Ian Welsh

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

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

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On March 17, 2026

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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

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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

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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

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On March 14, 2026

32 Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Drones Are Weapons Of The Weak #3: The Americas

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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.

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Iran Is Winning & It’s Not Close

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On March 12, 2026

37 Comments

Yes, the Americans and Israelis are inflicting a lot of damage. But that damage does not appear to be degrading the military enough to really matter. It’s mostly hitting civilians. There is zero possibility of stopping Shahed drone production, they are made with fiberglass bodies, there are hundreds if not thousands of facilities which can make them. The US can’t interdict ground supplies from China and Russia, either, meaning that everything Iran needs to build more missiles, it can get.

And if you think China, especially, won’t send Iran everything it needs you’re whistling past the graveyard. China is winning big time from this war: its ships are allowed into the Strait and every single America ally in the East is seeing that the US not only can’t protect its allies, it can’t even protect its own bases.

Every major US base in the Gulf has been hit and as far as I can tell they’re evacuated. US forces in Iraq are being hit hard and can’t evactuate. Hezbollah is slamming the North of Israel hard, and so far they’re doing very well against Israeli ground forces (as expected, Israel ground forces are crap because they’re occupation troops used to beating up people who, at most, have some homemade weapons.)

The Strait is closed. It cannot be opened till Iran allows it. Period. Iran is hitting oil infrastructure across the Gulf and despite propaganda otherwise, no Gulf interceptors cannot stop Iranian missiles enough to matter, and they WILL run out of interceptors before Iran runs out of missiles, if they haven’t already:

I see zero prospect of America and Israel winning this war, and if Iran has any sense they won’t allow a ceasefire till they have done enough damage that the US and Israel will be scared to start a new war.

Nukes? Tactical nukes won’t win the war. They’d have to hit Iran with the strategic nukes. All tac-nukes would do is turn the entire world against Israel and the US. Strategic nukes would be a war crime even Europe couldn’t ignore and turn both states into complete pariahs. They might win the war, but they’d lose the peace. And, again, Iran has everything it needs to make a few dirty nukes, and one hit on Israel renders the entire country uninhabitable.

Invasion? Impossible. Iran has a large military and perfect terrain. Any forces sent will be slaughtered. It won’t even be close, it will be a massacre, the worst US loss in generations.

The new leader of Iran is a hard liner and he had most of his family killed by America. The leadership in general knows their lives are on the line. If they don’t win in a way which makes it so Israel and the US aren’t scared to tangle with them again, the assassinations will start up again and there will be a third war. That’s unacceptable and their pain tolerance is FAR higher than America or Israel’s is. Trump is scared about midterm losses. Iran’s leaders’ lives are on the line and the lives of everyone they care about.

This war is a long way from over, but the math I pointed out at the start, that it was a race between Iran’s missile/drone levels and US/Israeli interceptor stocks is happening as I expected: Iran can go longer than the US can.

As Iran I would accept nothing less than all Gulf States and Saudi Arabia kicking out all US bases and the US withdrawing entirely from Iraq. That’s the very least I would tolerate.

In the larger strategic position, this is genuinely the end of the American global Empire. The US had a “one shot” military, to use Will Schryer’s term, and this is the shot. It has proved that the US can’t defend itself or its allies and it will take at least a decade to restock interceptors, if China allows that, which, if they’re smart (and they’re usually smart) they won’t. Remember, the US can’t make ANY advanced weapons without supplies from China.

I’ve lived a long time now and I’ve seen a lot of stupidity from America, but this war is the stupidest thing I’ve seen America do other than making the original decision to send its industrial base to China.

Empires die ugly, but America’s is dying. After this it will be a regional power.

 

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Every Credit Cycle Is Different, Just Like This One

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On March 11, 2026

29 Comments

~by Sean Paul Kelley

Every credit cycle is different: they don’t repeat, but they do rhyme at the end.

Phase One: the Expansion

The credit cycle begins when intense speculation drives asset prices into bubble territory. This time around AI is the prime mover.  AI stocks have clearly inflated, irrationally, and dangerously market averages. Nvidia’s market cap ($4.9 trillion) is larger than India’s annual GDP ($4.5 trillion).

