Oil Crisis was a Peak into the Future

Jeff Rubin doesn’t fit the typical profile of an interview subject for The Dominion. For more than a decade, he was Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets, one of Canada’s largest investment banks. Rubin recently broke ranks with the financial crowd to publish his book, Why Your World is About to get a Whole Lot Smaller. The man once touted as Canada’s top economist now predicts the end of globalization because of triple-digit oil prices.

“The same economics that compelled the mass exodus of manufacturing abroad will compel [the] return [of manufacturing to North America] because distance will cost money,” he says between sips of San Pellegrino, as we watch container ships move through Vancouver harbour. This end point isn’t far away; Rubin predicts that a barrel of oil will hit US $225 by 2012.

Forecasting the price of oil, or anything for that matter, has long been considered a fool’s game. And plenty of respected analysts think the former CIBC guru has gone over the top. But, when it comes to looking into the crystal ball of global capitalism, Rubin has a far better track record than most other pin-striped sages. In 2000, Rubin correctly predicted that oil would top $50 per barrel by 2005. And in 2005 he got it right again, forecasting prices would top $100 per barrel in 2007.

The basis of Rubin’s predictions