cheap oil, while great for crushing odious regimes, does cause some collateral damage.

The sense that falling oil is bad for stocks is mostly a matter of timing and conspicuousness. The bad parts of the oil plunge are hitting now: the credit downgrades, the defaults, the investment cutbacks, the layoffs of roughnecks. They’re making news and rattling people’s confidence. Eventually, the money freed up by cheap oil will leak into other parts of the economy.

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