Rise in Oil Prices Tests Economy’s Resilience

Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on May 25th, 2008 4:28 am by HL

Rise in Oil Prices Tests Economy’s Resilience
Peter Gosselin, LA Times

The Next President’s Health – Washington Post

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One Response to “Rise in Oil Prices Tests Economy’s Resilience”

anonymous Says:
August 4th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
“Oil Shock”
Even as the Economy Reels, a Golden Opportunity is at Hand
For more than a year the U.S. economy has been reeling from the housing and credit crises, but now it’s staggering from the blow of rising energy and food prices. The impact of $4-a-gallon gasoline is rippling outward as Americans cut spending of all sorts. Every month it seems as if another major economic sector hits the skids: first it was housing and construction, then automobiles and airlines, then tourism and, finally, back to housing with the implosion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
What ties all these crises together is cheap energy, which drove years of suburban sprawl, SUV sales and big-box consumption. That’s all in the past, however. The United States consumes 12.4 million barrels of imported oil products a day. At $140 a barrel, that comes to $633 billion a year — a huge transfer of wealth to oil companies and oil-producing countries and four times the annual cost of the Iraq War.
Oil prices have surged six-fold since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But with the housing sector on fire and profits robust, consumers and businesses were able to absorb the costs. Not anymore. In June, consumer prices rose 1.1 percent nationally and 1.2 percent in the New York region. Also in June, the producer price index, the inflation rate for businesses, rose an astonishing 1.8 percent. The inflationary effects are being passed through the commodity chain in price increases and job losses.
To view the rest of this article, see http://www.indypendent.org/2008/07/19/oil-shock/