Jeffrey Rubin

Four years ago, when I was still chief economist at CIBC World Markets, I forecast that global economic growth was on pace to send oil prices to $200 a barrel by 2012. In short, the argument was based on a supply-driven analysis that weighed the sources of future oil supply...

With Greece on the verge of default, we're about to learn how little has really changed since governments around the world wrote the last round of bailout checks to prop up failing financial institutions. Just as the collapse of the US subprime mortgage market rippled into nearly every corner of...

European voters are rejecting further fiscal restraint, showing the door over the weekend to former austerity-imposing politicians in Greece and France. In a similar spirit, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi is now calling for a "growth pact" to replace the "fiscal pact" demanded by Angela Merkel's government in Germany....

When the first OPEC oil shock hit in the 1970s, President Nixon responded by lowering the national speed limit to 55 miles per hour in a bid to conserve energy. But speed limits aren't the only thing that can change when oil prices go up. Right now, we're seeing that...

On the same day the Obama Administration put the kibosh on the Keystone XL pipeline, two engineering contracts totaling $12.2 billion were awarded to two U.S. companies for work in the Alberta oil sands. One included a $750 million contract to a Chicago-based company for work on Exxon's...

Can we still expect to see sustained economic recoveries when oil, the world's principal source of energy, is trading in triple digit range?

As I argued several years ago in my book, Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller, triple digit oil prices will...

Will the PIIGS sink the euro or will the European monetary union jettison the PIIGS? As the stakes get ever higher, we are rapidly approaching the end game for the European debt crisis.

With the spectre of default now hovering over major European economies such as Italy and Spain, the...

Record low interest rates and record high debt levels are a marriage that history tells us won't last long.

This is a lesson European bondholders have already learned. And it is one that will likely unfold in the U.S. Treasuries market, the supposedly safe haven from the panic gripping...

Facing growing political and environmental opposition in the U.S. to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, Canada's landlocked options for exporting its oil have never appeared more costly.

Not only has deadheaded oil in Cushing Oklahoma, the present terminus of the pipeline, put a crimp on expansion plans in the oil...

What U.S. presidents seeking re-election fear most is the wrath of a rising misery index. And nothing brings more misery to the world's largest oil consuming economy than high oil prices.

During the 1960s, Arthur Okun, an American economist, created the idea of a misery index...

Heading down to Washington to speak at the Association for Peak Oil-USA's Truth in Energy conference on Nov. 2, I sense a general malaise within the peak oil movement.

The pequists, as they have become known, appear to be on the defensive these days as they once again roll back...

You might have thought things had changed in world financial markets since the U.S. subprime mortgage disaster. After all, we were told at the time that if taxpayers didn't open their wallets and bail out the banks, we could face a complete meltdown of the global financial system and an...

The more you hear about the extraordinary efforts that governments around the world are taking to promote economic growth, the less confident you can be in the result.

With the clock ticking on a Greek default, members of the European Monetary Union are considering sweetening their bail out pot for...

When virtually every global financial institution is exposed to one other in today's world of free flowing capital markets, where do you hide when bankrupt borrowers like Greece default?

Certainly not in French banks, which have lost almost half of their share value over the past year due to their...

It is getting harder and harder to see where tomorrow's global growth will be coming from. Job creation in the U.S. has come to a screeching halt. Growth in the Eurozone has done the same. And a still irradiating Japanese economy continues to stagnate, while an emerging energy crisis has...

With the sudden collapse of the Qaddafi regime in Tripoli, the oil industry is hoping it can repair enough of Libya's damaged export terminals, pumping stations and pipelines to get as much as one million barrels a day of oil flowing into the market within the next six to 12...

Ever since the North American Free Trade Agreement was implemented in 1994, Canada's economic compass has been pointing south.

But with U.S. oil prices more than $20 below world levels, an American auto market nearly 50% cent smaller, and a broke and dysfunctional Washington that independent on the People's...

It is not that difficult to discover who is the most concerned about Standard & Poor's recent downgrade of the United States' coveted AAA credit rating?

The People's Bank of China owns more Treasury bonds than anyone. All of a sudden, the liquidity of the U.S. Treasuries market no longer...

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan was recently quoted as seeing a nuclear-free future for his nation. But unlike similar pronouncements from Germany, which pledges to be nuclear-free by 2022, Japan may become nuclear-free literally within a year.

That would be quite a feat for a...

Even though the world economy is drowning in government debt, borrowing rates remained chained to record low rate setting by the G7 central banks.

In the U.S., the Federal Reserve has effectively anchored its key setting federal funds rate around zero. The Bank of Canada, for all its warnings...