Amid the quiet before earnings season, airlines looked on with unease as oil prices marched upward again. The pronouncement of an OPEC supply cut has Brent crude flirting with the $100 per barrel mark, never a good sign for the industry. For the world as a whole, high commodity prices, high interest rates, and high U.S. dollar exchange rates make for what one commentator called an “excitable” macroeconomic situation. A better word might be “combustible.”
