Oil and the Western Economic Crisis

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Helen Thompson

   Pages 1-7

3. The Spectres of Peak Conventional Oil and Stagflation

   • Helen Thompson

   Pages 9-45

4. Salvation and Damnation: The Rise of Non-conventional Oil and Quantitative Easing

   • Helen Thompson

   Pages 47-92

5. Revisiting the 1970s

   • Helen Thompson

   Pages 93-106

6. Conclusions

   • Helen Thompson

   Pages 107-114

7. Back Matter

   Pages 115-118

   PDF

This book explains the place of oil in the economic and political predicaments that now confront the West. Thompson explains the problems that the rising cost of oil posed in the years leading up to the 2008 crash, and the difficulties that a volatile oil market now poses to economic recovery under the conditions of high debt, low growth and quantitative easing. The author argues that the 'Gordian knot' created by the economic and political dynamics of supply and demand oil in the present international economy poses a fundamental challenge to the assumption of economic progress embedded in Western democratic expectations. 

• Monetary policy
• Federal Reserve Board
• European Central Bank (ECB)
• Bank of England
• US foreign policy
• OPEC
• Quantitative easing
• Stagflation
• Zero interest rates policy (ZIRP)
• us politics

• University of Cambridge , Cambridge, United Kingdom

  Helen Thompson

Helen Thompson is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK. She is currently principal investigator on a research project on austerity and its consequences within the EU, which is financed by the Philomathia Foundation. 

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