Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
My friends, this is it. America isn’t going to win this war, unless they use nukes, but even if I’m wrong and they squeeze out their .01% chance of success, it is over. The army is exhausted and can’t be re-armed in less than a decade, with Chinese help. The Middle East will be in ruins. The AI bubble will crash out without money and resources from the Gulf. Everyone’s going to turn hard from hydrocarbons to renewables, especially solar, and that means China is going to make absolute bank.
This is the second stupidest war decision I’ve seen in my entire life. (The first was Ukraine refusing a very generous peace deal and, as a result, losing the majority of its fighting and breeding age male population.)
The war is lost. It was lost the moment Iran proved it could keep fighting and wouldn’t accept a peace without achieving its aims. The Americans, with, it appears, help from NATO nations, are going to try and open the Strait militarily. They will fail and it will be a military clusterfuck of epic proportions. There is approximately zero chance of opening the Strait, and if they are stupid enough to try and land marines, those marines are DEAD.
I have never seen such military insanity in my life. If I were a colonel in the US army I’d be organizing a coup and I am not kidding. There are suicide missions and then there’s trying to land troops in the Strait while Iran has missile and drone dominance, thousands of speed boats and has mined the Strait. The US does not have air superiority, even, we just saw the Iranians hit an f-35, they’ve shot down at least eight aerial refueling planes, forced the US to keep its aircraft carriers far away, made it impossible to use most of the local bases and taken out almost all US radars in the area.
This is a loss. The smart thing for the US to do would be to just declare the war is over and evacuate the region. If Israel wants to fight on its own, let it.
But the Israelis almost certainly have video of Trump raping kids, and Americans can’t admit they’re losing, so the war will go on.
The oil field damage is severe enough already that it will take years to repair. Iran will probably retain control over the Strait permanently, deciding who gets to transit. Nations they like go thru free. Nations they hate have no access. Everyone else pays: after all Iran’s going to have a lot of rebuilding to do.
Meanwhile France, still under the delusion that it’s a great power, seized another Russian oil tanker. The Russians have said they’re considering military escorts in the future. This could go south in very bad ways, and France’s missile defense systems and interceptor stockpiles are not in any shape to fight a war with Russia. The EU has decided not to ease Russian oil sanctions and Putin, in any case, has said he doesn’t want to sell to Europeans any more because they’re unreliable.
Europe’s industrial base is evaporating. They’re so far behind in tech that they don’t even show up on lists of the top five tech leaders, even when you lump all of the EU together. (Top 4 are China/US/Japan/South Korea.) Trump just massively cut science and tech spending and scientists and academics are fleeing the US, often for China. Russia, by itself, produces more missiles, drones and artillery shells than all of NATO, which should tell you meaningless GDP is as a measure of state capacity.
The US is about to become a regional power. And I don’t think it will sustain even that. Iran has just taught everyone how to make tangling with even a medium sized nation unbelievably painful. The process of turning into porcupines should take five to ten years, at which point the US navy loses 90% of its power projection ability.
Further the loss of dollar hegemony will lead to a good 30% drop in the American standard of living. But America’s cost structure (if you need an MRI fly to China, stay in a five star hotel for a week and pay cash for your MRI. It’ll cost less than getting it in America) means that high nominal wages mean very little. Americans are going to strangle slowly to death. Meanwhile one-third of the world’s fertilizer supplies are about to evaporate, helium (used to make chips among other things) is about to become rare and expensive and China has put export controls on key elements like silver and all petroleum products. As the supply chain shocks multiply (who thought just in time was smart? Oh, all the usual morons) multiple countries will stop exporting key goods up to and including food.
US bases have been proven not to protect your country but to make it a target. Every American ally is noticing this and the Phillipines and South Korea in particular are taking note. Japan is still talking tough, but they’re being morons. They either get nukes and destroy their economy when China sanctions them, or they cut a deal.
The scale of this clusterfuck is mind boggling. America is destroying its ability to coerce other nations, destroying its economy and making having an alliance with it not just worthless but actively a detriment, while devastating all of its allies’ economies: Europe, Japan and South Korea are all going to take HUGE hits from this.
