Monday, November 16, 2015

What are falling commodity prices telling us about the world economy?

"by Shaun Richards 
One of the features of 2015 has been the fall in price of so many basic staples of life. By this I mean the price of energy metals and some foods. Putting it another way we have seen a sort of currency revaluation where most people can now buy more and often considerably more product for the same monetary outlay. This is certainly true for those who use the US Dollar and even the Euro’s fall has only offset part of it. This currency revaluation has spread to much of the world and only has a downside for those who are producers where places like Western Australia and the oil producers come to mind.
If we look at things this way and again look at the Euro area I note that Mario Draghi has again indulged in Open Mouth Operations to drive the Euro lower today and thereby offset some of the commodity price fall. Does anybody in authority even question the wisdom of this?
The price of oil
if there is an equivalent to “the spice must flow” theme of the novel Dune for the world economy it is the supply of oil. That is why so many wars have sprung up around the middle-east in recent times. However the latter part of 2014 saw a sea change in the pattern of the price of oil as it fell and fell to a nadir in Brent Crude Oil terms of just below US $50 as 2015 began. This was very different to the period where as we observed on here a Star Trek style tractor beam kept pulling it back to the US $108 level..."
at http://investmentwatchblog.com/what-are-falling-commodity-prices-telling-us-about-the-world-economy/

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