Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
I’ll begin, as usual, with the economy. JP Morgan lays odds for a global recession at 60% now. Causes? According to JPMorgan it’s threefold: the conflict in Iran, the tariffs and AI. But JP Morgan is forgetting another huge variable, the private credit/shadow credit unwind happening in real time. Blackrock halted redemptions from its flagship debt fund to the tune of $1.2bn. Blackrock to investors: fuck off. Blackrock’s fuckery marks the third private credit shop in the last three months to shut investor redemptions down: first Blue Owl, then Blackstone and now Blackrock.
As Dario intones ruefully, “Mark my words, the damage to the financial system the private credit space will cause will be greater by many orders of magnitude than the one subprime caused in 2008.” I’m pretty well convinced he’s right. That said, the political will to backstop another financial crisis has not eroded totally, so the emerging credit crunch will be the last one backstopped by the Fed and/or Congress.
Another variable JP Morgan doesn’t address is the most recent (un)employment numbers. If the first reported, non-revised numbers of a -92,000 jobs is any indication, once the numbers are revised, February’s numbers are likely to resemble a catastrophe.
On the ugly, catastrophe side of things, Dubai has only ten days of fresh food remaining if the Straits remain closed. I suppose they can eat dates, no?
Also of note, The Reptile, aka Peter Thiel (yes, it’s a real anagram, google it if you donnae believe me!), dumped 2 million shares of Palantir. It’s a bright flashing red light, a semaphore both unmistakable and of serious consequence, when top execs dump shares of the corps they run. They are cashing out, leaving the equity collapse in the hands of suckers, ermm, retail investors, widows and orphans-like.
If you want a fuller understanding of the logic logic behind Iran’s attacks on the region’s infrastructure, read here. Speaking of oil, one can’t fix stupid. Shorting oil in this kind of risk environment is nucking futs.
Maintaining our focus on petroleum for a bit longer, I have to note, if oil breaks bad to the north, past say $120, the resulting global recession will have deleterious effects on commodities, especially gold and silver. But more gold than silver, as the silver supply-demand equation has been so structurally out of whack for so long, the recession would have to be almost depression-like to impose enough demand destruction for the price to sink below the mid $70s.
Sticking with petrol it appears the Euros might come a begging to Czar Pootie-poot for gas and oil the longer the Straits remain inaccesible. Apparently Czar Vladimir has already hinted the Euros can, in Russian, “пошел нахуй.” I’m sure you can suss the meaning out of that one. If true, this volte face by the Euros is staggering in its hyprocrisy and implications. But it is far from surprising. Anyone with a halfway decent brain on their head could have seen this ugly denouement coming a mile away. Wait, a kilometer and some change. Yeah, ‘Muricans can do metric!
In genuinely good news, Indonesia has enacted a total and complete ban on the riding of elephants. When I traveled in South East Asia I refused to ride any elephants, they are too sensitive emotionally and very much deserving of my respect. As I note on X:
This is supremely welcome humane news. The limbic system in elephants is so extensive and well developed it creates “profound emotional intelligence, long-term memory, and social bonds [in elephants.] [Their] brain structure allows for intense empathy, mourning, [and] social cohesion,” making them closer to humans in social development than any other class of animals than primates and ceteceans.
Check out the photo of an elephant getting frisky with me. Suprised me to no end, you can see it in my face. This news makes me smile and happy. Somewhere somebody is doing something right. Faith in humanity remains unrestored, but a credit has been added to the depleted account of faith, nonetheless. One of my finest memories is seeing a herd of wild elephants emerging out of the bush about sixty miles south of Mysore, India in 2009. Wild effing elephants. How cool is that? Portions of my life have been truly charmed and I’m grateful.
Speaking of memories, I was only five years old when Nadia Comaneci stuck 7 perfecf tens at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, but even then I knew I was witnessing something very special. My view hasn’t changed in 50 years. And her performance is as elegant and perfect as it was then.