Meanwhile China’s oil stockpiles are at record highs, they spent the last 4 years buying 50% of the world’s grain supply and piling it up, and their hard move into renewables has proved to be 100% correct. As for Russia, another big winner, since their oil and gas, minus some minor damage from the Ukraine war is just fine, thanks.
While Ukraine’s decision to fight the Russians as a cat’s paw for the US was arguably worse it lacks the awe-inspring scale of this bout of epic stupidity.
As Mencken wrote,
“the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
And here we are. Americans elected the stupidest President in history, a known rapist, a pedophile being blackmailed by a foreign power, a con man, who is also suffering from dementia and all of this was known before he was elected to anyone paying attention.
America’s empire was doomed by Reagan and Clinton. Trump’s just bringing it to a messy end. But the decline could have taken another twenty years and been much, much less painful. Trump has decided to end it in the most spectacular and stupid manner unimaginable to anyone with the intelligence of a door-mouse. Meanwhile, Europe’s pygmy leaders are feeding Europe’s economy into a woodchipper, foot first and greasing the gears, “why is this machine so slow!? What can we do to speed it up?”
Welcome to the end of Western hegemony. It’s stupider, more venal and more darkly funny than I could ever have imagined.
Had a lot of subscribers unsubscribe recently. I assume it’s the economy and/or hating my coverage of Israel. If you value my writing and can, please subscribe or donate.
I planned on writing a post about how the Russians were the ultimate winners of the Iran War, what with all that petroleum and natural gas they have. Truly, the Russian’s have got God by the balls (Как бога за яйца поймал).Windfall after windfall is accreting in an economy that is supposed to be in the doldrums. The reverse is true: Trump’s witless pursuit of war against Iran is effecting the collapse of the entire global economic order, except those nations trading with, well, you guessed it: Russia. I can’t fathom right now. How does one convey the stupendous amount of boomerangishness happening? It’s like karma grew a pair of balls and teabagged the entire Western order.
That said, I failed to write the post. Instead I got profoundly distracted by Col. Larry Wilkerson’s disturbing prediction that Israel will more than likely use up to 15 nukes on Iran to settle the conflict. Watch the video yourself. It’s a mercifully brief 7:03 minutes of terror. It’s the stuff of nightmares. I ain’t kidding. I’m dumbfounded. Dismayed because he makes a plausible case for Israel’s use of nukes.
If Israel opts for nukes the entire calculus of war changes. Nukes virtually guarantee the inclusion of other great powers in the war. I’ve taken to joking lately that we’re watching Armageddon. I didn’t mean literally, but now? I’m really at a lack for words.
We’re all going to die.
Afterthought #1: Before we all perish in flames, some more shitty news: sales of newly built houses fell a full 17.6% nationwide. In the Northeast it was a rout: down 44%. Adding insult to injury, McDonald’s, Pepsi and Dollar Tree are all racing to the bottom by reducing prices. Not goody, vewwy baddy.
Afterthought #2: The spread between home-sellers and home-buyers in San Antonio, my town, has widened to an astonishing 114%. That’s absolute brutality to home-builders. So, the end of this credit cycle is going to include the following macro events: housing crash, credit crisis, energy shock and at least one Too Big To Fail will fail, just as Lehman Bros and AIG did in 2008. Oh, and the AI bubble will unravel. Wow, that’s almost a perfect storm.
Here are today’s Phase Two developments. Many are ominous. Things not looky so goody.
The smartest guys in the room, i.e., Goldman Sachs had this to say about AI: “Massive investment in AI contributed basically zero to US economic growth last year.” What will they predict next? An oil price spike if we go to war with Iran? Oh wait.
Dario notes that the liquidity crisis is going global: “Middle East liquidity crisis in the financial system is surfacing.”
He cites Rashid ben Saeed who elaborates: “Citi and Standard Chartered literally evacuated their offices this week. Told staff go home, work remote. HSBC closed their Qatar branches. Hedge funds are in “contingency mode.” That’s a polite way of saying they’re bricking it. Analysts are saying customers could pull out $307 BILLION if this goes on another month.”
First Squawk writes that both JP Morgan and Goldman are offering Hedge Funds ways to short private credit. That’s just weird.
