Marc Faber : I think you’re asking a very important question. Traditionally, oil prices around this level have been negative for economic growth around the world whereby we have to distinguish. Say, in 1998 when oil prices bottomed out at ten dollars a barrel the income from oil or the expenditures for oil were around four hundred million dollars. Sorry, four hundred billion dollars. Now, at the current price they are around four trillion dollars. In other words, some people get the four trillion dollars, the people that produce the oil, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Russian, Venezuela, Ecuador, Angola, Nigeria, and so forth. And, on the other hand, the people that use the oil, the U.S. and Western Europe, they pay a higher price. So for some people it's revenue and for some people it's an expenditure. The people that have to spend it unless they can borrow more and more as they have in the past, they can roll it over. In other words, it's not damaging. But, the people that can’t borrow money to pay for the increased price in the oil, in other words, like an increased tax, they suffer so they have less to spend. And, that’s why I think the economy in the Western world will be relatively sluggish. I think we’ve bottomed out in the U.S. but will remain relatively sluggish. But, to mind you say anything happens in the Middle East and the price of oil goes from, say, the current level of a hundred ten or a hundred dollars to a hundred fifty or two hundred dollars, what do you think Uncle Ben will do? Uncle Ben, he knows only one thing and this is to print money. - in Chris Martenson interview
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