Holding your tongue as a prudent business strategy. (Commentary).

ANYONE who is honest will admit it's impossible to know if this is a good war or a bad one. That is, if it will contribute to, or detract from, the sum total of human suffering.

The success of the war against Iraq depends on how long it lasts, how many and what kind of people die, and how young Arabs and old North Koreans react. None of that is knowable.

The violent war protesters on the streets of San Francisco are so moronic because they are certain when certainty is not possible. This war is a matter of subtle calculation, of weighing ever-changing costs against ever-shifting benefits. But that doesn't prevent people from having

fixed opinions about it; about this war everyone seems to have an opinion. The problem for most is knowing when to shut up about what they think.

Not financial people. The odd thing about financial people -- especially important financial people -- is how few have expressed their views on the war.

Isolated comments

George Soros wrote in the Financial Times that the United States' love of its military power was as unhealthy as a bull market's love of its rising prices. Bond-fund manager Bill Gross, chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., posted a column on his company's Web site in which he voiced his fear that, no matter what the outcome, the war would cost America her soul.

Other than that, the people who are meant to be the real power brokers of American society have remained silent about the use of American power. Why? It isn't for lack of a compelling financial interest in public opinion. In the past week the U.S. financial markets have reacted, in the most astonishing and direct way, to the smallest skirmishes on the Iraqi battlefield. Twelve American soldiers are ambushed after their convoy takes a wrong turn and the market tanks; a few citizens of Basin rise up against their own army, and the market soars.

Whether the market should be driven by the headlines from the front lines is beside the point: the market thinks it should, and so it is.

So why hasn't Wall Street had more to say for, or against, the war? Warren Buffett has recently spoken out against the dire risks to the financial system posed by derivatives. What does he think about Saddam Hussein? Henry Paulson has recently denounced American business ethics. What does he think about the ethics of pre-emptive warfare?

You can't open a newspaper without running across some joint letter of protest from yet another group of artists or intellectuals. Why should business and financial leaders alone remain uninvolved?

The other day there was a hint of how high the passions about the war now run on Wall Street, and how constipated is Wall Street's public expression of them. After Al-Jazeera aired footage of dead and captured GIs, the New York Stock Exchange revoked the Arab television network's 5-year-old press pass.

This, to me, seemed less than bright. Banning Al-Jazeera from the NYSE because of its fierce anti-Americanism will only further estrange two worlds that badly need to talk to each other.

The reason for the financial world's silence about this war is neither indifference nor detachment. It is fear -- the fear of saying the wrong thing. Or, to put it more politely, the probably accurate calculation that the private costs of saying anything far exceed the public benefits.

No matter what Philip Purcell or Sandy Weill or any other financial leader says about the war, it is bound to be bad for business, as it is sure to anger someone. And what possible good would come from speaking out?

If you are against the war, your words are unlikely to have much effect. If you are for the war, you don't need to say anything to get what you want, and you can keep your French customers in the bargain.

At critical moments in history, passions run high; but when passions run high, financial leaders lie low. How important can they be, after all?

Michael Lewis is a columnist for Bloomberg News. His new book, "Money-Ball," is about professional baseball and will be published in May.