Martin Wolf

Oil is much less important than it used to be 70 years ago.

Prices have risen, but actually, if you look at real terms of the long history of oil prices since the first oil shock, they're not sensationally high.

And so, we will adjust to it, and we're very good at adjusting to it.

The Gulf will end up as a different place because it will be exporting the same way, but it's not enough to derail the world economy.

And incidentally, the country that is likely to be the least damaged of the major ones is the US, which is not a coincidence.

After all, they wouldn't have started it if that weren't at the back of their minds.

China will be damaged.

Russia is benefiting, but I don't think that's going to bother Mr. Trump.

So in the end, the losers are Europe and China, not his favorite countries.

I think that on the whole, Mr. Trump prefers China to Europe.

But the

And the world economy will continue.

And there's this huge technological upheaval going on, which is very much what the markets are talking about, which looks transformative.

So I think the market's assumption that the profitability of companies is going to be fine.

The world will have possibly a recession, but that's not the end of the world.

World has recessions, probably not even zero growth.

And life goes on.

Yes, I think that's right.

And there's been a greater disconnect than I would have expected.

And so I've more than once used another famous quote from a British author, of course, it has to be given the intro.