Word: benchmarking
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...economy's high-octane fuel has been low interest rates. The benchmark prime rate that banks charge for commercial loans has remained steady at 9.5% since it plunged to that level last summer from 13% in mid-1984. Fostered by the Federal Reserve Board, the easier credit has spurred consumer spending and encouraged corporate investment in plant and equipment. "All the signs are strong. We're seeing the fruits of a very substantial decline in interest rates," said Board Member Charles Schultze, a senior fellow at Washington's Brookings Institution who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under...
...threatened to launch an all-out campaign of slashing prices to boost OPEC's declining share of the world oil market. The pronouncement sent petroleum traders into a temporary selling frenzy. On the futures market in New York City, the January-delivery price of West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark crude, took a record two-day plunge of $3.51, to $25.23 per bbl. Some traders lost millions of dollars overnight. "It was the oil market's 1929. It was catastrophic," said Peter Beutel, a petroleum specialist for Manhattan's Rudolf Wolff Futures...
...OPEC barrel of oil by 29 cents, although some grades will drop by more than $1. It was only the second price cut in the organization's 25-year history. The first came in March 1983, when sliding world crude prices forced OPEC to mark down its Arab Light benchmark crude...
...ministers hope to avoid repeating their desperate move of March 1983, when they were forced to make the first and only price cut in OPEC'S history, a markdown of its benchmark Arab Light crude by $5 per bbl., to $29. Since then, energy conservation and sluggish world economic growth have helped push oil prices even lower, despite OPEC's self-imposed production limit of 17.5 million bbl. a day. Ministers hinted last week that they might reduce their output to about 16 million bbl. a day. By comparison, the group's daily production...
Nonetheless, other authorities maintain that the OPEC benchmark will have to come down at least $1.50, particularly since Nigeria is selling on the cheap. The true market price of oil, if all producers exported at will, would be about $20 per bbl., and OPEC must at least partially close the gap between that price and the official $29 level. Said Safer: "My guess is, the OPEC countries will come to their senses." In a speech to a gathering of energy experts in London, Energy Secretary Donald Hodel predicted last week that world prices could fall...