Jim de Wilde, a GIR Community Member, is delivering a very interesting speech in the next few days at the Haskayne Business School at the University of Calgary (note the location). Jim, today a venture capitalist (very important) and a long-time Liberal (less important) has a very important take on the impact of petrocapital on capital markets. He suggests that the source of capital is important. He raises it by identifying capital that is, “…just non-productive capital resulting from resource rents and geological roulette? How does the concentration of newly-formed capital in the hands of a few producers affect the open operations of international finance and decision-making of global capital markets?” Now Jim suggests that such capital is in fact distorting (how still needs to be articulated at some later date by Jim no doubt. You will notice that I have added Jim’s website to our GIR community links. While not a blog, Jim has posted a numbert of his speeches and papers. And hopefully he will use our New Multilateralism blog to give us his views on capital markets, globalization and how the new multilateralism needs to be structured to deal with identified problem.)

According to Jim the Dubai Ports crisis, “was the first major clash of petrocurrencies and the global capital markets.” Moreover Jim as much as predicts that this is but the beginning with possible actions that could include other possible targets ‘jewels’ of global capitalism in Europe and in the US threatened with takeover from Moscow, Caracas and Tehran.

While I don’t necessarily see the distinction between petrocapital and cadre capital from say China, Jim does raise again the threat to global investment posed by state-owned enterprises. As he suggests:

“The new real issue is whether we can address the issues of ‘from what source capital is formed’ and whether state-owned companies should be treated differently as they become global players. By definition, the strategies of a stae-owned company are informed by different criteria than are publicly-traded companies.”

In just another guise the key issue of global capital is raised by Jim and in addressing the new multilateralism somewhere some of us will need to address this issue.