by Pops » Mon 03 Jan 2022, 10:54:39
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', 'U')nder the assumption that central banks are aiming to keep oil prices stable, oil price no longer is any sort of signal...
Price and rising or falling storage are the only signals that matter I think.
Central banks may wish they could surgically affect oil price but their tools are too blunt. All they can do is influence the overall economy to heat up or slow down and perhaps reduce oil demand but it is only indirect, it's wagging the dog to move the tail.
Gasoline price is a third higher this year and inflation is more stubborn than expected so from all accounts the Fed is likely to raise rates this year, one of their few tools.
But, a higher cost of borrowing won't increase oil production and lower oil prices, on the contrary, increasing production requires other people's money so higher cost for that money will reduce production in the future.
That is if demand were constant but the whole point of raising interest rates is to do the the entire economy what it does to oil production and slow everything down. The central banks will be hoping to slow growth of the entire economy just enough to get inflation down to "target" of 2%. Again, the tendency of higher rates is to reduce production so only by slowing the overall economy can the effect oil price — hopefully more than they reduce future production.
But... Don't forget that oil is the master commodity. High oil price is already a large if not largest factor of inflation. High oil price itself is a drag on the economy, a counterweight to inflation. Because oil is central to the economy, a higher oil price slows growth as much or more than higher interest rates.
So central banks attempting to cool the economy combine with oils "natural" ability to moderate excessively fast growth can actually combine to cause recession. Pretty sure you can look and find that both oil price and discount rates rise before most recessions. Maybe that just happens accidentally but probably not.
Here is a pretty good article that is probably more lucid than me this morning.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he direction of travel for global interest rates seems clear: they are about to rise - perhaps significantly, if some market pricing is to be believed - as nervous central banks try to put the inflation genie back in the bottle.
There's a strong case to be made, however, that if oil prices fall or even just plateau at current levels, policymakers' hawkish turn may prove to be mistimed at best, or a catastrophic, growth-choking policy error at worst.