The economic consequences of war with Iran

The economic consequences of war with Iran - Financial Times

What are the more narrowly economic lessons from this shock?
The first is that we need to reduce our vulnerability to shocks in the availability of fossil fuels. For the US, the net effect of big rises in fossil fuel prices on aggregate real incomes is modestly positive because it is a net exporter, though the distributional effects are malign. But the opposite is true for almost all other industrial countries. Their need to invest in renewables, in order to reduce vulnerability, is clear.
The second is the need for central banks to ensure that inflation expectations do not get unanchored. Unfortunately, the price spike after Covid makes this more likely. Central banks must be prepared to act against second-round effects of big price rises.

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How The Economic Machine Works by Ray Dalio - Bridgewater

Source: How The Economic Machine Works by Ray Dalio

Letter: Why the geopolitics of international currency choice matters - FT

This coincidence must alert readers that a tempest is brewing on subjects noted: lurking inflation, increasing debt, suppressed interest rates and the shifting of hegemonic power. There are only two important questions in investing that also apply to subjects impacting the future stability of the world — tell me why and tell me when. Plender gives us the “why”, the ever-increasing “intolerable burden” of government debt and suppressed rates leveraging the global financial system. He gives us the tipping point. What we await is “the when”, as in when do we know we have “tipped”. Paul Hackett Madison, NJ, US Letter: Why the geopolitics of international currency choice matters

Reading the runes on a Warsh Fed - Martin Wolf - Financial Times

Intellectually, at least, today’s Warsh appears the same as the one of 2010. In his IMF lecture delivered in April 2025, he stressed not only the Fed’s “institutional drift”, but also its recent “failure to satisfy an essential part of its statutory remit, price stability. It has also contributed to an explosion of federal spending. And the Fed’s outsized role and underperformance have weakened the important and worthy case for monetary policy independence.” He made other criticisms, the most pointed being that “the Fed has been the most important buyer of US Treasury debt — and other liabilities backed by the US government — since 2008”. He asserts: “Fiscal dominance — where the nation’s debts constrain monetary policymakers — was long thought by economists to be a possible end-state. My view is that monetary dominance — where the central bank becomes the ultimate arbiter of fiscal policy — is the clearer and more present danger.” For Warsh, then, easy money is the road to ruin. ...

Luca Bindi, LL.M.

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