Finished reading The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes
The second half is weaker, but it contains a full account of the Hunt brothers’ attempt to corner the world silver market in the late 1970s. Teamed with oil-rich Arabs, mostly Saudis, the Hunts ended up controlling 77 percent of the world’s privately held silver and, with the help of the Jimmy Carter-era hyperinflation, had driven the price up from $6 per ounce to $50 per ounce.
As government regulators cracked down on this speculation and the price of silver began to fall, banks who’d lent money to the Hunts were at risk. There were fears of a banking collapse and the Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, got involved to urge a rescue.
Intermittent chapters cover the pernicious influence of rich Texans on national politics. The author ridicules these guys for being “ultra right-wing” and mourns the fact that their money seeded a right-wing political movement. Burrough concentrates on the Texans’ fears of Communists and conspiracy. Burrough, who seems to long for a return to the days of FDR, does not describe what for modern readers would be an unimaginable degree of government control over private industry. The government decided how much oil a well owner could pump, at what price he could sell it, and where it could be sold. Shipping a petroleum product by rail? The government decided how much the railroad would charge for that. How about by truck? The government established rates (see Mancur Olson for how slowly the U.S. economy grew until the Ford Administration’s deregulation program took hold). It is not surprising that an industry hobbled by this much government regulation would attempt to lobby its way out, or at least get prices increased.
The book ends with a paragraph about how happy these old geezers might have been to see Ronbo, King Bush I, and then W. in the White House.
What about an account of how Texas morphed itself into the natural gas hub of the U.S.? Something about Enron and how those guys related to the old oil elite? Perhaps ending with Halliburton moving its headquarters to Dubai would have been more instructive for readers trying to understand how world power is shifting.
Conclusion: the book