As Barton Biggs, a mentor-of-sorts when I was at Morgan Stanley, said about the dot-com bubble, “things that cannot go on forever, don’t.”

That rule applies to the 10 Horsemen of the AI-pocalypse.

The bubble will deflate, jus not the way you think.

It won’t go “boom” and pop all of a sudden. As Kathleen Tyson, a commenter as qualified as any to opine on this market, notes, “credit bubbles collapse from the periphery toward the centre [just as empires do]. Always. Overextension creates a vulnerable, unstable margin at the extremes.”

The bubble is here and it’s collapsing from the outside, just like a balloon does. Wrap your hands around an imaginary balloon and feel it lose gas. You can see it now, yeah?

So what does this mean? Well, it means we’ve reached the end of the beginning of the first part of this credit cycle. Part two is up next and it’ll be a like a rodeo-clown getting gored by a ten-tonne bull.

Phase Two: The Big Unwind

Phase two of the credit cycle is the credit unwind, read credit destruction, linked to insolvency concerns, similar to what FSK KKR is undergoing:

“FSK’s portfolio was hit by large markdowns in the fourth quarter on debt extended to software companies. The fund’s holdings in debt tied to janitorial services groups, and so-called roll-ups of dental clinics, veterinarians groups and defence contractors also saw markdowns.” 

Other private credit shops that have taken some heavy markdowns and/or halted redemptions, as I disucss below. But seriously, if you know the private-equity model, you should be appalled their taking over janitorial serivices, dental clinics and veterinarians. Mom and pop shops par excellence. And they are now having the profitable assets stripped and the rest is larder with tons of debt and left out in the world to go bankrupt. I have a cousin in private equity and I’ve lost all respect for him. It’s probably mutual. I’m no role model.

But I digress . . .

The real kicker is our Bearn Stearns moment: an analog to the precise moment the 2008 Financial Crisis became inevitable. Recall summer 2007 when two Bear Stearns hedge funds met the guillotine. Blue Owl and it’s recent woes are this crisis’ first canary in the coal mine. Blue Owl, essentially an SPE/SPV for AI-hyperscalers to offload debt from their balance sheet, is ground zero for Oracle’s recent woes. SPE/SPVs, for those of you who don’t remember, are what killed Enron and destroyed AIG. Blue Owl vis-a-vis Oracle signals the end of the inflating bubble and beginning of the credit unwind.

“So who’s unwinding and why, you ask?”

The first-comer was Blue Owl. They got a rude wake up call when investors demanded $1.4 bn in redemptions, which forced Blue Owl to sell assets to meet redemption needs, in essence a fire sale. Every trader on the street worth his salt knew who was selling and what. It was brutal, as I’ve heard it told from some old Wall Street pals of mine.

Then Blackstone gets hammered with $1.7bln in redemptions and halts all redemptions. Blue Owl is a shadow lending facility for corporations, not individuals. But the next examples affect the money of individuals, billionaires that is.

So here comes Blackrock, sideswiped by $1.2bn in redemption requests, of which they honored only half of them. Resulting in a bunch of high net worth investors got sucker punched.

This ongoing and accelerating unwind in private credit is canary number two of our next credit crunch/crisis all the while the Fed is, unsuccessfully trying to backstop the slippery-slide of private credit into insolvent credit: on February 17th they injected $17.8bn into the debt markets via overnight repos.

So a lot of credit destruction has to happen—and will—before we get to the third and final phase.

We are a closing in, accelerating for sure. In fact, the appraoching crisis, because the mass fuckery of private credit does not have to legally disclose holdings, will make 2008 look like a Roman Holiday. No candles included.

Added at 9:30 AM Central Time: Teachers’ Pension Reportedly Loses $7 Billion in Private Equity Bets in 2025

“Ontario Teachers’ Posts First Private Equity Loss Since 2009”

If you run a pension fund and you invest the funds money with private equity you are shit. You are giving money to the very people that are strip mining this country’s middle class businesses. Regardless, the contagion is on. This thing is getting perilously close to becoming uncontainable. Remember that catchphrase form 2007-08? “It’s contained!”