Ripplebrain conveys just how devastating the attack on QatarEnergy’s LNG production is: “17% of QatarEnergy’s production is 3.4% of the world’s LNG production.” Ending ominously saying, that it’s “gone in the blink of an eye, perhaps for years.”
The irrepressible Matt Stoller highlights a video that highlights “straightforward market manipulation.” He also points our attention to the #2 story at the Wall Street Journal: “U.S. Regulators Propose More Lenient Capital Rules for Big Banks.” This kind of proposal is in direct contravention to the ‘stress test’ rules put in place after the 2008 Financial Crisis. It also clearly foreshadows liquidity and/or solvency issues that the commericial banks will soon face.
In another clear phase two clusterfuck is this story from the WSJ, cited by Unicus Research. The upshot: “Stone Ridge’s LENDX fund just told investors it would honor only 11% of redemption requests.” The post on X also includes what kind of garbage is in the fund. Go take a look. It’ll engender a ton of schadenfruede. Enjoy!
As pending crises morph into full blown disasters investment banks often prepare by enacting the following policies. First, they raise production quotas for their employees while simultaneously cutting their commission payouts. It’s a cut-throat business. Payout cuts are painful. I’ve lived it. And they always cut payouts right before or during bear markets. I endured this twice at Morgan Stanley. Guess what: Goldman has begun that process, as First Squawk reports: “Goldman plans performance-based job cuts in late April.” This we can infer two important factoids from this: Goldman is worried about cash-flow. You don’t plan to run employees off if you’re flush with cash. Two: timing, Goldman clearly sees this credit cycle accelerating rapidly with an April inflection point.
Shashank Joshi catches an excellent highlight from the Economist: “Average prices of petrol and diesel have reached $3.88 and $5.09 a gallon, compared with $3.11 and $3.72 at Mr Trump’s inauguration. Republican support for the war is strong, but softening.”
More Perfect Union informs us “the cost of vegetables jumped 49% last month as inflation hit hard and companies raised prices.” Its source is BLS data. Now I know, some will dispute how the CPI is computed. I thinks it full of balderdash and male bovine excrement. So does Ian. So I post and you decide.
Sohrab Ahmari notes, unconfirmed but entirely plausible, that “force majeur [has been declared] on Qatari LNG contracts for up to five years.” Five years? That’s going to pile Pelion atop the already messa Ossa of the energy markets globaly.
CORRECTION: according to EarlyGray the video below does not say anything about Japan buying Russian oil. Mea culpa. I regret the error. SPK
Richard posts a video and apparently translates it. If true, it’s a bombshell: “Japan is now openly buying Russian oil with the yuan.” Why not with JPY? I would imagine that China has already set up a Yuan based transaction system for buying and selling oil to steadily chip, chip, chip away at dollar hegemony. Yeah, Japan has said it publically and officialy. That’s pretty much like pissing on the petrodollar. Our closest North East Asian Ally. That’s fuckery on an hitherto unseen level.
Meanwhile, to Japan’s northwest, South Korea is considering resuming imports of Russian oil.
And I make the observation, in utterly obscene Russian fashion that “with these high oil prices the Russian Treasury has certainly Как бога за яйца поймал.” Translated idiomatically: Russia is in the catbird seat. Translated directly:they got God by the balls.
Rory Johnston notes just how high Dubai crude prices have risen: “Cash Dubai crude (balance of the month) just broke above $170 per barrel.”
Here’s what I’ve previously written on this credit cycle. I stand by it all. The only comment I’ll add at present is this: if the exogenous shocks to the US economy continue and the energy shock intensifies, all bets are off on the proximate cause of the end of dollar hegemony.
The most salient observation in Lawrence Freedman’s book Strategy: A History, comes early, paraphrasing Frans De Waal’s seminal study Chimpanzee Politics, Freedman writes, “De Waal concluded that rather than changing the social relationships, the fights [to become or overthrow and alpha or to wage war] tended to reflect the changes that had already taken place.”
This “Chimpanzee Framework” is a useful way of understanding the catastrophe unfolding in the Persian Gulf today and the accelerating collapse of American power globally. The “Chimpanzee framework” clarifies just how and why American foreign and economic policy actions resemble a honey drenched giant fighting off an hungry sleuth of bears more than a smart, historically informed nation. American policy and its actions are uncoordinated, moored in shared delusion and filled with several metric shit-tons of hopium. (See, more proof ‘Muricans can do Metric!)
