The day George W. Bush took office as president, the price of oil closed at $24 a barrel. This week, the price of oil topped $80 a barrel.

The U.S. consumes about 20 million barrels of petroleum products each day. Do the math. Since half of our oil is imported, we are shelling out more than a hundred billion dollars each year to oil exporting countries. England, France and other fuel-intensive nations are not far behind.


So it's hardly a coincidence that on the same day oil closed above $80 a barrel, the Carlyle Group announced that it was selling a 20% ownership interest to the government of Abu Dhabi, and the NASDAQ announced it was selling 19.9% of itself to Dubai. Across the pond, 20% of the London Stock Exchange got sold to the government of Qatar

Abu Dhabi. Dubai. Qatar. These are three countries with very big bucks. Our bucks.

The economies of all the oil producing countries of the Middle East (except for Iraq) have been in high gear during the Bush years. With the outflow of U.S. wealth through the reverse oil pipeline and other aspects of the trade deficit, many countries are growing exceedingly wealthy. And with their money they are buying up a lot of assets we used to consider sacred U.S. property.

What's driving the price of oil? You can point to many culprits, including rising demand from China, India and other emerging industrial countries. But you can also hang a big part of the blame on President Bush and the Congress.