FORBES @ 100: POWER CUT—JULY 15, 1976
America’s long, dangerous dependence on foreign oil.
Sign of the timeS Vandemonium
the Big three automakers were on track to sell 520,000 vans in ’76, up nearly fivefold in six years. the trend had started “in California when surfers began using cargo vans as luxury campers. the fad has spanned manhattan and [reached] into prim New england.” AmericA wAs one of the world’s two superpowers, but it remained dangerously dependent on foreign oil. The 1973 OPEC embargo—imposed on America in retaliation for weapons sales to Israel during the Yom Kippur War—had cost the United States between $10 billion and $20 billion in gross national product (upwards of $86 billion today) as well as 500,000 jobs. It exposed the country’s extreme dependence on foreign oil, a “vulnerability to supply interruptions [that] will get worse, not better.” Sure enough, another oil shock would hit in 1979 after the Iranian Revolution. As America sank into another recession, blockslong lines at gas stations nationwide again became a daily test of endurance. Despite the warning calls sounded by Forbes and many others, reliance on foreign oil worsened in the ensuing decades, reaching a peak of nearly 3.7 billion imported barrels a year in the mid-2000s. That figure has declined by 22% since, as technological advances such as hydraulic fracking and horizontal drilling have offered access to new U.S. oil and gas reserves.
notAble And newSworthy brighton beach millions
Neil Simon didn’t need to blow his own horn: He was a “one-man entertainment conglomerate” who earned in the mid–seven figures just for the film outline of The Odd Couple; he had also written 1976’s Murder by Death (below).
AmAzing Ad yankee Doodle Diesel
Southern Pacific launched a fleet of red, white, blue and gold trains to mark the country’s bicentennial— freight locomotives that continued to do “a job we’ve been doing for 125 of the 200 years we’re celebrating in 1976.”
the editor’S deSk Their Highnesses
more than 10,000 spectators attended the second annual gathering of hot-air balloonists, hosted by malcolm forbes at his Normandy estate. each paid $2.20 (roughly $10 today) to see pilots from a dozen countries, all personally selected by malcolm, maneuver their buoyant craft through the skies.