The Economics of War
The David McWilliams Podcast
David McWilliams
4.5 • 692 Ratings
🗓️ 12 March 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What happens to the global economy when a war erupts at the world’s most important energy choke point? In this episode, we trace the economic shockwaves already rippling out from Iran: surging oil and gas prices, rising shipping and insurance costs, higher food and fertilizer bills, and the growing threat of a 1970s-style stagflation shock. This is the old nightmare back again, prices rising while growth slows. We explain why the Straits of Hormuz matters so much, why Europe is far more exposed than America, how energy shocks feed into mortgages, inflation and consumer confidence, and why even countries with no direct trade with Iran will still feel the pain. From Beirut to Dublin, from jet fuel to grocery bills, this is the economics of a war that could redraw the Middle East as well as the global economy too.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | How are you doing there? |
| 0:01.3 | The podcast is all about the economic impact of the war in Iran. It's on stagflation. In effect, we're going back to the 1970s, get your flares, get your disco collection on, and we will be listening. John, what will we listen to? We'll be listening to... Oh, we start with a bit of T-Rex, I think. T-Rex. It's all coming up in a couple of minutes. |
| 0:25.7 | To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature. |
| 0:31.2 | This podcast is powered by ACAST. |
| 0:34.6 | How you doing there? |
| 0:36.1 | It is time for the podcast. |
| 0:38.5 | As you can hear, we're chuckling here in the HQ. |
| 0:52.9 | I hope you are well. The world is odd out there, John. It's very, very odd. We are trying to, in this podcast, put some economic flesh on the war in the Middle East. If you can even call it a war, it's like... Well, officially it's not, according to the US Congress. |
| 0:56.2 | Well, I mean, the minute... |
| 0:57.3 | It's a special operation. |
| 0:58.2 | Exactly. It's like Putin is a special operation. |
| 1:00.9 | Exactly. Exactly. |
| 1:02.3 | But what I want to do in this podcast is to try and give listeners a sense of what's likely |
| 1:07.5 | to happen economically as a result of this. |
| 1:10.7 | As we are talking, the bombing is going on. |
| 1:14.8 | Mm-hmm. The Israelis are bombing in South Lebanon, in Hezbollah. They're bombing in Tehran. |
| 1:19.5 | They're going to level it like Gaza. They are. And if anybody has been to Beirut, they will |
| 1:25.0 | realize that Beirut is an enormous city, enormous city, |
| 1:28.4 | an architecturally stunning city. |
| 1:30.8 | Yeah. |
| 1:31.6 | Stunning city, it's a huge, I mean, unlike Dublin, it has many skyscrapers, right? |
| 1:36.5 | It is a high-rise city, the Corniche of Beirut, as you mentioned, the last podcast, |
... |
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