Читать книгу Financial Cold War. A View of Sino-US Relations from the Financial Markets онлайн

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Born in Paterson, New Jersey in 1927, William Edward Simon was the son of an insurance executive. Handsome and athletic, he served in the US Army before attending Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Upon graduation in 1952, he headed to Wall Street, where he eventually became the partner in charge of the Government and Municipal Bond Departments at Salomon Brothers. The chain-smoking Simon became Deputy Secretary of the Treasury in January 1973 and launched the Federal Energy Administration to address the energy crisis at the height of the Arab oil embargo. He was appointed Treasury Secretary in May 1974, after George Shultz resigned from the Nixon Administration.

In mid-1974, the economic outlook for the US was dire. The oil embargo had quadrupled oil prices and inflation soared, even as unemployment was rising. For the oil exporters, however, the sharp rise in oil prices had been a bonanza. In 1974, members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) had a balance of payments surplus of $67 billion.ssss1 None benefited more than Saudi Arabia which, with the largest reserves of oil in the world, enjoyed a surge in its wealth. Bedouin shepherds, whose fathers and grandfathers had ridden across the desert on camel back with Ibn Saud, were suddenly driving Datsun pick-up trucks, propelling Nissan to the number one spot in vehicle sales in the country.