Dr. Doom doesn't give a fig for your commodities exchange traded funds.
In an interview with the Hard Assets Investor website ("Common Sense on Commodities"), Dr. Nouriel Roubini, who called the top on the market in 2005 with predictions of, well, doom by 2008, said speculators pouring cash into commodities funds were to blame for oil prices near $100/barrel and above.
And those high prices, the NYU business professor says, will cripple any global economic recovery. "At current levels, oil prices aren't justified," Roubini told the web site Friday, "but they can go higher because of market dynamics and speculation; much higher."
"If oil were to go because of nonfundamental reasons toward $100, then I would say oil at $100 would be like a big hammer beating on the head of the global economy," he explained.
Position limits would dampen volatility that Roubini says is damaging the global economy. "It's time to control it. If we don't control it, these booms and busts are going to become more severe, more damaging and more risky."
Position limits would hamper, if not kill funds that depend on trading in energy futures and financials, but Roubini says their death serves a better world: "It might kill them off, but frankly, who cares? I care about the real economy. I care about not having another global recession. If people are speculating on oil, and that pushes oil up to $145 like last year -- I'm in favor of limits on that."
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