How about some music on this fine March Saturday morning? I’ll note in brief the quiet but powerful resurgence of political and human vitality to American music. As I post regarding Tyler Childers:
Tyler Childers’ song, “White House Road”, written in 2017, paints a generalized portrait of American misfortune and hardship, but uses the patois of the Appalachian South in particular to stoke the emotions of the listener. And it’s why Childer’s imagery works no matter where you live in the US-hell, it’s almost Dickensian and could be anywhere. The tune’s poignance is just that brutally authentic and powerfully magnetic.
Don’t, for a second, confuse this with C&W. It ain’t that. This is threadbare roots Americana. If this doesn’t stir your heart, you don’t have one.
The raw explosive emotion of Childer’s lyricism propels a simple 3-chord song (E-D-A) across the ragged, tragic and increasingly impoverished tableau of a decomposing America. Childers tells an old rural story, but ‘makes it new’ as Ezra Pound frequently exhorted young writers and poets. Indeed, there is a touch of Chris Whitley’s muse to this song.
Childers voice is a beacon of distress, masquerading as joy, “a damn good feeling to run these roads.” He sings.”Get me drinkin’ that moonshine/Get me higher than the grocery bill/Take my troubles to the highwall/Throw’em in the river and get your fill.”
His distress is amplified by his vocal register; and his range acts like the kinetic tension in an unsprung faucet, Schrodinger-like: at once blowing in a soft mountain drawl, only to tornado-up into a raspy hard emotional sucker punch landing on your solar-plexus and leaving you breathless.
Tyler is proof that there are only two types of music: good music and bad music.
I dare you to listen and not stomp your feet.
More to the point, Jack White has single-handedly reinvented and fused Delta blues, Chicago blues and rock music right back into political and cultural relevance. One example is the global adoption of his anthemic Seven Nation Army.
His appearance on SNL in 2020 is another solid proof of concept.
Honorable mention goes to the Stone Foxes and their fantastic and criminally underrated retelling of the death of Delta Blues legend Robert Johnson, “I killed Robert Johnson.” The song is 15 years old. So what, it’s aged well.
While you’re at it, this lovely morning, check out this music here and rock out to this and this. The last two are representitive of a new breed of American rock bands. You won’t hear ’em on the radio, but rock is alive. And that’s a good thing, like this cover of Dancing in the Street, by the Struts.
Who ever talks about modern dance, or takes an interest in it ought give this video a solid once over: the choreogrpahy on display is a stuning blend of traditonal renaissance era galliard or volta, early Appalachian line dancing and urban American break dance, yeah, break dancing, for a tune straight out of my Scotch-Irish heritage
While you’re at it, check out this Ryan Adams cover of the Iron Maiden classic, Wasted Years.
Last one, I promise, this Band of Heathens song, “Hanging Tree,” eeriely echoes old-timey Protestant hymns sung by a choir, except it’s about infideltiy and damn near a murder ballad. It’s about 15 years old, as well, but it has aged like a fine Irish whiskey. Lastly, I have rarely in life coveted anything. And I use the word ‘covet’ purposefully. But that Dobro he’s playing in the video: me want one something fierce. But I’m left handed and those cost upwards of $1500. Ouch!
More if it happens. Maybe.
Nota bene: Apparently Kuwait Oil has declared force majeure on oil sales. That’s not confirmed, but plausible and bad news if true. As one commenter in the X thread linked wryly noted, “You know shit has hit the fan when you have to start using French terms.”
LMFAO.
The Iranian strategy in the war has been fairly simple. They’re taking out all nearby American bases and prioritizing hitting all infrastructure, especially radar. While doing so they are running US and Israeli interceptor stocks into the ground, and driving up the price of oil, gas and potash (fertilizer.)
Attacks on radar matter. Accounts suggest that warnings for incoming missiles and drones have gone from fifteen minutes to two or three. And these radars can’t be placed in any reasonable time frame:
I wonder if China will LET the US rebuild it’s military. They do have a veto.
