Saudis Shift Toward Letting OPEC Aim Higher -NYT

Over the last year, Saudi Arabia has quietly endorsed a shift in strategy that was once championed by only a handful of OPEC's more radical members, like Iran or Venezuela, who were pushing for prices higher than those of the last two decades.

Instead of enforcing what has been OPEC's official policy since March 2000 and defending prices of $22 to $28 a barrel, Saudi Arabia, the group's most powerful member, has acted to nudge the group's reference price closer to $40 a barrel. Along the way, OPEC has grown increasingly fond of high prices, with crude oil trading near last year's records.

While the century-old oil industry has been through a number of boom-and-bust cycles before, OPEC's strategy carries risks. For consuming nations, high oil prices could derail economic growth and plunge the world into lasting recession; for producers, it could mean lower demand for their commodity in the long run as consumers shift to alternative fuels or promote energy-conservation policies.
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"My view is the world is not suffering, as far as economic growth is concerned, from where prices are today," Ali al-Naimi, Saudi Arabia's oil minister, told Reuters at the World Economic Forum in Davos yesterday. "The price today doesn't seem to be affecting economic growth negatively, and we do not want it to."

http://nytimes.com/2005/01/28/business/worldbusiness/28oil.html

and we give our money and our children so they can raise oil prices on us so we defend them...

They majorly suck!!!

15/19 hijackers are Saudi's...so how does Bush deal with them?

(1) We exit the military bases we established there.
(2) We take out their #1 regional secular threat and next door neighbor Saddam Hussein (who, coincidently, had nothing to do with 9/11)
(3) Through this war, we've effectively taken Iraqi oil off the market.....making Saudi Oil much more valuable.
(4) Bush family lawyer James Baker is the Saudi counsel AGAINST the family of 9/11 victims who had a multi-billion lawsuit against the Kingdom.

Bush is compromised by Saudi Arabia, no question. Saudi Arabia is now a national security problem. They've invested trillions of our dollars buying up our country. The Bush family has been selling America short for 35 years.....

Is this article implying that prices are going to stay closer to $50/barrel, if not more? I met an investment advisor today, and he thinks that oil will trend closer to $100 over the short-term, due to China's impending crisis. Anyone have thoughts on this? Is oil a good investment, even with it's current price tag?