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Lenovo Group, the world’s No. 4 PC maker, said Thursday that earnings for its latest quarter rose 133% as strong sales in China and Europe offset slower growth in the United States.

Profit totaled $140 million for the three months ending March 31, the Beijing-based company said. Total revenues rose 13.5% to $3.7 billion.

"Lenovo continued to demonstrate strong execution of our strategies in the past quarter, achieving the eighth consecutive quarter of profitable growth," said chairman Yang Yuanqing said in a statement.

Yang said Lenovo will focus on boosting sales in developing countries and expanding its retail business.

Sales in China, which accounts for about one-third of Lenovo revenues, rose 18% to $1.29 billion in the quarter. Sales in Europe, Africa and the Middle East were up 30% at $879 million, the company said.

Sales in the United States and the rest of the Americas rose just 9% to $1 billion, Lenovo said.

For the full fiscal year ending March 31, earnings rose 201% to $484 million, Lenovo said. Full-year sales rose 17% year to $16.4 billion.

Lenovo has reported similar improvements in results in previous quarters, with profit growing faster than revenues, which it says is due to cost-cutting. The company said it boosted its gross profit margin last year from 13.5% to 15%.

Lenovo bought IBM Corp.’s personal computer unit in 2006 and said last year it had completed integrating the acquisition into its own business. Lenovo had the right to use the IBM (IBM, Fortune 500) name on some products but said earlier it plans to discard it this year. 

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Chinese power plants are running out of coal, with less than a three-day supply in some areas, the government said Tuesday, adding to China’s logistical headaches following a devastating earthquake.

It is the second time in three months that Chinese power plants have run short of coal, an unintended effect of government-mandated price controls — a throwback to communist central planning — to shield the public from rising global energy costs.

Some 32 power plants have already shut down due to lack of fuel, the State Electricity Regulatory Commission said in a report. It said two were in Sichuan province, where last week’s magnitude 7.9 quake damaged the power supply grid.

In February, freak snowstorms caught power plants without adequate coal supplies, causing blackouts and factory shutdowns in a country that relies on coal for 70% of its electricity.

Utility companies have let coal stocks dwindle and are buying less fuel after Beijing froze power prices last year, while allowing the market-set costs that producers pay to rise.

The SERC gave no indication as to how Beijing might respond to new shortages. An employee who answered the phone in its press office referred questions to the Cabinet’s National Development and Reform Commission. The NDRC did not respond to requests for comment.

The government created an agency this year to oversee energy policy, but it has yet to take any action.

Beijing has also frozen retail prices of gasoline and diesel. That helped farmers and the urban poor, but it has spurred sales of gas-guzzling luxury cars and propelled double-digit annual growth in fuel consumption.

Oil refiners say they are suffering heavy losses and some began cutting production last year, causing fuel shortages in parts of China’s south.

Power plants in the eastern province of Anhui have less than a three-day supply of coal, while those in Beijing have about a week supply, the electricity agency said. The recommended minimum is 15 days; a seven-day supply is considered dangerously low.

In Sichuan province, where the May 12 quake killed tens of thousands of people, power plants have only a seven-day supply of coal, according to the agency. It said two plants have none.

The quake’s effect on coal supply was not addressed in the report, but the NDRC says 200 coal mines in Sichuan were closed for inspection after the disaster.

China’s power use is growing at double-digit annual rates, driven by a boom that saw the economy expand by 10.6% in the first quarter of this year.

On Tuesday, a U.S. official urged Beijing to join the International Energy Agency — a group of major oil consumers that includes the United States and European governments — and aid its efforts to keep petroleum markets stable in times of crisis.

"I believe it is important for China and other key economies in the world, such as India, to prepare to eventually join the IEA as full members," Daniel S. Sullivan, an assistant U.S. secretary of state, said at a business conference.

China’s surging energy demand, and its potential impact on prices, has stirred unease abroad as state companies scour Africa, Central Asia and elsewhere for more.

The 27-nation IEA coordinates the release of petroleum from national stockpiles to stabilize prices if crises threaten to disrupt supplies, Sullivan said. He said that was last done in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina in the United States.

Sullivan, who is the U.S. envoy to the Paris-based IEA, said Beijing was invited to take part in an emergency response exercise next month. He urged the government to accept.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry referred questions about whether Beijing might join the IEA to the NDRC, which did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

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Computer maker Dell says Don Carty, the chief financial officer hired a year and a half ago to help lead the company’s turnaround plan, has resigned.

