This is going to hurt
So far we have all been talking about fuel prices and what the invasion of Ukraine means for energy bills.
That will need addressing, governments cannot leave their citizens to choose whether to freeze to death or go hungry.
But look at the long term pain that Putin has imposed on the West.
No one can ever trust Russia again, that means ending the dependency on Russian energy in Europe. That involves structural change on a massive scale, the kind of thing normally only tried in war time at huge expense. New pipelines, refineries, ports and storage facilities, all stuff that no one thought necessary until last week.
There will also have to be massively more investment in green and nuclear energy, the idiots who say this crisis has killed net zero don’t get it. We need to spend more, sooner, to cut energy use.
And then higher defence spending too, for almost everyone.
The UK alone needs to spend a small fortune on new tanks, APCs, ships and planes. And it can’t wait for a badly managed design competition as usual. It needs to place orders now.
We are talking about much higher spending, a significantly larger percentages of GDP for numerous countries.
The economic consequences will be huge.
In the long term probably quite good consequences, we are talking about a massive economic stimulus package across numerous countries.
But for quite a few years this is really going to hurt
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.