On oil sources: may be true, but it's probably largely irrelevant. With a fungible commodity like oil, it mostly trades as a single world stockpile. (National trade barriers can affect that, but probably only make things worse for the US.)
Price regulation: could be, but that would only make things worse for the average consumer. At that point we'd get hoarding, panics, blah blah blah -- the cure's likely to be worse than the disease. I can't say that the government wouldn't do it, but I suspect it would backfire.
That said, the government probably *would* somewhat open the taps of the strategic oil reserves, now that I think of it. That's a stopgap at best, but could help to absorb a few months of shock while the situation stabilized. That could actually be fairly effective for a short-term crisis, if managed with care...
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-02-23 04:26 pm (UTC)Price regulation: could be, but that would only make things worse for the average consumer. At that point we'd get hoarding, panics, blah blah blah -- the cure's likely to be worse than the disease. I can't say that the government wouldn't do it, but I suspect it would backfire.
That said, the government probably *would* somewhat open the taps of the strategic oil reserves, now that I think of it. That's a stopgap at best, but could help to absorb a few months of shock while the situation stabilized. That could actually be fairly effective for a short-term crisis, if managed with care...