A shock to the oil system
Marketplace
Marketplace
4.6 • 8.5K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The war in Iran has cost the global oil supply roughly 15 million barrels a day so far. Today, International Energy Agency executive director Fatih Birol said the war’s impact on oil is worse than the two oil shocks of the 1970s, combined. On today’s episode, a look at how long this shock could last. Plus, how skyrocketing natural gas prices will impact U.S. data centers, and why the stock market isn't “baking in” the long-term impacts of the war with Iran. Also, a journey to Beaver County, Pennsylvania, a former steel hub looking toward a different kind of industry — with middling results.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | All right, what if, and just hear me out now, what if the markets are an idiot from American public media? |
| 0:14.0 | This is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizzdahl. It is Monday. Today, this one is the 23rd of March |
| 0:30.8 | Good, as always, to have you along, everybody. All right, it was perhaps a little bit harsh |
| 0:36.5 | to characterize the market's reaction to the news of the day as I just did, because it does make some sense, after all, for traders in their algorithms to react to presidential promises that things are going to get better, whatever the actual facts might show. |
| 0:50.7 | But one cannot help but wonder whether the markers of market-based capitalism that we |
| 0:56.3 | use might be just a bit too focused on the short term. That is that they haven't priced in the |
| 1:03.3 | long-run economic challenges that this war is going to bring. Robin Brooks is a senior fellow |
| 1:08.4 | at the Brookings Institution. Robin, it's good to have you back on the program. |
| 1:12.3 | Great to be back, Kai. |
| 1:14.4 | All right, test my premise. |
| 1:15.7 | Do you think markets are not, as I said, pricing in the long-term challenges, |
| 1:21.0 | no matter what the president happens to say on any given day? |
| 1:25.5 | So I think there's two big questions, and I think the question you're asking is totally |
| 1:31.3 | valid. |
| 1:31.9 | The first question is, is what just happened? |
| 1:35.5 | On Friday, we were de-escalating. |
| 1:37.9 | On Saturday, we were escalating. |
| 1:39.9 | We were going to bomb power plants in Iran. |
| 1:42.9 | This morning, we're de-escalating again. And I think it's worth |
| 1:47.5 | thinking about, you know, how much weight should the market put on any one pronouncement. |
| 1:54.3 | The whole thing reminds me of the tariffs standoff with China a year ago when tariffs went to 150 percent. And for a while, |
| 2:05.0 | the president was almost negotiating with himself, escalating, de-escalating. And ultimately, |
... |
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