The myth of the petrodollar

Illustration: Álvaro Bernis

May 7th 2026|5 min read

ECONOMISTS LIKE to preach prudence, but they do not always practise it. Ibrahim Oweiss was a young economist in Egypt’s Ministry of Industry when he offered some frank advice to his bosses. He warned against a suffocating overconcentration of industry in Cairo and Alexandria. And he later criticised General Nasser’s hollow boast that Egypt made everything “from the needle to the missile” (it made neither well). This incaution made it safer for him to leave the country in 1960, and hard to return.