All wars are brutal, ugly and inhumane. And it seems to me that that ugliness has impacted DU.

[PatrickforB]

132. Capitalism has a lot to do with it. This morning on MSNBC, they had a person on

analyzing the financial implications of the war - price of gas, price of goods, speculation on what the Fed and IMF will do, and how the military equipment manufacturers such as Lockheed can look for some big new orders.

This is where I always come from because I have been a practicing economist these last 16 years. There will indeed be economic ramifications of this whole thing, particularly of Hezbollah and others on the Israel borders take advantage of the confusion and attack.

Capitalism has everything to do with it. Whole swaths of people across the world live in grinding poverty. Here in the US we operate on the legal doctrine of shareholder primacy - the legal precedent is the 1919 MI Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Dodge brothers against Henry Ford. So when you hear someone talk about 'profits over people,' yep! That is how we roll.

This means that the ONLY fiduciary responsibility of the C-suite officers in any publicly traded company is to generate and grow shareholder profits. This is why most management is resistant to union organizers, and why they bust unions whenever they can. And on the floor, they may cut corners on safety, and even turn a blind eye to wage theft.

As to we consumers, it is common practice to downsize the package but continue charging the same price or even more. Ingredients or components will be cut as far as possible in quality to lower cost of sales. And, if the product maims or kills people (J&J talc), they will summon their MBAs to do cost-benefit-analysis and determine if it is better for shareholder profits to simply pay the claims from affected consumers or recall the product and fix the problem.

And finally, the environment. Wall Street has long sought to pass the costs of any cleanup or other malfeasance onto taxpayers while the company continues to pocket profits. The most egregious example of this was how a few Republican members of Congress actually apologized to BP over the Deepwater Horizon (talk about cutting corners on safety!) disaster when Obama and the Democrats charged the company $20 billion for the cleanup.

So yeah, as long as shareholder profits rule, we will continue to have what we have - predatory lending, big student loan debt, healthcare debt, and so on.

And many companies will in fact will see a big boost in contracts as this new war grinds on.

Now, Israel needs to defend itself, and they will need help. We need to help them, and Ukraine.

However, as an economist, I'm always mindful of poor working schmucks like us and how they fare in something like this. Israeli civilians are living in fear for their very lives right now, because they have no time when those sirens go off to seek shelter. They are dying. Their children are dying. Their parents are dying. There's massive property destruction and they will have to rebuild.

Same with the Palestinians (the majority who had nothing to do with this). They are suffering, and will suffer prodigiously throughout this whole thing, as the Hamas terrorists are hunted down and killed.

Nobody really wins, Ab, but business definitely will go on.