Global recession if oil price hits $150, boss of financial giant BlackRock warns | BBC News

Well obviously a lot of analysts are looking into this. There's big businesses as well, the impact of this ongoing war. And it's not so much how long it goes on, it's how it ends. That's the verdict of the boss of the world's biggest money manager on this crisis that is unfolding in the Gulf. Larry Fink runs BlackRock, which manages $14 trillion worth of Savers money. He's been talking exclusively to our business editor Simon Jack as he sends his annual letter to the CEOs of the companies in which BlackRock invests. I can see a year from now oil at $40 a barrel. I could see it above $150 a barrel. But we have two very extreme outcomes. And in my conversations throughout the world with the US government, all that, to me, everybody has to recognise there's not going to be an outcome that's middle. It's going to either be two extremes. Is Iran a country that can be accepted by the international community? Can Iran be a country that participates in the world again? And if that outcome occurred, then you're going to have the Iranian oil back into the marketplace, alongside the growth of the Venezuelan oil. And you can paint a picture where oil prices could be lower than they were prior to the Iranian war. If there's a cessation of war, and yet Iran remains a threat, a threat to trade, a threat to the Straits of Hormuz, then I would argue that we could have years, years of, you know, above $100, closer to $150 oil. What happens to the global economy if that happens? How do we see it? We'll have global recession. The US is essentially energy independent. Should countries, other countries, including the UK, maximise their energy resources, including their oil and gas reserves? It needs you to use what you have to provide more abundance in your country. In the UK, you have some solar, you have some wind, you do have hydrocarbons. To me, it is about being pragmatic. But on oil and gas, use what you've got, is the message. Use what you have, unquestionably, but also aggressively move towards alternative sources, too. It all feels a bit 2007, surging energy prices. We're seeing some cracks in the financial system, particularly in private credit. Are those little tremors before an earthquake? Does this feel very 2007 to you? I don't see any similarities at all. Zero. 2007 was based on hidden leverage, just gigantic leverage balance sheets. This is not a leverage balance sheet problem. And it was the leverage that was the foundation of the fall of 2008. We've seen trillions of dollars pumped into AI. When Jimmy Dimon did an interview with the I do not believe we have a bubble at all. That being said, could we have one or two failures in AI? Sure. I'm fine with that. That's market mechanisms. I believe there's a race for technology dominance. I believe if we do not invest more, China wins.