The first things to go will be summer vacations and air travel.

Question: What will a $120 barrel of oil mean for the U.S. economy?

Michael Klare: I think some of what we can anticipate is already happening, I mean you have to think in terms of the economic strata in the American population poor people, and working people are already suffering, they already cutting back. I read stories everyday in the New York Times, in the Wall Street Journal of working people who are having a very hard time. The trucking, industry, farmers, working people who have long commutes, have to cut back on everything in their life, just to pay for gas, now that will work itself up from the working people, blue collar people, farmers and artisans who drive long distances, even the middle class will start suffering and work its way higher and higher, all of us will start suffering in various ways. I think summer vacations are going to be very problematic, air travel will become much more costly. So, in all kinds of ways we will start experiencing all kinds of hardships in our lives. Small business will shut down, resorts will shut down, and all this will then ripple out of cross the economy and I think the recession that we are already experiencing will go deeper and more severe.

Recorded: 3/14/08