■"Oil Prices Generates Winners and Losers: Exporters Celebrate Windfall Profits As Importers Reel From Cost's Burden," by Anthony Faiola, Washington Post, 3 October 2004, p. A25.
I just like this article more than most on the subject, because it reminds us that for every winner in a price rise, there must be a loser. Japan is now at risk of seeing its recovery stall, and China could really have a hard landing, which of course would impact our economy quite a bit. Many other Asian and Latin American countries have suffered big currency drops in recent years which already made the oil they import more expensive, so this rise hurts them even more.
People like to pretend America is the only country "addicted to oil," but frankly the entire world is. It's not an addiction, it as real and as pervasive as any mutually-assured dependency you find anywhere in the global economy. Imagining that any war is "just about oil" is somewhat idiotic, because much of the global economy is "just about oil," so any war that involves oil involves the global economy, or the day-to-day welfare of basically everyone on the planet.
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