The German Financial Times features an article that links the record high oil prices of last July to the onset of the financial turmoil and economic crash. Thomas Fricke writes the following:
No financial analyst managed to predict that 2008 would end in a recession. The financial crisis has been described as the cause. However, it turns out that the initial suspicion was wrong. The chronology speaks against the fact that the September bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers crash caused the real economy. Key economic indicators were on descent weeks before Lehman Brothers collapsed.
In the United States, the number of new applications for unemployment benefits soared in the last week in July suddenly to recession levels – not mid-September. In August broke the upward trend in orders for U.S. companies, the orders fell within one month increased by four percent. Industrial production also fell abruptly in the month before the Lehman-crash – not afterward. The same is true for America’s exports, which previously had boomed for months.
In the euro zone started in the mood indicators in June to time, with worsening in July. Even in China, there was already weeks before Lehman signs of a severe economic setback. The crash of the summer of 2008 coincided with another global phenomenon: In June and July 2008, at the rise in oil prices, the first courses were almost twice as high as a year earlier. It also caused another shock as a result of the global: an inflation scare that led to just the interest rate in June shot up high expectations.
In agreement with the oil price theory, the sales of cars in the U.S. crashed at exactly the mid-July. With the oil price could also explain why no industry is in a crisis like the automotive industry. In the euro zone fell to new registrations from June to July by 8.3 percent. The German car industry was almost 15 percent fewer orders than last year.