He will be replaced by Brian Gladden, chief executive of SABIC, formerly known as GE Plastics.

Round Rock, Texas-basedDell Inc (DELL, Fortune 500). said Monday Gladden will join the company May 20 as senior vice president, and assume the CFO role on June 13.

Carty, a former chairman of American Airlines, has been CFO since Jan. 1, 2007. Chief Executive Michael Dell says Carty has played a "key role" in re-establishing the transparency and integrity of Dell’s finances.

Gladden has served as president and CEO of SABIC Innovative Plastics Holding BV, formerly GE Plastics, a maker of polymers used by electronics, office equipment, computer and auto manufacturers. 

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Central bankers should strengthen regulation to avert a credit-fueled increase in asset prices and forgo raising interest rates in an attempt to reverse a future price surge, Federal Reserve Governor Frederic Mishkin said.

“It falls to regulatory policies and supervisory practices to help strengthen the financial system and reduce its vulnerability to both booms and busts in asset prices,'' Mishkin said yesterday in remarks at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

“Central banks should recognize that trying to prick asset bubbles using monetary policy is likely to do more harm than good,'' the Fed governor said.

The collapse of the U.S. subprime-mortgage market has led to a decline in global credit and the worst housing slump in 25 years. U.S. foreclosure filings increased 65 percent in April from a year earlier, RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, California- based seller of default data, reported this week, while financial institutions have reported writedowns and credit losses exceeding $333 billion since the beginning of 2007.

The central bank has aided financial institutions by creating ways to expand liquidity, including opening up loans to investment banks.

Funds provided to banks through the so-called discount window rose by $2.8 billion to a daily average of $14.4 billion in the week to May 14, the Fed said yesterday. Separately, the central bank's loans to Wall Street bond dealers rose by $75 million to $16.6 billion.

Market Turmoil

When expected market turmoil doesn't “happen, it's really tough to unwind monetary policy,'' said Robert Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Cumberland Advisors Inc. and former head of research at the Atlanta Fed.

“We are in a new world now,'' Mishkin said in the question and answer period regarding the use of an emergency power to loan to investment banks. “This is going to be an issue that involves a lot of discussion'' about Fed involvement in markets.

Mishkin, reiterating arguments used by former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, 82, and current chairman Ben S. Bernanke, said central banks that use increases in the benchmark interest rate to deflate asset prices will hurt economic growth.

“Monetary policy should react to asset price bubbles by looking to the effects of asset prices on employment and inflation,'' said Mishkin, 57.

U.S. central bankers, when faced with asset price bubbles in technology stocks and housing during the past decade, chose not to intervene with the federal fund rate.

Internet Stocks

As investors began pushing Internet stocks higher in 1996, the Fed held the benchmark lending rate at 5.25 percent and raised it only once, by a quarter point, the following year.

The Nasdaq Composite Index from 1996 until 1999 rose almost fourfold. After hitting a record in March 2000, the index fell for almost two years. The U.S. economy slipped into an eight- month recession in March 2001.

“It has been pretty clear for a long period of time that there was a fear of a Japanese-type slowdown and unwanted deflation'' among policy makers, Eisenbeis said in an interview. “That led them to keep interest rates too low for too long.''

Similarly, low short- and long-term rates early this decade helped fuel the biggest mortgage boom in U.S. history. Mortgage lending between 2004 and 2006 totaled $2.9 trillion, and house prices rose 31 percent, according to an index tracked by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.

Market Collapse

After the collapse of the subprime-mortgage market, house prices fell during the final two quarters of 2007, OFHEO data shows. Home values will increase less than 1 percent during the first six months of this year, according to economists.

The Fed's hands-off approach to soaring asset prices is “a dangerous, reckless and irresponsible way to run the world's largest economy,'' Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January.

Greenspan, Fed chairman from 1987 until January 2006, has defended the monetary policy that coincided with the surge in technology stocks and home prices, saying an increase in borrowing costs would harm employment and growth.

“The notion that a well-timed incremental tightening could have been calibrated to prevent the late 1990s bubble is almost surely an illusion,'' Greenspan said in an August 2002 speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Bernanke has long opposed using the federal funds rate to prick asset bubbles, said Mark Gertler, an economics professor at New York University who has researched the issue with the Fed Chairman.

