UN General Assembly
1977

75. This is true if the world market is conceived of as being confined only to a third of the world's population. Their market has possibly reached the saturation point, and the world economic crisis will persist and worsen so long as rich countries regard the global economy and world markets largely in terms of 30 per cent of the world's population. The remedies applied so far have in fact been postulated on the basis of this fallacy, and predictably, inflation and unemployment continue to bedevil the international economic system. 76. The present economic crisis has its fundamental cause in the developed world—the rich countries—and predates the fivefold increase in the price of oil. The oil price certainly aggravated the crisis, but it did not originate the crisis.