Ian Welsh

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

Category: Economics Page 1 of 101

A Billionaire Has A Psychotic Religious Break With Reality

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On October 15, 2026

22 Comments

Billionaires are powerful. Peter Thiel isn’t the richest billionaire in the world, but he is an American billionaire who runs the most important intelligence firm in the world, Palantir.

Thiel’s gay, a protestant, and appears to have gone stark raving mad. You’ve probably heard about his Antichrist lectures. A simple summary is:

Thiel has previously written and lectured on the subject, arguing that the Antichrist is not necessarily a person but could come as a global government system. It would take control, he has argued, by exploiting people’s fears around artificial intelligence, climate change or nuclear war.

Exploiting fears? Like the insane 72% of Americans who thought Iraq was involved in 9/11? The massive scare campaign around Iran?

No–actual legitimate issues. Climate change is real, nuclear war is possible and the very founders of AI constantly publicly worry about AI ending humanity. (Well perhaps the AI bit is bullshit.)

Now it’s possible that Thiel is just running an op–that he doesn’t believe any of this and is simply trying to whip up religious folks, especially Evangelicals (a religion that is reversal of much of what Jesus preached) against policies he hates. Being kind, perhaps he genuinely thinks that the world is in danger of world government and it will be achieved thru fear.

But I think it’s more likely he’s had a religious psychotic break, confusing his own desires and prejudices with religious teachings.

And the generous reading fades the more one knows:

He describes the ICC as part of the emerging ideological architecture of the Antichrist, likening language on the ICC’s website to the antichristic talk of peace and safety in 1 Thessalonians. Thiel notes that the ICC’s arrest warrants for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have limited where they can travel.

The ICC warrant meant Netanyahu couldn’t visit Poland on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp; though Poland’s president said he wouldn’t enforce it, Poland’s authority to defy the ICC wasn’t clear, and so the Israeli PM didn’t come.

Hungary, which belong to the ICC, allowed Netanyahu to travel to their country, with zero consequences, so this is false.

But the bigger point is that he’s weaponizing the Bible to say that doing good is bad. Netanyahu has lead a genocide, there isn’t a single human rights org in the world that I know of that has concluded anything else, and anyone who two brain cells to rub together knows it is true, because it’s been livestreamed and Israeli politicians are very clear that they want to get rid of all Palestinians, and a super-majority of Israelis agree.

Thiel’s been very dedicated to this message. He repeats it over and over again.

And what he’s saying is batshit insane. He’s either gone crazy or is acting crazy and to some extent it doesn’t matter which.

But because he’s a billionaire, and an important one (the US Vice President is his creature, plus he’s shown a vicious willingness to use his power to destroy his enemies), no one has pointed that what he’s saying is crazy.

Being good at making money doesn’t mean you’re smart or wise about anything else. We hang on the words of billionaires as if they’re pearls of wisdom, but the more billionaires we have minted, the worse the economy has become for a super-majority of the population.

If you want a Bible quote, here’s one for you: “by their fruits you shall judge them.”

By the fruits of Western billionaires, they’re terrible people and any advice they give, whether they’re having a break with reality or not, are meant to benefit them and their class, and not anyone else.

Google made search worse to juice profits. Facebook knew scammers were on their site, knew who many of them were, and did nothing, because they were making money off them. We now have online gambling and prediction markets which make casinos look like a good deal. Enshitification is word, and a thing, and it’s driven by billionaires caring only about themselves and their profits.

Anyone who listens to them without running what they say through “this person only cares about themselves” is a fool.

But Thiel’s gone a step further. The Antichrist?

Come on.

This worship of wealth as meaning someone is wise and smart is foolish. Most of them are only good at making money and buying political power. But beyond that foolishness, a sane society would look at Thiel’s Antichrist claims and laugh him out of the public sphere as a lunatic. That we don’t shows how far our societies have fallen into “The Emperor’s New Clothes” territory.

