Daniel Yergin

And so markets do respond.

It just took longer for that to happen.

Well, I think these countries did assert their political power.

Certainly, again, it was a very different Iran, but the Shah of Iran, you know,

until he fell, he got sick and then he fell, asserting, you know, we're players on the world economy.

Suddenly people, you know, Saudi Arabia had been a country that people didn't think much about in the United States.

Suddenly Saudi Arabia became really important.

And you had this huge flow of money that went into these economies, you know, what were called petrodollars.

And that made them, you know, was a whole other source of influence.

You know, in the book, I talk about Richard Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew, who, you know, had to quit.

He actually resigned because he was corrupt and even had people paying for his groceries.

And a couple of years later, he shows up in Saudi Arabia trying to do business as a consultant.

I mean, people went there.

That's where the money is.

If you go today, if you're a private equity fund, many of them...

their number one place to go to raise money today is not necessarily the pension funds of various states in the United States.

These private equity funds or venture capital funds are going to the Gulf countries again, because that's where the money is.

Well, I mean, yeah.

So, I mean, I, I mean, I certainly speak in that, speak in that part of the world.

I mean, it's pretty much, you know, sometimes I joke.