That’s another puzzle for anyone old enough to remember the recession of the early 1980s, which followed a sharp increase in oil prices through the  1970s that peaked with the Iraq invasion of Iran in 1980. Higher energy prices act as a kind of tax on both businesses and consumers. So, all things equal, higher energy prices should slow the economy by putting a drag on both business and consumer spending.

But oil prices have been rising for five years and it hasn’t happened yet, although the price increases have been gaining momentum. From a low of just over $50 a barrel in January, oil prices on the futures market have surged nearly 75 percent. Yet the economy remains relatively healthy, corporate profits are holding up well.

One reason is that economic growth depends less on oil that it did 30 years ago, according to economists, including former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan.

“We have very gradually but persistently been phasing out oil in the world's gross domestic product,” he said Monday in an interview on CNBC. “The ratio of consumption of oil or energy relative to world GDP, in both developing and developed world, has been declining. And that's one of the reasons why we have been able to maintain fairly strong and buoyant economies in the face of very high crude oil prices.”

By some estimates, it takes about half as much oil today to produce the same dollar of U.S. economic output as it did 30 years ago. So while there are more cars on the road, and bigger houses that consume more energy, more workers today pay for that consumption by, say, working on a computer instead of a job in a much more energy-intensive factory where they might have worked 30 years ago.

And, while the price of oil is at a nominal record, it is still well below the inflation-adjusted 1980 peak of $101.43 a barrel.

Market watchers are split on where oil prices are headed from here. At some point, major moves in any financial market develop enough momentum that they can continue on the same course regardless of what the "fundamental" forces would otherwise dictate. That has some analysts predicting that oil could soon top $100 a barrel.

If the price of oil continues its upward march — especially at the speed it has been moving upward in the last month — the impact eventually will be felt more widely by consumers, businesses and the overall economy. No one is exactly sure where that breaking point lies.

But no market — whether for Internet stocks or Florida condos — goes up forever.

“It will probably come off at some point; I don’t think it’s going to continue to be a runaway freight train,” said Winslow. “But it certainly is doing that now.”

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