November 8, 2003

Cut off the Money!

Parapundit argues that the correct strategy to turn back Islamist terrorism is to reduce the demand for oil, that is cut off their funds:

The US economy is over $10 trillion per year. The total cost of the 9/11 attack is in the ballpark of about $100 billion. Another larger attack could cost far more. Isn't it time we started to take some large steps toward developing technologies that will reduce world demand for oil as a way to reduce the amount of money available to the Islamists to make trouble for the rest of the world?
He points out that at current price and production levels $654 billion/year is being spent on oil. About 30% of that flows into the middle east and the middle east has about 55% of the world's known reserves. This is a large number and it will take a long time to reduce it especially if oil prices are driven up by increasing demand from China.

Read the entire post.

NB: I have revised the last paragraph of this post. The original misquoted Parapundit on the size of the dollar flow to the middle east.

Posted by Steve on November 8, 2003
Comments

Steve,

Actually the over six hundred billion figure is for all oil produced by all countries. Only a portion of that amount goes to the Middle East. The fraction going to the Middle East will rise in the future as other oil fields become depleted. The Middle East has a smaller fraction of the world oil market than it has of total reserves.

Posted by Randall Parker at November 8, 2003 7:41 PM

Oops. Goes to show what happens when you are in a hurry. I have revised the last paragraph.

Posted by Steve at November 9, 2003 6:54 AM
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