Russia and Saudi Arabia’s oil price fight shows the world doesn’t have what it takes to fight coronavirus

- The fact that the world is now in an oil price war does not bode well for the fight against coronavirus.
- That is because fighting coronavirus is going to take global economic cooperation, and the fact that Russia and Saudi Arabia cannot even work together to keep oil prices stable — which benefits them both — is a bad sign.
- The economic damage of this oil price war goes beyond lost jobs in the sector. It’s existential.
- It creates an environment where markets will be more skittish because it’s unclear if countries will be acting in their own interest for the great or good, or to spite each other.
- This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
To fight the economic fallout from the spread of coronavirus countries will need to engage in massive global coordination. On Friday, and again on Monday, we had our first test of that global coordination as oil producers met to discuss how to stabilize the price of the commodity.
And unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, they failed.
It all started on Friday when Russia decided that it would not cut oil production in order to keep …continued .
[Source: Business Insider]