The crude-oil cartel has been boosting production and cutting prices in an effort to discourage North American crude development.
The rumor mill suggests that Russia is behind this.
In any case, it's a fine example of predatory pricing, and it's been generating headlines. You've seen them. Oil prices fall, there's no point in investing in domestic extraction, nor transportation of Canadian crude, all that stuff. Also, cheap crude will totally destroy the economy (I'm still not clear on how that's supposed to work).
But... isn't there a YouTube vid of an interview with Milton Friedman, in which he explains that predatory pricing doesn't actually work? I can't find it at the moment, but there's this from Thomas J. DiLorenzo at the Cato Institute.
And what evidence is there that it doesn't work? Why, after only a few months of selling below cost, Russia is having a grand economic crisis, with the ruble in free-fall.
Maybe there's something to this Austrian economics stuff after all.
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