Tag Archives: low oil prices

A lack of very cheap oil is leading to debt problems

Posted on October 31, 2025 by Gail Tverberg

The economy needs a strong middle class to maintain the buying power needed to purchase goods such as vehicles, motorcycles, and new homes, to keep the price of oil up. Prices must be both high enough for producers and low enough for consumers. Continue reading →

Posted in Financial Implications, Introductory Post, PDFs Available | Tagged , , , , | 1,521 Comments

What should individuals do in a world filled with conflict?

Posted on June 18, 2025 by Gail Tverberg

Regardless of how things play out, it is the physics of the self-organizing system that determines what happens next. No matter how offended we as individuals may feel regarding what some political party or politician has done or has not done, individuals are not able to fix the system, except to the extent that available inexpensive energy supply allows such a fix. Continue reading →

Posted in Financial Implications, News Related Post, Planning for the Future | Tagged , , | 1,547 Comments

Energy limits are forcing the economy to contract

Posted on March 4, 2025 by Gail Tverberg

My analysis indicates that our expectation of what goes wrong with inadequate energy supplies is wrong. Strangely enough, it is the finances of governments that start to fail, early on. They add too much debt to support investments that do not pay back well. They add too many programs that they cannot be supported for the long term. Continue reading →

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Oil shortages lead to hidden conflicts–even war

Posted on October 14, 2024 by Gail Tverberg

Governments may want to reduce long-term interest rates, but they cannot do so without having the market for these loans disappear. In this part of the economic cycle, it appears that high interest rates, indirectly due to inadequate inexpensive-to-extract crude oil supplies, act as a brake on the economy instead of high oil prices. Continue reading →

Posted in Financial Implications | Tagged , | 1,561 Comments

Today’s economy is like that of the late 1920s

Posted on August 21, 2024 by Gail Tverberg

Today, there is great wage and wealth disparity, just as there was in the late 1920s. Recent energy consumption growth has been low, just as it was in the 1920s. A significant difference today is that the debt level of the US government is already at an extraordinarily high level. Adding more debt now is fraught with peril. Continue reading →

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