Yes, I heard it happens...

I don't know if the "Action Man" is the one to blame for this, but we've seen that anything goes. Anyway any discussion on this subject is a can of worms! I'll keep my rationals to myself because we (in the EU) haven't been behaving any better, just invading less... :(

@duartix

I can provide you many details in PM if you want. Here we do not discuss R. :-)

@Sage

Nope

@VK

:)

Today I was shocked/pleasantly surprised when I filled my car for $3.11/gallon -- until a few months ago it was usually in the range of $4/gallon. Heating oil cost is way down, which will save a lot for me this winter. It seems weird that the price should change so much though. Supposedly its because of Saudi Arabia not wanting to cut production, but I have a feeling it doesn't gain them much revenue but it does hurt other oil producers revenue. I think it's political, maybe about Syria (fill in the blanks).

@Alienhead

maybe it's because isis , who work for the US and Israelis, are marketing all of the stolen iraqi and syrian oil !

Maybe "Hope and Change" wasn't successful in Syria, Ukraine, so somebody is throwing a tantrum... ( Economic war) :

What really happened in Beijing

...Oil prices are now below $80 a barrel. It costs me nearly $20 less to put gasoline in my car than it did a year ago, and good enough. But why has the price of crude tumbled in so short an interval? ..... To do this, Kerry told the Saudis 1. to raise production and 2. to cut its crude price.

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/13/what_really_happened_in_beijing_putin_obama_xi_and_the_back_story_the_media_wont_tell_you/

As I said, monetary idiots.

@jleo

The sudden fall of oil prices is a great blank slate to fill in with insecurity and existential narrative. It is always more comfortable for a people to look without than within.

A big thing that has emerged for me - how much money the big oil companies have been making! They have been charging king's sums, and they are probably still making a killing. A kind of global mass redistribution to the pockets of a few (as usual)

If I was investing right now, I would buy ruble assets. I agree with this analysis - http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.in/2014/12/ruble-moves-25-intraday-bidask-spread.html

US tar sands plus Saudis opening up the taps means global oil prices in freefal. Since 2/3s of R's exports is oil, the result is inevitable. Of course invasions and sanctions don't help either...

My personal take: Saudis smart. They are opening up production to intentionally drop prices to fight USA's domestic efforts. Fracking isn't profitable unless oil prices are high. Saudis keep prices low to kill US production and ensure their future continued oil revenues. R just an unintended side effect.

But the larger result will be another global super-recession, also not the intention...

This is nothing. R. has survived such things many times in the past. Or nobody remembers when suddenly people in R. woke up with their currency devaluation, and life savings up in smoke back in the 90's? They survived. So this is nothing. They'll survive, no problem. The bigger issue is how to disconnect the R. economy from dependence on oil revenue and natural resource mineral extraction... you need to have more sources of income, so that some stupid change of price in one thing - oil - doesn't wreck the whole economy. R. must become independent of oil revenue - develop other sources of income. If China could do it, R. can do it. There are a lot of very smart and educated people in R. - much better educated than people in China in the past, so they should do even better - take a look how many world class scientists, mathematicians and so on come from Russia. So they are in an excellent position to develop industry and economy and not be so dependent on making money from oil. The only thing I think Putin is doing that is stupid is wasting so much money building the military... what for? Nobody is going to attack R. as long as they have nuclear weapons (which they will always have), so why waste money on the military instead of building the economy. But anyway, this ruble thing is nothing.

@RottenCarcass @kurth

Let's keep to the topic.

Looks like a typical leveraging and manipulation stunt of some the usual suspects - Goldman, Sorros etc. - to me. With that, you can bring every currency down to its knees.