Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Month: March 2026 Page 3 of 5

The Credit Cycle: Phase Two Accelerating

By

On March 19, 2026

18 Comments

~by Sean Paul Kelley

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.

 

Donald Trump and the Apotheosis of Chimpanzee Politics

By

On March 19, 2026

15 Comments

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?

Personal Consequences Of The Iran War

By

On March 18, 2026

19 Comments

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.

In Memoriam: John Timothy Ater April 10, 1953-January 20, 2026

By

On March 17, 2026

13 Comments

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:

Mass Disabling Continues

By

On March 16, 2026

31 Comments

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.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 14, 2026

By

On March 15, 2026

12 Comments

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 14, 2026

by Tony Wikrent

 

War

US Navy tells shipping industry Hormuz escorts not possible for now

Jonathan Saul, March 10, 2026 [Reuters, via gcaptain]

The U.S. Navy has refused near-daily requests from the shipping industry for military escorts through the Strait of Hormuz since ​the start of the war on Iran, saying the risk of attacks is too high for now, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The ‌Navy’s assessments spell continued disruption to Middle East oil exports and reflect a divergence from President Donald Trump’s statements that the U.S. is prepared to provide naval escorts whenever needed to restart regular shipments along the key waterway….
The U.S. Navy has held regular ⁠briefings with shipping and oil industry counterparts and has said during those briefings it is unable to provide escorts for the time being, three shipping industry sources familiar with ​the matter said….
Malte Humpert, March 11, 2026 [gcaptain]
Mick Schuler, March 11, 2026 [gcaptain]
[TW: The gcaptain articles were used by Sam Mercogliano, professor at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, in his YouTube podcast, “What’s Going on With Shipping: Shipping is Afire in the Persian Gulf” ]

Zachary Cohen, Phil Mattingly, Kevin Liptak, Kylie Atwood, March 12, 2026 [CNN, via [Talking Points Memo]

Top Trump officials acknowledged to lawmakers during recent classified briefings that they did not plan for the possibility of Iran closing the strait in response to strikes, according to three sources familiar with the closed-door session.

The reason, multiple sources said, was administration officials believed closing the strait would hurt Iran more than the US — a view that was bolstered by Iran’s empty threats to act in the strait after US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last summer….

Trump’s preference of leaning on a tight circle of close advisers in his national security decision making [which] had the effect of sidelining interagency debate over the potential economic fallout.

 

 

Why America is Losing the War With Iran (w/ John Mearsheimer)

Chris Hedges, Mar 11, 2026

…John Mearsheimer

Yeah, it’s quite remarkable, Chris, that none of Trump’s predecessors took the bait when the Israelis tried to trap us into going to war against Iran. And you want to remember in 2024, Joe Biden’s last year as president, the Israelis twice, once in April and then second in October of that year, tried to trap Biden into going to war against Iran and he refused to do it.

And Trump is the first president who fell into the trap and of course he did it last June during the Twelve Day War. You want to remember in the Twelve Day War, the Israelis by themselves started that conflict on June 13th and it ended on June 25th….

Yudhajit Shankar Das, Jun 23, 2025 [indiatoday.in]
The US, which has attacked Iran’s nuclear sites, once supplied the Islamic Republic with HAWK surface-to-air and TOW anti-tank missiles despite an arms-export ban. The covert deal during the Reagan era 40 years ago, known as the Iran-Contra case, became one of America’s biggest political scandals.

U.S. Begins Withdrawing THAAD Missile Defence Systems From South Korea to Replenish Losses in War with Iran 

[Military Watch, via Naked Capitalism 03-11-2025].

 

 

Iran targets Turkey’s Incirlik air base housing US nuclear bombs; sirens trigger panic

Manmath Nayak, March 13, 2026 [indiatvnews.com]

 

 

Ted Postol: U.S. Missile Defense Is ‘A Giant Technical Fraud’

Thomas Neuburger, March 13, 2026 [God’s Spies]

There’s a mountain of good information in this video interview/presentation by Dr. Ted Postol, MIT professor emeritus of Science, Technology, and International Security. More on Ted Postol here. He’s truly pre-eminent in his field.

If you want to know what missiles are used by Iran, how they work, and how they defeat U.S.-supplied missile defenses, settle down and watch. You won’t be disappointed.

 

 

Iran Cows US Navy into Submission in Hormuz Standoff 

Simplicius [via Naked Capitalism 03-12-2025]

…All internal rumors point to neither the Israeli or US side having anticipated the Iranian “regime” surviving so intact.

One of the reasons for this is that in the wake of the last ‘12 Day War’ you may recall Iran carried out a massive purge of Mossad assets throughout the country, with hundreds of agents apprehended, thousands of pieces of sabotage equipment confiscated, etc. After the Mossad network was neutered, it seems the threat of color revolutions and destabilization of the leadership was no more….

