Sheldon Richman on Oil Sanctions and the Pretense of Knowledge

March 2, 2012

The sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the EU on Iranian crude oil exports were not supposed to cause a spike in oil prices. Yet as Reuters analyst John Kemp reported this week, “the policy has backfired.” This is despite the fact that President Barack Obama, a smart guy advised by a slew of other smart folks, was empowered to determine the best course of action. And yet the policy still failed. Why? As Sheldon Richman explains, it’s because the matter that these “experts” were grappling with does not permit the kind of knowledge they would need to design a plan calibrated to produce the results they seek.

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