Meanwhile Putin is getting ready to twist the knife into Europe’s guts. The other day he was musing that since Europe intended to end all imports in 2027 anyway, perhaps Russia should just end it now. And now:
Novak: Russia will redirect gas supplies from the EU to other markets Russia is ready to supply gas to friendly countries committed to long-term, constructive relations, instead of Europe, said Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak.
“And such opportunities exist. Our companies have confirmed this today. They are already in negotiations, and gas quantities will soon be delivered to other countries,” Novak added.
It’s really hard to overstate how much the past few years have absolutely devastate Europe’s industrial position. Part of it’s just “China scale” but a lot of it has been high energy prices making Germany legacy industry (that’s almost all of Germany’s industry, they don’t have the tech lead in anything but a few obscure niches like lenses) uncompetitive. US natural gas is MUCH more expensive than Russia was.
Meanwhile Iran has targeted both Amazon and Microsoft servers, since both are used by the US and Gulf State militaries, including key targeting systems.
What the world is finding out is that an American base in your country doesn’t protect you, it makes you a target. The US can’t protect either its bases or its allies. Countries like the Phillipines, whose defense strategy was “ally with America, get American bases” have to be realizing the bases are a liability, not an asset.
The US can’t protect its allies. It can’t protect its own power projection capability. Iran hasn’t taken out any aircraft carriers, but every time it fires a salvo at them, the carrier groups scuttle another few hundred miles away, making them less and less useful.
I don’t know if this is America’s last great war, I think there’s one more left, but it’s the war that shows how hollow the US has become. Can’t defend it’s bases. Can’t defend its allies. Can’t keep the trade routes open. Can’t build enough interceptors for a real war. Can’t replace destroyed radars and other infrastructure in any reasonable time span or without Chinese aid.
As for America’s strategy? It’s wasting vast amounts of time bombing civilians, while Iran dismantles its military infrastructure.
The oil shock is going to be much worse than most people realize. Kuwait is already reducing production, all the Gulf States have limited storage and when it runs out they have to stop producing. But if you stop an oil well mid-production, it takes a long time to get them going again, same with refineries, and stopping production can damage oil fields permanently.
This is especially hurting US Asian allies. Both Japan and Korea are cruising for running out of oil and gas. But not China:
This is a complete fiasco for America and its alliance and satrapy system. If you can’t protect your allies and vassals, they are going to want OUT. And the Gulf States are already talking about reducing investments in America and even repatriation, because they’re going to have a lot of rebuilding to do.
Yet again America has wound up a baseball bat, taken a swing and hit its allies and itself.
After this it will take years for the American military to recover, if it ever does. Everyone will be safer as a result, except for a few Latin American countries it can still slap around. Even they will be scurrying to protect themselves: after all, Iran has shown how. Drones and missiles and a decentralized command system. China and Russia and Iran will be happy to sell them what they need and China at least will probably finance them at cut rates.
I remember reading some Chinese Christian Uncle’s theory that Trump was indeed chosen by God: to destroy the American empire. So far, true or not, that assumption has had very high predictive utility, almost everything Trump has done has made America weaker.
Maybe that’ll work out for the US, too, in the medium run. Losing its Empire and having nothing else to do but fix its own problems is what America needs.
But in the meantime, every day Iran makes everyone in the world safer by destroying the very sinews of American war and the myth of American superiority.
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We’ve maybe reached FAFO time for the sleeping American public. Our idiotic asshole officials and oligarchs and genocidal child-predator overlords have done did it this time.
The U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spoke about the sinking of an unarmed Iranian ship in the Indian Ocean. Here’s what he said:
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth: Last night we sunk their prize ship, the Solamani.
Looks like POTUS got him twice.
Their Navy not a factor.
Pick your adjective. It is no more.
In fact, yesterday in the Indian Ocean, and we’ll play it on the screen there, an American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death.
The first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War II like in that war back when we were still the War Department. We are fighting to win.
Alex Christoforou calls him out:
Alex Christoforou: He talked about death and destruction. He was talking like a maniac. Pete Hegseth. A very unfortunate press conference from the Secretary of War, a top official of the United States of America.