“Our view is the best way to deal with this is through prudent regulatory structure,'' Gertler said in an interview.

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Malaysia's industrial production growth cooled for a second month in March as the U.S. slowdown weakened demand for electronics.

Production at factories, utilities and mines rose 3 percent from a year earlier, easing from a revised 6.5 percent gain in February, the Putrajaya-based Statistics Department said today. Economists were expecting a 4.2 percent increase.

A slowdown in the U.S., Malaysia's largest export market, is hurting demand for Intel Corp. chips and Dell Inc. laptop computers made in the country. Growth in Southeast Asia's third- largest economy may slow for the first time in three years in 2008 as global trade cools, the central bank said in March.

“I don't think we're at the bottom,'' said Azrul Azwar Ahmad Tajudin, an economist at Bank Islam Malaysia Bhd. in Kuala Lumpur. “Going forward, the performance will be characterized by slowing manufacturing output, at least until the third quarter of this year.''

Malaysia's March exports grew 5.3 percent, the slowest pace in three months, as the U.S. slowdown and a stronger currency eroded the value of electronics shipments. Sales to the U.S. in March dropped 22 percent, the Trade Ministry said this month.

Manufacturers

Manufacturing output by companies including Unisem (M) Bhd. and Malaysian Pacific Industries Bhd., the nation's two largest publicly traded chip assemblers, grew 3.7 percent in March from a year earlier, slowing from 6.7 percent in February, the Statistics Department said today.

Manufacturing accounts for more than 30 percent of Malaysia's $151 billion economy, and manufactured goods comprise almost four-fifths of the country's shipments abroad.

Mining output rose 1.8 percent in March, while electricity production fell 1 percent.

Malaysia, Southeast Asia's second-largest oil and gas producer and the world's No. 2 palm oil seller, is counting on domestic demand and record commodities prices to sustain growth as global trade slows.

Malaysia's economy may expand between 5 percent and 6 percent in 2008, weakening from 6.3 percent last year, the central bank said in March.

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Facebook, the world’s second-largest social networking Web site, is adding more than 40 new safeguards to protect young users from sexual predators and cyberbullies, attorneys general from several states said Thursday.

The changes include banning convicted sex offenders from the site, limiting older users’ ability to search online for subscribers under 18 and joining an existing task force seeking ways to better verify users’ ages and identities.

"The agreement marks another watershed step toward social networking safety, protecting kids from online predators and inappropriate content," said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who announced the agreement Thursday with his counterparts in several other states.

Officials from Washington, D.C., and 49 states have signed on.

Facebook, which has more than 70 million active users worldwide, already has enacted many of the changes and others are in the works, its officials said Thursday.

"Building a safe and trusted online experience has been part of Facebook from its outset," said Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer. "The attorneys general have shown great leadership in helping to address the critical issue of Internet safety, and we commend them for continuing to set high standards for all players in the online arena."

Texas has not endorsed this agreement or a similar one reached in January among the other states, the District of Columbia and News Corp.’s (NWS.A) social network, MySpace. Texas officials have said they want quicker action on verifying users’ ages and identities than the pacts guarantee.

Millions of users: The attorneys general have been negotiating for months with Facebook and MySpace, the world’s largest online social network with 200 million users around the world, for tighter controls.

"Social networks that encourage kids to come to their sites have a responsibility to keep those kids safe," North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said. "We’ve now gotten the two largest social networking sites to agree to take significant steps to protect children from predators and pornography."

MySpace, Facebook and other online networks have created a new venue for sexual predators, who often lie about their age to lure young victims to chat, share images and sometimes meet in person. It also has spawned cyberbullies, who have sent threatening and anonymous messages to classmates, acquaintances and other users.

Among other changes, Facebook has agreed to:

• Ensure companies offering services on its site comply with its safety and privacy guidelines.
• Keep tobacco and alcohol ads from users too young to purchase those products.
• Remove groups whose comments or images suggest they involve incest, pedophilia, bullying or other inappropriate content.
• Send warning messages when a child is in danger of giving personal information to an adult.
• Review users’ profiles when they ask to change their age, ensuring the update is legitimate and not intended to let adults masquerade as children.

The protections included in the MySpace and Facebook pacts could be expanded to smaller services such as Friendster and Bebo, Blumenthal said.

"We’re entering a new era in social networking safety," Blumenthal said. "This agreement is open-ended in envisioning advances in technology that will permit even stronger steps in the future toward protecting kids’ safety." 

