Bloomberg reports that:
Oil’s decline is proving to be the worst since the collapse of the financial system in 2008 …
“Worst?” For whom and why?
Well, this is because the crash in oil prices is:
… threatening to have the same global impact of falling prices three decades ago that led to the Mexican debt crisis and the end of the Soviet Union.
Times are so hard for the oligarchs of oil that:
… Russia, the world’s largest producer, can no longer rely on the same oil revenues to rescue an economy suffering from European and U.S. sanctions. Iran, also reeling from similar sanctions, will need to reduce subsidies that have partly insulated its growing population. Nigeria, fighting an Islamic insurgency, and Venezuela, crippled by failing political and economic policies, also rank among the biggest losers from the decision by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries last week to let the force of the market determine what some experts say will be the first free-fall in decades.
Big economic disruptions are never entirely pretty and a lot of innocents are inconvenienced at best. Still … it is going to be very hard for a lot of Americans to feel especially sorry for the states, qua states, that are taking the hit.
