ECONOMISTS LIKE to preach prudence(宣讲审慎), but they do not always practise it. Ibrahim Oweiss was a young economist in Egypt’s Ministry of Industry when he offered some frank advice to his bosses. He warned against a suffocating(令人窒息的) overconcentration of industry in Cairo and Alexandria. And he later criticised General Nasser’s hollow boast that Egypt made everything “from the needle to the missile” (it made neither well). This incaution(不谨慎) made it safer for him to leave the country in 1960, and hard to return.
经济学家喜欢讲审慎，但并非总是身体力行。易卜拉欣·奥韦斯是埃及工业部的一名年轻经济学家，当时他向老板们提出了一些坦率的建议。他警告说，开罗和亚历山大的工业过度集中会令人窒息。后来他又批评纳赛尔总统空洞的夸口，即埃及制造了“从针到导弹”的一切（实际上两者都做得不好）。这种直言不讳使得他1960年离开祖国更为安全，却难以重返。
In 1974, as a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, Oweiss turned his attention to(将注意力转向) another troublesome concentration of assets: the dollars accruing(积累、产生) to the Gulf’s oil exporters faster than they could make use of them. “I wish to introduce a new term: petrodollars,” he said at a speech in March that year. This ensured the word would always be associated with his name (although it had also appeared in an earlier testimony by Peter Peterson, a former American commerce secretary).
1974年，作为华盛顿乔治城大学的教授，奥韦斯将注意力转向了另一个令人不安的资产集中：海湾石油出口国积累美元的速度超过了它们能够运用的速度。“我想引入一个新术语：石油美元，”他在当年3月的一次演讲中说。这确保了这个词将永远与他的名字联系在一起（尽管它也曾出现在前美国商务部长彼得·彼得森早些时候的证词中）。
Petrodollars, originally viewed as a threat to America and other oil importers, were later seen as the saviour of America’s currency and a cornerstone(基石) of its financial might. At the end of 1974 the Treasury Department agreed to let Saudi Arabia’s central bank buy Treasury bonds in secret, outside regular auctions, to shield the kingdom from criticism for financing a backer of Israel. At the same time, Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, decided to accept only dollars, and not pounds, in payment for its crude (a decision that awkwardly came to light(曝光、显露) during a visit to Saudi Arabia by Britain’s chancellor). The dollar pricing of oil created global demand for America’s currency. And the investment of oil earnings in dollar assets gave America an enviable amount of financial latitude. “This system has been a linchpin of US financial dominance for nearly half a century,” wrote Diana Choyleva of Enodo Economics, a research firm, last year.
石油美元最初被视为对美国和其他石油进口国的威胁，后来却被视为美国货币的救星和其金融实力的基石。1974年底，美国财政部同意让沙特阿拉伯中央银行在常规拍卖之外秘密购买国债，以保护沙特免受因资助以色列支持者而受到的批评。与此同时，国有石油公司沙特阿美决定只接受美元而不是英镑来支付其原油（这一决定在英国财政大臣访问沙特期间尴尬地曝光）。石油的美元定价为美国货币创造了全球需求。而石油收益投资于美元资产则给了美国令人羡慕的财务自由度。“这一体系近半个世纪以来一直是美国金融主导地位的关键，”研究公司Enodo Economics的Diana Choyleva去年写道。
The other hostage crisis
另一个人质危机