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Shares in Toyota Motor Corp skidded on Friday after the world’s biggest automaker forecast its first annual net profit decline in seven years as it faces a triple blow of a stronger yen, rising materials prices and a slowing U.S. economy.

Toyota’s shares, which have roughly followed movements in the dollar-yen rate this year, ended down 3.3 percent at 5,300 yen, wiping $6 billion from its market value to $177 billion. They lost as much as 4.7 percent shortly after trade opened on Friday.

News of Toyota’s bleak outlook and the dollar’s fall below 104 yen sent shares of other Japanese automakers downhill. Honda Motor Co lost 3.9 percent, Nissan Motor Co shed 1.6 percent and Mazda Motor Corp sank 4.4 percent.

Many analysts viewed Toyota’s guidance for a 27 percent fall in net profit this business year to be an ultra-cautious one that factored in the manifestation of every possible risk, and held onto their assessment that it was better-positioned than many to weather the headwinds.

“At the moment, Toyota is assuming the worst possible scenario,” said Koichi Ogawa, chief portfolio manager at Daiwa SB Investments. He added that the shares’ fall was likely tempered by optimism that Toyota would lift its forecasts in mid-year.

Goldman Sachs analyst Kota Yuzawa agreed.

“Although it looks negative at first sight, we see the new guidance as a minimum level that factors in every conceivable risk,” he said in a report, keeping his rating at “buy”.

Still, Toyota executives on Thursday did little to quell concerns about the increasingly tough environment in the United States, where it makes just under half of its profit. 

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U.K. consumer confidence fell to the lowest in at least four years in April as the weakening housing market and higher living costs depressed shoppers, Nationwide Building Society said.

An index of sentiment taken from the responses of 1,000 people declined seven points to 70, the lowest since the survey began in May 2004, Britain's fourth-biggest mortgage lender said today in an e-mailed statement.

Home values had the first annual decline since 1996 last month after banks curbed mortgage lending to the lowest in nine years, Nationwide's house-price index showed a week ago. The Bank of England, which has cut the benchmark interest rate three times since December to avert a recession, may leave it unchanged tomorrow to keep inflation under control, economists say.

“Food and fuel prices remain high and with house prices no longer rising, it is unlikely that consumer confidence will pick up very quickly,'' Fionnuala Earley, Nationwide's chief economist, said in a statement. “Inflationary pressures mean the Monetary Policy Committee will probably prefer to cut rates at a more gradual pace than many would prefer.''

An index of sentiment on consumers' present situation dropped nine points to 65, and the gauge of their future situation declined five points to 74. A measure of willingness to make a major purchase fell two points to 65.

House prices declined in April by 1 percent from a year earlier, Nationwide said April 30. Rival HBOS Plc, the nation's biggest mortgage lender, said May 2 that prices fell 0.9 percent on the year, which was also the first drop recorded since 1996.

Loan Approvals

Mortgage approvals fell in March to 64,000, the lowest level since records began in 1999 and half the level of 1 1/2 years ago, the central bank said April 29. The International Monetary Fund forecasts U.K. economic growth of 1.6 percent in 2008, the least since the end of the last recession 16 years ago.

The labor market deteriorated last month, accountancy firm KPMG and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation said today. An index measuring placements of permanent staff fell in April after rising in March, while hiring of temporary workers increased.

“Employers are shifting away from hiring permanent staff into a more temporary workforce as a way of dealing with the current economy uncertainty and financial crisis,'' Alan Nolan, director at KPMG, said in a statement.

Concern about inflation left the central bank's rate-setting committee with its first three-way split in almost two years last month. Timothy Besley and Andrew Sentance wanted no rate change, while David Blanchflower favored a bigger cut than the quarter- point approved by the majority.

Crude Oil

Crude oil rose to a record above $122 yesterday, and United Nations figures showed food was 57 percent more expensive globally in March than a year earlier. Inflation will accelerate from the current 2.5 percent to exceed the government's upper limit of 3 percent, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said last week.

All but five of 61 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News predict the central bank will leave the key rate unchanged tomorrow. The rest forecast a quarter-point cut. The bank announces the decision at noon in London.

George Buckley, chief U.K. economist at Deutsche Bank AG in London, changed his interest-rate forecast yesterday to predict a quarter-point reduction this week from the current 5 percent.

