If all else fails, there is always the possibility of some sort of supply shock this year.
With global demand for oil growing by 1-2% a year, there are persistent fears of a supply shock.
First, an oil-supply shock resulting from an Iranian crisis, say would send fuel prices sharply up again and wipe out profits.
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Since many goods cannot efficiently be moved by air, a long stoppage would have meant a huge supply shock.
But it is certain, as opposed to merely likely, that the recent oil-price hike is a substantial negative supply shock.
There is lower supply or a supply shock due to natural and geopolitical occurrences that occur where the commodities are produced.
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In the energy complex, geopolitical risk tends to be a prevalent supply shock factor, as I recently have observed with Libyan crude oil output.
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In other words, the problem with corn, wheat, and soybean prices is the consequence of a supply shock, not a structural move in demand.
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Interestingly, neodymium magnets were invented in the 1980s to overcome the global cobalt supply shock that occurred as the result of internal warfare in Zaire (now Congo).
"Bad news would be a supply shock - if you did have a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz or a war in the Middle East, " Koll said.
The IEA has warned of an oil supply shock within five years and on Thursday raised its oil demand forecast for 2010 to 86.5 million barrels a day.
In fact, we could be just one supply shock away from a full-blown food crisis that would make the price spikes of 2008 look like a happy memory.
It seems highly likely, Mr Oswald's scepticism notwithstanding, that a surge of technological progress in America has indeed applied a significant positive supply shock to the economy (see article).
This underlines the fact that oil prices have been driven higher largely by an increase in global demand, especially in China and America, rather than by a supply shock, as happened in the past.
The supply shock began two years ago.
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Furthermore, while much of the recent oil-price increase was demand-driven, and thus expected to have relatively benign economic effects, any sizeable outages owing to Katrina could cause a supply shock similar to those that repeatedly battered the world economy in the 1970s.
According to Bruno Sidler, the chief operating officer of CEVA, which manages logistics and freight for companies in 170 countries, European manufacturers are vulnerable to any big supply shock because they have run down their inventories over the past two years to conserve cash.
Volpon thinks that a renewed supply-side shock could likely lead to similar, if not worse, outcomes as those in 2011.
Lawrence Summers, America's treasury secretary, attracted attention recently when he likened the new-technology boom to a positive supply-side shock, the converse of the oil-price shocks of the 1970s.
It is concerned about the impact of the oil-price shock on the supply side of the economy.
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