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Blame the US Federal Reserve for this one.

Since the Fed lowered interest rates to near zero during the financial crisis, the world has been flooded with cheap money. Emerging market companies, banks and governments have responded by taking out dollar-denominated loans. Now that US interest rates are rising again and the dollar is strengthening, those debts are becoming a lot more expensive to pay back.

If you were thinking about taking an early retirement and living off the fat of your financial market investments, think again.

Wall Street is having its worst start to a year ever, with the S&P 500 falling more than 8 percent in less than three weeks. The losses have spread like a bad flu to other regions — China and Japan have tumbled into bear markets and London’s FTSE 100 looks set to join them. (The technical definition of a bear market is a fall of 20 percent or more from a recent high). European markets are deep in negative territory, too.

Global oil prices have plunged in the past 18 months and key benchmarks have begun trading below $30 a barrel, the lowest level in more than a decade, as a global glut and China growth fears weigh on demand. The International Energy Agency warned Tuesday the oil market could “drown in oversupply.” Sounds scary, right? It is.

The latest data show China’s economy grew at its slowest pace in 25 years in 2015, confirming fears that the world’s growth engine is losing steam. It expanded by 6.9 percent last year, compared with 7.3 percent in 2014.

Is the next recession on the way? Here’s everything you need to know about the market’s oil collapse

www.salon.com|David Dayen

Given how the first few weeks of January have played out, I feel sorry for anyone who chose as a New Year’s resolution to check their retirement accounts more assiduously. Stocks hit a 15-month low last Friday. Analysts cite a number of factors in the slowdown – China’s economic woes, the strong dollar – but the biggest culprit appears to be the dip in the price of oil, from a high of $100 a barrel in mid-2014 to under $29 a barrel, which is over three times cheaper than the price of the barrel itself. By the way, the Iranian nuclear deal, which will allow the major oil producer to return to global markets, makes future price prospects worse, not better.

There will be chaos: Big Oil’s collapse and the birth of a new world order

www.salon.com|Michael Klare

As 2015 drew to a close, many in the global energy industry were praying that the price of oil would bounce back from the abyss, restoring the petroleum-centric world of the past half-century.  All evidence, however, points to a continuing depression in oil prices in 2016 — one that may, in fact, stretch into the 2020s and beyond.  Given the centrality of oil (and oil revenues) in the global power equation, this is bound to translate into a profound shakeup in the political order, with petroleum-producing states from Saudi Arabia to Russia losing both prominence and geopolitical clout.

To put things in perspective, it was not so long ago — in June 2014, to be exact — that Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, was selling at $115 per barrel.  Energy analysts then generally assumed that the price of oil would remain well over $100 deep into the future, and might gradually rise to even more stratospheric levels.  Such predictions inspired the giant energy companies to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in what were then termed “unconventional” reserves: Arctic oil, Canadian tar sands, deep offshore reserves, and dense shale formations. It seemed obvious then that whatever the problems with, and the cost of extracting, such energy reserves, sooner or later handsome profits would be made. It mattered little that the cost of exploiting such reserves might reach $50 or more a barrel.

The House GOP’s under-the-radar oil coup: The dangerous domestic bailout that they’re almost certain to win

www.salon.com|David Dayen

Here are some questions for you to ponder today: What if the first major piece of legislation after the historic international climate agreement in Paris gives domestic oil companies lucrative financial incentives to spew more carbon into the atmosphere? What if the first item the President signs into law after the climate accords assures the very spike in drilling that scientists believe we cannot afford within our carbon budget?

That appears to be the likely result of an end-of-the-year deal in Congress. Republican insistence and Democratic acquiescence has paved the way for Washington to lift a 40 year-old ban on oil exports, which will not only aid a hurting domestic oil industry, but which would increase carbon pollution in the United States, and probably around the world.

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Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue, according to a recent investigation from InsideClimate News. This knowledge did not prevent the company (now ExxonMobil and the world’s largest oil and gas company) from spending decades refusing to publicly acknowledge climate change and even promoting climate misinformation—an approach many have likened to the lies spread by the tobacco industry regarding the health risks of smoking. Both industries were conscious that their products wouldn’t stay profitable once the world understood the risks, so much so that they used the same consultants to develop strategies on how to communicate with the public.

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The executives at the helms of the 30 biggest oil, gas and coal companies in the United States took home a collective $6 billion in compensation over the past five years, a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies found.

