Among the many problems with dictatorships is that they cannot blame anyone else for their follies. This is what the Bani Saud are discovering. Their policy of over production has led to the collapse of global oil prices. This in turn has caused drastic fall in Saudi revenues forcing them to slash subsidies on essential commodities increasing resentment against the regime.
Alan Greenspan’s recently published memoirs cut through a great deal of the official American bluster about the US involvement in Iraq, going straight to the heart of the matter. “I am saddened,” he wrote, “that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”
