Interesting headline from today's Nikkei Asia (economy section)
Haven’t we (the average citizens) been inundated by media that cheap oil was supposed to be a boon for the economy? In particular, consumers should have engaged in a spending binge that would have boosted GDP or G-R-O-W-T-H?
So why the seeming (or reluctant) change of tune? Because things have been falling apart now? That denial through rationalizations by spin doctors or so-called 'experts' haven’t delivered what they were supposed to?
Or has it also been that previous denials were meant or designed to camouflage that the fundamental problem of tanking oil prices has been due to mainly government interventions? That easy money policies have enabled a massive debt financed buildup of oil supply? Also that easy money policies have hardly led to consumer income growth but instead to asset bubbles, part of which financed the energy sector’s supply side boom?
Or has it been that the pressures from the entitlement society of the welfare state along with hubris by the governments of oil producing nations prompted the said authorities to think that they were above the laws of economics for them to keep pumping regardless of prices (in the name of 'market share')?
Ideas have consequences. And it appears that we will distressingly pay a heavy price for applying the wrong ideas.
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