The Return of the Bad Old Days of Oil Shocks And we thought the bad old days of oil shocks were over. Embargoes, price spikes, gasoline lines in America, a sweater-bedecked president ordering the end of hot water in many facilities, collapsing retail sales as high gasoline and energy prices hit stores as much as a big tax increase would, economic stagflation, or worse. Well, it just might be that we were wrong to believe that danger to our continued prosperity has been removed with the death of theories about “Peak oil.” Certainly, the takeover of part of Iraq by ISIS forces, variously called “militants,” “terrorists,” “gangsters,” and in White House circles thought to be disaffected Sunnis aching to participate in the government of a democratic Iraq, has set nerves jangling among energy planners. True, most of Iraq’s oil production, at around 3 million barrels per day the second […]