A very, very unfortunate press conference.
Just tell the American people what’s going on with the war in a professional manner.
There’s no need to to talk about death, destruction, hitting them while they’re down.
…
He took a victory lap for sinking a an Iranian ship in the Indian Ocean.And this Iranian ship was not a combat ship. It was not in combat. It had no ammunition because it was invited to India along with 200 crew members to take part in a ceremony.
It was a guest of the the Indian government, a non-combat ship which was sunk by a US submarine.
So the whole thing was was premeditated. The the US knew exactly what this ship was doing in India. They knew it was not a combat ship. They knew it had no ammunition. They knew it was taking part in a ceremony invited by the Indian government and they went to the Indian Ocean.
The submarine made its way to the Indian Ocean and decided to sink this ship. And my understanding is that all 200 crew members died.
That’s my understanding of it. I’m not sure if there were any survivors.
…
We’re starting to get statements from from India, from various people in India who are who are very, very angry at this incident pointing out that that this is embarrassing, a humiliation, completely wrong for for India to invite Iran to this ceremony and then for the United States to know that this ship is there and then to sink this ship.And the worst part is that Pete Hegseth was actually proud of this. What are you proud of? What are you freaking proud of? He thought this was some sort of of act of strength.
He was talking about this is about how this is the first time uh a submarine has sank a ship since World War II or something like that.
What are you talking about, psycho? It was there to attend a ceremony (thousands of) freaking miles away without any any weapons on on board.
I couldn’t believe what I was watching. The Secretary of War taking a victory lap for for sinking an unarmed, no ammo ship that was participating in a peaceful event invited by by India.
Hegseth and Trump and those commanding them are so ignorant of the concept of honor they can’t even pretend to have any.
Ryan Grim elaborated:
An unarmed Iranian ship was invited, along with the U.S., to be part of an Indian Naval exercise, and its sailors paraded on land before the president.
The U.S. at the last minute pulled out of the exercise and instead attacked the Iranian ship with a torpedo.
Breaking with… https://t.co/OD6RPnT8vz
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) March 5, 2026
And the cherry on top of the sundae of evil, the U.S. did not render aid in violation of every law of war and conduct:
They also failed to render aid, the Sri Lankan navy came out later to save people still left in the water. Sailors may already have drowned by then. pic.twitter.com/t8t0NiOusv
— Dan (@DanFmTo) March 4, 2026
Tuomas Malinen, a Finnish investment analyst put it succinctly:
Most of you do not get this, so let me explain, with one sentence.
The Strait of Hormuz is closed by Iranians and the U.S. navy dares only attack an unaware Iranian ship 3000 miles from this chokepoint of the global economy.
Modern U.S. navy is a bloody fucking joke.
— Tuomas Malinen (@mtmalinen) March 4, 2026
This one requires that I excerpt the full quote:
Tuomas Malinen: So, let me get this straight, @SecWar
.
You just sank an Iranian frigate, which was returning from an international naval exercise in India, near Sri Lanka. In other words, you attacked an unsuspecting “enemy ship” in international waters, thousands of nautical miles from the combat zone in the Middle East.You know, who conducted such cowardly attacks on unsuspecting naval targets before you? Nazi Germany.
And his follow up:
Most of you do not get this, so let me explain, with one sentence.
The Strait of Hormuz is closed by Iranians and the U.S. navy dares only attack an unaware Iranian ship 3000 miles from this chokepoint of the global economy.
Modern U.S. navy is a bloody fucking joke.
Even gung ho pro US merchant marine and shipping expert John Konrad is baffled as to why Hegseth would do something so stupid and chickenshit.
I’m a bit too panicked to be blogging much more at the moment. Time to stock up on canned foods, etc because these idiots have triggered the biggest oil supply shock in recorded history.
We are experiencing the largest loss of oil supply in history (3X bigger than the 1973 Arab oil embargo). The level of complacency to me is staggering. Prior playbooks do not apply!