“Survey evidence suggests the economy isn't as resilient as we thought it might be,'' Buckley said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “The housing market is weakening quite sharply, and that can be the catalyst for much weaker consumption than we've seen so far.''

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Record oil prices netted Exxon Mobil a $10.89 billion profit in the first three months of the year, sharply higher than a year earlier but short of Wall Street estimates and below what was needed to set a new all-time profit record.

The profit was still enough to be the second-highest U.S. corporate profit on record, falling just short of the record $11.66 billion Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500) earned in the prior quarter. The profit in that quarter came to $1,385 a second, enough to buy nearly 382 gallons of gas at current prices.

The sheer size of the Exxon profit reported Thursday will still likely attract attention from consumer groups and lawmakers, who have been arguing for higher taxes on oil companies amid soaring gas and oil prices.

"There is something seriously wrong with our economy when Exxon’s record $11 billion in quarterly profits are seen as a disappointment by Wall Street," Hillary Clinton said in a statement, referring to the fact that Exxon’s shares fell more than 3% Thursday. "I believe we should impose a windfall profits tax on big oil companies and use that money to suspend the gas tax and give families relief at the pump."

John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, also has called for suspending the gas tax, although he has not detailed how he would make up the lost revenue.

Clinton also has a plan to use a tax on oil companies to fund renewable energy, as does her rival Barack Obama, although Obama does not support eliminating the gas tax, saying the idea would do little good.

Several lawmakers in Congress, mostly Democrats, have tried to eliminate oil company tax breaks and use the money to fund renewables.

So far, those efforts have gone nowhere, blocked by lawmakers and the Bush administration, who say higher taxes will result in less domestic drilling and a greater reliance on imported oil.

But with gasoline prices setting a new record every day, the political pressure is mounting on lawmakers to do something.

Why record oil doesn’t mean record profits.

Gasoline prices actually helped Exxon miss estimates Thursday. While nationwide gas prices are at record highs, they have not risen as fast as oil prices.

Gasoline, with a nationwide average of $3.62 a gallon, costs about 20% more than it did a year ago, according to the motorist organization AAA.

But oil, at $113 a barrel Thursday, costs over 75% more than it did a year ago.

Exxon - which makes more gas than it produces oil - saw less profit than expected partly because it has to pay more to buy crude oil.

"Higher crude oil and natural gas realizations, driven by record worldwide crude oil prices, were partly offset by lower refining and chemical margins, lower production volumes and higher operating costs," Rex Tillerson, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement.

Another reason Exxon missed estimates is that its overall production fell. The company said "liquids production," which includes oil, fell 6% in the quarter, even excluding things such as OPEC production quotas or seizures in Venezuela.

One analyst said Exxon could be easing production as certain fields, giving them a chance to rest and rebuild pressure - and avoiding posting even higher profits.

"I think Exxon has decided to mask some of their profitability because they don’t want the political risk", said Robbert Van Batenburg, Head of Global Research at Louis Capital Markets, a brokerage. "Above and beyond this, their results were outstanding."

Exxon, by the numbers

Exxon posted first-quarter net income of $10.89 billion, or $2.03 a share. That’s up 17% from the $9.28 billion, or $1.62 a share it earned a year earlier, but it missed the earnings per share consensus forecast of $2.14 from analysts surveyed by earnings tracker First Call.

Revenue hit $116.85 billion, up 34% from a year earlier when sales hit $87.2 billion. The revenue was short of forecasts of $124.4 billion.

Exxon spent $8 billion buying back shares in the first quarter. Companies buy back shares to increase the value of the remaining shares outstanding.

Including dividends, the company returned $9.9 billion to shareholders this quarter.

Exxon said it spent $5.5 billion on finding and developing new sources of oil and gas, up 30% from a year ago.

Exxon has been criticized for not spending enough money of finding new oil and - especially - not investing enough in renewable resources.

Exxon has long maintained that it is an oil company, and renewable technologies should be left to renewable energy companies.

Despite Exxon’s investments in finding new oil, the company production declined. In addition to oil production falling, overall production including natural gas fell by 3 percent.

That drop will likely be noticed by proponents of the "peak oil" theory, who contend world oil production has peaked and will run out in fairly short order.

Many analysts - and Exxon executives - say the oil is there, it’s just held in countries not particularly friendly to U.S. oil firms.

