I’ll begin, as usual, with the economy. JP Morgan lays odds for a global recession at 60% now. Causes? According to JPMorgan it’s threefold: the conflict in Iran, the tariffs and AI. But JP Morgan is forgetting another huge variable, the private credit/shadow credit unwind happening in real time. Blackrock halted redemptions from its flagship debt fund to the tune of $1.2bn. Blackrock to investors: fuck off. Blackrock’s fuckery marks the third private credit shop in the last three months to shut investor redemptions down: first Blue Owl, then Blackstone and now Blackrock.
As Dario intones ruefully, “Mark my words, the damage to the financial system the private credit space will cause will be greater by many orders of magnitude than the one subprime caused in 2008.” I’m pretty well convinced he’s right. That said, the political will to backstop another financial crisis has not eroded totally, so the emerging credit crunch will be the last one backstopped by the Fed and/or Congress.
Another variable JP Morgan doesn’t address is the most recent (un)employment numbers. If the first reported, non-revised numbers of a -92,000 jobs is any indication, once the numbers are revised, February’s numbers are likely to resemble a catastrophe.
On the ugly, catastrophe side of things, Dubai has only ten days of fresh food remaining if the Straits remain closed. I suppose they can eat dates, no?
Also of note, The Reptile, aka Peter Thiel (yes, it’s a real anagram, google it if you donnae believe me!), dumped 2 million shares of Palantir. It’s a bright flashing red light, a semaphore both unmistakable and of serious consequence, when top execs dump shares of the corps they run. They are cashing out, leaving the equity collapse in the hands of suckers, ermm, retail investors, widows and orphans-like.
If you want a fuller understanding of the logic logic behind Iran’s attacks on the region’s infrastructure, read here. Speaking of oil, one can’t fix stupid. Shorting oil in this kind of risk environment is nucking futs.
Maintaining our focus on petroleum for a bit longer, I have to note, if oil breaks bad to the north, past say $120, the resulting global recession will have deleterious effects on commodities, especially gold and silver. But more gold than silver, as the silver supply-demand equation has been so structurally out of whack for so long, the recession would have to be almost depression-like to impose enough demand destruction for the price to sink below the mid $70s.
Sticking with petrol it appears the Euros might come a begging to Czar Pootie-poot for gas and oil the longer the Straits remain inaccesible. Apparently Czar Vladimir has already hinted the Euros can, in Russian, “пошел нахуй.” I’m sure you can suss the meaning out of that one. If true, this volte face by the Euros is staggering in its hyprocrisy and implications. But it is far from surprising. Anyone with a halfway decent brain on their head could have seen this ugly denouement coming a mile away. Wait, a kilometer and some change. Yeah, ‘Muricans can do metric!
In genuinely good news, Indonesia has enacted a total and complete ban on the riding of elephants. When I traveled in South East Asia I refused to ride any elephants, they are too sensitive emotionally and very much deserving of my respect. As I note on X:
This is supremely welcome humane news. The limbic system in elephants is so extensive and well developed it creates “profound emotional intelligence, long-term memory, and social bonds [in elephants.] [Their] brain structure allows for intense empathy, mourning, [and] social cohesion,” making them closer to humans in social development than any other class of animals than primates and ceteceans.
Check out the photo of an elephant getting frisky with me. Suprised me to no end, you can see it in my face. This news makes me smile and happy. Somewhere somebody is doing something right. Faith in humanity remains unrestored, but a credit has been added to the depleted account of faith, nonetheless. One of my finest memories is seeing a herd of wild elephants emerging out of the bush about sixty miles south of Mysore, India in 2009. Wild effing elephants. How cool is that? Portions of my life have been truly charmed and I’m grateful.
Speaking of memories, I was only five years old when Nadia Comaneci stuck 7 perfecf tens at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, but even then I knew I was witnessing something very special. My view hasn’t changed in 50 years. And her performance is as elegant and perfect as it was then.
How about some music on this fine March Saturday morning? I’ll note in brief the quiet but powerful resurgence of political and human vitality to American music. As I post regarding Tyler Childers:
Tyler Childers’ song, “White House Road”, written in 2017, paints a generalized portrait of American misfortune and hardship, but uses the patois of the Appalachian South in particular to stoke the emotions of the listener. And it’s why Childer’s imagery works no matter where you live in the US-hell, it’s almost Dickensian and could be anywhere. The tune’s poignance is just that brutally authentic and powerfully magnetic.
