Word: cartelism
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When Iran and Iraq decided to end their eight-year war, oil producers hoped that a new spirit of unity in OPEC would lead to a boost in crude prices. But the cartel is still fueled more by friction than by fellowship, and oil prices are plunging. Last week the cost of West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark grade of U.S. crude, dropped 4%, to $14.18 per bbl. -- its lowest level in nearly two years. Reason: although OPEC agreed last month to hold daily output to 15 million bbl., some 20 million bbl. are flooding the market each day. Among those...
...both Colombia and the U.S. warned last week that a feud between drug lords based in the Colombian cities of Medellin and Cali is not only getting bloodier at home but has spread north to New York City. Its cause, they say, is a drive by the Medellin cartel to muscle into the New York cocaine market long controlled by the mobsters from Cali...
...expanded the more profitable New York traffic and apparently shattered the deal. One ominous result is that both Robert M. Stutman, head of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration office in New York, and Sterling Johnson, New York City's special narcotics prosecutor, say they have learned that the Medellin cartel has hired gunmen to kill them. Says Stutman: "We get very angry at this type of thing...
...tough approach scored a victory of sorts last week. A Florida jury convicted Carlos Lehder Rivas, a kingpin of Colombia's Medellin cartel drug empire, of conspiring to smuggle 3.3 tons of cocaine into the U.S. He could be sentenced to life plus 150 years in prison. But no one was so naive as to believe jailing Lehder would make a dent in drug smuggling. In Congress, a desperate search was under way to find something that might work. The Senate has followed the House's lead by voting 83 to 6 to force the military to participate in antismuggling...
Reagan thought OPEC was finished. The cartel began to self-destruct in the early 1980's when internecine squabbling and cheating on production quotas rendered it powerless to prop up oil prices. Combined with Carter-era conservation programs, excess production led to a world-wide glut. The price of a barrel of oil fell by one-third, ushering in the economic recovery of the Reagan...