CRUDE AWAKENING? Crowd Insists Growth Will Keep Its Composure as Oil and Inflation Rattle the Gates

One must ask, as the great economists of every age have asked over their cooling coffee, whether the barrel of crude is a millstone about the neck of civilisation or merely an expensive paperweight. A new opinion market on Morfi has posed precisely this question, *quaestio vexata* though it is: do rising oil prices and inflation drag global growth into the mud, or does the old engine keep humming? Trading opened less than a day ago, and the combatants are already in the arena.

The early verdict, to the visible dismay of every doom-merchant with a newsletter, is serenity. "Growth stays steady" leads at 60% consensus, carried by 12 holders who apparently believe the global economy has the constitution of a Victorian headmaster: unmoved by weather, unmoved by fuel bills, unmoved by anything short of a war.

Hard on its heels comes the party of nuance, "Mixed, sector by sector," at 25% consensus with 10 holders. These are the scholastics of the debate, the ones who would remind you that what ruins the airline may enrich the driller, and that the price of oil is a tax on some and a dividend to others. *Distinguo*, they cry, and frankly one admires the footnotes. Also on the ballot, waiting for their moment: 2 other sides.

Permit me a professorial aside. History has not been kind to the optimists here; the spectre of stagflation still haunts many a lecture hall. That the crowd should lead with calm strikes this columnist as either admirable stoicism or the confidence of someone who has not yet refilled the tank. I speculate, of course, purely as a matter of opinion; the market alone shall judge.

So far 19 traders have put $24,359 behind their convictions, which is to say the debate is young and the throne is anything but secure. Will the stoics hold, or will the sector-by-sector casuists storm the forum? *Alea iacta est*, dear reader, but the dice are still rolling: join the market on Morfi and cast your own.