What If There Is No Rapture?: Haggith: Iran Gave Doha Oil Meeting the Slip

Monday, April 25, 2016

Haggith: Iran Gave Doha Oil Meeting the Slip - from TRUNEWS

David Haggith, financial commentator, TRUNEWS guest, and author of ‘The Great Recession Blog’ shares his insights on why the much-vaunted oil meeting in Doha last week failed to produce the forecasted results:

As predicted relentlessly here, the scuttled meeting in Doha to limit oil production broke up with no agreement at all. The meeting foundered like a tanker snagged in the dessert sands because of the singular obvious factor that should have sunken all hope weeks ago but did not: Saudi Arabia said, “No deal without Iran.

It’s absurd the people did not see with certainty that the meeting would founder. They simply didn’t want to believe Saudi Arabia would stay on the course that it repeatedly stated it would take. They didn’t believe the Saudis were ready to crash the market if that is what it takes to retain their market share and keep Iran in a weakened position. That shows the market is operating in a realm of make-believe and denial.

David Haggith of ‘The Great Recession Blog’

What I didn’t anticipate in this situation and what nobody anticipated (that I saw) was that a total failure of the Doha meeting would end with oil prices going up the next day. Yes, they have. The oil market dropped for less than a day, and then it yawned for the rest of the week, as if it couldn’t care less about the long-anticipated Doha meeting.

But does the strengthening in the price of oil and the resulting jubilance in the stock market make any sense? In my opinion, it proves the market is truly running on the fumes of euphoria and wishful thinking….

Irrational exuberance is a precursor to all great market crashes. If the above scenario is not proof that market exuberance has reached the zenith of irrationality, I’m not sure that anything could provide proof in the face of such irrationality, for it is the irrational who will be judging the proof harshly.