Until we purge the entire oligarchic class in the West, we will never have widespread prosperity or an information commons which is useful. It’s that simple. In the meantime, can we at least not pretend that religious mania is worth listening to?

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

Buy, Borrow, Die—Another Way the Rich Avoid Taxes

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On October 8, 2026

12 Comments

One of the long term themes of my writing is that the rich have engineered a system in the West which insures they will continue to get richer, generally in a way which simultaneously impoverishes everyone else.

Buy, borrow, die is another example. The idea is simple enough: rich people

  1. Buy or otherwise obtain assets. Ideally these are assets which produce income or capital gains, but if you have a millions of dollars of stocks that works. This is one main reason for stock and option grants: they don’t register as income per se, and thus aren’t taxed as income but as capital, which means they aren’t taxed until you sell them, no matter how much they appreciate.
  2. Borrow is the next step: use your assets as collateral. Loan rates for the rich are usually 1.5 to 2% higher than short term treasury rates (which means that from 2008 to 2020 they were rarely more than 3%, they’re higher now, especially due to Trump’s insane war with Iran and its consequences for treasury rates. This rate of interest is far lower than you would pay for capital gains taxes, let alone income
  3. Die. When you die the price of your assets for estate tax purposes are reset to how much you bought them for. So your heirs pay taxes as if there had been no appreciation in asset prices.

This has been going on for a long time, but only become the default for “high net worth individuals” after 2008. It’s viable somewhere between ten and 30 million dollars of wealth.

In order for this to work, of course, you need to know that asset prices and returns on income producing assets will be higher than borrowing costs. Fortunately ever since Greenspan and his infamous Greenspan’s Put, the Federal Reserve has always insured that the stock market and asset prices in general, always rise fast. This has broken down a bit with real estate assets since 2020, but the stock market is reaching unseen highs regularly, and unlike in the pre-Reagan era, there are no sustained bear markets.

This is, again, a policy choice. It doesn’t have to be this way. Doing this in China would not work even if the law allowed it, because the stock market isn’t juiced and doesn’t provide essentially automatic increases. It does work in most, perhaps all Western nations, though in general other countries aren’t quite so permissive. The “die” part also required some significant changes to estate taxes for it to be viable for the merely rich (tens of millions) as opposed to the really rich with hundreds of millions or more.

As a result of this the rich often pay far less in taxes, as a percentage, than the upper middle class, especially highly paid professionals who still mostly get their money from wages.

I’m going to return to this later, but for now the important thing is simply to understand that the economy, which includes the tax system, is set up structurally to favor the rich. Yes, they still wind up paying a lot of taxes in absolute terms, but in proportional terms they often pay less than ordinary citizens. Warren Buffet famously noted that he paid a lower percentage of his income than his secretary did.

This is also organized to keep wealth together over generations, creating an oligarchic aristocracy, which is something America’s founders were very much opposed to. Along with permission for oligopoly, monopoly, price fixing and the structure of monetary production (many rich people are connected to banks and other financial firms which are allowed to create money out of thin air), plus law changes like Citizen’s United (money is speech so restrictions on election spending are illegal) this is a structural preference for oligarchy.

The only way to end this requires significant legislative changes, along with changes to the Supreme Court makeup, since as it stands right now the Supremes would strike down any laws intended to challenge oligarchy.

Since oligarchs own the politicians and the supreme court, this won’t happen unless the rich lose their power in a Great Crash that even the Fed and Treasury can’t bail them out from, and since they can print as much money as they want, that means it isn’t going to happen short of some sort of revolution. The money as speech decision makes it unlikely this will be an electoral revolution (though not entirely impossible), so it will likely require a full revolution.

If that doesn’t happen America’s decline will continue until it is just a larger version of Brazil or India: lots of poor people, a small but prosperous upper middle class who are direct retainers of the rich and a mass of poor people.

It’s quite clever really, the only downside is that this sort of financialization and rentierism weakens America as a whole since returns on manufacturing can’t match financial returns under this sort of economic engineering, and industrial power is effectively military power in the post-industrial revolution world.

