Let’s talk about oil (Part II)
J.D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil, became the world’s first billionaire in 1916. It wasn’t Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate, or Cornelius Vanderbilt, the transportation mogul, or J.P. Morgan, the legendary banker. It was Rockefeller. And this was even considering the fact that oil had largely been used only for machinery, medicine, and lighting up to that point, and transportation only came into the mix in the early 1900s.
Oil has since become the most important commodity, ever. In fact, almost every major geopolitical event in the past century can be tied to oil.
How did oil get to be so important?