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Justin, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself. I know who you are, but the rest of the world, how should they know you?

I'm Justin. Good-Aye.

I'm a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, and really,

I'm here because I want to teach the world economics.

Justin's last name is Wolfer's, by the way.

And one of the reasons that I like to call him up is that he can explain the real-world

impacts of markets, oil prices, all the kinds of scary business headlines that you

are probably seeing right now.

So you have been thinking a lot about what is happening in Iran, the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran,

from an economist standpoint. And I guess I wonder, if you had to pick one metric to give you

the best information about what is happening right now. What is it?

So that's hard because a war raises lots of things. Every number answers a question.

It's up to us to decide what question we want to ask. For instance, if you cared a lot about

how things were going militarily, you honestly have to get a different guess. If what you want

to is a guess as to likely economic consequences for the United States, the United States

invaded, bombed, epic furied a handful of days ago. There are no economic statistics that

have come in within a couple of days.

...