The hostage crisis had even wider ramifications. It served to demonstrate the apparent weakness, even nakedness, of the consuming countries—in particular, of the United States, whose power was the basis of the postwar political and economic order. And it seemed to establish that world mastery really did lie in the hands of the oil exporters. At least that was the appearance. But there were forces at work in the oil market even more powerful than governments. And now it was the turn of the exporters to make fatal miscalculations of their own.