I found Gail Tverberg's article on the economic impacts of falling oil prices interesting (The Actuary, February).
I did wonder when reading it whether the underlying driver for the drop in oil price is due to either: 1 - the US and Saudi governments' desire to weaken Russia, including its government, following the Ukraine occupation, targeting its reliance on oil export revenue; or 2 - the desire from OPEC et al to reduce the risk of reliance on alternative energy sources such as shale gas, which has received significant investment, especially in the US which is a major purchaser of oil. Perhaps I'm just more of a sceptic than the article's author. Clearly if, and it's possibly a big 'if', one of these is the case, many of the conclusions within the article would then need revising.
In addition, I'm not an expert on the subject, but I'm not sure bail-in works in the way described in the article. I thought it simply led to a portion of the debt being converted into equity and other impacts, such as on payment systems, would only be relevant if the payment system was in some way a source of the bail-in. Clearly the debt would need to be suitably structured for such bail-in to work, so some of this is likely more theoretical than practical.
Mark Gorman 17 February