They don’t want you to fill up for less than a 20. They can’t handle cheap gas. I can. I can! Liiii-oonnn. They don’t want you to lose thousands in a tanking stock market. No, seriously, they don’t. In reality, they really don’t want to see a glut of oil in an energy sector that is so dependent on a constantly balanced supply and demand chain. All dank DJ Khaled memes aside, we’ve got a problem with our oil.

Everyone loves fuel – and I mean dirt cheap gasoline – but when your entire stock market is built upon one commodity, and said commodity is devalued nearly 50% of its steady value, you’re going to have a bad time. The problem arose when Saudi Arabia and Russia both continued pumping oil when the global leadership and OPEC urged them to slow down. There’s more being produced than there is being used, in short. Recently, both Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed to freeze all pumping at January levels – on the condition that Iran would freeze theirs as well. The likelihood that Iran, a budding market, will sacrifice their momentum for the well-being of the global economy is slim. Economists can’t agree on anything ever, but they certainly don’t agree on when this recent crash will be sorted out.

The responsibility of the recovery is on the shoulders of nations that can sustain and gradually work down the output of oil in their borders. The current boom in US shale-oil and the proclivity of Iraqi production will need to be quelled in order to drain the market of its surplus at the moment. This is going to have to be a coordinated effort between OPEC nations and non-OPEC nations in which the global community collectively works to correct the mess in front of it. The recent freeze in Russian and Saudi assets is a start, if it actually happens, but it is not even close to being the solution.

Operating under the assumption that these two nations carried out these actions without malice is completely without reason. Both countries understand what the effect of the glut would be, but it’s worth it when the UN nearly wrecked the Russian economy early last year. Putin doesn’t seem to be the forgiving type from what I’ve gathered, and this vindictive behavior is his MO.

At the risk of bringing this back to the 1960’s, Russia really is the biggest economic threat that the United States is facing.