An investor’s warning to be ready when oil and the dollar dance.
A different way to look at the impact of oil prices—and what it might mean for the future.
The forces of supply and demand alone cannot explain oil prices, writes Oh. The value of the U.S. dollar and oil prices are linked, while history shows that geopolitics and oil are inseparable. A fund manager for a Korean asset management firm, Oh analyzes the enigma of oil from a financier’s perspective. The result is an alternative interpretation of the history of oil, particularly the oil price “shocks” of 1973 and ’79. The Oil-Dollar Composite Index, which accounts for changes in both oil prices and the dollar, is used as a tool for understanding the fallout from oil shocks. Oh makes a case for the ODCI, with easily digestible prose and helpful graphs. A thumbnail history of the oil industry and floating-exchange-rate system provides suitable background for the general reader, though the lack of footnote citations may frustrate some researchers. The author convincingly puts oil at the center of a power struggle among nations, from the dividing of the Turkish Petroleum Company after World War I to the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74. The author then turns toward economics. He argues the dollar has a “leveraging effect” on oil prices. If oil and the dollar move rapidly in the same direction, the impact is significant. The Latin American debt crisis of the ’70s and ’80s is used to demonstrate how a surging ODCI acts as a “misery index” for developing countries and a “happiness index” for developed nations. Conversely, the Soviet Union suffered as the world’s top oil producer when oil and the dollar plummeted in 1985. Like any investor, Oh is ultimately concerned with the future. He believes a third oil shock may be looming. Most ominously, oil-thirsty China could be the biggest loser. Given China’s role as the world’s second largest economy, it’s a hypothesis that gives pause. Oh presents his case in a logical, step-by-step manner, allowing the past to be his guide. Unlike many economics texts, the book’s message can be grasped by those with only a journeyman’s knowledge of the subject. It’s a risky business trying to predict the future of oil prices, but Oh bravely peers into the crystal ball and finds that history may repeat itself. Time will tell.
An investor’s warning to be ready when oil and the dollar dance.Pub Date: Dec. 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-1479180158
Page Count: 170
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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