Well, Soros is a NAZI
Regarding this thread (2-1/2 years later....) it's interesting how prescient Bracken's writing was. Having just dealt with the gasoline crunch we had last weekend, I was surprised at how quickly gas supplies dried up. In my area, things were perfectly fine on Saturday morning. One station had a few pumps bagged, and I read a few rumbles of a problem on FR.
Ten hours later, by Saturday evening (8pm or so) there was no gasoline to be found in a 10 mile radius of my house. Certainly problems existed beyond that, but I didn't bother to look out any farther.
And that was as a result of a simple, semi-easily fixed malfunction. What shortages would a *serious* issue have caused? This was a low-impact event and thus an excellent learning opportunity.
To be fair, I'm equally surprised by how quickly gas supplies rebounded. In less than a week, things are mostly back to normal again.