The biggest development revolves around Iran reportedly beginning to deploy naval mines in the strait, although there is some contention regarding this. The US appears to be trying to minimize the panic by claiming Iran has only deployed “10 mines” and that the US has been destroying Iranian minelayers. All the while, the IRGC has released videos showing they can lay mines via rockets fired from inland.

The US has even begun making up lies about escorting tankers through the strait, only for them to be humiliatingly retracted….

WSJ reports that Iran itself is exporting “more oil than ever before” through its own straits. This is obviously perplexing: how is the US allowing Iran to do that?

On one hand, one Iranian tanker was said to be hit, presumably by US forces. On the other hand, it’s clear there may be secret allowances at play because we know Kharg Island has not been taken out, and the obvious speculation is that US is afraid to ‘rock the boat’ economically, even if it means sparing Iranian oil and letting it flow.

This more than anything shows the limits of US military capability as the US is not capable of defeating its enemy swiftly enough to preclude the types of economic shocks now at danger of spilling out. They may have done it in Venezuela, but the Iran conflict more than anything else validates the Venezuelan operation was a fake with behind-the-scenes betrayal at play, rather than a determined force putting up a real fight….

 

 

Armageddon Now! Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Program

Kevin Kirk, March 12, 2026 [Naked Capitalism]

[TW: This is a detailed summary of Isreal’s development and construction of nuclear weapons, which included covert assistance from France, Britain, and South Africa. Revelations include the dumping of nuclear waste in Palestinian areas with no safety measures at all, and how Iran has achieved some level of deterrence, including the probability Iran has acquired nuclear weapons from North Korea. ]

…Other dump sites in Palestinian territory are in the Eastern hills of the West Bank. For example, 80 barrels of Israeli waste were physically uncovered in the city of Hebron with another 120 found in the town of Al Ezareya, just outside Jerusalem.  Palestinian health authorities in the West Bank grew increasingly alarmed after their monitors detected massive radioactive, pesticide and other toxins leaching into the water supply. The IDF responded by smashing the sensors and raiding their offices, where they destroyed the data then threw all of the equipment out of a 5th floor window….

Israel also dumps its waste on the Egyptian and Jordanian borders after ensuring that the prevailing winds will carry the radioactive dust out of Israeli territory. This is creating health problems for people living in those areas. For example, in the Al Tafila governorate of Jordan, downwind of the waste dumps on the Jordanian border, cancer rates, particularly amongst children, are up to five times more prevalent than anywhere else in the country.…

According to analysis undertaken by the Belorussian military, BELTA, the likelihood of a nuclear strike being undertaken against Iran by Israel is, in their opinion, extremely low. This is because of the Iranian threat to completely destroy Dimona (on a day when the wind blows to the north) and a massive missile attack that would destroy all of the vital services needed for everyday life in Israel, like desalination plants, power stations, ports and refineries. Iran also threatened to destroy ALL of the energy infrastructure in the Middle East, threatening worldwide energy supplies for years to come. It is definitely not in the USA’s best interests, nor Israel’s, because it would achieve the opposite effect of what this war is purportedly about: the elimination of another nuclear power in the Middle East, because Iran would undoubtedly either build a bomb or acquire one from elsewhere. North Korea (DPRK) has already developed (and tested) a bomb for Iran back in 2012. Iran paid for its development and given the passage of time it is more than possible that Iran already has nuclear weapons (two can play the strategic ambiguity game)….

 

 

How Close Is Israel to Maximum Escalation? “The situation in Israel is dire,” say many observers.

Thomas Neuburger, Mar 11, 2026 [God’s Spies]

[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 03-12-2025]

THE ENTIRE CHIP INDUSTRY IS ABOUT TO SHUT DOWN AND NOBODY IS PANICKING YET No helium. No semiconductors. No phones. No AI. No future.
Samsung and SK Hynix just went on HIGH ALERT. Ships carrying helium have stopped moving through the Gulf.

Here’s how this destroys everything — step by step:→ Helium is used to cool semiconductor manufacturing equipment→ Without it, chip fabs CANNOT operate→ There is NO substitute for helium in this process→ Most of the world’s helium ships through Gulf routes now under fire→ South Korea makes 60% of the world’s memory chips→ Samsung and SK Hynix supply Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, every AI company on Earth….

A Farewell To Arms Supplies 

Aurelien, March 11, 2026  [Trying to Understand the World, via Naked Capitalism 03-11-2025]

The fact that a force was constituted and deployed without any real idea of what it was supposed to achieve is actually a lot more common than is often realised. History books are full of apparently stupid decisions to start wars or reinforce failure for reasons that appear insane in retrospect, as well as being generally divorced from the realities of the time. But this conceals a larger issue: such decisions are rarely taken for a single reason, and often result from the interaction of all sorts of different pressures and ambitions. They may also be based on partially or completely false understandings of the situation, or indeed just plain wish-fulfilment. Some are based on over-confidence, others on fear that waiting will make the position even worse….

