In September 2012, "The Economist" described the CDM as a "complete disaster in the making" and "in need of a radical overhaul". Carbon prices, including prices for CERs, had collapsed from $20 a tonne in August 2008 to below $5 in response to the Eurozone debt crisis reducing industrial activity and the over-allocation of emission allowances under the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme. "The Guardian" reported that the CDM has "essentially collapsed", due to the prolonged downward trend in the price of CERs, which had been traded for as much as $20 (£12.50) a tonne before the global financial crisis to less than $3. With such low CER prices, potential projects were not commercially viable. In October 2012, CER prices fell to a new low of 1.36 euros a metric tonne on the London ICE Futures Europe exchange. In October 2012 Thomson Reuters Point Carbon calculated that the oversupply of units from the Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation would be 1,400 million units for the period up to 2020 and Point Carbon predicted that Certified Emission Reduction (CER) prices would to drop from €2 to 50 cents. On 12 December 2012 CER prices reached another record low of 31 cents. "Bloomberg" reported that Certified Emission Reduction prices had declined by 92 percent to 39 each cents in the 2012 year.