Someone should do a wellness check on The New York Times. Looks like its journos read the portents wrong — AGAIN — on another one of its apocalyptic prognostications on the economic consequences of President Donald Trump taking out the Islamist regime in Iran.
Times business reporter Emmett Lindner nonsensically tried to dig up the corpse of the 1970s oil price shock following the Yom Kippur War as a comparative case study to what is transpiring around the Persian Gulf as Israel and the U.S. decimate Iran’s war machine. “Echoes of the ’70s in What’s Now the Largest Oil Shock Ever,” read Lindner’s overdramatic March 13 headline.
Lindner even had the temerity to suggest that the Iran War of 2026 was “worse” than the 1973-74 energy crisis, which was marked by a plethora of factors, which included the following: Bad domestic policy, dollar devaluation, and an oil embargo imposed by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC).
“Certainly, oil and gasoline prices are soaring,” cried Lindner like a soothsayer throwing fits as he pours over the portents. “The 1973 embargoed oil accounted for about 7 percent of global oil consumption, and targeted only a handful of nations … Now, closer to 20 percent of the world’s supply is threatened, and the disruption is caused by a war that has no end in sight.”
Lindner’s scareporn had a shelf life of about 3 days, as U.S. oil prices (WTI crude) would plummet over five percent back under $100 to $93.54, leading Wall Street toward having its best day since the war began, as the Associated Press reported March 16. As popular trading account NoLimitGains posted on X the same day, “Traders are betting this [war] ends soon.”
🚨 WTI crude oil has fallen to $93.95
Traders are betting this ends soon. pic.twitter.com/XtxMkCKd2q
— NoLimit (@NoLimitGains) March 16, 2026
“No end in sight,” eh Lindner?
Lindner proceeded to postulate that “The United States, Israel and Iran are all dug in, and daily threats to oil production, refining and storage mean that even when ships can sail again the supply might not come back quickly.” But this is misleading, and even more misleading in light of the 1970s comparison.
FreightWaves Founder Craig Fuller pointed out March 15 that there was “No sign that oil spikes are hurting the domestic economy.” In fact, wrote Fuller on X, “the signal coming from freight is that activity in the domestic goods economy is strengthening, not slowing. If recent oil spikes were on a drag on domestic consumption, it would show up in the high-frequency trucking volume data.”
Contrast that with Lindner’s own admission that the 1970s shock was characterized by government “[p]olicies like rationing [that] set off panic buying, creating shortages instead of easing the problem.” Riddle us this, Lindner: Do you see any 1970s-style rationing going on now? On another note, who knew that The Times would finally admit that restrictive domestic government policies only tend to make things worse!
Oh, but it gets better. Fuller reported a day later that the SONAR Truckload Volume Index “is now at the highest levels since October 2022 – affirmation that the freight market recovery is not slowing down and the tightness is not strictly capacity related.” RIA Advisors Chief Strategist Lance Roberts even contextualized that the “recent spike in #crudeoil prices is driven more by speculation in the futures market than by an actual supply shortage.”
3-16-26 The Oil Spike Is Mostly Speculation,⁰Not Supply Issue$OVX $VIX
The recent spike in #crudeoil prices is driven more by speculation in the futures market than by an actual supply shortage.
While the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a major headline event, the U.S.… pic.twitter.com/hgccEbQLG1
— Lance Roberts (@LanceRoberts) March 16, 2026
In essence: traders are trading off headlines, not fundamentals. This is evidenced by the recent downturn in oil prices and in turn dismantles Lindner’s anti-Trump pontificating, which in retrospect reads more like the typical wishful thinking for a Trump blunder by Times writers with an axe to grind as opposed to straight reporting:
The conflict has the potential to cause a lasting inflationary cycle, as rising prices for everything from diesel to fertilizer are passed on. That could add pressure on a world economy that is already contending with President Trump’s trade war.
Keep stepping on those rakes.