If I ever write another book on history, I’m going to call it The Alternative was Worse, to underline the point that most decisions about war and peace are sub-optimal, and often the consequences of a search for the least bad solution….

It’s obvious that the current US/Israeli assault on Iran is a good case of this. It’s not so much that strategic objectives seem to change daily in Washington, as that there are a whole host of different motivations, some mutually contradictory, held by different people who go before the cameras on different occasions to say different things. All they have in common is a vague conviction that Iran should be attacked. And it’s a classic error of pundits to imagine that because many different actors in a national capital publicly support something, there is therefore a united policy, let alone an agreed plan. In many cases, vague but impressive-sounding strategic soundbites are all they can agree on, and they differ violently about everything else….

…So far as I can see, there are “cooler heads” in the sense of those who think a military campaign isn’t the best way to destroy Iran, but few who actually advocate learning to live with it. Thus, sudden changes in announced “objectives,” simply mean that another way of punishing Iran has come into favour or fashion. Linked to this, of course, is a profound, willed, ignorance about the country itself and its internal politics….

… Modernisation Theory. This began in the 1950s and 1960s with the belief that economic growth and modernisation would produce democratic, rational, secular political systems….

It’s not just Iran, either. Incoherent ideas derived from Modernisation Theory help to explain the disastrous failure in Iraq: left to themselves, and with the evil Saddam removed, the Iraqis would move rapidly along the path to a modern liberal democratic market economy, because that was the destiny of all societies. Religious forces were so yesterday, and thus could be discounted. Likewise, the arrival of the Islamic State first in Iraq and then in Syria was such a shock because the very idea of religion, not just as a political mobilising factor but as a complete and unchallengeable guide to life, had been unknown in the West since the seventeenth century….

…The residual influence of Modernisation Theory even today is such that western leaders and the media assume that every country is full of People Like Us standing ready to take over the reins of government, and that by contrast if a country is run by People Not Like Us, then the vast majority of the population must be waiting for Us to overthrow the government for them. And yes, it’s actually as dumb as that….

… So we can see the fundamental, and typical, US error in assuming that the Iranian regime was fragile, that removal of a small number of its leaders would bring the system down, and that People Like Us were ready to take over….

… very tangible hard limits brought to you by all these clever people who outsourced and globalised everything ….

Electronic Fog of War: GPS Spoofing Distorts Ship Traffic Near Hormuz

Mike Schuler, March 10, 2026 [gcaptain]

“Vessel tracks show clear inconsistencies when compared with simultaneous vessel movements and reported headings,” MarineTraffic said, noting the apparent transits are the result of satellite navigation interference rather than actual vessel activity….

The Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC) said in its latest advisory issued March 10 that the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters remain at a “critical operational risk level” for commercial shipping amid the escalating conflict with Iran. Over the past 24 hours, more than 600 GNSS disruption events have been reported across the operational area, according to aggregated open-source monitoring and maritime reporting, with documented impacts including positional offsets, AIS anomalies, and intermittent signal degradation.

A separate update from the EU’s Maritime Security Centre – Indian Ocean (MSCIO) warns that heavy GPS and AIS spoofing is continuing across the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman, adding that disruptions have also affected communications and radar systems.

The advisory states that navigation systems in the region are “highly likely to be unreliable”, urging vessels to rely more heavily on radar and visual navigation methods when operating in the area.

Why Little Was Done to Head Off Oil’s Strait of Hormuz Problem

Rebecca F. Elliott and Vivian Nereim, March 14, 2026 [New York Times]

…The reason there is no true alternative comes down to a combination of geography, political tensions and economic competition among the region’s oil powers. There have been efforts to circumvent the strait, notably by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But the pipelines through those countries can carry only a small fraction of the energy produced in the Persian Gulf.
For many other energy-producing countries in the region, the only way to avoid the strait would be to lay a pipeline across a neighboring country — an expensive and politically fraught endeavor. Take Qatar, one of the world’s biggest natural gas exporters. Its only land border is with Saudi Arabia — a country that cut off diplomatic ties and closed that border during a regional spat resolved five years ago. Plus, any pipeline would itself be vulnerable to Iranian attacks….

I Was a US Intelligence Analyst. Here’s What a Ground Invasion of Iran Could Look Like

Harrison Mann, Mar 10, 2026 [Zeteo]

US intelligence shows Iran government is not at risk of collapse: Sources 

[Reuters, via Naked Capitalism 03-13-2025]

Will the Iran Price Shock Break the World?