Phase Three: the grand finalé.

Where credit cycles rhyme, as I said above, are how they end: on the last two syllables. Can you say it with me: Ponzi? In the end the ponzi finance bubble always collapses.

I suspect Crypto will be the first big Ponzi unwind. And it will take a lot of suckers with it. Plus, a damn lot of fools who worked for investment, commercial banks and private credit/equity shops. Crypto is bullshit, wrapped in dead fish skin that’s been perfumed by Chanel. No matter how good it smells, it’s rotten to the core. Crypto is to this financial crisis as CDOs and synthetic CDOs were to 2008.

The AI-hyperscalers will suffer as well, during the Ponzi unwind.

Why?

They are in essence engaging in a similar sort of vendor financing like CISCO and Juniper Networks did in the dot-com bubble. Nvidia is giving chips to AI-hyperscalers as collateral for loans. Never mind the chips will depreciate long before the earnings are solid enough for the AI-hyperscalers to payback the “loans.”

Once the AI driving stock bubble bursts, all hell breaks loose. One or two investment banks will go bust this time around. Maybe Morgan Stanley? Maybe Goldman? (I doubt Goldman goes bust, they’re too politically well connected.)

Note, as I and Ian have both said, this will be the final financial crisis the Fed is willing to backstop. Broad political support for a bailout hasn’t eroded completely.

But the next one? It’ll be unstoppable. Not only will the political will have evaporated, but so will have the resources to do so.

As we say down here in Texas, cowboy up, ride’s about to get real.

Nota bene: Phase Two of this credit cycle is accelerating: JPMorgan Restricts Private Credit Lending After Loan Markdowns. (Hey, Dimon can be a putz, but he’s a careful, shrewd banker.)

Key takeaway from my post at X: “JPMorgan Chase & Co. is restricting some lending to private credit funds after marking down the value of certain loans in their portfolios, according to a person familiar with the matter, in the latest sign of stress in the $1.8 trillion industry.” Morgan took a $22 billion haircut. 

And this: “L&G’s solvency ratio — a measure of its ability to meet long-term financial obligations — declined to 203 per cent for 2025, down from 232 per cent in the previous year and below a Visible Alpha consensus of 217 per cent.” h/t for both stories go to Ventzu.

That’s some special fuckery there, folks.

Nota bene, bene: Good Morning from Germany, where today’s 10y govt bond auction technically failed.

Nota benissima: Well fuck, Cliffwater is the next domino to fall. First, huge redemption demands-to the tune of $33bn–at Cliffwater, LLC, force the private equity shop into a firesale a lá Blue Owl. So Cliffwater, LLC is a twofer!

And JPMorgan is dealing with some collateral stress issues. Whatever the fuck that means. When banksters make up words, be careful, you’re about to get screwed.

Even PIMCO piles on saying that they see “a crisis in bad underwriting in private credit.” Christian Stracke, president of PIMCO reiterated the headline news, “[this news] is the result of years of sloppy underwriting standards in lending.” Basically calling out the private credit/shadow credit industry for engaging in the 2007 equivalent NINJA–No income, no job–loans to any company that want cash. He also added, “there is a reckoning going on right now. . . . It’s not just a crisis of confidence, it’s a crisis of really bad underwriting.” Makes one wonder just how many cockroaches are going to come out of the dark, dank Wall Street kitchen this time around once the lights come on?

Phase Two of the credit crisis has arrived, and it came heavy.

America & Israel Don’t Get To Choose When The War Ends

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On March 9, 2026

32 Comments

So, Trump:

TRUMP SAYS “I THINK THE (IRAN) WAR IS VERY COMPLETE, PRETTY MUCH” – CBS REPORTER ON X, CITING AN INTERVIEW

Israel:

A few senior officials in Israel are starting to voice concern about the escalating, open-ended attack on Iran — and suggesting possible exit ramps that might halt the war before it further damages the region and the global economy.
Talk of an endgame is early, and a decision about whether to stop the attacks rests largely with President Donald Trump, who continues to seek all-out victory. But in a telephone conversation Sunday, a senior Israeli official familiar with the planning and strategy for the Iran war discussed alternatives to Trump’s call for “unconditional surrender.” The official requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the Iran situation.

and:

A senior Israeli official told The Washington Post: “For fear of an endless war, there is thinking of ending the war without toppling the regime.”