America’s oligarchs have thus chosen American decline in exchange for what they hope is permanent oligarch status.

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

America Continues To Destroy Its International Markets

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On October 1, 2026

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Sanctions come with a cost. When the US, in Trump’s first term, put chip sanctions on China and particularly sanctioned Huawei (the leader in 5g networks), it galvanized China. They pivoted hard to supporting internal chip companies, and over time moved their government computers off US software. Huawei survived, prospered and created its own operating system. In the past couple years China has actually forbid import of US chips, though some still come in thru the gray market.

This isn’t an isolated issue. One of the reasons, ironically, that Iran is so strong in many ways is because of sanctions: they were forced to create their own industrial base, not just in weapons, but in things like railroads, engines, boilers, etc, etc… When Iranian infrastructure was destroyed by the US earlier this year much of it was very quickly repaired: to the extent they have dependencies, they are on China and to a lesser extent Russia.

The US can’t stop itself: as their military and industrial might has declined they have relied more and more on sanctions. Not only has this lead to other countries (particularly Russia and China) creating their own payment systems and offering those payment systems to their trading partners, but it has vastly decreased the market for US tech.

In  order to protect Israel and Netanyahu from sanctions, it hit one of its allies:

The Netherlands is following China, France, and Russia in moving to break the global stranglehold of US tech dominance, it was revealed this week.

The Dutch government was shocked into action after the US remotely disabled the computers of judges in the Hague who criticized Israel leader Benjamin Netanyahu. The sudden loss of ICC staff’s Outlook email accounts caused significant problems.

The US reserves the right to unilaterally sanction anyone, anywhere in the world–all your Google accounts could disappear in an instant. Bye-bye, gmail. “The Dutch government is creating its own digital work environment based on the Dutch Linux distribution NixOS,” said Jasper Bakker of news website Tweakers.

Once lost these markets won’t come back. Countries which create their own tech, will use it. Getting civilians to transfer over is harder, most non-government, non corporate computers in China still run Windows, but Huawei created HarmonyOS, and it’s getting traction. I would expect that in a few years China will cease the sale of Windows in China, and new computers will have to come with non US operating systems.

Every source of American power, for about 35 years, has been subject to systematic dismantling. Industry was offshored, they stopped refining and mining many key resources, sanctions were abused, dollar privilege was abused, and so on. Generally the external actions didn’t hit allies/vassals–until recently, but Trump has been on a tear: forcing the Netherlands to stop selling China chip making machines, for example, which the CEO of ASML predicted would lead to China developing its own advanced chip making machines. (They’re still behind, but they’ve progressed far faster than most people predicted.)

The thing about crippling sanctions is that they don’t work on real countries in the medium term. China and Russia are real countries, with their own industrial bases, plenty of scientists and engineers and access to resources the US can’t sanction. Cutting them off just speeds up internal development or shifts to other suppliers. If you’re going to exploit a critical vulnerability, you should do so only against those who can’t substitute or as prelude to a war: and that war needs to be soon, before they adapt.

Anyway, this continued nonsense is pushing even vassals to reduce their vulnerability, and while Europe is still prostrate, these sorts of actions build the basis for a break from US hegemony–and cost American companies billions. Likewise, as people move off US tech, as it loses its ubiquity, a lot of power is lost: people use many techs because “everyone uses them”. Network effects are huge, but each of these hits reduces those network effects.

It’s extraordinarily foolish (and Nvidia’s CEO pointed this out) but it’s US policy. America thinks its indispensable, and once it was, but it’s doing everything possible to make it so that other countries will do whatever is necessary to make it dispensable.

Truly, American elites, while vicious and cunning are some of the worst long term strategists I’ve ever seen.

 

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

The Psychology Of Elite Depravity

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On September 26, 2026

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So, why are so many members of the elite pedophiles?

