Now we're cooking with crude! Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad greeted yesterday's record oil prices with a nonchalant musing about how undervalued petroleum actually is. "The global oil price," he said, "has not reached its real value yet. The products derived from crude oil are sold at prices dozens of times higher than those charged by oil-producing countries." Step 1: Grab America's testicles. Step 2: Swiftly squeeze.
You'll remember that the last major oil crisis was spurred by an OPEC embargo called by, if memory doesn't fail, Iran. Now, Ahmadinejad's outpost doesn't have the same authority it once did, so I'd be surprised to see them spark a regional movement. Nevertheless, with Saudi Arabia no longer boasting the excess capacity it once had, oil prices leap whenever Middle East nations say any word that even rhymes with "jump," and Iran just screamed the order. Tomorrow is going to be a very bad day at the pump...
