The Saddam Shuffle

摘要

What a tangled, sticky and profitable web is woven when governments fix the price of oil. If you want to witness this phenomenon up close, look at the curious details beginning to leak out of the investigation of Iraq's oil-for-food program. Under the auspices of the United Nations, Saddam Hussein sold $64 billion worth of oil between 1996 and 2003. The program called for the oil to be sold at artificially low prices, to motivate hesitant buyers to step forward to take on tainted oil. The discounts, though, were more than enough to attract customers. They were deep enough that the buyers could make a nice pile even while rebating $229 million to Saddam in the form of what the industry euphemistically calls "surcharges."