It starts with the fact that money or power gets you pretty much anything you want that’s legal. If you’ve wanted to do something, you can and you do. Hedonic adjustment sets in: if you can have all the boy toys and booze and fine homes and massages and trips and fine cuisine you want, after a while you get bored of it.

It comes second from “elite impunity”, the fact that in most countries a lot of laws aren’t enforced against rich or powerful people. Do crack, go to prison? Have a pricey cocaine habit, like half of American elites in the 80s, and you’re not touched. (Leaving aside immunities like being able to steal employees wages without usually being called on it, and when you are, not going to jail.)

The general observation is true: elites go to prison only when they prey on other elites.

The third bit is how sensual pleasures work. If something is forbidden, if it has powerful taboos around it, like pedophilia, or cannibalism or incest or rape or sacrilege, then when you perform those actions you get much more of a rush from it — powerful emotions are released when violate strong emotional prohibitions.

So you get wealth or power, you use it to enjoy all the things you wanted which are legal, and hedonic adjustment sets in.

All that is left are forbidden pleasures, and as a bonus, those forbidden pleasures come with an extra hedonic boost as long as you’re impaired in your guilt function. But if you’re rich and powerful, over time, your compassion and empathy die (this is well attested to in the literature). You’re used to having your way and to using other people as means to ends which benefit you, not them.

So–extra enjoyment from breaking taboos and unlike ordinary people, no guilt because you can’t feel compassion or empathy for your victims.

And you’re still basically immune. Oh Epstein eventually went to prison and was suicided, but we’ve all seen how those who partook of his services have been protected: how the Epstein files were redacted and no one was indicted.

All the taboo breaking hedonic highs with almost zero likelihood of going to prison.

Then there’s the simple fact that if you’ve got power, other people with power like to have blackmail on you. (Mossad says “hi”, but they are hardly the only panderering blackmailers.) After all, if you’ve got power, you might decide to do something that isn’t good for other elites: blackmail (and remember, Epstein’s properties had hidden cameras everywhere) takes that option off the table.

Elites thus are always at far more risk of engaging in egregious behaviour than ordinary people. It doesn’t show up in stats because elites are in charge and don’t arrest each other. Even those who don’t partake, either because they have some vestige of ethics left, or because they’re smart and don’t want to open themselves to blackmail rarely go after other elites because once there are enough corrupt evil blackmailed elites, there’s no way to get through that vanguard and if you threaten them they’ll band together and destroy you. (See Thomas Massie, the Representative who has pushed releasing the Epstein files the hardest and who lost his primary to a massive influx of outside money.)

Wealth and power are deeply corrupting. They don’t corrupt everyone, but they can corrupt a plurality, and once the threshold where a plurality have been corrupted by evil acts, the system becomes self-sustaining: impossible to stop.

This is the sort of thing that Xi headed off. The Communist party and wealthy oligarchs were becoming corrupt, though as far as I know not yet to the level of pedophile rings. He headed it off with a savage crackdown.

Eventually some future leader will fail to do so, and China’s elites too will become corrupted: it’s a virtually universal experience.

And once you hit that point it generally requires revolution of one sort or another to clean up the mess.

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

Conditions for Revolutionary Change In The West: Fiscal

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On September 24, 2026

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The traditional revolutionary change requirements are:

  1. An inability to pay military, police and functionaries.
  2. A split in the elite.
  3. Popular revolt.

As a rule, all three are necessary.

In the Russian revolution, the military was noticeably absent, or in the case of the Navy, actually revolted. Near the end, with the old government in the Winter Palace and protestors outside, the cadets being used as guards refused to fight, the Cossacks which the government expected to come rescue them never showed up, and navy sailors helped organize the crowds outside and storm the Palace.

There’s a lot of confusion around this issue, and a fair bit of comes from the idea that money doesn’t matter, because you can always print more.

Sure.

How’d that work for the Weimar Republic?

The bottom line is that money is only good for buying what exists or what is close to existing.

