William Nordhaus, Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University, and one of the leading economists in the world, indeed a potential Nobel Prize winner, has published this month an analysis of the potential cost of the war with Iraq to the United States in extenso at the web address below and in summarized form in the New York Review of Books. His conclusion is summarized in his appeal to Barbara Tuchman's phrase-- 'the march of folly'. Even the best case scenario, a repeat of the rapid victory of the kind involved in the first Gulf War, will send shockwaves cascading through the American economy. You can be sure that we in Britain (a) will have to pay higher taxes to allow Tony Blair to keep face with the Americans (it costs money to tag along with a superpower) (b) will also be shaken by an American economy which enters crisis.