"Soon after the Arab states clapped on their embargo and then boosted the price of oil by 400 per cent," WFB reminds us, President Nixon appointed William E. Simon energy czar, "and the American people were introduced to ... [this] cyclone from Wall Street who bedazzled the Congress, the bureaucracy, and the press, and got us through the winter." But oil was still $10 a barrel, and where do we go from here? The non-expert will have to pay close attention, but the issue of cartels and how to crack them is still very much with us. WFB: "In your conversations, for instance, with these leaders in the Persian Gulf, do you go so far as to say to them, 'Look, insofar as the United States suffers from this huge outlay for imported oil, it necessarily worsens its inflationary situation and it sets up domestic pressures ... to reduce the defense establishment; and to the extent that we proceed to dismantle our defense establishment, we are dismantling precisely the only thing that you can ultimately rely on to keep that oil yours rather than somebody else's'? Now, does their thinking extend that far... ?" WES: "These are extremely intelligent men, all with degrees-- I almost said that they're all American-educated. That doesn't make them extremely intelligent men, but they are experts in their particular fields and you don't have really to draw them pictures about this."