The president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, on Monday called on oil producers and consumers to learn from past mistakes if Western economies were to avoid a repeat of the high inflation and unemployment that followed the first global oil shock in 1973.<\/p>\n
That year is widely acknowledged as an economic watershed, a time when an OPEC oil embargo led to a spiral of higher prices, recession in Western economies and a wrenching contraction in the early 1980s that finally put an end to a decade of sharp inflation.<\/p>\n
No one, whether Western consumers or oil suppliers, should want to repeat that history, Trichet said. “There is a joint interest in behaving as properly as possible,” he said.<\/p>\n
Trichet spoke at the Forum for New Diplomacy, a series of periodic discussions organized by the International Herald Tribune and the Paris-based Acad\u00c3\u00a9mie Diplomatique Internationale, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the ECB.<\/p>\n
He did not specify what suppliers might do, but some countries, including the United States, have urged oil exporters to pump more crude to bring down prices.<\/p>\n