Business Is Booming

 So here's the headline that stopped me in my tracks: "Ukraine's top general just warned that a 'limited' nuclear war can't be ruled out — here's Warren Buffett's investment advice while facing the 'greatest danger' in the world."

I didn't read the article. Warren's vision of the world and mine seem to differ in a few ways. First of all, my investments are pretty much limited to the funds I can be cajoled into being a part of when it's time to inspect my retirement accounts. Since most of them are pretty limited in terms of their exposure and daring, I don't imagine I'll be playing in Buffett's league anytime soon. And then there's the matter of profiteering. You know, making money off of someone else's misfortune. 

In this case it would be the annihilation of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of innocent men, women and children. The quotes around "limited" was kind of the giveaway. The very idea of some sort of containment once Pandora's box has been opened wide leaves me with very little hope, and even less interest in the finances. It reminds me that regardless of the horrors of war that we encounter, it is the horror of those who sit back and watch it happen that are even worse. What is our first response, as a nation, when innocents are threatened abroad? Economic sanctions. We want to get them in their portfolios, where it hurts. 

Understanding that this is a way to steer clear of sending American troops into the fray, I continue to struggle with the notion that we are willing to send our guns and missiles to do battle, but we don't want to pull the trigger ourselves. In this way, we continue to our non-combatant presence while still blowing things up. Lockheed has been making a ton of money on the sale of its weapons to Ukraine. Its stock is through the roof, and there are at least twenty members of Congress who own some of that stock while they push for an additional forty billion dollars in military aid to our friends there. That's not a conflict of interest, it's synergy, right?

I went ahead and looked at the article. Back in 2006, Warren Buffet the eternally optimistic American investor said, “We have developed over these 72 years, since August of 1945, the ability around the world to almost destroy civilization. It's the only real cloud on the horizon.” But even a mushroom cloud has a silver lining, right? What's Warren's hedge against any war, nuclear or not? Real estate. People have to live somewhere. 

If they live.