Don’t, for a second, confuse this with C&W. It ain’t that. This is threadbare roots Americana. If this doesn’t stir your heart, you don’t have one.
The raw explosive emotion of Childer’s lyricism propels a simple 3-chord song (E-D-A) across the ragged, tragic and increasingly impoverished tableau of a decomposing America. Childers tells an old rural story, but ‘makes it new’ as Ezra Pound frequently exhorted young writers and poets. Indeed, there is a touch of Chris Whitley’s muse to this song.
Childers voice is a beacon of distress, masquerading as joy, “a damn good feeling to run these roads.” He sings.”Get me drinkin’ that moonshine/Get me higher than the grocery bill/Take my troubles to the highwall/Throw’em in the river and get your fill.”
His distress is amplified by his vocal register; and his range acts like the kinetic tension in an unsprung faucet, Schrodinger-like: at once blowing in a soft mountain drawl, only to tornado-up into a raspy hard emotional sucker punch landing on your solar-plexus and leaving you breathless.
Tyler is proof that there are only two types of music: good music and bad music.
I dare you to listen and not stomp your feet.
More to the point, Jack White has single-handedly reinvented and fused Delta blues, Chicago blues and rock music right back into political and cultural relevance. One example is the global adoption of his anthemic Seven Nation Army.
His appearance on SNL in 2020 is another solid proof of concept.
Honorable mention goes to the Stone Foxes and their fantastic and criminally underrated retelling of the death of Delta Blues legend Robert Johnson, “I killed Robert Johnson.” The song is 15 years old. So what, it’s aged well.
While you’re at it, this lovely morning, check out this music here and rock out to this and this. The last two are representitive of a new breed of American rock bands. You won’t hear ’em on the radio, but rock is alive. And that’s a good thing, like this cover of Dancing in the Street, by the Struts.
Who ever talks about modern dance, or takes an interest in it ought give this video a solid once over: the choreogrpahy on display is a stuning blend of traditonal renaissance era galliard or volta, early Appalachian line dancing and urban American break dance, yeah, break dancing, for a tune straight out of my Scotch-Irish heritage
While you’re at it, check out this Ryan Adams cover of the Iron Maiden classic, Wasted Years.
Last one, I promise, this Band of Heathens song, “Hanging Tree,” eeriely echoes old-timey Protestant hymns sung by a choir, except it’s about infideltiy and damn near a murder ballad. It’s about 15 years old, as well, but it has aged like a fine Irish whiskey. Lastly, I have rarely in life coveted anything. And I use the word ‘covet’ purposefully. But that Dobro he’s playing in the video: me want one something fierce. But I’m left handed and those cost upwards of $1500. Ouch!
More if it happens. Maybe.
Nota bene: Apparently Kuwait Oil has declared force majeure on oil sales. That’s not confirmed, but plausible and bad news if true. As one commenter in the X thread linked wryly noted, “You know shit has hit the fan when you have to start using French terms.”
LMFAO.
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How awesome and great it would be if everyone invested in this evil system, meaning they have investment skin in the game, is wiped out entirely? I hope and pray for that day. It will be a massive step to true change, as painful as that will be and it will be excruciatingly painful.
Eddie Hill
I’m pretty sure you turned me on to the stone foxes in ’08 or so back on the Agonist. I’ve enjoyed them every since. I even managed to see them live when they came through St Louis. Consistently good music. Thanks for the recommendation.
If you like Dirty Honey check out The Band Feel. https://youtu.be/f03g5JO7S94?si=KTIg3U7tB6C6Fr1P
Sean Paul Kelley
@Eddie Hill: thanks, I will check them out right now. I’m jealous you got to see the Stone Foxes. They don’t make many appearances in Texas.
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Here’s King Donald’s latest proclamation. Iran has surrendered and apologized to him and Israel and all its neighbors and Iran has thanked him but despite that, Iran still needs to surrender or he will be forced to nuke young school girls and nursing homes and nurseries.
Every day, the Mad Hatter gets even madder, if you thought it wasn’t possible.
Iran, which is being beat to HELL, has apologized and surrendered to its Middle East neighbors, and promised that it will not shoot at them anymore. This promise was only made because of the relentless U.S. and Israeli attack. They were looking to take over and rule the Middle East. It is the first time that Iran has ever lost, in thousands of years, to surrounding Middle Eastern Countries. They have said, “Thank you President Trump.” I have said, “You’re welcome!” Iran is no longer the “Bully of the Middle East,” they are, instead, “THE LOSER OF THE MIDDLE EAST,” and will be for many decades until they surrender or, more likely, completely collapse! Today Iran will be hit very hard! Under serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death, because of Iran’s bad behavior, are areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time.