And this… not formally from Iran, but consistent with everything I’ve seen from them:

A senior Iranian political official: Trump is seeking, through intermediaries, to connect with us and Washington to end the war, but at the same time, he claims the opposite.

Trump states in interviews with American media that there is no specific timeline for ending the war, which contradicts the messages he is sending to us.

This American contradiction reflects a state of chaos and deep crisis that Trump is going through, where he has found himself in a major predicament without possessing a clear path out of this quagmire.

Tehran has firmly informed the intermediaries that it is not receiving any message from the American side and will not respond to it Iran has a firm and resolute stance with a strategic objective, which is not to respond to any initiative until the Zionist entity retreats and completely collapses after all the crimes it has committed in the region and the chaos it has caused in the world.

America and Israel are used to wars they can end any time they want. Afghanistan not worth it any more? Just leave. Israel wants a truce with Hezbollah? Make one then break it every single day.

They’re used to being so much stronger than their enemies that they can force a bad deal, or if they can’t, they can just walk away.

Not this time. They forgot that in a real war you either have to completely win or the other side has to agree to end the war.

General Mattis once said “No war is over until the enemy says it’s over. We may think it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote.”

Now here’s the problem Iran has, they can’t negotiate with the US.

I mean, they could go thru the motions: send some diplomats, talk about terms, but there is no deal the US (or Israel) has ever made with Iran which they’ve kept. Worse than that, during negotiations they’ve killed negotiators and leaders.

Not only is there no point in making a deal with the US or Israel, since they won’t keep them, doing so is dangerous. Negotiations are just a time for them to re-arm and find new targets.

Russia pointed this out years ago, calling the US “Agreement Incapable.” There’s no deal you can make with the US which they won’t break. This was true before Trump, but he’s ramped it up to eleven out of ten.

So Iran has to keep going. They have to win the war. What’s a win for them? Well, at the least, all US bases out of the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. And now that they’ve taken out most of Israel and America’s radars:

Iran’s IRGC Aeroforce Commander: “From now on, no missile with a warhead lighter than 1 ton will be launched (against Israel). The frequency of launches, their intensity, and the scope of operations will increase significantly.”

And:

Iran Now quoting an Iranian military source: Trump’s claims that the war is nearing an end are a political illusion with no basis on the ground. Iran has categorically rejected all proposals for a ceasefire and says it will continue the war until its stated objectives are achieved. Any US attempt to occupy Iranian islands will face a severe and unexpected response, with consequences extending to countries hosting US military bases in the region.

Amusingly (but  unconfirmed):

Any Arab or European country that expels the Israeli and American ambassadors from its territories will be granted full authorization and freedom of passage through the Strait of Hormuz starting tomorrow.

Then, of course, there is the election of the new Supreme leader: the previous leader’s son. Remember that his parents, his wife and his children were all killed. In fact, previous to Trump saying that he was unacceptable, what I had heard is that he was unlikely to be elected: even his father had been against it. But, as with Carney in Canada, Trump’s “endorsement” had an effect.

Iran let the US and Israel off the hook during the twelve day war. The US asked for a cease-fire and they agreed, then the US and Israel came back and tried again.

Iran must, and its leaders personally must, if they don’t want to be assassinated, win this war so decisively that neither Israel nor America will even think about attacking them again. Then, if the new leader is wise, they’ll get some nukes.

This war is, I suspect, far from over. This time America has really fucked around, and it’s really going to find out. Nor are the majority of its allies going to be happy about this as they run out of oil, gas and fertilizer. Further east-Asians have now realized that US bases don’t protect your country, they only make it a target. This is going to reign hell of the willingness of other nations to militarily cooperate with America.

Good chance this is America’s last big war. They’ll push around some Lat. Am countries, but this is it. If it isn’t their last big war, they’ll regret it, there’s no possibility now of winning a war with China or Russia.

 

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