Matt Stoller, Mar 09, 2026 [BIG]

[TW: Remember Obama boasted about how his policies facilitating fracking had boosted US oil production? The horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing used to tap shale oil reserves allowed the US to produce 12.9 million barrels of oil per day in 2023, the highest annual average ever. In 2019, for the first time in decades, the U.S. was a net exporter of crude and refined oil. Imports of oil dropped to almost one tenth of what they had been: 2022 imports of about 1.6 million barrels per day compared to 12 million barrels per day in 2005.

[So, if the US is not using oil from the Middle East, why have gasoline prices in the US increased? The cost of producing oil in the US has not increased one iota because of Trump’s Epstein Fury war. But profits sire have. Over a decade ago, a number of observers explained how increases US gas prices go almost entirely to enrich financial speculators. Most prominent among these was Michael Greenberger, who served as director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Obama administration. I was saddened to learn, in searching for Greenberger’s articles on the role of speculation in gas prices, that he had passed just three months ago. ]

 

Make Markets Be Markets: Restoring the Integrity of the U.S. Financial System (pdf)

Roosevelt Institute, March 3, 2010

The crisis of 2008 was predictable.  Unless we go far beyond current legislative
proposals the next crisis is inevitable.

The structure of our current financial markets does not reflect the critical mar
ket principles that once allowed our economy to flourish– principles like trans
parency, competition, and free flow of information. And it has not been subject
to the most important principle of all — the opportunity for market participants
to fail.  We all know the result. Financial sector CEOs have relied on taxpayer
support. They have benefitted from express taxpayer bailouts as well as secret
“back door” deals. They continue to lead companies that seem to make profit
but actually only thrive because of government subsidies and taxpayer support.
Make Markets Be Markets: Restoring the Integrity of the U.S. Financial System
is the result of months of discussions among the country’s leading financiers,
market experts, academics and former regulators….

Testimony of Michael Greenberger before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
on Excessive Speculation: Position Limits and Exemptions (PDF)

August 5, 2009 [Commodity Futures Trading Commission]

Speculation and Criminal Manipulation of Food and Commodities Prices

Lambert Strether, April 14, 2012 [Naked Capitalism]

The Price of Oil – Where the Outrage?

Payam Sharifi, February 18, 2011 [Naked Capitalism]

Read More

Open Thread

By

On March 14, 2026

32 Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Drones Are Weapons Of The Weak #3: The Americas

By

On March 13, 2026

19 Comments

Back in 2012 I wrote that American inventing drone technology was a self own. They’re easy to make, and over time everyone would learn how to do so. Iran has about 40K, according to most estimates. But that isn’t the key, the key is that they’re easy to make. Any boat builder or auto repair shop could make them:

An Iranian-made Shahed-136 drone is a simple weapon. The delta wings, which span 2.5 meters, are made of fiberglass and end in two fixed vertical stabilizers. The rear control fins are operated by simple servos. The drone carries an autopilot system, a global positioning receiver, and a data module. Propulsion is provided by a basic air-cooled four piston motor, made of cast aluminum, producing 50 horsepower to drive a pusher propeller. While built to aviation specifications, the motor is not unlike that found on a small motorcycle. The drone can fly at a speed of 185 kilometers per hour while carrying a 40-kilogram warhead over a distance of 2,000 kilometers.

This is the sort of weapon where the production is almost impossible to stop. Nothing in it is particularly sophisticated and everything you need to make it is available, cheap, from China. Nor are any of the parts all that hard for any real nation or even strong non governmental organization to make. (Hezbollah makes many of its own drones and has for a long time.)

Missiles are also relatively simple, certainly compared to manned fighters and bombers. The combination of the two has up-ended warfare as we’re seeing today, as Iran completely wrecks the Middle East and no one can stop them. Literally short of using strategic nukes (tac nukes wouldn’t work) they can’t be stopped, especially since they have a land supply line to China and China is the big winner in this war, which is bringing the global American Empire to an end.

Every Latin American country needs to take note. Enough drones and some missiles and you can tell the US to go fuck itself. If they try to interdict your shipping, well, that’s what drone carriers are for.

America’s global Empire is over after this war, but it will attempt to remain the hegemonic power in the Americas. That means everyone, including Canada and Mexico, needs to arm up, learning from the Iranians. And unlike Iran, if America wants a war with its neighbours, well, that war can come home. At this point America has no effective missile or drone defenses left. Attack anyone within range, and their own cities and domestic military bases can be hit.

Hopefully arming up will be sufficient, and actually bringing the heavy hand of war to the continental US won’t be necessary, but all nations in the Americas should start preparing to do so, because once it loses its global Empire there’s a good chance America will, even more than it already has, turn to attacking its neighbours.

This site is only viable due to reader donations. If you value it and can, please subscribe or donate.

Page 3 of 5

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén