by Robert Gore
This is not an analysis of the natural gas market, but rather an explanation of why it’s price graph will be the shape of things to come, not just for natural resources, but for manufacturing and equities. At first, natural gas’s price rose even as a flood of capital was expanding production, precursor to what occurred in oil and other natural resources several years later. In a free market, speculative capital would have been attracted to the possibilities opened up by natural gas fracking. In a world in which central banks have for decades supplied more debt at cheaper interest rates than what would have prevailed in a free market, that flow of capital was amplified. Consequently, so too was the number of natural gas rigs put in operation, the amount of natural gas produced, and the subsequent crash in price. The same can be said for the progressions that came later in oil, iron ore, aluminum, coal, copper, and other extractive industries.
