Cooking Up a Catastrophe

That's what the "sharks" in the Bush Administration are doing, according to Patrick Tyler and Richard Stevenson of The New York Times. If the United States invades Iraq, oil prices will sky-rocket, the domestic (and perhaps the global) economy might crater, deficits will soar, the stock market will tank and all of the Middle East and Central Asia might become one huge conflagration.

Let's go to the text:

Already, the federal budget deficit is expanding, meaning that the bill for a war would lead either to more red ink or to cutbacks in domestic programs. If consumer and investor confidence remains fragile, military action could have substantial psychological effects on the financial markets, retail spending, business investment, travel and other key elements of the economy, officials and experts said.

When Andrew Sullivan first started banging the drum about the New York Times using its news pages as a platform to oppose the invasion of Iraq, I thought he'd had a bit too much sun up there in P-town. But he was right. The paper is letting its politics get in the way of its mission. Yet another reason to short the stock.