| Oil prices dropped this week below $50 a barrel for the first time since April 2009. What do those dropping prices mean for the markets? For jobs? For GDP? And for you? National economics correspondent Josh Zumbrun and Brian Baskin, commodities and emerging markets editor, answered your questions about plummeting oil prices in a Q&A on Facebook. Below are excerpts from that exchange.
Question: “Oil price drop is mostly demand-driven. Weaker global demand, more U.S. independence, and China and India demanding less oil. So it has resulted in overproduction, so the glut of oil caused prices to fall down drastically.” Zumbrun: “That’s probably one factor. But it’s impossible to ignore the role of supply. Just look at this chart of U.S. oil production. There’s a huge supply shift here:..............................................Full Article: Source
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