OVER A BARREL

Publisher: Encounter Books (10/30/07)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1594032033
ISBN-13: 978-1594032035
Longtime commodities trader Raymond J. Learsy explains the real reason behind today's outrageous gas prices by exposing the Mideast oil cartel and revealing how OPEC manipulates the oil markets-and, consequently, threatens the world's economy and American security.

With refreshing candor and an insider's perspective, Over a Barrel, explains OPEC from the bottom up: its history of extortions, manipulations, broken promises and cynical opportunism. Learsy reveals how OPEC manufactures illusions of oil scarcity to inflate prices and gain political power.

Perhaps more frightening, OPEC's members funnel their profits to dangerous anti-American and Islamist movements across the globe, in effect using dollars from our own wallets to fund jihad. And yet OPEC remains the de facto controller of the oil fields our American soldiers have fought to liberate in Iraq.

A sharp, sweeping survey of OPEC's methods of economic dominance, Over a Barrel is at once a stern warning on where we are headed and a practical guide to busting the Mideast oil cartel and charting our course toward energy independence.

BIO

Raymond J. Learsy, a graduate of the Wharton School, made his life in the fast-paced, risk-filled world of commodities trading, beginning in 1959. In 1963, he started his own firm and over twenty years expanded from the U.S. into Canada, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Brazil, and Pakistan, trading in an array of bulk raw materials and commodities, shipping to customers worldwide. In the 1980s, he shifted gears as a private investor, from 1982 to 1988, served as a Reagan appointee to the National Endowment for the Arts...