a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment
b_b  ·  3184 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Sell everything ahead of stock market crash, say RBS economists

I have a hard time with the gloom and doom oil scenarios. There kind of is a price floor for oil, in that it's not going to drop below the cost of producing the cheapest oil. Fracking will dry up before that point, and meanwhile the Saudis will have blown through a huge portion of their cash reserves. One of the ways they're fighting the war of attrition with the US, Russia, et al, is that they have a mountain of cash. In 2015, the war cost them 20% of their reserves. 20% of a huge amount of money. That's not sustainable, even for a prince. Anyway, who the hell knows if there's going to be a multi-state sectarian war that will cause a massive supply disruption. Can RBS or anyone else predict that? My point isn't that they're wrong, per se; it's that we always need to take forecasts with a grain of salt. The number of incorrect predictions always vastly outnumbers the number of correct ones for the simple reason that there are infinite possibilities, but only one thing can actually happen. Good on RBS for predicting gloom and doom and inciting panic. Very mature.