What we’ve been seeing for about 60 years now is:

  1. price increases higher than wage increases.
  2. Deindustrialization.

This means the West is making less of what its own populations need, and the populations can afford less of what does exist. Internal capacity is collapsing. (Ignore CPI, it’s not just a lie, it’s a damned lie. Expenses have risen far faster than it suggests.)

The solution to this, such as it was, was to trade: buy what is needed from other countries. The West was almost the sole supplier of goods that other countries wanted: planes, cars, advanced electronics, weapons and so on. For a while the USSR was an alternative, but as time went by that alternative became less and less viable, until the collapse of the USSR, at which point the West was pretty much the only game in town.

But Western elites were drinking their own kool-aid. They wanted reduced wages and environmental protection costs, so they decided to move production overseas, especially to China. Now China can make almost everything that any country might want: they don’t have to buy from America, and as the technical ability to avoid the dollar payment system increases, that means they don’t need the West.

Recently, what we’ve seen is a reduction in Western coercive ability. Not a complete loss of it (yet), as Venezuela and Cuba and Greenland show, but a serious loss in power. In fact the pivot to coercing weak nearby states and vassals is due to the weakness: the US can’t win far from its territory, but it’s still scary to Latin America and Europe.

This isn’t just about the US though, France had its own sphere of African interests, with military bases throughout multiple ex-colonies. It essentially ran multiple countries. Almost all of them have now run the French out. The French nuclear system, for example, used heavily discounted uranium from African vassals.

Trump seized Venezuela’s oil and has locked down Greenland’s resources, but he’s lost the Middle East. (Yes the war continue. Yes the US has lost and the American Middle Eastern Raj is dying and will not be saved.) Africa would far rather do business with China.

So would Latin America, but American military might, “NGOs”, diplomats and intelligence services have so far mostly been able to keep Latin America in the American sphere. So far. As the ability to use naval forces to project forces declines (and it is and will) this will end, though the process may take a couple decades and a lot of pain.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that the US is becoming much more poor and will continue to do so. Its coercive abilities are low, it has lost Africa and is losing the Middle East. Even Asian countries which have disputes with China (Vietnam, for example) are integrating with China’s economy.

Can’t make it. Can’t force as many countries to sell to the US for cheap. Has much less to sell to the world that it wants at a reasonable price, since China sells all the same things for less.

At this point the system’s only remaining pillar is dollar privilege. Everything is bought and sold in dollars, the US can print dollars, and the US can thus keep buying what it needs.

Except when it can’t, as with rare earths, industrial magnets, and other resources and goods China has decided to stop selling to America, which it can’t make itself and for which there is no adequate alternative supply. These goods, by the way, are necessary for American weapons, and without them the US military will keep becoming weaker and unable to rebuild its arsenal. (On the other hand, Russia and Iran and North Korea all get as much of these goods from China as they need.)

And dollar privilege is ending. Oh it goes back and forth, the US is fighting tooth and nail to keep it going, but the trend is clear. Abuse of sanctions, in particular, has made it clear to everyone outside the West, and even to some inside the West, that being in the dollar system: settling trades in dollars, is a huge vulnerability.

I assume the picture is clear: America can’t make as much, can’t force other countries to sell for cheap, has less to trade that can’t be bought for less somewhere else, and soon won’t just be able to print dollars and buy it anyway.

This brings us back to the enforcer class. Police in America are paid VERY well.

With overtime it’s not unusual for police salaries to hit the mid hundred thousands.

Cops are, generally, pretty well paid.

The military is less so, with salaries in the mid 30K range being common for non-NCO enlisted members.

Cops are well paid because they enforce the laws.

“Duh,” you say, but the point I’m making is that they break strikes, intimidate protesters, enforce property laws and steal more money from people than burglars do–but not from elites. Laws are set up to favor elites and cops are how laws that are unfair are enforced.

