Boom to bust…and we learned little

Few among us today, mostly those 40 years and older, will recall how the first oil boom impacted on the society. Before 1973 and the advent of Libya’s Muammar Gadaffi as the strongest spokesman for oil-exporting countries, the great guzzlers of energy to the North paid us a paltry US$2 a barrel. That is hard to imagine today, but it is a fact. Gadaffi led OPEC to the dominant position it holds today by insisting that oil exporters be paid more for this all-important product that drove the industrial engine that was The North-from the USA and Canada to Europe and Japan. Trinidad and Tobago, a minute player in the scheme of things, enjoyed immense benefits from this windfall that lasted close to 10 years.

..If we who were around learned anything from the “bust” that followed the first oil boom, it is that you use whatever comes to you wisely, that you save for the rainy day that is sure to follow. How and where you save or even better, invest, is something people need to be advised about. But if we don’t, and signs are that a wild spending spree is underway, we are destined to pay a heavy price when the country’s economic fortunes change.

Trinidad & Tobago Express