Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Highlight

America also strongly preferred that its allies bank in New York (or San Francisco or Los Angeles). As David Harvey describes it, an agreement to do just that is what saved the Saudis from a U.S. military invasion to break the oil cartel in 1973.42 The United States held on to Saudi cash until the kingdom was ready to distribute it to U.S.-based multinational contractors, a process that contractor John Perkins describes from personal experience in his Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.