Aw yea, short memories

Rockwall TX

Description

It's funny, you have a lot of facts correct, just a little fuzzy on the timeline. The "oil shock" as many called it at the time was in 1973-74. Before Carter was elected. "On October 19, 1973, immediately following President Nixon’s request for Congress to make available $2.2 billion in emergency aid to Israel for the conflict known as the Yom Kippur War, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) instituted an oil embargo on the United States." (Reich 1995) Out of control inflation and the sinking of the dollar began when the US went off the gold standard. Carter tried and failed to stem the slide. So did Reagan. Nobody really knew what to do, it was a global problem. "After 1971, the U.S. economy crashed and burned. As the dollar fell from the Bretton Woods parity of $35/oz. of gold to over $350/oz. during the decade – a devaluation of 10:1 – the U.S. and the world economy was mired in an intensifying stagflationary slump that many feared would lead to hyperinflation, revolution and war." (Forbes) I was a contractor in the 1980s-90s. Luckily for me, 90% of my business was with existing homeowners, because new home building came to a complete stop. I remember dozens or maybe hundreds of new subdivisions with streets, sidewalks, water and sewer systems and 4 or 5 houses. Nobody could afford to buy with 16% mortgage rates and no job. Most of those subs remained that way for years, others were bulldozed. On the bright side, I could hire all the skilled trades I wanted at discount wages. A friend of mine bought a house in 1986 for about 1/2 of what it should have been worth. Totally complete except for landscaping. Of course he was alone in that sub for years before anyone else moved in. I got a mortgage in 1987 for 10.125% and that was a bargain because a friend was a VP at the bank. Average rates at the time were 12-13% Bank CDs paid 12%. I had a lot of CDs, Preferred stocks and corporate bonds at the time because the yields were ridiculous. Of course the Shah (Farsi for king) was friendly to the US, we put him in power. In 1952, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran wanted to audit the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, a British company now Part of BP, in order to verify that AIOC was paying the contracted royalties to Iran. UK prime minister Winston Churchill and the Eisenhower administration decided in early 1953 to overthrow Iran's government. In August 2013 the U.S. government formally acknowledged the U.S. role in the coup by releasing a bulk of previously classified government documents that show it was in charge of both the planning and the execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda. The CIA is quoted acknowledging the coup was carried out "under CIA direction" and "as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government" (wiki). So after 25 years of living under a US puppet dictator's rule, some Iranians got pissed enough to stage a revolution of their own. I don't believe a violent coup is ever the answer, but that was the example that the US taught them.