Business professor says high oil prices could topple U.S. President George Bush

The Associated Press

U.S. President George W. Bush’s success in November is tied to what happens in June when the Iraq government is turned over to local control, a business professor says.

“The political aspect of Iraq is if we still have the problem we have right now and oil prices go up to $48 or $50 a barrel, I’m afraid we’re going to have a new administration,” Habib Bazyari said May 25 during a civic club speech in Meridian, Miss.

“Everything depends on the end of June when the new Iraqi administration comes into power,” he said. Bazyari is dean of the College of Business at the University of West Alabama. He moved to the United States from Iran in 1960.

Bazyari said there was a 4 percent growth in the gross domestic product for the first quarter of 2004. The GDP is the output of goods and services produced by labor and property in the United States.

But the last four of five recessions in the United States started with an increase in the price of oil, Bazyari said.

“I’m afraid if oil prices stay about $42-$45 (per barrel) we are going to go back into another recession,” he said.

If that happens, Bazyari said unemployment may increase to close to 6 percent.

“The whole thing depends on oil,” Bazyari said.

He said the main triggers for higher oil prices are the purchase of gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles; an increased demand for oil in China and India where manufacturing jobs are on the rise; and the need for more oil refineries in the United States.

He also said the war has affected oil prices because terrorists continually puncture pipe lines, wasting millions of barrels of oil in a day.