A week ago I asked whether global energy markets have “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” I was being a bit arch because I didn’t mean in the sense that MAGA world means, which is being somehow obsessively, compulsively anti-Trump. I meant the opposite. Are the markets wedded to a kind of Trump magical thinking? That somehow he’ll always find a way to thread the needle or slip out of his self-made crises? I’ve tried to be very aware of the fact that I’m totally green on the question of global energy markets. And since oil futures are at least flirting with twice the price that they were at when this war started, it’s hardly like markets aren’t reacting to it. A friend who follows energy markets very closely walked me through some of the reasons why the markets response has been more tempered than one might expect: existing slack in the oil markets on the eve of the war, continued impact of the recent release of 400 million barrels of oil, and uncertainty about whether the U.S. can or will reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But I get more and more indications, some in just reading the news closely, some in small bits of information I pick up from sources, that there really is something going on here.
