[econjack]

The problems pre-date the 1980's by decades. It began in the 1950's when oil was first discovered in the mid-east. (After all, oil is just rotten vegetation, so why look in a desert?) The US price for oil was $.40/bbl, but it was only $.10/bbl in the mid-east. The oil lobby approached Eisenhower and sold him the military view that we should not depend on the "politically unstable" mid-east and to prevent this, we should establish import quotas and tariffs on imported oil. Ike bought it, and the result was OPEC.

If we had been smart, even buying the military argument, we should have capped our wells, imported all the foreign oil we could at about half the domestic price, and sucked their fields dry. Had we taken the long run view then, now we'd be uncapping our fields and thumbing our noses at the tryants in the mid-east. Alas...the long run to a politician is his/her term of office...another gov't screw-up.

[Flavius Josephus]

That's not true... oil had been being harvested from the ME long before the 50s. That's what the war in North Africa in WWII was about. What happened in the 50s was that was when all the kingdoms and sheikdoms nationalized the oil industries and started taking most all of the profit instead of just a percentage. That's when the mystique of the unimaginably wealthy ME sheik came about.