They’re frontline against the possibility of change. During the American revolution, those unhappy with officials would gather in large groups and go “have a talk” with their representatives. That sort of thing is basically impossible now.

It should be obvious why it’s necessary for the enforcer class: military and cops, to break from the elites for a revolution to succeed. They don’t all have to, but either you need some on the side of the new order, or you need them to refuse to do their jobs: as was the case with the Cossacks in the Russian Revolution.

A lot of people think that the first requirement of revolution: being unable to pay cops, military and functionaries (someone does need to keep things running) is impossible now in the US.

They’re right.

Now

But as the US becomes poorer and as prices continue to rise faster than wages, even police wages, and especially as actual shortages occur (sorry, we just don’t have any) that will change. You could pay them 10 billion dollars, but if it won’t buy the food, medicine, housing, internet and so on that they need or want, it amounts to “not being able to pay”.

And that’s where the US is in danger of heading. Can’t make a lot of stuff. Can force fewer and fewer countries to sell or “give” resources to them, can’t earn an honest buck in trade because China’s good are cheaper, and soon can’t just print dollars.

(I also expect that a lot of US copyright laws may be overthrown in other countries in about a decade to two decades. No reason to pay that ransom if you aren’t buying from the US, and it’s better to have domestic industry or your own internet companies.)

Every great nation thinks “it can’t happen here” till it does. For the US the endgame grows closer.

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

Preparing For Bad Times, Trumpocalypse Edition

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On September 22, 2026

12 Comments

I’ve been warning that there would be serious problems from Trump’s war because of the effect on oil, fertilizer, helium, natural gas and much more.

This was obvious: world use was higher than supply, and stockpiles would eventually dry up. Trump, for whatever reason (I favor blackmail, but hey, insert your reason here), refuses to make peace. Then the Saudis decided to hit Yemen’s capital aiport and Ansar Allah said “you’ve made us angry. You won’t like us when we’re angry.”

There’s some dispute over exactly who hit the pipeline (Sauds say Iraqi militias, Iraqi militia’s say “that’s not our honor” but it doesn’t really matter. Ignore BS about repairs, they remain no more defensible after repairs than they were before repairs are needed.

I expect to see shortages (already here for diesel in America and France), price increases and in some countries, food riots. No real supply management has been done, the geniuses in charge figured “let’s keep prices lower than they otherwise would be, and for sure we shouldn’t make sure farmers have enough at prices they can afford, or any other critical industry.” Add increased fertilizer prices, and BOOM!

So, Trump and co. have blown up the world economy, and 2027 is going to suck extra rancid ass. What to do?

The obvious thing is to stock up, if you can, but that’s not enough unless you’re rich and sure that your income stream is secure.

What you need is to belong to an actual community: people who take care of each other. It could be a very tight friendship group, it could be a large extended helpful family (not a lot of those still around), but the easiest way to get such a community is to join an active church. Active churches and their members give you a support network by default if you get involved. (Don’t just go worship, volunteer for something.)

“But Ian,” you whine, I’m not religious.

Get religion!

Kidding, kidding. There are churches for non-believers too.

So find a church that suits you and start going. Make friends. Be useful and helpful. When you need help the odds of you getting it skyrocket.

If you’re alone, or part of a small family group, you’re always one bad bump away from fiasco. In normal times this is bad. In the the times which are coming, well, it could be catastrophic.

Again: things ARE going to be bad. How bad will depend on where you are, and how stupid and unwilling Trump and MBS, the the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, are to make peace.

But I’m sure everything will work out. Neither of them are evil, stupid and have a track record of failure at everything except enriching themselves and clinging to power, right?

Act on this. It doesn’t have to be my suggestions, but do what you can: Shit Mountain just liquefied and started rolling downhill to where you live.

 

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

Doom, As Predicted

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On September 17, 2026

28 Comments

Sigh:

Regular readers will know I have been predicting this for some time. And understand that this is before the effects of Yemen basically shutting off Saudi oil and natural gas entirely because of shipping times.