Why would American actions be otherwise? America inhabits a fundamentally different world than it did a decade ago. The unipolar moment is gone; multipolarity is fact, not wishful thinking. BRICS grow faster every day, searching for the perfect red-pill of knocking the dollar off its hegemony throne. Meanwhile, the United States cannot affect international policy change to its liking regardless where it acts. Not in the Ukraine. Not in Iran. Worse, the inevitable defeat in Iran will cascade into Venezuelan and Cuban failure as the small shrug off the rotten shackles of a wounded giant.
America’s inept inefficacy is not limited to international policy: economic policy vis-a-vis tariffs is an abject failure as it was under Biden. The United States will find re-industrializing an impossible adjustment when the reality of a nationwide collapse of its standard of living happens. Reindustrializing starts with a vigorous textile industry, not more computer and AI chip plants.
So, just how many Americans are willing to work for peanuts in sweat-shops? How many machinists can we realistically turn out in five, ten, even fifteen years? Do Americans even know what machinists do? How many high school graduates can use a lathe, much less know what one is? Our domestic reality is as equally grim as our international one, except our international collapse will compound already enormous burdens pervading an economy of misaligned priorities and a poorly performing one at that.
In Strategy, Freedman also discusses the utility and efficacy of coalition building among chimpanzees, their alphas and those tribes they war against. In his most striking note, he describes the political complexities, violence and the necessity of building stronger, effective coalitions, be they to wage war for a nearby fig tree or to install a new alpha. His conclusion is counterintuitive and profound: chimpanzee violence doesn’t represent an overthrow or revolution. It confirms a preexisting reality.
Henry Kissinger made the same argument in his doctoral dissertation, later published as A World Restored, not regarding chimpanzees, but in the context of Metternich’s formation of the Sixth Coalition against Bonaparte. The Befreiungskriege, as it was called in Metternich’s native German, confirmed the reality on the ground that Bonaparte’s 1812 invasion of Russia was a mortal own goal for the French; the War of the Sixth Coalition merely confirmed it; and the subsequent peace codified it for almost a hundred years.
The same argument can be made regarding the United States and its quickly deteriorating Western coalition of the unwilling. Not to mention its Far East allies who are quickly tiring of American shenanigans, outright betrayal and economic, tariff-related fuckery. That this coalition, a coalition that dominated the post-Cold War world, cannot now manufacture more artillery shells than a single nation, the Russian Federation, is proof positive of a deeply misunderstood alignment of power and an pre-existing altered reality is met with blank stares and outright denial.
That this coalition is blindly following a great power lead by the nose by a tiny, recalcitrant and criminal regime running Israel has historical precedent. Think Serbia and Russia in the days before August 1914. The Serbs were deeply complicit in the assassination of the Austrian Archduke (read Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark for proof). And Russian mobilization in support of their little Slav Brothers (or if you really need me to spell it out in today’s terms, those who we share Judeo-Christian values with) guaranteed German entry into the war.
Freedman’s “Chimpanzee framework” goes far in explaining the escalating devastation of petroleum related infrastructure and targeting of natural gas fields in the Persian Gulf. The world desperately needs to move away from fossil fuels. And many nations have made great efforts to do so. Thus, the destruction in the Persian Gulf of petroleum assets, refineries, gas wells, LNG and oil terminals, represents a symptom of a larger global reality: the world has turned an epoch making corner on fossil fuels. The day of fossil fuels is far from over, but this is the beginning of the end. There will be winners and losers, cliché I know, and yet countries that have made strong investments in renewable energy will make the inevitable and painful adjustments successfully. The losers like the USA, are those who will maintain their reliance on petroleum, come hell or high-water.
Most Americans dispute the idea that we higher primates and chimpanzees have a common ancestor or share any commonalities for that matter. They are in need of a rethink. Our politics are too similar, our warmaking just as brutal and our collective decision-making is too catastrophe prone to deny.
So, anyone got a fig? Or know where a fig tree is?
I’ll keep this one short. Israel just hit a major Iranian oilfield. Iran has said it will now hit Gulf oilfields in retaliation. Ali Larijani, probably the last person in the Iranian administration who could have negotiated an off-ramp, has been assassinated.
