Oil Card Geopolitics

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The Solari Report – 19 May 11

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by Catherine Austin Fitts

Jim Norman’s book  The Oil Card: Global Economic Warfare in the 21st Century is one of the most important books you can read to understand the economy and financial markets today.

In The Oil Card, Jim makes the case that a suppressed oil price was the most important strategic variable in bringing down the Soviet Union two decades ago and that engineering an inflated oil price is now being used to keep China in check. The war in Iraq was driven, Jim writes, first and foremost by the importance of keeping the oil price up and China out of a strategic position in the Middle East.

Jim is a veteran business journalist and energy reporter. He writes for McGraw-Hill’s Platts Oilgram News. He has been a senior editor at Forbes and was at BusinessWeek, where he served as Houston bureau chief. Prior to that, he won an AP award for investigative reporting (on an oil and gas scam) while a reporter for the Ann Arbor News in his home state of Michigan.

Jim joined us twice on the Solari Report last year (1,2) His knowledge of the energy markets is deep, representing years covering the big picture nationally and globally after mastering the local beat. Jim is one of those rare experts who can integrate the dots between billions in the futures markets in New York, with what that means to politics from Moscow and Beijing to London and Washington, and how that impacts you and me on Main Street.

After our interview with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson about national security, the ongoing dance between the US dollar and commodity prices and recent events in Japan and the impact on energy policy globally, it seemed a focus on oil and energy was in order. Jim and I will be talking about geopolitics of oil and what it means to our portfolios, the price at the pump and the prospects for peace.

The “oil card” just keeps getting more important and Jim is the master of bringing it into focus.

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I will start with Money & Markets and Ask Catherine. This week’s Money and Markets charts will be posted at the blog.