I would like to focus here on where the money has gone, and leave the issue of asset prices for another time, even if both issues are much related. According to figures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the combined current account surpluses of oil exporters are closed to $ 577 billions in 2006. This is a big number that might mean little to many readers. Just to see how big this number is, if we compare it with US current account deficit, it is approximately 2/3 of it. This represents an important part of worldwide savings and implies an important process of asset re-allocation. Beneficiaries of these surpluses are not only OPEC producers but also non-OPEC producer such as Norway or Russia. The big heterogeneity of oil producing countries means that they also have different investment patterns. This has been discussed in a recent report from PIMCO, a large bond investment fund that draws interesting conclusions. First, low risk assets dominated purchased assets. Among them most of the flows went into US treasuries and these purchases were mainly originated in Russia. Fear from potential asset freezing after Patriot Act has led many Middle Eastern oil-producing countries either to move away from US government assets or do this purchase in a more secretive way. Second, middle-eastern countries seem to be more diversified and aggressive in their asset allocation compared to non-OPEC countries. Russia’s inflows are mostly received by the Central Bank (with a conservative approach channelling most of the inflows towards US treasuries). In Middle Eastern countries inflows have different recipients and their asset allocation is more diversified. Inflows are equally distributed among short term US fixed income, equities and company acquisitions. This pattern has changed in 2006, and Russia is diversifying towards other currencies other than the dollar and taking a more aggressive approach. This is a different asset allocation pattern than that we saw in the previous oil crisis when huge surpluses were running in oil producing countries. Their effect in price assets has also been different. But we will look at it some other time.