I am writing this on a Tuesday, having had the mildly optimistic feeling that arose from the changes listed below rather deflated by the oil refinery bombing in Saudi Arabia.
Those of us who were adults in the 1970’s are very aware that rapid and dramatic rises in oil prices will threaten a long recession. However, until now the problem for the oil industry was surplus supply, so the immediate spike in prices might be short lived. If not, the already fragile global economy might stumble into a deep recession.
More Help From The ECB
The European Central Bank has decided to open back up its bond buying programme (quantitative easing), a reversal of policy much as has already happened in the USA.
What this means is that interest rates in Europe are going to be effectively negative at an institutional level which is an economic stimulus.
It occurs to me that we are in a situation where the politicians are like hopeless learner drivers in the dual control cars of their national economies and central bankers are the instructors jumping on the brakes and hauling back on the steering wheel to protect the public from disaster!
We (might not) Work
The latest fantasy based IPO (offer of new shares to the public) of the US office space business WeWork has been pulled after investment banks at last baulked at the underlying highly questionable business model and dominating behaviour of the charismatic founder.
If this is the end of vast amounts of capital being diverted into chancy business ventures, to be burned up at astonishing rates by founders who manage to become personally super rich without ever making a cent of profit, then that is good news.
The money that would have been burned on hopeless enterprises might now get used to buy shares in boring profitable businesses that have been useful to humanity for decades.