The Biggest Picture - Petrodollars

"At today's prices the value of oil in the ground exceeds the combined value of all the world's equity and debt markets. Oil-importing nations are paying oil-exporting nations roughly $1.5 trillion per year for oil - about 2.5 per cent of global GDP - by some measures the biggest income transfer in history."
...
"The second fundamental macroeconomic challenge is to find ways to enable oil producers to transform their resource wealth into financial and real assets on a gigantic scale."

"This is much more difficult than it might sound. Of course no-one knows what the long-run price will be, but at current prices the value of oil in the ground is $162,000bn - more than the total value of all equity markets ($52,300bn) plus all debt markets ($67,000bn.)"

"Indeed it almost exactly equals the total value of all tradeable financial assets, which the McKinsey Global Institute estimated was $167,000bn at the end of 2006."
...
"Over such a long period of time, it should be possible for global markets to absorb the petrodollar flows, but it will be challenging,"

Source: S.A.R., FT