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What fraction of the interest on the debt incurred for the efforts do you imagine that benefit might be?



I've got rough, completely unqalified to give, ideas that I won't bore you with. But, to give you an idea of oil's importance to the US economy, there was some study that floated through investment news sites that said if oil goes up to (it was somewhere around) $130/barrel), the US can't grow, it will necessarily be in recession while oil stays above that price. It's at $100/barrel now.

And, the US GDP is like $2T/year. So, whatever percentage we'd lose due to something as permanent as oil prices being too high and the GDP shrinking vs. growing like we normally do... A banking crisis we just went though is harder on an economy than most recessions because it freezes up money flows, affecting every sector of our economy. An oil recession would affect every sector to. But, scarce oil wouldn't be as temporary as a banking crisis, it'd last longer and so be more severe...

I just started typing out a bunch of shit, but it's pointless. I've read through this stuff before, but haven't memorized and am completely unqualified. Hopefully just you can just get some kind of round idea of what I'm thinking is the importance of oil...