Personally, while high oil prices hurt in the short to medium term, hopefully it sends the US economy towards less dependence on oil. To me, this is a good thing. I just hope the US is smart enough to invest in reducing demand rather than increasing supply.

Also, if this type of story is interesting to you, I highly recommend Paul Krugman's blog at http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/ . Also NPR's planet money (blog & podcast) has great information and is much less slanted than Krugman's. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/ .