Jeff Rubin: Boom Times Aren't Coming Back, But That's Not Necessarily Bad

As recently as 13 years ago, a barrel of oil cost $20, or even less. Today, global crude prices are hovering around the $100 mark. We may be getting used to higher prices at the pump, but the world economy isn’t, says economist Jeff Rubin — and the result is a permanent shift down in economic growth.

Rubin was the chief economist at CIBC World Markets for close to two decades, but had to part ways with his employer when he started writing about how rising energy costs are going to make our worlds a lot smaller.

David Suzuki and Jeff Rubin form unlikely alliance

They certainly seem like an odd couple.

Environmentalist David Suzuki, who has said conventional economics is “a form of brain damage,” is on a cross-country speaking tour with Jeff Rubin, the former chief economist of CIBC World Markets.

Rubin quit his 20-year job at the bank in 2009 to publish Why Your World is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization, a book about how high oil prices were going to reverse the trend of globalization.

Jeff Rubin Q&A: What The World Will Look Like After The 'End Of Growth'

Jeff Rubin has a message for all the economists and central bankers out there, waiting with baited breath for rock-bottom interest rates to kick the world economy into high-gear: it’s not going to happen, and the sooner you realize that, the better.

As the straight-shooting former chief economist of CIBC World Markets argues in his new book, The End of Growth, triple-digit oil prices are here to stay -- a reality that will make it impossible for developed economies to return to the glory days of rapid expansion built on cheap credit and affordable fuel.

But as Rubin sees it, that’s not all bad news. Though he predicts permanently tepid growth will push Greece and Portugal into default, he also says it will reverse globalization, stop climate change in its tracks -- and put a limit on oil sands expansion.