It was one of the main issues last year when the price of oil spiked, but now everyone seems to think it isn't that big a deal anymore.
Hopefully the economists and politicians are not fooled by the lower price of oil. Hopefully plans are being made for what we should do to lower our dependence on a resource that is getting harder to find.
I wonder what the average investor thinks about the situation with oil? It really makes the stock market a much riskier proposition. Any thought about how profitable a company could be would be completely changed if their transportation and heating costs quadrupled.
If oil prices spiked agai as they did last year, would there be any type of global unrest that could alter the global economy. Petro dictators would be flush with cash while poor nations would have food shortages and potential panics.
I'm not one to speculate about worst case scenarios, but it is just a fact that oil is a major driver of the global economy while being a resource that is getting harder to find.
Of course the War on Iraq was about a response to 9/11 and had nothing to do with Iraq having one of the largest reserves of oil in the world.... Yeah right....
There's a great article about Goldman Sachs in Rolling Stone that attributes the oil spike in 2008 to Goldman manipulating the market. A very interesting read.