Richard, It's obvious that China is doing fairly today and in the past few years. We really can't predict with certainty what will happen in the global market in the next few years.
As far as I'm concerned, it's good for me and the US to have cheaper gas prices in the gas station. More likely, Saudi Arabia and the OPEC countries would cut down their oil production in order to get better prices in the world market. But the US has its own worries and responsibilities. Specifically, how can we reduce the national debt? Who's going to pay for it? The rich or the poor? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <punditster@...> wrote : On 12/4/2014 4:22 PM, jr_esq wrote: > But I'm not sure if that's good or bad. With it's population of a billion or more, China can produce and sell more to increase its economic output. > A country the size of China can't produce very much without oil, John. It may not be even capable of feeding it's own people in the next few years. It is an open question what will happen to Algeria, Iraq, and Libya if oil prices hover at half the budget break-even costs for a year or two, given the extreme fragility of the region and political risk of cutting subsidies. A world already unsettled by Russian-inspired insurrection in Ukraine to the onslaught of Islamic State in the Middle East is about be roiled further as crude prices plunge. Global energy markets have been upended by an unprecedented North American oil boom brought on by hydraulic fracturing, the process of blasting shale rocks to release oil and gas. According to what I've read, "oil below $70 is already playing havoc with budgets across the global petro-nexus. The fiscal break-even cost is $161 for Venezuela, $160 for Yemen, $132 for Algeria, $131 for Iran, $126 for Nigeria, and $125 for Bahrain, $111 for Iraq, and $105 for Russia, and even $98 for Saudi Arabia itself, according to Citigroup." 'Saudis risk playing with fire in shale-price showdown as crude crashes' The Telegraph: http://tinyurl.com/pw5dgfs http://tinyurl.com/pw5dgfs > It’s official: America is now No. 2 It’s official: America is now No. 2 The Chinese economy just overtook the United States economy to become the largest in the world. View on finance.yahoo.com Preview by Yahoo