This war is about to enter the economic devastation phase.
Unless you live in China (bought half the world’s grain production for the last 4 years and massively increased its fuel stockpiles) you’d better start preparing. Stock up on food. Check your local power grid to see how reliant it is on natural gas and oil turbines (Europeans, this is you.) Buy medicine. Acetaminophen, for example, is basically 100% a petroleum product. Figure out how to stay warm or cool and how to cook — can you still get some solar power and batteries. India mostly relies on gas for cooking, and it’s going to run out soon.
Australia’s got maybe 3 weeks of petroleum left. The Gulf States aren’t going to be able to run air conditioning soon. Everyone’s going to start putting export bans on key supply chain items soon. The Chinese have already banned export of natural gas and oil, but this will spread to food, key medicines, etc, etc… if the war goes on much longer.
Don’t assume this is all going to work out, even in most countries which can keep the power on and enough food, there will be price increases. A lot of the world economy is based around oil, gas and… fertilizers. About a third of the world’s fertilizers come from the Gulf, thru the Strait. Even if the war ends in a couple weeks, there will be aftershocks, and, of course, companies like supermarkets will jack up prices then keep them up even after the shock, just like they did during Covid.
But over the next few months expect shortages and increased prices and in some parts of the world straight up energy brown outs.
Unless you’re Chinese or Russian, don’t expect your government to do anything competent to protect you. Even if it can, it won’t, unless you’re part of the 1% at least.
Prepare. Perhaps we’ll be lucky, but don’t be count on it.
Everyone reads these article for free, but the site and Ian take money to run. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.
Outside my Mother and Father, few people had a more profound, wide-reaching and persistent impact on my life than John Ater.
I met John when I was 16. I was a deeply troubled youth. Still wickedly angry at my parents, their divorce and how they used me (and my little sister) as a weapon to hurt each other. I was on probation–convicted of juvenile delinquency–and still engaging in bouts of mayhem. Add to that far too much experience hoping chemistry might improve life, plus a penchant for late night theft and I was a handful. I’m not ashamed to tell y’all John was my therapist. I hated him the first time I met him. I hated him a good long while. He had one rule for me. He said, “I will treat you like an adult so long as you act like one. If you don’t I’ll treat you like a child.” For some reason, something unrecognizable compelled me to return week after week. I wasn’t aware of it yet, but I wanted change. I yearned for it from a place I didn’t recognize. But that soon changed.
His undivided attention to me while in therapy was profound. Without doubt, I was never an afterthought by my parents, but John’s ability to listen to me and cut right to the matter at hand was attention from an adult on a whole new level for me. For the first time in my life I was seen by an adult willing to see me as I was, not as a parent would have me. While I wasn’t mature enough to recongize this as liberating, I felt heard and I felt a growing sense of nurture. (Although I only saw this in the clairvoyance of hindsight.)
My dislike of him soon grew into genuine fondness. So, I stuck with him for eight years, from 16 to 24, years old I saw him weekly until I graduated university. By then I had grown to love him. After that we were friends. He was my confidant, a sounding board and a shoulder to cry on. He never asked for anything in return. He gave of himself, that he might receive from others.
He was fond of telling me, “Sean Paul, I am here to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comforted.” And that is what he did.
San Francisco, May 2010
When I was up and full of myself–which happened a lot in my late 20s and early 30s, he called me on my bullshit. When I was down he lifted me up. I would not have survived two major depressive episodes in my life were it not for his patience and love.
He was also fond of saying, “when you point the finger at someone, do realize you’re pointing three back at yourself.”
My personal favorite was, “evolution gave you two ears and one mouth, use them in their proper proportion.”
They say a mother teaches her son what is expected of a man. And a father teaches his son how to live up to his expectations.
But John taught me something entirely different. He taught me how to be an adult. He taught me how to be kind. How not to hold grudges. How not to second guess myself. He taught me that it was much more difficult to admit when I was wrong or had made a mistake than to deny or ignore it, but that I had a moral obligation to do so, regardless of how I felt. He taught me the difference between morals and ethics. He taught me how to walk into a room and read it, painful introvert that I was. “The people in the room want your attention just as much as you want theirs. Go, ask questions of them, open-ended questions and you’ll make more friends than you know what to do with.” He was right.