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
President DONALD J. TRUMP
Feral Finster
The Peter Thiel news is interesting. I am a big fan of ignoring the splashy 8-K and the 10-K and watching the 3/4/5 if you want the real story.
It’s , BTW. Hopefully Russia actually will do it, this time. It would be amusing to hear europeans wail about how this is so unfair, unprovoked, how can he do this to US?
However, these grandiloquent threats (“Don’t make me do this! I’m warning you! I’m serious this time!” indicate that Putin will try to find a reason not to pull the trigger.
Anyway, I see that the US and Israel have resorted to attackinf desalination plants.
Feral Finster
https://samkriss.substack.com/p/youll-regret-it
https://policytensor.substack.com/p/why-the-us-is-facing-strategic-defeat
Would to God they prove correct. However, I suspect that the Americans will not hesitate to go nuclear, while europe, canada, australia, etc. bleat about how “Israel has the right to defend itself!(R):
mago
Attacking de-salination plants is ok if the Chosen People do it. If any turban head tries it it’s a war crime and antisemitism.
different clue
” You know la shit, she has hit la fan, when you have to start using French terms”. Good rule of thumb.
If we already had a better credible thresh-hold of power” political party to vote for, I would vote for it, if it was going my way. Since we don’t have one, people who think one might even be possible even in theory would have to get started growing it.
And since it takes several years to grow such a party even if millions of people are already devoted to the effort, we would need to buy those several years of time and space to grow it in.
And speaking as a proud Mainstreamal Normie American, the only way I can imagine such a multi-year zone of space-time being created is to get the current crop of KlanMaga Christianazi Republicans out of power and replaced with a vastly overwhelming majority of Democrats which would of course include all the BiPartisan Cuck liberal Democrats and NeoLiberal Corporate-Oppression Democrats currently ruling their Party. That might freeze the ongoing rush of KlanMaga Christianazification of government and society and culture in fast forward motion today. It might just slow it down.
Would that reverse it? No. The current anti-New-Deal Democrats are stil the eager pawl to the Republican ratchet. We know this.
But it would gain time for serious people to grow a serious Legitimate Party-Movement to seek the serious conquest of cultural, social and political power in a serious way. If enough such serious people exist and if they are seriously done with compromise and bipartisanship and niceness. Compromise on the goal is for cucks. Tactical compromise in the now in order to build the power needed to exterminate compromise at End Game Time could be a good thing.
Based on that understanding of things and stuff, I will spend Election 2026 voting Blue no matter Who. If that makes the Left mad, then that makes Me happy.
Meanwhile, if oil is getting short and then shorter, and gas prices promise to go high and then higher, what can those displeased and disgruntled with the current power arrangements do to leverage that rise in prices? I think if a hundred millions sympathisers with the self-styled “resistance” were to drive as much as possible, including pointless road trips from here to there and back to here, and even around and around in circles if necessary, and thereby buy and burn as much gas as possible; they might be able to deepen the gas shortage even more. Maybe enough to raise gas prices up into the genuine torture and compromise-of-survival level. That would affect everyone, the Red and the Blue alike. But the Blue “resistance” could all help eachother through the price-torture hardship and leave the Red to suffer so much price torture cutting so deep as to perhaps torture them into not voting anymore for the KlanMaga Christianazis of their hearts’ desire.
Sean Paul Kelley
@different clue: it’s too late to turn the ship of state around. It may spend another decade or two collapsing, things like this do take time, even though today feels like history on amphetamines, constituitonal orders do not collapse overnight, until they do. And we’re just not that close yet, but we’re definitely past the point of no return. We crossed that threshold when Trump won the 2024 Republican nomination. I’ve made my peace with the long term consequences. My hands are clean. Enjoy the suck.
Jefferson Hamilton
“https://policytensor.substack.com/p/why-the-us-is-facing-strategic-defeat”
How am I supposed to take this guy who cares fucking Grok on whether or not American sortie rates have declined because of Iranian missile attacks on airbases seriously?
Jefferson Hamilton
Who *cites* Grok. Auto”corrected.” 🙄
Sean Paul Kelley
@Jefferson Hamilton: I dunno, a fucking idiot?
different clue
@Sean Paul Kelley,
You may be correct. All anyone can do about anything is to lift a finger towards wherever it is that anyone wants us to go. Just one finger? Yes. Just one finger. I will not lift the other nine fingers in order to cover for nine other people who will not even lift Finger Number One.
