Morning Bell: Is America Prepared for a Saudi Oil Crisis?

Think fueling up your car at $4 a gallon is rough? How would you feel about paying more than $6.50? Add on top of that massive job losses and a drastic drop in U.S. economic productivity, and you’ll get the picture of what life in America would be like if oil stopped flowing from Saudi Arabia.

It’s a scenario that’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility. Over the past year, the world has watched the Arab Spring spread across the Middle East, toppling regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Were massive social upheaval to strike Saudi Arabia, the conditions could be ripe for the country’s oil spigot to be shut off to the Western world.

In the event of an economic crisis like this, Heritage experts write that the free market is the best instrument to ride out the storm, and that government’s task is be prepared to support that effort rather than to jump in and try to tell markets what to do.