The motivation behind my latest Mises piece was spurred on by Joe Dunsmore, a fellow traveler in the English expat scene. One of the questions he asked me a couple months ago dealt with why most of OPEC sells in terms of dollars, despite a weakening dollar.
While my article is hardly the most authoritative research on the matter, according to at least one email it was a “nice little history of oil markets.”
I’d also like to give a shout out to Bob Murphy who provided a useful critique to a draft copy I sent him and B.K. Marcus who stood his ground regarding gold-dollar exchange rates.
Also, while I’m fairly desensitized to receiving odd email from random readers, I just received one from “Lenny” who states, “I’m sure that there is a statue of Chaing Kai-Shek somewhere in Taiwan. Leave a flower on it for me.”
Perhaps he is a child of the ’50s who still remembers the political talking points of the Nixon vs Kennedy 1960 presidential election… in which Taiwan played center stage. For instance, the RoC controlled the islands of Matsu and Quemoy which were a few miles off the coast of mainland China.
During this time the PRC military was continually bombarding the islands with artillery shells and made several (failed) attempts to storm them by amphibious assault. And starting with Truman, every US administration had pledged the support of the US military to aide ol’ Chiang and the RoC who were now holed up in Taiwan.
For instance, in his mind, to prevent a cold war from going hot, Mao apparently phoned Eisenhower and asked that the 7th Fleet be dispersed from the mainland coast, saying that he would only shell Kinmen (Quemoy) every other day. Neither Eisenhower nor his successors felt obliged to comply and an annoyed Mao proceeded to lob volley after volley of shells, filled with propaganda leaflets, onto Quemoy — for 20 years.
The pissing contests between Mao and Kai-shek remind me a lot of those in Korea, between Syngman Rhee and Kim Il-Sung (father of today’s Jong). In fact, there are lots of similarities between these guys, but that is a story for another day.
I have no plans on laying a flower on any of Kai-shek’s statues, he was hardly Santa Clause and even massacred a number of indigenous Taiwanese tribesmen. And ironically, it looks like the party he founded (KMT) will end up being the party of peace during the future integration with the mainland.
See also: Chiang Kai-shek finally pulled from the Cold War myths