So for now, I will devote half of one lifted finger towards doing things and stuff designed to help turn the ship of state around. And I will devote the other half of my lifted finger towards preparing for the possibility that it is as too late as you believe it is, and therefor devote that other half of one lifted finger towards building separate survival along with whatever other people are also building separate survival for after the ship has sunk.
Part of that would mean building a totally organized movement with plans and intentions ready to go for rushing the lifeboats and trying to prevent any KlanMaga Christianazis from getting into them with us. Because none of Us will be able to survive the sinking if any of Them are allowed to get into the lifeboats with Us. That could be somewhat metaphorical, to be sure. A literally linear expression of that would be to withhold any survival knowledge we might have from people who do not deserve to have it. It might involve crafting Separate Survival Political Party-Movements in certain possibly-viable Separate Survival Zones.
Anyway, we crossed that threshhold when Trump won the 2024 election. It was theoretically possible even if not likely that Trump could have been defeated in that election, thereby buying us a time-space bubble of Brezhnevian Stagnation and Rudderless Drift in which to start building something new.
Maybe certain people will re-learn anew the wisdom in SecDef Rumsfeld’s deathless words: ” You go to War with the nominee and party you have, not the nominee and party you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
spud
Morgan is setting us up for the shaking of that MMT money tree bailout machine, putin will certainly cave as he gets repeatedly insulted in public and russia attacked, hope i am wrong.
and why are the lights still on, water running, and oil flowing in israel? i realize iran is ferreting out the military deeply embedded in civilian area’s, but how about one less missile doing that, and one missile starting the process of serious degradation.
Feral Finster
The guy who wrotes Policy Tensor is many things, but he is not stupid.
different clue
” and why are the lights still on, water running, and oil flowing in israel? ”
This is just a guess, but muh feelz like the IranGov Leadership know they are dealing with End Times Chiliasts in charge of Israel and America who all want to Immanentize the Eschaton. And they themselves don’t wish to a part of the Eschaton Immanentization process or output.
But that’s just muh feelz as a total layman.
Carborundum
Beyond the fact that drones and missiles don’t deliver heavy enough payloads to amount to all that much without good precision guidance (absent the ever possible golden BB), a big part of the reason that the lights are still on is Israel is likely that a very large majority of Iranian missiles and drones are being aimed elsewhere. If The Times running summary I saw earlier is accurate, Israel’s taken quite a small minority of total fires. Assuming they are telling the truth, UAE looks to have taken roughly ten times more.
spud
different clue:
they are going to keep after iran no matter what. appeasement will only encourage even more outrages.
different clue
spud,
I doubt the IranGov is doing any appeasing. Whatever the IranGov is or isn’t launching at Israel just now is for strictly Iran-centric reasons. Carborundum above may have a much better answer for why so relatively little launchable force is being directed towards Israel just now.
It may be that the IranGov is trying to torture the Lesser Gulfies into torturing the US FedRegime into calling off the War on strictly Iranian terms to-be-determined. Or it may be that the IranGov is methodically working to reduce oil and gas output enough to where the US economy is put under real hydrocarbon deprivation. In which case the hundred million members of Blue Team America can try leveraging that Iranian petro/gas deprivation plan by using up and wasting as much of the gas and oil products still here as possible, in order to get the price pain even higher, and then even more higher-er still.
And if any dumm-alecks ask Team Blue why they are doing that, Team Blue can just say, with a straight face hopefully, that we are just doing our patriotic duty to keep the Oil and NatGas industries profitable through the storm. What Trump-loving MAGA could possibly argue with that? (What if everyone else in the world who considers themself againts Team Trump were to do the very same thing in their countries to the very best of their ability? Could they all help drive the price of gas and oil in the US even more yet higher yet even still more?)
spud
different clue:
looks like we hot irans oil today, and they responded in kind. pretty predictable.
i feel we maybe hours, or days away of nuking iran, setting off WIII. so iran might as well fight back as hard as they can.
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… i feel we maybe hours, or days away of nuking iran, setting off WIII.
From my vantage, it seems as though those who keep pushing the WWIII meme do so because they want to see WWIII. It’s a schadenfreudic fantasy, of sorts. One they clamor for to manifest with their insistent, nay consistent, proclamations that the latest is WWIII.
