This weekend, I was thumbing through my highlighted copy of David Stockman's The Great Deformation [5] (about which I wrote a lengthy and over-the-top laudatory review last September here [6]) when this passage caught my eye:
[7]
In case you've been helping Elon Musk establish the new Martian Colony over the past nine months, you might have missed what's been going on with black tea:
[8]
(Incidentally, I wouldn't get too excited about the bounce we've seen over the past couple of weeks; unlike Cramer, I don't think this "smells like a bottom [9]" - - but that's probably a field of study about which he's better acquainted than me. But I digress..........).
On the one hand, oil has indeed fallen to $50 (and well below it) as Stockman anticipated; on the other, if there's a worldwide recession going on (and perhaps there is, the very beginnings of one), it sure isn't yet apparent from the mass media.
Perhaps, as in 2008, commodities are a very large canary in a very crowded coalmine. I am highly confident Mr. Stockman's prediction about North Dakota is going to come all too true. And, as a parting shot, I must suggest (nay, insist) to those who haven't bought and read the book - please do so [5]. It is excellent, from beginning to end. There are many other predictions in the book which will probably unfold much as the one regarding crude oil has.