Ken:
I read the local paper this evening and the article about the Saudi's was on page 4. I don't buy it.
It is a well known fact that the North American oil reserves make the Arab oil field pale by comparison and the Arab oil ministers know that. They know that the price per barrel must be kept below the threshold that will allow American reserves come into play. Remember, they don't have to deal with the bureaucratic red tape that we have in place here. That is what makes their oil cheap. Besides, when their reserves are depleted and they will be depleted in the future, there go the palaces and Bentley's. Back come the mud huts and camels. The oil deal is all about sticking it to the capitalists and making money. The Saudi's don't give a hoot about the global economy or world affairs.
Remember too, that the steel crisis came about over a period of time with many factors influencing the outcome. I posted a while ago about the Taconite shortage as well as the Chinese buying American scrap by the boatload. That coupled with the current administration rolling off the import duty on foreign steel has set the stage for China to do some really serious gouging and line their pockets with American dollars. Even though our dollar is weak in the world economy right now, the American dollar is still the benchmark by which the nations of the world set their clocks by. European countries would have you believe that the Euro is. It isn't. The Euro is just the European communities way of standardizing, sort of like ISO. This country sets it's standard to the QS SOP's. Just like we use the English system of measurement while the European community uses the metric system.
It's interesting, that Machinery made in Japan for importation to the United States and I'm not talking about farm machinery, comes here with english fasteners and tooling or measuring devices in primarily english with metric backup. The same holds true for China, Korea, Germany or any other European community. They all know who butters their bread even though they would lead you to believe that the shoe is on the other foot.