In the 1993 blockbuster film Jurassic Park, Jeff Goldblum’s character, Dr. Ian Malcolm, explains chaos theory—commonly known as the butterfly effect—the concept that even the smallest events, like a butterfly’s wing flap, could set off a chain reaction with wide-ranging repercussions. “If there’s anything the history of evolution has taught us, it’s that life will not be contained,” he said. “Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously.”
In a recent Economic Compass outlook report, KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk references Goldblum’s lines from the classic sci-fi to illustrate how the war in Iran could send a ripple effect across the global economy, and ultimately weigh on American households amid an already-dire economic landscape.
