>At 03:31 PM 4/12/2004, Shane Taylor wrote:
>>There seems to be a problem of price discrimination here. Even assuming
>>that a puppet government and privatized oil industry gives the US great
>>influence over prices.
>
>Since I'm the one who asked about privatization, can I assume that
>your implicit answer (and Doug's) to my question is, "Yes, it looks
>like the neocons want to see Iraqi oil (and the rest of the region's
>oil) privatized."?
Sure they'd like the oil privatized, but 1) the Clinton admin presided over mass privatizations everywhere, so I don't know that there's a policy innovation that could explain the war, and 2) so far, there's been no attempt to privatize Iraqi oil (or wasn't last I'd heard).
As a qualification of 1), you could say that the Bush admin's roots in the oil biz makes them different, but that would contradict the Yoshie & Co. argument that Bush is little different from th rest of the gang. Privatization of oil would benefit some lucky companies, but again, that's a narrow sectoral argument rather than a big capital one.
Doug