...That may well be a modest price that Americans are prepared to pay to help save the planet. But if a gas holiday is a bad idea, aren't there some other things that could be done to reverse or offset the ridiculous run-up in oil prices?

Actually, there are.

Hillary even hit upon one this week when she called for taking tough action against OPEC.


These days, people who want to be thought of as sophisticated aren't supposed to rail against the oil cartel, either because it is viewed as ineffective in controlling supply or because there's nothing legally that can be done about price fixing when it is done by sovereign governments. Both assumptions are false.

While OPEC may not be so good at controlling how much its members pump, particularly when supply is plentiful, it has been very effective in limiting the pace at which new capacity is developed. We were reminded of that reality only last month when the Saudi oil minister said his country would not go beyond the 11 percent increase in pumping capacity that it embarked on several years ago after decades of almost no growth. And in recent weeks several of his OPEC colleagues have acknowledged that as long as prices remain this high, they have no incentive to make the investments needed to dramatically increase supply.

Nor is it true that there is nothing to be done about this. While the Supreme Court has ruled that current price-fixing laws do not apply to foreign governments, there is nothing preventing Congress from changing the law -- or, as Hillary and others have suggested, challenging the legality of price fixing at the World Trade Organization. Short of that, the United States could deny visas to top officials from OPEC governments, prohibit U.S. oil and drilling companies from doing business with known price fixers, and make it more difficult for the sovereign wealth funds of price-fixing countries to make direct investments in the United States.