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When I was last in Saudi Arabia, gas cost $0.26 per gallon. They can handle a doubling.
We can bash the Saudis all we want, but recall that it was the Saudis who, in 1973, agreed to price their oil in the US Dollar to stabilize our currency after Nixon took it off the gold standard. That stability has allowed us more than forty years of economic security we otherwise would not have enjoyed. (Thank you, Dr. Kissenger, for negotiation that little agreement...)
This economic meltdown couldn't have happened to a more deserving country.
Arab countries, and Saudi Arabia in particular, fancy themselves as great philosophers and leaders of science and culture (and the "custodians and guardians" of Islam) when in reality they haven't contributed one thing to the world. They treat everyone else as their laborers and would never deign to actually performing any work themselves, instead importing cheap labor from Southeast Asia to be their servants and to perform all the actual work happening in the country.
They have used all the wealth from the oil, which we, westerners, used our knowledge in how to extract, to just invest in importing their strict wahhibism version of Islam, fomenting jihadists in all corners of the globe.
They have never been our friends and I for one am gleefully watching this collapse of a culture rotten to the core.
but . . . . once they fall . . . . we (USA) is not too far behind.
You follow that side bar of the conversation, above -- about the Petro-dollar and all?
Oil is the "Gold Standard" that backs the US Dollar. Took over from the Treaty of Bretton Woods, near the end of WW2. The International Agreement was that the US Dollar would be THE world reserve currency, and allowed US to become the World Empire. Switched from US Gold backing it to Oil in about 1973.
So while you hear folks here whine about the Federal Debt, the Trade Debt (aka Current Account), and the overall Business and Personal Debt here . . . it is the rest of the world that is truly carrying that for US.
Folks send US their stuff from around the world and we just send them back otherwise worthless paper. The day the US no longer is printing the Reserve Currency for the rest of the world . . . is the day that things sudden get very, very, very real for US in a way that most of US have no idea.
The US is Oil and Debt addicts. Saudi has been a world-class supplier for our Addiction.
Saudi Arabia is removing a fuel subsidy due to tight budgets with regards to oil prices.
I don't think it's that earth shattering.
Imagine the pain that Iran, Venezuela, Russia etc. are in.
Heck, Canada is feeling the burn too...their currency has lost 20-25% of it's value vs. the US Dollar as it's heavily tied to oil prices.
Gee, anyone remember all those threads about how we should be more like Canada and how it's a utopia providing free health care etc etc? They've got budget woes too.
Obviously, you're unaware of the pain in the US in places like Alaska, Texas, and the Dakotas where thousands of people have lost their jobs because companies have stopped drilling because of low oil prices. The difference is that the US is a much larger, much more diversified economy than these other countries. Individual states that are oil dependent, however, are in about the same boat as these countries. Check out some of the threads in the Alaska forum.
The fact is, It's far better for 99% of the population And the over all economy for the public to save, or spend, thousands of dollars per year on things other than fuel. Of course it's not great for every one, but that's usually the way things go.
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