Christopher Altman saw it in the same way that most small business owners do: in the quiet of an inbox that used to fill up on its own, rather than all at once. His Oakland tree-trimming crew scheduled three weeks off for years without his involvement. Then, the reservations simply…

The atmosphere changed somewhere between a half-empty diesel station outside Hamburg and the screens of a London trading floor. Like these things often do, it happened quietly. In January, Brent crude was trading at about sixty dollars. It was close to 120 by the second week of March. Ten weeks.…