Soaring Oil Prices Won't Halt Globalization

Jeff Rubin was, for years, a lonely voice among economists when it came to predicting the price of oil. In 2007—when crude began the year at a relatively modest $50 a barrel—Rubin, then the chief economist at CIBC, all but staked his reputation on a prediction that oil was about to hit triple-digit prices and never look back. In his reports, speeches and even addresses to skeptical oil executives, he preached the end of the era of cheap fossil fuels. “The bottom line is, we’re in the bottom of the ninth inning of the hydrocarbon age,” he declared at a conference that year. Like any economic soothsayer, he had flubbed some calls in the past, but this, it seemed, was different. Oil prices kept rising just as he said they would until last summer, when the big spike hit and oil surged to over $140 a barrel. Rubin’s star rose right along with the price of crude.