As we discussed yesterday, a number of countries depend on oil money to keep their populations happy, and lower oil prices are threatening those governments’ legitimacy. They lost control over the pricing mechanism as free markets took over, spurred by new technology—in this case, fracking.

Following up on yesterday’s post, let’s take a look at what the oil price crash might mean for states in general. The problems in the Middle East and Africa are the most glaring, so we'll start there.

Overall, the effects of low oil prices here in the U.S. have been positive—very positive, in fact. In the rest of the world, this is even more true. China and Europe, for example, import much more energy as a proportion of their economies than we do, and the positive effects have been proportionately greater. Whatever troubles China and Europe are having, they would be much, much worse with higher oil prices.

There are, however, real costs of cheap oil.

This past week had a light data calendar, with prices and housing coming into focus. Let’s take a closer look.

One of the assumptions I’ve made in my recent analyses of the markets is that we are not in—or close to—a recession. Although I stand by this view, it’s common sense that, at some point, the U.S. will see another recession. When that happens, stocks are very likely to pull back, and we might enter the bear market everyone fears.

Yesterday was a wild ride. The market dropped steeply at the open, plunged even more at midday, and then came back strong, leaving us down just a little.

I was getting on a plane as it was dropping the most, and I have to admit it was an anxious flight. The market was the first thing I checked when we landed, and I was relieved to see the recovery.

Oil prices continue to fall and are bringing markets down with them. We talked about why oil prices are dropping last week, so today, let’s take a look at why markets are getting hammered—and whether that is likely to last.

Overall, last week’s economic data was rather disappointing, marked by an industrial slowdown and lackluster retail sales. Let’s take a closer look.

The market sell-off continues, and as the slide gets more severe, we have to ask ourselves, once more, how worried we should be.

I’ve written over the past couple of days that it's not time to panic, and I still believe that's true. But it appears there may be more short-term damage than I initially thought. Now, the question is, how much worse might it get, and what does that mean for us as investors?

If you’ve been following my posts lately, you know that I’m not panicking about the current market decline. In fact, despite yesterday’s drop, I believe the market situation is normal, reasonable, and not likely to turn into a 2008.

On the other hand, it’s always worth considering how and why you could be wrong. So let’s make the opposite case and argue for a crash. What evidence do we have that the world is coming to an end?