retail spending | Barataria - The work of Erik Hare

Why should the stock market move in tandem with the price of oil? If you’ve never before heard that it has been you may think that the world really has gone crazy. Of course, you might be right.

But the phenom has been so strong and so enduring, lasting nearly two months now, that it’s more than a bizarre intellectual exercise – there’s a lot of money at stake. So what’s so important about oil going up that it drives the market? And how long will this keep up?

There are a few good theories out there for the first question, none of which make a strong case for when this relationship will break and we’ll go back to “cheap oil is good”. But there may be an even simpler way to look at it which tells us that the current situation can’t hold for very long at all.

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In a steady crunching beat over crispy snow it’s one foot after the other. Head down to measure every step for solid footing before the next careful crunch. There’s nothing but grey sky tinkled with flakes if you bothered to look ahead anyway. Most of the US has experienced that this December, but the economy has been doing that for at least four years now. And like a brisk and noisy walk through the cold eventually you find that you have actually gotten somewhere.

Along with the blustering weather news that has dominated this month there has been a lot of good economic news. Most recently the growth in GDP for the third quarter came in at a rosy warm 4.1%.. The National Retail Federation tells us that the holiday retail season is indeed going to come in with an impressive 3.9% growth over 2012, the high end of predictions. But not everyone thinks the future is so bright. It’s worth running down the reasons for both naughty and nice economic news for next year.

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