With that aside, why do you believe nuking Iran would necessarily set off WWIII? I’m not certain it would. I think about all Trump and his fellow fascist goons have done as a result of this fascist coup, and they’re doing it with absolute impunity. The envelope gets pushed further and further each and every day and instead of the world holding the Trumpian fascists to account, they enable them and platform them and legitimate them as was witnessed, for example, by Merz in the Oval Office the other day and Carney with his beat-around-the-bush, vague, long-winded response to Trump’s attack on Iran versus Spain’s, for example, which was short, concise and to the point.
I truly believe at this point, Trump and the fascists could nuke Iran and nobody will do a damn thing. The world has been inured. This is what Trump does best. He is so incessant with the insanity that he inures the world to it all. I think it will be no different with nukes. If you think China or Russia will do anything about Trump and the fascists nuking Iran, you are naive beyond repair or rehabilitation.
So this is my Jiangian prediction using my version of Game Theory. IF Trump and the fascists were to nuke Iran, there will be no WWIII and the world will not hold Trump and the fascists to account.
different clue
So it sounds like Trump is the crab eating raccoon I mentioned in the thread just after this one.
Or at least one of the crab eating raccoons. And a very good one.
ProNewerDeal
disclaimer – this post and any replies are for informational purposes, and do not consistute any fiduciary or legal advice.
If the recession has stagflation, I would guesstimate gold may rise.
In the 2008 GFC recession, 30-yr US Treasuries were the best asset, as USTs were the “flight to safety” asset. IIRC the EDV Vanguard ETF (20-30 yr Zero Coupon Bond version of USTs) was up 50%. An AA (asset allocation) with 25% EDV had limited losses in 2008.
I’ve read speculation that gold might be taking some of “flight to safety” “market share” that USTs had.
Sean Paul, which asset(s) (if any) do you guesstimate will increase in this next recession?
I guesstimate a factor may be which assets have a signficant portion of leveraged bull investors who could be hit with forced selling. I’d guesstimate that this applies to stocks, crypto (I don’t hold any anyways), gold, & silver. I doubt there is much leveraged investors on USTs, from 4-week Bills (or I Bonds Savings Bonds) to 30-year Bonds. Personally I have never done leveraged investing.
In my AA I have both EDV & gold ETFs. I hope at least 1 will be a “flight to safety” 30%+ appreciating asset in the next recession, to limit my (small/modest) portfolio’s losses.
Sean Paul Kelley
@ProNewerDeal: I’d like to repeat whay ProNewerDeal said: disclaimer – this post and any replies are for informational purposes, and do not consistute any fiduciary or legal advice. That goes for my response.
Second, you’re a smart cookie. An investor after my own heart. You’re probably somewhat of a contrarian, no?
As I have said before on X: https://x.com/seanpaulkelley/status/2027245954626187746 “[W]hen the credit crunch gets a full head of steam it won’t lead to reserve status collapse of the dollar. It will, counter-intuitively, but inexorably pump the dollar higher and stronger as NYC becomes a 2008-like Black Hole for cash allocated dollars world wide desperate to fill potential insolvency holes in banks and shadow-banks/private equity credit boutiques . . . . ”
Pronewerdeal: this confirms your instincts. I also made the same argument here: https://www.ianwelsh.net/short-take-on-what-id-be-doing-to-prepare-for-the-pending-economic-st-show/
I’m always consistent, if often wrong. That’s actually an insult brokers and traders crack about well-connected incompentents behind their back.
Nonetheless, I am consistent.
During 2007-08 I advised the following for clients and family, here in the same post:
“A liquidity crisis is already here. But this may not be like your father’s ’08 crisis. In ’08, the USD rose — counterintuitively — against every other major currency. Why? The need for USD to cover credit losses was global, and NYC became a literal blackhole for USD. I made an absolute killing on the USD during the ’08 crisis, and afterwards even more on the banks and zero coupon bonds. I made several people fortunes they still retain.”
So, again, your instincts are correct. In the run up to the crisis I bet hard on the actual zeros, ie. treasuries stripped of their coupons. Had 50% 10-years 50% 30-yrs. After I sold the zero coupons bonds and after Lehman and AIG went bust I gobbled up as many of the banks as I could. Bought BoA for $5 a share as I recall. So when this crisis’ major investment bank fails, a lá Lehman Bros, take your zero profits and you buy all the commercial, investment and regional banks you can. They’ll be trading massively depressed.
Hope that helps. That’s what I’ll be doing.