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迈克尔·赫德森：美国帝国的全球霸权计划
伊夫·史密斯 2025年6月28日
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/06/michael-hudson-the-u-s-empires-plan-for-global-domination.html
我是伊夫。以下是本·诺顿与迈克尔·赫德森的另一场深入探讨，他以美以与伊朗的战争作为切入点，探讨了中东在美国霸权中的角色。
尽管这场谈话中有很多精彩的内容，但我仍然不得不与赫德森就20世纪70年代石油危机期间美国与沙特阿拉伯达成的美元循环谅解的性质持有不同意见。该框架并非由财政部的比尔·西蒙制定，而是由亨利·基辛格和美国国务院在与沙特，尤其是其强大的石油部长沙特·费萨尔的谈判中制定的。包括重要会议详细记录在内的关键文件已解密，并已发布在美国国务院网站上。这些文件明确指出，美国财政部在这些安排中扮演着次要角色（例如，他们很少参与基辛格和美国国务院与沙特·费萨尔及其他沙特高级官员的会谈）。
基辛格及其团队将他们的担忧概括为如何“回收”沙特积累的美元。他们之所以努力说服沙特集中购买美国国债，是为了防止沙特吞噬美国的生产性资产：包括上市公司和私营企业的权益、商业地产、农田以及银行（例如，阿尔·瓦利德王子在20世纪90年代初对至关重要的花旗银行的救助，该银行作为美国金融旗舰机构，在满足美国跨国公司和小型出口商的支付需求方面发挥着关键作用）。大规模控制生产性资产将赋予沙特酋长国巨大的政治权力。
我不认同沙特在20世纪70年代除了将美元再投资到美国以外的任何地方之外还有很多其他选择的观点（正如我之前所述，他们确实令人印象深刻地抬高了伦敦黄金地段的房地产价格，购入了大量高档的梅菲尔区房产）。当时，美国是全球主导经济体，即使在石油危机期间，也拥有强劲的增长前景。美国金融市场是全球最深厚、流动性最强、监管最完善的市场。美国的信息披露和投资者保护措施，例如禁止抢先交易和串通投标，都超过了当时任何其他市场。当时还没有欧元，所以另一种选择是投资规模小得多的国内市场，例如英国或德国，这些国家缺乏易于交易的投资品种。1984年，当我在伦敦花旗银行为全球最大的外汇交易部门进行一项研究时，主要的货币“交叉盘”都是美元对美元。
美国在为投资者提供安全机制方面发挥的突出作用一直持续到20世纪90年代初，这一点可以参见1994年《哈佛商业评论》上阿马尔·拜德（Amar Bhide，他经常采用逆向思维，而且不幼稚；此外，他还经营着一家自营交易公司）的文章。
始于1983年的石油期货交易所市场的发展进一步巩固了美元在石油贸易中的地位（需要注意的是，像飞利浦兄弟公司（Philips Brothers）这样的大宗商品交易商，虽然收购了所罗门兄弟公司（Salomon Brothers），但随后遭到反向收购，而在此之前，他们一直在安排私人对冲）。
尽管20世纪70年代与沙特的谈判确实促成了沙特同意持有大量美元美国国债，但美元作为储备货币的持续作用取决于美国持续的贸易逆差，而不是石油贸易。石油美元论的一大反面证据是，在1997年亚洲金融危机之后，中国和东南亚国家积极积累了大量外汇余额。这些国家（中国除外）一直受到国际货币基金组织的“温柔”照顾，不希望这种情况再次发生。因此，他们操纵本国货币，使其兑美元汇率相对低廉，从而保持持续的贸易顺差，并积累大量美元资产以备不时之需。如果它们再次面临货币危机的风险，这将使它们能够大规模干预。这一行动显然与石油贸易无关。日本在20世纪80年代制造业占据主导地位并对美国保持巨额贸易顺差期间，也积累了大量美国国债。
Michael Hudson: The U.S. Empire’s Plan for Global Domination
As much as there is a great deal of terrific material in this talk, I have to continue to disagree with Hudson on the nature of the US dollar recycling understandings with Saudi Arabia during the oil shock of the 1970s. That framework was set not by Bill Simon of Treasury, but by Henry Kissinger and the State Department in negotiations with the Saudis, importantly its powerful oil minister Saud Al Faisal. Key documents, including detailed notes of important meetings, have been declassified and are on the State Department website. They make clear that the US Treasury was a secondary actor in these arrangements (for instance, they seldom participated in the talks by Kissinger and State with Saud Al Faisal and other top Saudi officials).
And Kissinger and his team framed their concern as how to “recycle” the dollar that the Saudis were piling up. The reason for the effort to persuade the Saudis to concentrate their buying in Treasuries was to forestall them from instead hoovering up US productive assets: interests in public and private companies, commercial real estate, farmland, banks (see Prince Al Waleed’s early 1990s rescue of the critically important Citibank, which plays a critical role as the US financial flagship serving payment needs for US multinationals and smaller exporters). Getting control of productive assets on a large scale would vest tremendous political power with the sheikdom.
I reject the thesis that the Saudis had much in the way of alternatives in the 1970s to reinvesting their dollars much of anywhere beyond the US (they did, as I have recounted, impressively bid up prime real estate in London, buying huge swathes of tony Mayfair). The US was the dominant global economy and even with the oil shock, had strong growth prospects. The US financial markets were the deepest, the most liquid, and the best regulated. US disclosures and investor protections like prohibitions against front-running and bid-rigging exceeded those of any other market at the time. There was no Euro back then, so the alternative would have been to invest in much smaller national markets like the UK or Germany, which has much less in the way of easily traded investments. As of 1984, when I was on a study for the world’s biggest foreign exchange trading desk, Citibank in London, the big currency “crosses” were against the dollar.
The US as the standout player in providing a safe regime for investors continued until easily the early 1990s, see Amar Bhide (who is regularly a contrary thinker and no naif; among other things, he ones ran a proprietary trading operation) in the Harvard Business Review in 1994 for confirmation.
The development of exchange-based markets for oil futures, starting in 1983 helped further cement the role of the dollar in the oil trade (keep in mind commodities traders like Philips Brothers, which acquired Salomon Brother but was then subject to a reverse takeover had been arranging private hedges before then).
Even though the 1970s negotiations with the Saudis did secure their agreement to keep their dollar holdings significantly in Treasuries, the continued role of the dollar as reserve currency depends on the US running sustained trade deficits, and not the oil trade. The big disproof of the petrodollar thesis is the very aggressive accumulation of large foreign exchange balances by China and Southeast Asian countries in the wake of the 1997 Asian crisis. These countries ex China had been subjected to the tender ministrations of the IMF and did not want that to happen again. So their manipulated their currencies to be comparatively cheap against the dollar so as to run sustained trade surpluses and accumulate a rainy day dollar assets hoard. That would enable them to intervene in a big way if they were ever again at risk of a currency crisis. This course of action clearly had nothing to do with the oil trade. Ditto Japan’s accumulation of large Treasury holdings during its 1980s period of manufacturing dominance and large trade surpluses with the US.
