Oil

In the news I'm hearing a lot about the oil markets. How low prices are great fro drivers but bad for the economy and countries like Russia who have basically one export. Oil. The price of a barrel dropped by half in the last few months.

This made me wonder about the wisdom of the market. Did they really expect a commodity to remain a fixed price? Never to go down? So stable in fact that all economic models for the future are based upon that one fixed point. This seems to me to be naive and ridiculous. The market goes up and down. Every commodity has fluctuations due to supply and demand and other ancillary reasons.

The news makes it sound like there is no profit to be made if the price of oil is at $50 a barrel. What was the price of a barrel a couple decades ago? About $30. In the 70's during the oil shortage what was the price I wonder? I'm sure there was a spike but nothing like the craziness of the 2000's. Are they trying to tell me that billions weren't made by the oil producers in the middle east during the 70's, 80's and 90's? that's just bullshit at best and disingenuous at worst.

There is a finite amount of oil on the planet. At some point it will be gone. Then what will the oil producers do? They have set up their entire business model without really thinking of the future. Stop bemoaning that you're only making half the billions you were.