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Comment by wingsonfire | Hacker News Reader

Countries that export crude are having recession.. To name few Canada, Russia, Brazil, Nigeria, Venezuela, Australia (commodities not just crude), at the same countries like India who import and depend heavily on crude are having good times (relatively).

So finally is it crude that runs all economies and everything else is overrated.. That scenario if true is so scary!

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> at the same countries like India who import and depend heavily on crude are having good times (relatively).

That's not really true. If you want to scare yourself look up what the "baltic dry index" is and what level it's at. Other transport indices (e.g. free space in harbours, train freight, ...) are all down hard.

Whatever the cause, but America and Europe have slowed down in ... pretty much everything they do. Goods transport is the clearest indication of that, but far from the only one. Somehow building in the US and Europe (and India) is down. A lot of economic activity is down in fact, the exception for now is very large debt-free services corporations.

Just to point that Brazil is a net-importer of oil, and benefits from the low price.

Our recession has other causes.

Australia has managed to avoid recession so far. I know that's only technically true, but that's the best kind of true. (We had a lot of defense spending in one quarter that pushed us over the line between contracting/expanding.) It'll be interesting to see how Q1 2016 goes. Even if it is a recession, it's not a normal one, since unemployment is going down.

Do you think we (Aus) will in 2016?

Oh, people in India are not having a good time. Retail gas/diesel prices have barely changed. Retail price is still the same as when crude prices where at $99/barrel. Taxes has been raised whenever crude prices falls, so the retail price remains the same.

That is true but think what will happen if Crude was still at 100$. Can you imagine trade deficit? Rupee would have crashed

rise in oil prices has never caused rupee to crash too much. Rupee has fallen a lot in last couple of years, but thats not due to increase in crude price. The govt could do better to support exports. There is still too much bureaucracy red tapes which discourages business. Unless this changes for better, it will not do any good in the long run.

I would see it the other way around, where real and stable economies don't depend on oil export. We will see them in the coming years. An economy that mostly rely on one and unique natural resource can only suffer in the medium term.

How long is the medium term in that context ?

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