Gathering Storms.

Economists are openly speculating now that we may be entering a period of deflation.

A drop in petroleum prices combined with a drop in some agricultural products prices at the producer level, which has not been felt at the grocery store, is fueling the concern.

"Great, lower prices!", tends to be the initial reaction to such news, but a prolonged period of deflation is always disastrous to an economy.

Brief deflationary period have occurred rarely in the past thirty years, but they've been very brief.  An economy with next to no inflation is ideal, but when you have that, you'll occasionally dip into deflation, particularly when your economy is dependant in part upon a product that's produced largely overseas and which has a volatile nature, which is the case for petroleum.  But prolonged deflation is usually a sign of something else, and that something else is a public that has decided its not spending any money.

And that is what economist are now worried about. 

With the COVID-19 Pandemic resulting in mass economic uncertainty, and what appears to be about 25% unemployment at least for the time being, a lot of people aren't spending money, or can't.  When either of those occur, prices drop by necessity.  But the prices dropping, in that environment, don't usually end up spurring purchases.  For people whose incomes are completely independent of the economy, and there are some in that category, their purchasing power is suddenly on the rise, but for most people, there's something else.

And that something else is an economic depression.