AP Photo/Seth Wenig
By Hugh Cameron
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America’s corporate leaders are voicing alternative visions for how the Iran war could weigh on the American and global economy, outlining two pathways that could dictate whether the conflict proves a lasting drain or a temporary dampener.
Speaking to the BBC on Wednesday, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, said he could see the conflict resulting in one of “two very extreme outcomes”: A sustained period of “abundance and growth,” or the world sliding into a “stark and steep” global recession marked and driven by oil prices soaring to $150 a barrel.
“There’s not going to be an outcome that’s somewhere in the middle,” Fink said, adding that the long-term result would depend on whether Iran can become “part of the world community,” or whether its “threats”—to trade or the “peaceful coexistence” of its Gulf neighbors—will mean years of simmering tensions that occasionally bubble over into outright war.
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Fink’s comments, made with the caveat that it is still too early to judge where the situation is heading, seem to reflect the mixed views taking hold on Wall Street.
Speaking at a conference in Washington, D.C. this week, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said that while the war presents short-term threats to the global order, the recent growth of Gulf economies had created incentives for stability and laid the groundwork for a “permanent peace” to emerge.
“I’m a little optimistic," he said. "The Iran war makes it a better chance in the long run, it’s probably riskier in the short run."
“The attitude is not what the attitude was 20 years ago,” he added. “They all want it.”
AP Photo/Seth Wenig
Bleaker predictions have surfaced elsewhere, most notably from American oil firms, who appear disturbed by the level of supply disruptions rather than enthused by the potential upside of rising global prices.
Chevron CEO Mike Wirth compared the current challenges to the 2022 energy crisis which followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, per Politico, and Bob McNally, president of the D.C.-based consulting firm Rapidan Energy Group, told Newsweek the fallout for supply and prices represents “the biggest oil disruption in history.”
“Sudden surges in oil price are like a big tax increase on consumers,” McNally said. “They also feed into most goods and services as oil is embedded in the supply side of the economy.
“While our large production and net exports put us in a more favorable position that economies that are heavily import-dependent, sudden and massive oil price spikes are a net negative.”
And even were there “a resolution tomorrow,” Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told CNBC that the economic damage already caused would linger long after the conflict, unwinding many of the “tailwinds” the U.S. economy had been enjoying before the war began.
Despite the warnings, business confidence itself appears untouched. The latest CEO Economic Outlook Survey from Business Roundtable found that the central index rose to 89 from 80 in the previous quarter, above the long-term historic average of 83, signaling broad-based optimism.
The survey of 169 CEOs ran from February 23 to March 6, spanning the onset of the conflict on February 28, and showed that hiring and capital expenditure plans, as well as sales expectations, climbed compared to the previous quarter.
This optimism, however, could quickly unravel if the war escalates and the economic effects continue to spill over.
“Recession risks are uncomfortably high and rising due to the hostilities with Iran, severe disruptions in global energy production, and surging oil and other commodity prices,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told Newsweek. “American consumers are suffering a significant financial blow, paying much more at the pump, and will soon face even greater costs as inflation broadly accelerates, undermining their purchasing power.”
Zandi said that upcoming economic indicators, such as March’s employment report from the Department of Labor, will be “an important tell of the economic damage and whether a recession is dead ahead.”
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