Focus in closely and oil prices turned negative this week because of technicalities in the futures market and storage capacity in Oklahoma. But zoom out and negative oil prices are merely the weirdest illustration of the destruction of demand in the economy—and fit with two longstanding negative prices in Europe, for money and for electricity.
In all three cases, the problem is that supply can’t respond quickly to changes in demand, while demand can’t or won’t increase quickly enough to take advantage of lower prices.
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