The oil burden measures oil’s weight in the economy: WTI price × national consumption / nominal GDP. Formalized by James Hamilton from 1983 onwards, the metric indicates that above 4-5% of GDP, three transmission channels produce a cumulative dynamic that…
Since 1973, WTI has traversed seven major shocks. Each combines in variable doses three ingredients — physical supply constraint, structural demand pull, financial stress — whose identification enables reading the nature of the shock rather than its magnitude alone. TL;DR…
Since 2011, WTI has structurally priced $3 to $5 below Brent. This discount is not anecdotal: it results from three mechanical factors — U.S. export capacity, Cushing logistics, pricing geography — that clarify what each benchmark actually measures. TL;DR WTI…
WTI is a precise object: light sweet crude at 39.6 degrees API and 0.24% sulfur, priced at Cushing, Oklahoma, tracked by FRED’s DCOILWTICO series at daily frequency since 1986. These three technical coordinates condition every macroeconomic reading that follows. TL;DR…
WTI, the U.S. barrel priced at Cushing, is not just a price — it is a macroeconomic barometer that compresses physical supply constraints, inflationary transmission, and geopolitical risk premium into a single daily signal. TL;DR WTI's grip on U.S. inflation…
