Looming oil shock means globalization's end: author

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) – Triple-digit oil prices are once again around the corner and will sound the death knell for globalization, an audacious but sometimes prescient Canadian economist predicts in a new book.

Jeff Rubin, who until two months ago was the chief economist and strategist at investment bank CIBC World Markets, argues that the days of cheap oil are over, making the global economy unsustainable and turning back the clock on the way we live.

“Everything we have taken for granted is about to change,” Rubin said in an interview with Reuters a few days after the publication of his book “Why your world is about to get a whole lot smaller: Oil and the end of globalization”.

“Our cars, our homes, our whole world has been getting bigger in the cheap-oil era. Now it is about to get smaller, And, greener. Much greener,” Rubin said.

In his book, Rubin argues that an ever-decreasing amount of supply but ongoing insatiable demand for oil will propel prices to highs not yet seen.

Reuters