A Century Ago, Petroleum -

Saudi Arabia Operates According To The Belief That God Made Young Men And Women So Utterly And Completely Without Self-control That They Must Be Physically Segregated Every Moment Of The Day And Night.

Soaring Prices For Crude Oil, Falling Production Surpluses, Wild Speculation In Commodities, A Rush Into The Precious Metals, Turmoil In The Middle East, Assertive Oil Producers: It Is 1973-74 All Over Again, And At Dictation Speed.

Viewed From A Distance, Or Through The Eye Of The All-knowing Ceo Of The Universe, The Crash Of 2008 Followed The Usual Pattern. A Long-lived Boom Driven By Cheap Credit, Going Back As Far As 1982 (though Subject To Interruptions In The Mid-1980s And 1990s, And In 2001), Came To Grief Because Of A Rise In The Cost Of Borrowing Money.

In Rising Financial Markets, The World Is Forever New. The Bull Or Optimist Has No Eyes For Past Or Present, But Only For The Future, Where Streams Of Revenue Play In His Imagination.

Saudi Arabia Is A Puritanical State That Claims A Monopoly Of Wisdom And Virtue.