— Eric Nuttall (@ericnuttall) March 5, 2026
In my humble opinion the current situation of markets reminds me more and more the days ahead of the Covid crash in 2020. Of course the situation today is different in many aspects, but it shares one big similarity: DENIAL
I remember vividly how at that time I was already… pic.twitter.com/OTi2jeVRNH
— JustDario 🏊♂️ (@DarioCpx) March 5, 2026
One-third of globally traded fertilizer transits Hormuz. Kpler estimates 3–3.9 million tonnes monthly.
There is no strategic reserve for nitrogen fertilizer. Oil has the SPR. Fertilizer has nothing.— Nazem Alkudsi (@LongArcNews) March 5, 2026
And starvation is just the appetizer:
OPERATION EPIC FUCKUP: Nuclear Edition
Mar 3: Trump says US running out of low-grade weapons, but plenty of high-grade weapons
Mar 4: Brandon Weichert says high-grade weapons include low-yield nukes
Mar 4: NYPost reports US tested doomsday missiles
Mar 5: Plane for nuclear… https://t.co/5U8POkr8Ir pic.twitter.com/Bm947Pajgd— GenXGirl (@GenXGirl1994) March 5, 2026
These idiots might be suicidal and/or stupid enough to trigger a nuclear war which will immediately escalate out of control just like the rest of this insane and reckless operation.
There's one thing @POTUS and @SecWar need to understand.
If you start to use nuclear weapons, even low yield (tactical) ones, against Iran, Russia will, most likely, provide Iran with weapons to reply.
Accept your defeat, like men. https://t.co/WPR8NOlb9q
— Tuomas Malinen (@mtmalinen) March 5, 2026
This is unconfirmed but seems entirely likely
🚨 BREAKING: The U.S. military reportedly carried out a parachute operation on a nuclear facility in Iran, with the forces ending up either captured or killed by Iranian forces. https://t.co/BKTR1CKybE
— The Middle East (@A_M_R_M1) March 5, 2026
There's one thing @POTUS and @SecWar need to understand.
If you start to use nuclear weapons, even low yield (tactical) ones, against Iran, Russia will, most likely, provide Iran with weapons to reply.
Accept your defeat, like men. https://t.co/WPR8NOlb9q
— Tuomas Malinen (@mtmalinen) March 5, 2026
For those looking for hopeful signs, Trump is losing the support of his base, like legendary Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter Matt “The Immortal” Brown:
I think I relate to a lot of people out there that don’t want to talk a lot about politics and govt but goddammit these crooked fucks are out there covering each others asses about Epstein island and now back to killing middle eastern people for no reason. Fuck this govt
— Matt Brown (@IamTheImmortal) March 5, 2026
And at least one former high ranking NATO official says “there is no special relationship between the U.S. and the U.K. The former does what it wants and it’s time for Britain to act in our own interest.”
In case you missed it. @SkyNews interview with Former NATO Dep Supreme Commander Allied Forces Europe didn't go the way they expected. #IranWar
— Duncan -🇬🇧🇪🇺🔶️ European #FBPE – Veteran (@dunc_saboteur) March 5, 2026
Back in 2017 Google changed their algo to prioritize “reliable” sites: aka. mainstream sources like Wikipedia. The blogosphere, what was left of it got hit hard. Now everyone’s getting hit. AI scrapes whatever someone writes and presents the information without referring traffic to whoever created the actual information.
This has been a long trend. Google and Facebook from about 2004 on slowly strangled everyone, taking almost all the value for themselves and destroying the ad-networks which existed before them. The money dried up, the audiences dwindled and sites went under, including some very large ones. Places like mine survived only because they had enough legacy goodwill, but I certainly saw massive decreases in referral traffic, especially from 2017 on.
The Web which existed has been replaced by a bunch of walled gardens, all offering the same takes. Once the Web was amazing, full of weirdness, beauty and opinion diversity. Those days are gone, perhaps never to be seen again.
This is part of an endless drive in the West towards creating oligopolies with massive profit rates. “I’ll just take 80% of the value since people can’t find you without me.”
The end result is less and less real interesting content because it pays less and less, and even people who don’t care about that can’t get an audience.
