The oil price crash in one word: ‘inelasticity’

The oil market collapsed in just a few hours on Tuesday, but it was months in the making. "The reason for the sharply negative price is that speculators are desperate to get out of their contracts before expiration — because if they still own the contract when trading stops, they'll be required to take delivery. And most of them have no way to do that. There are no oil tanks on Wall Street." Bloomberg Businessweek's economic editor, Peter Coy, analyses.