Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Crude Oil Is Down 38 Percent So Far This Year
If there’s a robust recovery in the U.S., somebody forgot to tell the commodities market, and the U.S. Treasury market, and holiday shoppers.
Crude oil plunged over 10 percent on Friday, following an OPEC decision to keep output at 30 million barrels a day. Both West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the U.S. domestic crude and Brent, the international benchmark, traded lower overnight at prices not seen since 2009 – in the midst of the financial crisis. Both WTI and Brent are now under $70 a barrel, seeing a decline of 38 percent this year with a loss of 18 percent in just November.
One might attempt to chalk up the plunge in oil prices to a situation unique to OPEC overproduction or supply coming from U.S. and Canadian shale production were it not for other economic indicators also flashing red.
The Bloomberg Commodity Index of 22 raw materials has lost 10 percent this year and is also back to levels last seen in 2009 in the midst of economic chaos stemming from the Wall Street collapse.
Global bond yields are also flashing a warning of an economic slowdown with 10-year or intermediate maturities in Germany, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Finland, France and Ireland setting all-time lows.
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