A Price War Has Sent Oil Prices Plummeting

The latest coronavirus obsession is the collapse of crude oil prices over the past couple of weeks:

The nickel version of this story is that oil prices started declining in February due to fears of lower demand caused by the coronavirus outbreak. OPEC tried to cut a deal with Russia to reduce output all around, but Russia balked. Saudi Arabia then decided to bring out its big guns, lowering prices immediately by about $7 per barrel and announcing that it would increase output in order to take share away from Russia. At that point the decline turned into a rout, with the price of WTI crude collapsing to $28 as I write this. Needless to say, there’s no telling where it will be when you read this.

Anyway, just another thing to keep your eye on. On the bright side, this certainly means we’re not going to have a recession based on a spike in oil prices.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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