Economy

Financial markets so far have reflected the belief that the Iran war will be over soon and that commerce will return to normal. I explain why I think this belief is unwarranted and why President Trump’s latest announcement regarding bombing Iran’s power plants is economic suicide.

Several commentators have remarked that the United States’ war on Iran carries echoes of 2008. A potential financial crash this year could actually be much worse.

The challenge before us is therefore larger than “teaching men how to succeed”. It is to teach them how to succeed without destroying the world that makes success meaningful and, when necessary, how to transform the systems that place those goals in conflict.

Oil price manipulation is taking many forms after the closure of one of the world’s major choke points for oil transport sent oil prices higher.

After the financial crash of 2008-9, I started to discover tools and ideas that I thought were promising, but discrete and disconnected. But they’re not: they can be (and are being) used together to form networks that have the potential to grow exponentially to challenge the status quo – to build a commons economy, a commons society, a commons world.

The 24-mile-wide Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, through which roughly 20 percent of world oil shipments pass, is an obvious pinch point for a vital industrial resource. But it also serves as an apt metaphor for the brittle global supply chains upon which the entire economy depends.