John drilled into me that color, creed and sexual orientation–he was openly gay–meant not absolute zippo in the grand scheme of things, that we were all divine children of the Cosmos. And he taught me how to stand firm when my principles or integrity were questioned. To never start a fight, but be damn sure to finish it. Another crucial lesson John imparted upon me was the necessity of asking for help when in over my head, or even when I just didn’t know something. And he always added, “just because someone said no, does not let you off the hook. You can’t stop asking for help.”
He was also fond of saying, “the universe answers prayers in three ways only, ‘yes, no and not yet.’
More than anything John ever taught me, it was the immense amounts of time he sat listening to me at coffee shops and then on the phone when he moved to San Francisco. He never asked for anything in return. All he said was, “be as good as you can to others, at all times.”
I spoke to John a few weeks before he died. He said it would be the last time we spoke. I told him how much I loved him and how responsible he was for me becoming the human being that I am.”Imperfect,” he said, “but fundamentally decent.” These were his penultimate words to me.
John died on January 25, 2026. It was not unexpected, but it hurts like hell. He was 73.
The Cosmos broke the mold when John was created. And I am diminshed by his loss.
John is survived by two sons.
His last Facebook post epitomizes John:
Recently stumbled across a thread by someone who dug deeply into the most recent data from Britain. It’s pretty abysmal, but what’s most interesting is the notes:
- There’s no systemic testing for either covid or long covid any more;
- Long Covid is often diagnosed as something else;
- You can have organ damage from Covid without it having symptoms (though you’ll pay for it later);
- Covid damage often leads to other health events (like heart attacks and cancer) which will not be shown as Covid related.
And:
Final note: The charts of the GP-Patient survey data in this thread were created by me. They are not official charts from the survey report… …and that’s because the data on prevalence of Long Covid (Q40) was curiously *left out* of the national report.
Luckily, data from the Long Covid question (Q40) is still available in the raw data files which is how I’ve been able to create my chart. However, these LC stats will have been seen by very few people unless they’ve been digging around in the raw data.
If we just pretend it’s not a problem… so typical of almost everything in the West these days. Whistling past the graveyard is all our elites do except march a bunch of proles straight into graves.
The entire thread is worth a read, but I’ll pull out two more charts:
Second:
The date where it all goes… north, is instructive.
I would add further that I think in a couple generations it will be recognized that the greatest damage was done to children in school, where they were reinfected multiple times. It often doesn’t show up as “long covid” because of their youth, but I’m laying long odds that their lifespans and healthy lifespans took a huge hit.
We continue to refuse to do anything about this. Every time I suggest making proper clean air changes to buildings, especially public buildings like hospitals and schools, the comments are full of people saying “but it would be expensive, we can’t do it” as if we aren’t wasting trillions on war and AI and various corporate subsidies, or haven’t lost trillions in tax revenue thru tax cuts for the rich and couldn’t do it if it was important to us. It’s always amazing to me how many proles spew back up the same bullshit elites use to justify their depravity.
Anyway, hardly anyone’s talking about Covid, but I’ll keep doing so. And my advice remains the same as it has for years: if your children are in a school which doesn’t take this seriously, find another school or home school them if there’s any way you can. If you care about your children, this is worth making some sacrifices for.
Most people rant on and on about how they love their children, but I watch how they act, and it’s a love expressed in words, not action, let alone sacrifice. When I was sitting next to my mother’s bed for the last two weeks of her life the province had people helping care for her at home, and I talked to them. They said almost no children do what I did, and recounted stories of the most horrid behaviour imaginable. I felt I was doing the absolute minimum. They thought I was a Saint.
(I didn’t sit by my Dad’s bed. Part of it is that it wasn’t clear when he’d die, but frankly he was a horrid father and husband and made my mother and my lives hell and that’s the real reason.)
Judged by how children treat their parents when they’re old, I’d say most parents sucked. Try not to be one of those.
Had a lot of subscribers unsubscribe recently. I assume it’s the economy and/or hating my coverage of Israel. If you value my writing and can, please subscribe or donate.