Oil and the Western Economic Crisis

This book explains the place of oil in the economic and political predicaments that now confront the West. Thompson explains the problems that the rising cost of oil posed in the years leading up to the 2008 crash, and the difficulties that a volatile oil market now poses to economic recovery under the conditions of high debt, low growth and quantitative easing. The author argues that the 'Gordian knot' created by the economic and political dynamics of supply and demand oil in the present international economy poses a fundamental challenge to the assumption of economic progress embedded in Western democratic expectations. 

Helen Thompson is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK. She is currently principal investigator on a research project on austerity and its consequences within the EU, which is financed by the Philomathia Foundation.