OIL BOOM: Good For America; Some Cautions…

We need to start this year on a good note, and I have it for you: The price of oil and natural gas. This is good news, and not just for our pocketbooks. Victor Davis Hanson, a man everyone should read, wrote a good piece regarding the irony of what happens to statists who don’t yet control all means of production in the United States.

Hanson:

Oilmen, not the government, returned hundreds of billions of dollars to American consumers. They, not Ivy League experts and Wall Street grandees, kick-started the economy where federal subsidies had failed to. They, not the policies of the Obama administration or the rhetoric of Secretary of State John Kerry, weakened our enemies.

Almost everything Obama tried for six years in an effort to rev the economy — from near-zero interest rates and $1 trillion annual budget deficits to Obamacare and vast increases in entitlements — has failed. His foreign-policy stances of resets and leading from behind led to chaos and emboldened enemies.

Yet the United States economy is slowly recovering with cheap energy. Consumers have more money. Industries are returning to U.S. soil.

Abroad, spendthrift oil producers such as hostile Iran, Russia and Venezuela are nearly broke. Friendly rivals such as Japan and the European Union can’t compete with the U.S. energy edge.

What Obama once ridiculed is now saving him from himself — after he had championed policies that nearly destroyed him.

The Greeks had a word for it: irony.

The good news is, though fourth-branch edicts from the EPA, Obamacare, and the like still make us pay more than we should for just about everything, private enterprise gets a shot in the arm…of Red Bull. The laws of economics, specifically supply and demand, often ignored by our statist leaders, found fissures in the already-crumbling dam of Marxist ideology surrounding the Beltway.

Despite everything the Obama administration has done against private enterprise, private enterprise is succeeding. Given even just a bit of liberty, it always will. This fact won’t prevent the most narcissistic jerk on the planet from taking credit for this upturn, but I like to believe his pablum and that of anyone else on the Left will become white noise amid the jingle of cash registers.

However, let this good news not keep you from your already steadfast attention to world affairs. As VDH said, OPEC nations are hoping low gas prices make fracking and other means of extraction so unprofitable that companies operating in the US stop production. I’m not in the prediction game, but it seems to me there are plenty of first and third world oil buyers on this planet. It’s a safe bet we could find more customers.

I assure you Negative Nellie has not taken over, but there are potential downsides to the US becoming the world’s largest oil and natural gas provider. Big players become big terror targets. Oil-rich countries not happy with our newfound success may take steps to knock us down. Also, places like Saudi Arabia don’t enjoy the benefits of a stable government and civil society. While they have ridiculous amounts of money now, they are in real danger of losing it. I’ve heard the term “implosion” applies here because if these countries have no other major industries to support them, money runs out and chaos ensues. America would have yet another international issue to deal with.

So enjoy this upturn, my friends, and keep an eye out.