The company also paid $9.3 billion in income taxes, $8.4 billion in sales taxes, and $11.6 billion in royalties.

– CNNMoney.com’s Chris Isidore contributed to this story  

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Despite daily headlines bemoaning record gas prices, the U.S. is actually one of the cheaper places to fill up in the world.

Out of 155 countries surveyed, U.S. gas prices were the 45th cheapest, according to a recent study from AIRINC, a research firm that tracks cost of living data.

The difference is staggering. As of late March, U.S. gas prices averaged $3.45 a gallon. That compares to over $8 a gallon across much of Europe.

The U.S. has always fought to keep gas prices low, and the current debate among presidential candidates on how to keep them that way has been fierce.

But those cheap gas prices - which Americans have gotten used to - mean they feel price spikes like the ones we’re experiencing now more acutely than citizens from other nations which have had historically more expensive fuel.

Cheap gas prices have also lulled Americans into a cycle of buying bigger cars and bigger houses further away from their work - leaving them more exposed to rising prices, some experts say.

Price comparisons are not all created equal. Comparing gas prices across nations is always difficult. For starters, the AIRINC numbers don’t take into account different salaries in different countries, or the different exchange rates. The dollar has lost considerable ground to the euro recently. Because oil is priced in dollars, rising oil prices aren’t as hard on people paying with currencies which are stronger than the dollar, as they can essentially buy more oil with their money as the dollar falls in value.

And then there’s the varying distances people drive, the public transportation options available, and the different services people get in exchange for high gas prices. For example, Europe’s stronger social safety net, including cheaper health care and higher education, is paid for partly through gas taxes.

Gas price: It’s all about government policy. Gasoline costs roughly the same to make no matter where in the world it’s produced, according to John Felmy, chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute. The difference in retail costs, he said, is that some governments subsidize gas while others tax it heavily.

In many oil producing nations gas is absurdly cheap. In Venezuela it’s 12 cents a gallon. In Saudi Arabia it’s 45.

The governments there forego the money from selling that oil on the open market - instead using the money to make their people happy and encourage their nations’ development.

Subsidies, many analysts say, are encouraging rampant demand in these countries, pushing up the price of oil worldwide.

In the U.S., the federal tax on gas is about 18 cents a gallon, pretty low by international standards.

But those relatively low gas taxes make it hard now for Americans to deal with gas prices that have risen from around $1 to over $3 a gallon in the last seven years.

"Everybody pays more, but the U.S. pays more in absolute terms," said Lee Shipper, a visiting scholar at the University of California Berkeley’s Transportation Center. If you’re already paying $4 in taxes, said Schipper, then an extra $2 a gallon isn’t that big of a deal.

Revenues from Europe’s high gas taxes are used to fund a variety of things. One thing they have built is better public transportation, said Peter Tertzakian, chief energy economist at ARC Financial, a Calgary-based private equity firm.

They gave people an alternative to driving, something we don’t have in North America," said Tertzakian.

Low fuel taxes and prices sprung out of a national love for mobility going back generations, said Robert Lang, director of the urban planning think tank Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech.

In fact, the U.S. could not have had the western expansion it did without the cheap mobility railroads and horse carriages afforded long before it became an auto-obsessed culture, said Lang.

"You couldn’t have Manifest Destiny unless you could move," he said.

The automobile, and its promise of personal mobility, only deepened the nation’s love affair with travel.

"Nobody sang ‘She’ll have fun fun fun until her daddy takes the tokens away,’" said Lang. ‘It’s totally romanticized."

Gas consumption Europe vs. U.S. There is some evidence Europe’s high gas taxes have capped its oil consumption.

Oil use in the United Kingdom has basically stayed flat from 1980 to now, while in France it’s dropped 17%, according to figures from the Energy Information Administration.

In the U.S., meanwhile, oil use is up 21% over the same period, although the country has added more people and seen its economy grow slightly faster.

Americans have taken advantage of cheap gas prices to do other things - like buy bigger cars and bigger houses further away from city centers, said Schipper.

On a per capita basis, Americans use three times more oil than Europeans, he said. That means Americans are more exposed to rising gas prices than their counterparts across the Atlantic.

"Five-thousand square feet in the suburbs, that’s much rarer in Europe," said Schipper, referring to big homes. "We dug our hole."

– Correction: Due to data errors, previous versions of the charts in this story were incorrect. The charts have been updated. 

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