Peak Oil.
It's a Crude, Crude World.
Oil is everywhere. It’s all around us. It’s in everything and it makes the world go around. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that renewable energy will comprise 27% of the world’s energy production by 2050, all things being equal. Pretty great, right? Not really. Based upon population and economic growth trends, the EIA also predicts that the use of liquid fuels will continue to increase over the same period. So as much as we think we might be getting ahead, we’re really not. But there’s another side of oil that most people rarely think about and that’s its value as a currency. Yes, a currency. We tie in good ol’ Milton Friedman again to discuss how trading this ubiquitous fuel went from commodity to casino, making it more difficult to break this habit than one might imagine.
Show Notes
Clips
Episode Timestamp + Link | Clip Link
- 00:00:00 | Alex Zanetis: Three Miles Down
- 00:03:54 | Airplane II: Everything that's happened up 'til now
- 00:05:47 | 60 Minutes Australia: The African tyrant living in luxury while his people starve
- 00:06:37 | Beverly Hillbillies: The Clampett's Strike Oil
- 00:09:46 | Democracy Now!: African Dictatorships and Double Standards
- 00:12:49 | The Godfather: I'm Gonna Make Him An Offer He Can't Refuse
- 00:13:53 | Jerry Reed: Crude Oil Blues
- 00:15:37 | Braveheart: Motivational Speech
- 00:16:00 | Red River: Yeehaw
- 00:24:37 | John Cleese: And now for something completely different
- 00:31:02 | The Big Short: I'm Jacked to the Tits!
- 00:31:04 | Frankie Laine and Jimmy Boyd: Tell Me a Story
- 00:41:26 | Bobby Darin: Mack the Knife
- 00:42:46 | There Will Be Blood: I Am An Oil Man
- 00:47:09 | The Pump: The 2008 Oil and Financial Crisis
- 00:47:18 | Oil and the Economic Crisis
- 00:47:29 | CHCH News: Gas prices up sharply
- 00:47:33 | Kerr Discusses Oil prices with Larry Kudlow July 2008
- 00:47:39 | 60 Minutes: The Price Of Oil
- 00:48:16 | Trading Places: Panicking
- 01:18:14 | Marketplace: Indigenous workers have been hit hard by COVID-19. But Friday’s jobs report won’t reflect that.
- 01:30:49 | Jennifer Lopez: Let’s Get Loud
Resources
- World Population Review: Richest African Countries 2022
- Trading Economics: Corruption Rank by Country | Africa
- Worldometer: Equatorial Guinea Oil
- Democracy Now!: African Dictatorships and Double Standards
- U.S. Energy Information Administration: International Energy Outlook 2021
Book Love
- Peter Maass: Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil
- Leif Wenar: Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules That Run the World
- Morgan Downey: Oil 101
- Dan Dicker: Oil's Endless Bid: Taming the Unreliable Price of Oil to Secure Our Economy
- Leah McGrath Goodman: The Asylum: The Renegades Who Hijacked the World’s Oil Market
- Bernard Harcourt: The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order
- Emily Lambert: The Futures: The Rise of the Speculator and the Origins of the World's Biggest Markets
Pod Love
- American Scandal: Enron
UNFTR Episode Resources
UNFTR Quick Links