Originally Posted by
BMEP100
My stock market crystal ball is broke, but I can watch the commodities market. WTI is at 28 dollars right now. Opec talks failed and Saudis walked out and have started a price war. Russia has responded by saying they would open the spigots. Goldman Sachs is saying WTI could be near $20 dollars very soon.
At the risk of sounding alarmist, 20 dollar oil is a major destabilizing event. There are some smaller countries whose economies depend on oil. Think Venezuela, Nigeria, and others to a lesser degree like Mexico, Norway, and of course Texas.
If you were around the last time oil crashed, it was very ugly. I remember entire neighborhoods in Houston with newer empty homes that could be bought for a dollar down. I bought one.
I pray this doesn’t last, but this kind of thing takes on a life of it’s own, and at no time in history has there been a 24/7 mass media fanning the panic like a blast furnace, or a such a polarized political landscape where one party seems to want the country to stumble to defeat the other party.
Corona or whatever the illness may be causing people to be afraid (warranted or not), to travel, trade and be entertained, could cause a technical recession.
How crazy is that? Unemployment is lowest in decades, money is cheap to borrow, inflation is lowest in years. What could be better for working Americans?
I lay blame for much of this on the mass news media.
That's what I've been saying for a few days. It's not the coronavirus that's the problem; it's the economic impact of the mass hysteria. And definitely the cause of this is the media. Unless you're already immunocompromised, coronavirus is very unlikely to kill you. But it's not coronavirus that's the problem for air travel, it's fear and the rapidly cratering world economy that's air travel's big threat in the medium term.