2y ago

What a third world war would mean for investors

1y ago

The Economist being The Economist: "What a third world war would mean for investors" (Text in comment)

2y ago

What a third world war would mean for investors

28 comments

Thousands of children and innocent civilians are killed by a fascist, genocidal government, and a jihadi group.
Won't someone think of the shareholders
- Islamist extremist are fachist too.
  
  They're terrible, but tend not to align particularly well with my personal definition of choice - Umberto Eco's 14 signs of ur fascism.

You may be dying in agony of radiation poisoning - but as long as your portfolio holds its value, it's all worthwhile!
(Didn't read the article. Paywall.)
- Yet in a sense, this has little financial relevance, since in a nuclear conflagration your portfolio’s performance would be unlikely to rank highly among your priorities
  Last paragraph

I thought this had to be one the of the parody news sites for sure. WTF.
- Right! I saw this in a political web comic this morning. WTF.

Death, it means death. That's it, there's nothing else. As the quote goes, "I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones"
- is it not the next 'world war' if it doesn't include nukes? i don't think the stupid war shit is quite there yet, but it's happening.
  
  I think a Middle East driven world war could have zero to very few nukes...
  Europe driven? Kiss your butt goodbye.
- Profile pic checks out

You know. I get that this is a boring dystopia. But it makes sense for an economic magazine (one that has been around since the first two world wars) to talk about the economic aspects of a looming world war.
It even acknowledges in the article (more than once) that financial concerns are far down the priority list in such a case. But that as a financial publication, this is their purview so they're focusing there.
There's a bit in the article in the direction of "war introduces such radical levels of uncertainty that even past occurrences provide few lessons to learn from". (Can't get a direct quote.. returned to article to be stopped by paywall) It goes on to say that this uncertainty is heightened because any future world war will involve nuclear powers.
I hope that knowledge of the level of uncertainty is enough to deter the spread of violence. But that hope may be as futile as hoping people would actually read the article

Global conflicts have a habit of sneaking up on money-managers
Wow, not even a hint of satire.

The Investors?
Since when did they become a class unto themselves? Fucking investors got us here in the first place trying to keep the money flowing into the MIC supplying wars around the globe with the latest toys.
Thought this was a joke…thanks to the global logistical flow of goods, food, and materials a real WW3 will mean starvation, lack of medications, and collapse of all sorts of systems as materials, technology, and even clothing stop showing up in warehouses and stores.

A third world war would mean the complete collapse of all global financial institutions within days, if not minutes.
The investors that survived would find themselves in a society that no longer had access to digital money, could only trade what you could physically hand over, and could only "own" what you can stop other survivors from taking from you.
- A complete collapse of global financial institutions? Promise?
  
  Don't worry, we kept a backup of everyone's credit score in this bunker.