Diesel is what farmers use. It’s what truckers use. It’s what most mining equipment uses. Much construction equipment. It’s probably more important for the operation of domestic economies than gasoline. Add to this fertilizer shortages, because much of the precursors come from the Middle East, and we’re in a world of hurt. Next up, bunker fuel, the stuff used to run freighters and tankers and without which international trade crashes to a halt, since shipping the is backbone of international trade.

Meanwhile the international bond market is freaking out:

Ouch.

Also ouch.

Are you sick of all the winning yet?

The Feds also increased the Federal reserve rate yet again, and indicated there may be another raise before the end of year.

Perhaps you’ve wondered why high interest rates are used to cool inflation? It’s because borrowing costs are a cost for businesses and individuals: when they go up, people have less money, and thus spend less. This leads to what economists like to call “demand destruction.”

Demand destruction means less economic activity, and enough of it causes recessions and shitty economies, and that’s in addition to the fact that expensive or insufficient fuel will also lead to a shitty economy.

And by shitty economy I mean that I expect to see actual food riots in multiple countries next year. This crisis is one of choice, and on top of that since there was no proper rationing which made sure that diesel and fertilizer and so on got to those parts of the economy which needed it most (yes, that means farmers in particular, but not just them) we’re going to be in a world of hurt.

Everyone with diesel refining who hasn’t already will put exports controls on at the least. That means if your country doesn’t produce enough, it’s not going to be able to buy enough otherwise. Yet another case of “no, you can’t buy anything that matters when it really matters.” Food exports will likely be restricted as well. Can your country feed itself? A lot can’t: for example Britain.

In personal terms I re-iterate. If you can afford to, start and stocking up on staples, medicine, fuel and so on. If you don’t need them, great, you’ll use them up in time anyway, but odds are you will need them and at the least, even if your locale doesn’t have physical shortages, be assured prices WILL rise.

This isn’t a theoretical matter any more, or a case of “later” as it was when I gave these warnings months ago. It’s happening now and it’s going to get worse. The only route out (and even then there’ll be problems, because rebuilding takes time) is for America to admit it lost the war and go to peace on Iranian terms and for Saudi Arabia to do the same with Yemen. All this nonsense about repairing the Saudi pipeline is almost meaningless because Yemen can hit it again and again and has no reason not to until the Sauds end their blockade.

This is a three alarm fire in the economy. The basis of the economy is on fire, and the fire is out of control and spreading. Act accordingly.

 

What I write here is for the benefit of everyone, but alas, I live in capitalism and I, and the site, take money to keep running. If you value the writing here and can, please subscribe or donate.

Information Overlord: Houthis Roll, Hegseth Bumbles, AI Doomer Hype, Lots of Music Talk

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On September 11, 2026

26 Comments

Nat Wilson Turner = Information Overlord = Flames Up = Phones Out = No Sense of Urgency

From me this week as Nat Wilson Turner

This week at Naked Capitalism I pulled a shift covering the Iran War and tried to connect the dots between Pete Hegseth’s Department of War and what’s going on with Meta and OpenAI.

I also continued my “Joe Biden’s Three Genocides in Four Years” series with the first installment of the Ukraine debacle.

More of what I wrote and recorded for The MMA Draw and The Let It Roll Podcast is at the bottom of this post but I wanted to feature the news links and think pieces.

What I’m Reading and Watching

The Iran War

  • The Iran War Has Just Had A Major Phase Change — Ian Welsh. On the interceptor math: the US runs out long before Iran does if Iran chooses to go all out, and hitting only three or four tankers a day was a choice rather than a ceiling.

“As I said day one of the war, the math is on Iran’s side: the US will run out of interceptors long before Iran if Iran chooses to go all out.”

Empire, and what it remembers

The AI trade

The AI Doomers really had their moment this week. I hope y’all know most of that crap is as overblown as the hype.

Money

What the heck is going on with the bond market, private equity, etc

 

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