That’s twice the money, just to drive the point home, that the U.S. pledged to help developing nations adapt to the impacts of climate change, by which they are expected to be disproportionately affected.

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If we’re going to have any hope of preventing catastrophic climate change, the vast majority of our remaining fossil fuel reserves are going to have to remain where they are — in the ground. One thing that can make a huge difference toward that end: the U.S. government could stop leasing out federal land for fossil fuel production.

A blanket ban on this process could prevent an astonishing 450 billion tons of carbon dioxide from polluting the atmosphere, according to a new report. (For comparison, the world emitted about 38.2 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2014.)  The analysis, performed by EcoShift consulting on behalf of the environmental groups Friends of the Earth and the Center for Biological Diversity, found that nearly half of the total amount of the United States’ potential emissions are accounted for by fossil fuels located beneath federal lands.

America’s fracking boom has made us the world’s biggest combined producer of oil and natural gas. It’s lowered the price of natural gas to a third of what it cost ten years ago and has created thousands of jobs — if not quite as many as promised. And to the local communities transformed, since 2008, into fracking boomtowns, it’s also brought pollution, earthquakes and, according to a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, high school dropouts.

Even for a fossil fuel company, ExxonMobil’s looking dirty. Just last week, it earned the distinction of being the fossil fuel giant with the longest known history of climate denial. As early as 1981, it emerged, the company was aware that climate change, as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, was going to be an issue. Internally, it understood the science. Yet its public-facing strategy, over the decades that followed, was one based on denial — a strategy backed by millions of dollars in spending.

More than five years after the explosion and spill that killed 11 people and spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, BP, at long last, reached a settlement last week with the Gulf states and the U.S. Justice Department to pay for the environmental damages wrought. If approved by a federal judge, the company will pay out $18.7 billion, “the largest environmental settlement in history,” over a period of about 15 years.

There’s been a sense of finality accompanying the announcement, as well as, perhaps, a sense of resignation. “No amount of money can ever compensate for the staggering damage caused by the 2010 BP oil spill,” the New York Times editorial board begins, before going on to argue that all sides should be more or less content with the settlement. Assuming the judge approves the deal, after all, the legal battles will finally be over, restoration can begin.

While evaluating the potential impact of developing a gas field it was interested in off Indonesia, ExxonMobil found one major reason for concern: the field in question was 70 percent carbon dioxide. If the field were developed, and that gas vented into the atmosphere, it could become the “largest point source of CO2 in the world,” accounting for a full one percent of climate change-causing emissions. According to Leonard S. Bernstein, a former chemical engineer at the company, Exxon recognized the potential for global warming concerns to lead to regulations that would impact the project and others like it.

When you hear about Richmond, California — on the environmental beat, at least — it’s usually in the context of the Chevron oil refinery, one of the country’s biggest, that casts its long shadow over the city. There was the fire and explosion in 2012 that sent toxic fumes into the surrounding Bay Area. There are the continuing worries about the long-term health effects facing the people who breathed those fumes in. There’s the everyday air pollution, and the everyday risk, that comes from living in the refinery’s vicinity and, more quietly, there’s the big money Chevron pumps into local elections to ensure none of this is examined too closely.

The United States’ transition to a low-emissions society powered by renewable energy is not going to be led by its biggest oil companies. At meetings Wednesday, ExxonMobil and Chevron rejected a number of shareholder proposals that would address climate change, be it by setting goal for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions or investing in renewable energy. Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, in particular, acted incredulous that anyone would even suggest such a thing.

The oil industry’s latest disaster has arrived on the shores of Santa Barbara, California, where an underground pipeline ruptured and spilled an estimated 21,000 gallons of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean. We don’t know the full extent of the damage yet — in the worst-case scenario, we could be looking at something more like 105,000 gallons spilled — but officials say the oil, which has separated into two large patches, has coated at least nine miles of coastline; Wednesday evening, California Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for the county.

Spurred by the advent of fracking and other high-tech ways of getting at North America’s fossil fuel reserves, the oil and gas industry has, for the past decade, been drilling at an astounding rate of 50,000 wells per year. This may be a large continent, but their impact on the landscape is nonetheless enormous. The industry’s total operations, say researchers at the University of Montana, Missoula in a new study, occupy land area three times the size of Yellowstone National Park, “transforming millions of hectares of the Great Plains into industrialized landscapes” that are rarely converted back after the drillers have gone on.