"Every global recession we've had in the last 4 decades has had oil's fingerprints all over it ... The most recent recession, from which we have only barely emerged, followed on the heels of $147 a barrel oil. Now of course, most economists and financial markets pundits tell you that the last recession was not an energy shock at all ... Was the subprime mortgage-crisis really the cause of the last recession or was it a symptom of something far more fundamental? ... Why all of a sudden did the US subprime mortgage market blow up? And the reason why it blew up is because in 2004, money was free, not unlike the situations we have today. The federal funds rate, which was the benchmark interest rate in the United States was 1%, and even people who didn't have jobs were getting approved for interest-free mortgages. And then a scant 2 years later, all of a sudden the federal funds rate was 5,5%, and instead of sending in mortgage checks, homeowners were sending in the keys to their mortgage institution, because they could no longer make the payment ... Any central banker will tell you that your borrowing rate is a reflection of your inflation rate ... If we look at what caused that huge increase in inflation, it came from one component of the US consumer price index: the energy component. Energy inflation was running at a 35% annual rate, and it was doing so because of one price: the price of oil ... Oil prices rised in the past either because somebody closed off the spigot, or, somebody invaded a major oil-producing country and crippled production. The spigot was wide open in 2007, the spigot is wide open today, 90 million barrels fall through it every day, a record high. The problem is, we can no longer afford the oil that flows through it ... The kind of prices that we need to access those [unconventional] resources are the same kind of prices that cause our oil-consuming economies to roll over and go back into recession ... The higher the price of a good, the less of it we can afford to consume. The very oil prices that lift oil out of today's resources ... translates into the very prices that cause our economies to stop growing ...I f we cancel out the cyclical fluctuations, I think what we're really looking at is a big flat line, or the end of growth as we know it ... Yesterday's bailout is today's cutback ... Our seemingly inexorable path to environmental self-destruction is about to run out of fuel."
Ein Vortrag von Jeff Rubin an der University of Western Ontario über die Verbindung von Ölpreisanstiegen und Rezessionen, die Rolle von Subprime-Krediten und Rating-Agenturen in der letzten bzw. aktuellen Finanzkrise, den Zusammenhang zwischen Leitzinssatz und Inflation, massive Liquiditätsinjektionen, Haushaltsdefizite und steigende Staatsverschuldungen, das Ende des Wachstums und dessen positive Auswirkungen auf die Umwelt. Erschienen auf YouTube (18. Oktober 2012).
Ein Vortrag von Jeff Rubin an der University of Western Ontario über die Verbindung von Ölpreisanstiegen und Rezessionen, die Rolle von Subprime-Krediten und Rating-Agenturen in der letzten bzw. aktuellen Finanzkrise, den Zusammenhang zwischen Leitzinssatz und Inflation, massive Liquiditätsinjektionen, Haushaltsdefizite und steigende Staatsverschuldungen, das Ende des Wachstums und dessen positive Auswirkungen auf die Umwelt. Erschienen auf YouTube (18. Oktober 2012).
