OP-ED: Market Plummets Amid Inflation; Russian Invasion Complicates Outlook
Published March 11, 2022
As if the Federal Reserve, struggling with elevated inflation, did not have enough on its plate, there is now a war in Europe after 83 years of peace.
Historically, Europe suffers a war about every 50 years or so. Countries there just don’t seem to be able to keep the peace. Too many countries and not enough space. However, after the horrors of World War II, with the threat of atomic Armageddon and the benefit of the American nuclear umbrella, Europe found a way to peace. That interlude was broken when Russia invaded Ukraine. Why Ukraine and why now, you may ask?
Ukraine is a rather large territory by European standards and therefore provides more living room. Hitler found it inviting in his search for Lebensraum. Putin finds it so now too; plus Ukraine is a breadbasket for Europe, and provides many commodities that Russia finds attractive.
Ukraine has historically shipped these commodities from its 18 port cities on the Black and Azov seas, which Putin is currently blockading and attacking. If he is successful in taking them, Ukraine will be blocked from shipping its products directly to buyers. Putin’s invasion and appropriation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, unopposed by the West, was his first step in implementing this strategy. According to Reuters, Ukraine in 2022 was predicted to account for 12 percent of global wheat exports, 16 percent of corn, 18 percent of barley and 19 percent of rapeseed, with much of it going to middle eastern countries already hard-hit from diminished food supplies.
Ukraine also houses several nuclear plants, including the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, which like Chernobyl, is just across […]