Middle East rumblings and oil price shock?

[Kate Turlington + 44]

New analysis coming out of a London finance company is putting a possible scenario out there that increased Middle East tensions could shock oil prices to $80 Brent, plus some high-level inflation reverberations. The war in Yemen, so the scenario goes, could become a wider regional war in 2018, and unrest in Lebanon and Palestine could turn this into WWIII. But they also take this further to pinpoint the biggest winners of an oil price shock like this: Russia, Colombia, Malaysia and Brazil ... interesting.

[Seleskya + 50]

Middle East war is just one of a number of 'grey swan' events that could help along oil prices in 2018: some are listing things like Italian elections, US impeachment risk.  

[Carlsbad + 19]

Still mulling over the 'black swan' and 'grey swan' event distinction on a philosophical level, but the London company is Nomura and they put out this very interesting list of 10 grey swan scenarios for 2018: 

 

[Marina Schwarz + 1,576]

Try as I might, I still can't grasp how bitcoin could possibly start affecting markets.

 

A United States of Europe, eh? Hehe.