West Texas Intermediate West Texas Intermediate West Texas Intermediate (WTI), also known as Texas light sweet, is a grade of crude oil used as a benchmark in oil pricing. This grade is described as Medium crude oil because of its relatively low density, and sweet because of its low sulfur content. It is the underlying commodity of New York Mercantile Exchange's oil futures contracts. The price of WTI is often referenced in news reports on oil prices, alongside the price of Brent crude from the North Sea. Other important oil markers include the Dubai Crude, Oman Crude, Urals oil and the OPEC Reference
Commodity fetishism Commodity fetishism In Karl Marx's critique of political economy, commodity fetishism is the perception of the social relationships involved in production not as relationships among people, but as economic relationships among the money and commodities exchanged in market trade. As such, commodity fetishism transforms the "subjective", abstract aspects of economic value into "objective", real things that people believe have intrinsic value. The theory of commodity fetishism is presented in the first chapter of "Das Kapital" (English: "Capital. Critique of Political Economy)" (1867), at the conclusion of the analysis of the value-form of commodities, to explain that the social organization of