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• Tuesday, April 22, 2008 01:32 PM

  Discreet beginning and end...

  I must take a small issue with your characterization that this oil crisis is open-ended, as opposed to the previous oil crises of 1973 and 1979...

  (Admittedly, I was not even alive then so you can take everything I say with a grain of salt.)

  But did people feel during those crises that the issues were open-ended? The Iranian Revolution must have been a complete shock, despite the warning signs emanating from the shah's corrupt rule for at least four or five years; war was a distinct possibility then, America's foreign policy was in complete shambles, and our government apparently had no idea how to get our citizen-hostages from the clutches of another government, let alone stabilize finicky energy markets. I cannot imagine living then and thinking: "OK, this will all be better in a few months once X is taken care of." At least looking back to it, I don't think anybody knew what X was until it passed and happened.

  I'm just saying, perhaps we will think about the 2008 energy crisis in the same way... in a few years after much analysis, we will be able to point to some number of discreet issues that were resolved and stabilized the energy markets. Right now, living in the crisis, we can only guesstimate at the solutions... hopefully, we'll get it right sooner rather than later.

  —PierreSD Read PierreSD's other letters
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