THE OIL-TRUST IDEA SEEMS TO BE GATHERING STEAM:

DEAD SEA, Jordan, June 22 — As Iraq began shipping crude oil today for the first time since the start of the war, the U.S. administrator of the country broached the politically sensitive issue of how oil revenue should be spent, proposing that some of the money be shared with Iraqis through a system of dividend payments or a national trust fund to finance public pensions. . . .

Bremer said one option would pay Iraqis annual dividends based on the year’s oil sales, a system used in Alaska. Another option, he said, would be to deposit the oil revenue into a trust fund to create a social security system. Either way, he said in a speech at the conference, “every individual Iraqi would come to understand [that] his or her stake in the country’s economic success was there to see.”

Seems like a good idea to me.

Read this item from Newsday, too.