If you decide to join the crowd and post on X, instagram, Facebook, Youtube or whatever, your account can be removed at any time, and there’s no recourse. Usually you can’t even find a human to to talk to, 99% of censorship and appeals are entirely automated.
All this before the various “real ID” stuff being justified by “protecting the children” and the buy-up of both old and new media by Zionist billionaires. It’s becoming much harder to find any non oligarch approved content on the web.
It’s sad, because the web used to be a marvelous place full of the oddest most interesting people. Now it’s just a mass surveillance and value extraction machine for half a dozen billionaires.
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There’s a lot to admire about Khameini. He was personally brave (fought in the Iran/Iraq war on the front lines), he was well educated, and within the limits of his religious beliefs quite humane. He was entirely opposed to nuclear weapons.
And that last bit was his greatest failure. North Korea is fine. No North Koreans are dead because of American attacks.
Iran could have had nuclear weapons any time in the last twenty years, at least. Iran was attacked, twice, because it didn’t have nukes, not because it did.
The lesson of Israeli and American actions makes it clear that every nation in the world needs nukes. Every single one.
This is what the NPT regime and the taboo against using nukes was meant to make unnecessary. But every time. Every time I talk about the possibility of Iran winning the war someone says “well then Israel or America will nuke them.”
If this is true, it means that Iran needs and needed nukes and so does everyone else.
If nukes aren’t “off the table” for pre-emptive use, everyone needs to have them.
This is what America has wrought.
(Secondary note: as a Canadian it is in my self interest for the US to take the largest losses possible. Every hit America takes makes me and my country safer. There is only one country in the world which has threatened to annex Canada, after all, and unfortunately, no one paid attention to me over the last 30 years when I said the US wasn’t trustworthy and we needed a deterrent.)
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How about we review Cipollla’s Five Rules of Human Stupidity?
One: Everyone always and inevitably underestimates the number of stupid people in circulation.
Two: The probability that a person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
Three: A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or group of people when he or she does not benefit and may even suffer losses.
Four: Non-stupid people always underestimate the destructive power of stupid individuals.
Five: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
Rumors persist on Wall Street for a second day, natch, for a day and a bit cause it’s early yet. But the rumors are several institutional investors, read hedge funds or investment banks like Morgan or Goldman, are desperate to unload large naked shorts on oil futures.
WTI has risen from $58 to $77 in less than 30 days. Brent has spiked in a similar fashion. Urals Crude is trading between $57-$65, higher than just a few weeks ago when it traded between $45-$50.
Today is the day I cease underestimating just how stupid, stupid can get. It’s like “killing the chicken to scare the monkeys” levels of stupid have taken over.
A tweet I encountered last night and obsessed over as I followed its logic all the way to the bottom terrified me in its potential implications. The poster links to another poster highlighting a few Euro press releases lambasting Iran for such a disproportionate response to our unprovoked attack and ends with this question:
“I want to know what they think is a “proportionate” response when invaders assassinate your head of state and civilian leaders in an explicit campaign to destroy your government?”
So, follow my logic here. I replied to their posts with the following:
“This is exactly what terrifies me about Operation Epstein Fury: Trump cannot abide defeat in any way. It’s seen as a personal rebuke to his idand his constant self-aggrandizement. Moreover, the more the US is percieved to lose–the US embodied by Trump’s id—and what it loses in reality, is blamed on Iran and its evil.
No introspection from the Empire of Chaos.
No acknowledgement that we started this war.
As American losses mount and Trump’s prestige fades, the doom spiral of executive decision making begins.
As my father has always said, “there is nothing more dangerous than a coward,” which is what Trump is.
And a coward in a doom spiral with his finger on the button terrifies me to the core.
As it should terrify us all.”
Yup, I’m talking about Trump’s id. He’s a walking manifestation of the human id. He’s the epitome of Freud’s id.
The possibility of him driving humanity off a cliff is NON-ZERO. Slight, yes, but what could a man such as he do in a state of desperation?