It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted, and in that time there has been a noticeable lull in financial news. With the BP oil spill and primaries across the country underway, financial regulation and the woes of Wall Street seem to be taking a backseat at most media outlets. For those who watch the markets closely, however, there has been an underlying theme to virtually all of the developments of recent weeks: uncertainty.

The financial markets have been in a state of perpetual ambiguity for nearly two years now, so this probably doesn’t come as a surprise. In the last month, however, there have been several reports and events which have put the economic revival many were predicting into question. Once again there are murmurs amongst investors and analysts that a double-dip recession may be on the horizon, especially for our counterparts across The Pond. Despite austerity plans from several of the beleaguered nations, bonds from those counties are constantly being downgraded by ratings agencies and people are losing faith in the Euro at a startling rate. This has led many people to fear deflation, when just a few months ago inflation was cited as a growing concern.

After several months of solid, continuous economic growth, numerous economic indicators took a turn for the worse in May. The jobs report looked strong initially, but when you take into account the surfeit of temporary census workers that were hired, private hiring was abysmal. And this week it was just announced that the rate of unemployment claims rose unexpectedly as well. These fluctuations in the market are somewhat expected, so what is really more troubling in the markets are policy changes, many of which are still vague to say the least.

It is still unclear how the financial reform bill will affect banks and American business because many major portions of the legislation are still being decided. The banking lobby has predictably been campaigning to mitigate the oversight of their practices. Two of the main points of contention are the arcane derivatives market, which bankers want to see remain intact and virtually everyone else wants to see taken out from the shadows and regulated in some fashion. The other catalyst for debate has been how banks are going to be allowed to invest, with the possibility of requiring traditional banking and investment banking to be conducted by separate entities to eliminate much of the systemic risk inherent in the current system.

And of course there is the elephant in the room: BP. What makes the BP situation so disconcerting is the fact that it is actually getting worse with each passing minute. Until the flow of oil is stopped, it is literally impossible for anyone to being determining the costs of cleaning the spill. And since this is a financial blog, we’ll focus on the repercussions not just for BP but for the industry as a whole.

In lieu of the spill, President Obama has announced a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling that directly impacts all oil companies, not just BP.  By now you’ve probably heard of the $20 billion escrow fund that BP will be making. Not only will this money go to people in the Gulf who have lost their livelihood, the funds will also be used to reimburse employees from other companies who will be unable to work during the moratorium.

And while the immediate ecological and financial ramifications are immense, the fiasco in the Gulf may have more extensive consequences. According to Fortune Magazine, six of the ten biggest corporations in the world are in the energy industry, which means oil. And although BP is undeniably the culprit, having hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico is bad press for all oil companies. There was already a push from environmental groups to develop new energy sources, and the anti-oil sentiment is only getting stronger. Unless these companies are able to innovate and develop new forms of energy, they run the risk of becoming antiquated when new competitors begin to enter the market.

I could try to conclude the post with some pithy resolution or prediction for the outcome of all this, but like everyone else I would simply be hypothesizing. The truth of the matter is that there are manifold forces at work and it is impossible for anyone to know how the markets will react next week, let alone a year from now. One thing is for sure, however; it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

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