That's a first, and another sign that the economy could be in trouble. Of course, $80-a-barrel oil in 2007 isn't what it would be in 1980 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, a $38 barrel of oil in 1980 would be worth at least $96 today, maybe more depending on how you're doing the adjusting. The latest hiccup: production problems from Hurricane Humberto (power was cut to several refineries in Port Arthur, Tex.). The October contract for light, sweet crude finished at $80.09, up 18 cents. For what it’s worth, Wall Street isn’t in a dither on the news; the Dow closed today up 133 points.(AP)

$100-a-barrel oil?: When Arjun Murti of Goldman Sachs first raised the possibility more than two years ago, no one paid much attention. So much for conventional wisdom. Here's some background from Mark Gongloff:

Murti wrote that oil markets had entered the early stages of a “super-spike,“ in which prices would rise high enough to “meaningfully reduce energy consumption.” The last such super-spike hit in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when crude peaked at an inflation-adjusted $101.75. Nominal crude prices then traded between $50 and $80 per barrel — enough to crush demand and lead eventually to oil prices as low as $8 a barrel. But today the U.S. and other developed economies are much less reliant on crude oil than they were in the 1970s, so it would seem to take a higher nominal price than $80 to really sap global demand — that could be as high as $105 a barrel, Murti estimated. Turned out oil didn’t really test $80 until a year later, and it retreated from that level fairly quickly, meaning Murti’s idea didn’t get much of a test.