Doug Casey on the Impact of War on Commodity Markets

Commodity prices tend to outperform the prices of most real and financial assets during war. From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

International Man: The world is in its most precarious geopolitical environment since World War 2.

Considering similar historical periods, what have been the most important investment implications of global conflict between the world’s biggest powers?

Doug Casey: The big question is whether or not WW3 will go nuclear. And if it does, will it be just some relatively small-yield tactical bombs used against military formations? Or will it get out of control, with strategic weapons used against cities? Either is possible.

Let’s just hope NATO doesn’t back the Russians into a corner, the Zelensky regime stays out of NATO, and the Israelis don’t go nuclear against the Iranians.

As WW3 develops, I don’t think there’s any question it will have significant cyber aspects as well. The whole world runs on computers. Computers control utilities, transport, the banking system, communications, commerce, distribution, and everything else. If computer networks are massively hacked it could collapse civilization. The result could be mass starvation after a couple of weeks.

And, of course, there’s a real possibility of biological warfare. If any of these things happen, it increases the odds of all of them happening.

So price movements in the commodity and financial markets will likely be the least of our problems. Let’s assume, therefore, that things don’t go beyond a regional level.

One current difference in how WW3 is evolving is that almost all of the governments of the world are already bankrupt. Historically, governments only go bankrupt during or after wars; this time they’re all bankrupt before the war has really even started. They’re all welfare states with huge fixed domestic spending. They already have an unrepayable amount of debt. That’s never been the case previously.

Along with unsupportable debt, and high levels of currency debasement, taxes are already at the 40%, 50% or 60% level for most countries. Before World War I and even before World War II, taxes, inflation, and debt were only a tiny fraction of present levels. Governments could access huge resources. Even though the world is much richer, it hardly seems possible now. They’re already running on empty.

WW3 will be limited by the financial ability of governments to fight. There’s a bright side, I suppose, to most of the world’s governments being financially unstable or on the ragged edge of bankruptcy, very much like the US government.

It may serve to limit the damage they can do. But, then, I’m an eternal optimist…

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