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Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

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October 7, 2021

Oil on the Ropes

Carbon-based-energy prices have swung wildly in the Covid-19 era, beginning with a collapse that saw West Texas Intermediate crude briefly trading below $0. They've climbed back, to a point of discomfort: At OilPrice.com, two recent columns note record prices in Europe and Asia.
 
At the same time, supply crises have reared, with coal-reliant China facing blackouts and a truck-driver shortage leaving UK gas pumps dry. The Economist sees a fundamental turning point.

"For much of the past half-decade, the operative word in the energy sector was 'abundance,'" the magazine writes, noting the glut of supply brought by fracking, horizontal drilling, and the shale boom. Now, everywhere one looks, the story is one of shortages.
 
As a result, the magazine suggests, oil may be on its way out. Industry investment in oil production has fallen below half its 2014 level, by one estimate. "[B]ig private-sector oil companies, such as ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell, are being pressed by investors to treat oil and gas investments like week-old fish," the magazine writes. As production figures to remain low, high prices will yield a few corporate winners, but not many. Petrostates are likelier to funnel profits into national budgets than into new fossil-fuel production. Consumers, meanwhile, will remain unhappy.
 
"[T]he longer prices stay high, the more likely it becomes that the transition to clean energy ultimately buries the fossil-fuel industry," the magazine writes. "Consumers … must brace for more shortages. The age of abundance is dead."

Do We Really Need the Debt Limit?

Every few years, the US Congress enters a political meltdown over whether to raise the national debt limit (a statutory cap on borrowing), or send the country into default. As the latest round plays out, Bloomberg's editorial board says it's had enough.
 
Forcing lawmakers to authorize new borrowing could inculcate fiscal restraint, the board writes, but it hasn't. "Not only that, but debt-limit brinkmanship itself imposes costs: By increasing the likelihood of default, it leads investors to demand higher yields on Treasury bonds and thus adds hundreds of millions in borrowing costs each time around." Better to do away with the limit altogether, Bloomberg writes, than to go through all this again.

China's Brittle Diplomacy

With its aggressive behavior and "Wolf Warrior" diplomatic style, China has "alienated" much of the rest of the world, Peter Martin writes for Foreign Affairs, noting that global perceptions of China have cratered, according to Pew Research Center polling.
 
"But even more striking than the backlash against China has been the country's inability to recalibrate," Martin writes. For instance, "Beijing's response to the rapid deterioration in ties with Canberra was to confront Australia with a list of demands that it said were prerequisites for improving relations." As Chinese officials hew to President Xi Jinping's message of national strength, and as they remember his anti-corruption purges, Martin suggests internal incentives will likely keep China on a course the rest of the world finds odious.

Piling On Facebook

On Tuesday, the Global Briefing noted The New York Times' Kevin Roose's argument that Facebook has been revealed as weak, amid whistleblower disclosures, explosive Wall Street Journal reports, and congressional testimony revealing problems with vaccine disinformation, Instagram's effect on teen girls, and more.

Other commentators have echoed the point: At The Spectator, Ross Clark blogs that Facebook's "empire" is "beginning to crumble" and suggests that "of all technology companies, Facebook has the dimmest future." The Economist goes so far as to declare Facebook is "nearing a reputational point of no return" and "risks joining the ranks of corporate untouchables like big tobacco."