to -mention China). Actually I believe the USA is trying to bring down the oil prices and that was one of the main -reasons for the colonial adventure in Iraq.

^^^^^^^^ Charles: Note that a main thesis of the article is that the purpose of the war is to destroy productive capacity ( creative destruction is the capitalist solution to a crisis of overproduction). Wouldn't a lot of the "really big troubles" you mention be destruction of productive capacity through bankruptcies and the like ? both in the US and the other countries you mention ? The article specifically mentions that Japan and China are targets of the effort to raise oil prices. Surely, Europe is eligible as a prime target too. Couldn't Bush be capable of placing the narrow interests of the oil companies above that of the "USA" as a whole ? He's a petty agent of oil, doesn't give a shit about the rest of "America". But anyway, the ruling sectors of US capital beyond oil want a wave of bankruptcies , higher unemployment and cuts in social spending in the US to cut productive capacity and raise the rate of profit back up. This is the classical analysis.



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