He Said That? 8/9/15

From Stephen Schork, of The Schork Report, an energy industry newsletter, in an interview with Bloomberg’s Pimm Fox:

And this is the big concern because we keep on thinking that lower energy prices are somehow good for the economy. That can’t be, because energy prices or commodity prices in general don’t drive economic growth. Economic growth drives commodity prices.

So we have the rout in oil prices. We have the rout in copper prices, in aluminum prices. If we look at the industrial metals complex, that’s now trading at lows not seen since the recession. We’re looking at bellwethers such as Caterpillar, a bellwether of industrial production. That stock is trading again at a post-great recession low.

So there are a lot of telltales out there that this drop in oil prices, this drop industrial metal prices, this is not good. It’s a canary in the coal mine that something is not right in the global economy, Pimm. And that is a concern for us all.