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vRozenSch00n
Oil + Monetary Policy = Power.
... and only because it goes back to the Nixon Whitehouse when that clown unhinged / unbacked the US Dollar from precious metals and struck up deal with make the US dollar the petrol exchange dollar - the currency in white all oil deals had to be done from 1972(?) until folks like Saddam Hussein and other more recently began transacting deals in other currencies and notably, gold.
Look at the gang up job currently ongoing with plummeting oil price per barrel. Great relief years overdue for say end consumers in the US - who protects the Saud oil fields. Serious money gasoline costs have been inflicting on average US household and part of why people are traveling less, not moving, etc.
How to kill a Russian economy with a pipe dream? Have Saud turn up the drilling rate, dump cheaper oil onto market, make Russian oil interests less valuable.
At the same time it drives shale drilling companies down the drain and whole natural gas exploration business suddenly non viable. Which drives out domestic energy independence.
Which perplexes the gas out of me... Because the Bush Whitehouse was all about Texas money + refinieries while bolstering their family/friends in the Sauds to fill the tankers with Saud crude.
The Obama-sam-alama Whitehouse is all about, well, killing domestic coal, domestic oil, etc. If it isn't green, they are about composting that economy. But they went back to their friends the Sauds for a #2 dump of crude. Which is taking out "enemies" on both sides - domestic energy producers and Rusky.
What is going to befall the US economy from all this price crash on oil? Well vast majority of those shale plays and companies were funded by funny financial instruments. There is no way those companies are going to be able to pay up. So if prices stay this low, whole bunch of risk funding is going insolvent and mass bankruptcies. Will spell end to shale industry. They will join the coal miners who are becoming darn near extinct as Appalachia lingers in extreme poverty.