In Our Opinion: We've been here before, when will we learn?

By now it's a familiar story: Turmoil in the Middle East leads to a rapid rise in U.S. oil prices, hurting consumers at the pump and causing an economic shock that's hard to shake.

At the tail end of 1973 and into 1974 the economy was stunned by rising prices triggered by OPEC's (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) embargo to protest U.S. support of Israel in the Arab-Israeli War. In 1979 another oil crisis occurred in the wake of the Iranian Revolution, when protests plugged Iranian oil exports. The so-called Peak Oil Crisis of 2007-08 owes more to increasing demand and stagnan...