Slip and Fall: New York Times Cries Oil Spike Doom Just Before Prices Plunged… AGAIN

Joseph Vazquez
March 9th, 2026 4:01 PM

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The New York Times was apparently so eager for an economic win to skewer President Donald Trump’s military achievements in Iran that it ended up making itself look foolish. As the saying goes: Curb your enthusiasm!

“Oil Prices Spike Over $110 a Barrel, Highest Since Pandemic,” read the March 8 headline from Times  reporters Rebecca F. Elliott and Joe Rennison. Of course, zeroing on the “ since the pandemic” angle allowed Elliott and Rennison to avoid mentioning President Joe Biden’s name at all, when Brent crude oil spiked to $119 a barrel June 6, 2022, and when gas prices surged to the highest average on record at over $5 June 14, 2022. And guess what: That happened without the U.S. leading a joint international effort to finally topple an entire, bloodthirsty regime.

But Elliot and Rennison railed that the brief oil market shock was a “sign of growing concern that” the successful mission to cut the head off the “Death to America” snake in Tehran “will continue to take a toll on energy supplies, raising gas prices for American consumers and weighing on the stock market.”

Here’s the problem: That narrative just had an hours-long shelf life. Both West Texas Intermediate (U.S.) and Brent crude oil prices (global) fell under $100 as finance ministers from G-7 countries discussed releasing up to 400 million barrels of oil. WTI Crude plunged as far as beneath $92.50 barrel after peaking over $119 early Monday morning. As popular economics-focused social media account Geiger Capital wrote in an X post around noon, “Oil is now in a bear market… Down -20% from [its] recent highs.” Industrial commentary company The Kobeissi Letter contextualized around 6:00 am that this complete 180-degree turnaround was reflective of “one of the biggest daily crude oil reversals in history.” 

The closest Elliott and Rennison came at first to an update for their sky-is-falling item was 9:15 am, which allowed the authors to get ahead of and gloss over a clear free-fall trend to avoid admitting initially that prices were about to fall under $100 a barrel:

The price came down below $110 a barrel after reports that governments were taking steps to ease concerns about tightening supplies of oil.

As of 12:48 p.m., Kobeissi noted that oil prices were on “the verge of turning negative.” Natural Gas Futures as of 1:37 pm erased “all gains on the day and turn negative, now down -2%.” Talk about slipping on an oil slick! No other update was posted to Elliott and Rennison’s item until 3:31 pm, around the time that Brent crude dipped below $90 and WTI crude fell to $85, but the headline still reflected the scareporn the authors were pushing the day prior as if that narrative was still the case. There could be a nefarious reason for that.

As Fox Business senior correspondent Charles Gasparino stated on X, impulsive commodities traders “trade off headlines, totally myopic in short-term thinking and predicting.” Elliot and Rennison’s item was no exception to that rule. All the media doom mongering and trading meltdown to boot, concluded Gasparino, was that it ignores the likely outcome “that within days we will 100% control the supply of oil coming out of the Straits of Hurmuz, or that Iran will be 100 decapitated as a military force and a financier of terror.” 

But if you were a trader reading The Times, you’d be instigated into an anxiety attack. “The huge jump in oil prices suggests that traders are increasingly worried about being able to access oil and natural gas from the Persian Gulf,” suggested Elliott and Rennison. That’s interesting, because International Energy Agency chief Fatih Birol just told European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen and EU commissioners a couple of days ago that “There is plenty of oil, we have no oil shortage … There is a huge surplus in the market,” according to The Economic Times. The current downward trend on oil prices appears to be reflective of Birol’s sentiments. Well, what gives! 

This isn't the first time The Times had to quickly eat crow on this front. The newspaper has been attempting to attack Trump along the oil price line as far back as last year when Trump initiated B-2 bombers to completely cripple Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Times economic policy reporter Tony Romm snorted June 23, 2025, that Trump had to face “the potential economic blowback from his military strikes on Iran, which threatened to send oil and gas prices soaring at a moment when U.S. consumers are already facing significant financial strains.” That was just before oil prices would plummet well over four percent just a day later on June 24. 

Déjà vu?

Elliott and Rennison, reflecting that knee-jerk impulsivity, attempted to play gotcha! With Trump by trying to make it seem like his campaign initiative to lower “the cost of energy” and his March 8 Truth Social post characterizing the higher oil prices as ‘short term’” were contradictory. Well, the price trends suggest the president may end up being right on target.

The Times is apparently just a hopeless TDS-afflicted glutton for punishment.

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