Instability in the Middle East, if prolonged, could jeopardize fragile recoveries in the United States and Europe. It could limit job creation and fuel inflation.

"If the turmoil is contained largely to Egypt, then the broader economic fallout will be marginal," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. "Now, obviously, if it spills out of Egypt to other parts of the Middle East, the concern goes to a whole other darker level." "It is certainly now on my radar screen," he said.

The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in the US was $3.12 on Friday — up 2.4 cents just in the past week. Analysts expect prices to stay above $3 a gallon — the highest since 2008 — and likely go even higher until the conflict in Egypt is resolved and tensions are eased in neighboring countries.

Oil prices have hovered at around $90 a barrel over the past week, with some analysts predicting the Egyptian crisis will lead to $100 per barrel prices sooner rather than later.

Traders worry the unrest might spread to other countries in the region and even affect shipments through the Suez Canal. Egypt is not a major oil producer, but it controls the canal and a nearby pipeline that together carry about 2 million barrels of oil a day from the Middle East to customers in Europe and the United States.

Several large Egyptian refineries near the canal have been the site of recent protests.

So far, traffic through the canal has been unimpeded. But it's high on everybody's worry list. It was blockaded by the Egyptian military for eight years after the 1967 war with Israel and shut briefly during the Suez crisis of 1956.

Meanwhile, rising food prices helped fuel the popular uprising in Egypt, where most of the population is poor.

And the turmoil there and unrest in Somalia now appears to be driving food prices even higher.

Some nations in the region have indicated they may begin increasing their stockpiles of wheat and other grains.

Hoarding can lead to more hoarding, and political strife can accelerate the process. Egypt is the world's largest importer of wheat.