All the mainstream news publications today are just catching up with my weekend Deeper Dive for paying subscribers, which reported a sea change in the war with Iran (literally). One of the highly consequential stories I included in my weekend edition that I didn’t see in mainstream news until about twelve hours after I published my own article was the complete knock-out of Saudi Arabia’s major east-west pipeline. That line had been rerouting 4% of global oil supply from the Hormuz side of the Arabian Peninsula to its escape route in the Red Sea. Completely shutting down that alternative route will obviously impact oil prices, which the events of last week certainly did, causing diesel fuel to spike the highest it’s ever been in history.

What made this a Red Sea change in the war was the main news I presented of a historically huge and rapid advancement of the Houthis to gain full control of Western Yemen, which no mainline news source was yet carrying. I couldn’t even find the latest gains on Google. Mainstream sources had covered the advance along the strait the Houthis had achieved up to Perim Island, which is right in the chokepoint; but the massive sweep further inland and around the point all the way to seize the major port city of Aden, gaining full control of many regions, was a blockbuster scoop that I found info about in only one of my resources; but the info. was clear, so I ran it. There was in my mind no question about how fast the Houthi’s sweeping gains had been in fully taking over the Bab al-Mandeb (the Gate of Tears) with a deep penetration inland to safeguard all their firing position in areas that used to be under the Saudi military.

I also reported, as the news was just coming in, that Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) had called Trump twice to implore him to start bombing the Houthis during that advancement before they gained full control of that region, and Trump twice turned the Saudis robust pleas down, leaving the Saudis desperate and intensely frustrated.

The whole basis for the petrodollar agreement collapsed right then and there. The Saudis only started selling oil solely in US dollars back in 1974 because it guaranteed US protection from Iran and anyone else, which it and other OPEC nations did for decades. That surely just ended because apparently the US is not capable of taking on another front on another sea in this war that it started, or political pressure against Trump at home has risen high enough in the election season that he dare not risk kicking his Iran war up a notch.

So, the Saudis lost—bigly— this weekend, and, with that loss, you can flush the petrodollar because all of those US military bases in Saudi Arabia that were there, in part, to fulfill America’s promise of protection have become the reason Saudi Arabia is being attacked so viciously by Iran. That turns all those bases into nothing but liabilities now, rather than assets, since they can offer no more assistance in Saudi Arabia’s worst hour. Other Arab nations with US bases have certainly all taken note with equal horror.

It’s showing up in the news now, though.

The US offers empty assurances

Into the now rapidly spiraling energy crisis, US Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, attempted to speak some calm into markets. He seems to specialize in saying stupid things. This time he indicated the total shutdown of the east-west pipeline was not a huge concern because the Saudis plan to have the pipeline fully “running very soon.” Since he is always saying empty stuff like that, it would appear the energy secretary’s brain doesn’t have the energy to run a lightbulb.

With the Houthis having seized full control of western end of Yemen, which was generally under Saudi military control until this Friday, the Houthis have gained a lot more missile firing platforms and drone-launching areas along the Saudi border that are now uninhibited, at least locally, by the Saudis from stopping them. The Saudis even fled so fast, Biden style, that they left some valuable equipment behind.

So, it is not hard to figure out what the Houthi game plan will be for that major pipeline, making me think the energy secretary cannot be this dumb, so he must just be another Team Trump liar. (It is not hard to figure out what Iraq will do either because it has also done damage to that route.) With the pipeline totally dead, both partied will (if they are as smart as I suspect they are) wait until the Saudis spend a lot of money and time getting the pumping station back online and until the oil starts flowing again. Then they will immediately blow it all back up, leaving another big mess of spilled and burned oil all over the totally destroyed equipment. Each time, the Saudis will have to clean up the big, charred oil spill before they can even start to rebuild.

If they do not blow up that station, they will simply blow up one of the several others along the line, all of which are essential to keeping the oil moving. There is no sense blowing any more of the line up until it’s back in operation. Might as well let the Saudis have fun and spend money like it is going out of style (because it IS) fixing it all and then blow it all up again. And that means the pipeline will not likely be “running very soon,” as the energy secretary lamely assured the world, because it is now part of Iran’s “escalation trap” strategy to keep it cut off. Once the next step up the escalator has moved into place, there is no reason to take it out of play anymore than Iran has done with its blockade of Hormuz.

And, while we are on the subject of Team Trump’s lies, lets just also note today that Trump repeated his forever lie during the forever war that “Iran desperately wants to make a deal, but I will be the one to decide if a deal is made.” Uh huh! That’s called “trying to put a good face on it” or “sour grapes”: “I don’t really want a deal so that is why we are no longer negotiating.”

Costco is cracking prices higher in its own oil shortage

With both Brent and WTI now staying solidly above $100 per barrel because of the events of last week, especially on Friday, it is not surprising that we are also now seeing another one of those kinds of shortages I said we would likely see before the big gas-station fuel shortages. Costco has just announced that it is putting a cap on how much synthetic oil its customers can buy. (I didn’t realize this, but synthetic oil is still about 80% petroleum.)

There are two reasons Costco would be capping consumer purchases to one, five-quart container per purchase with a total weekly maximum of two. The usual reason for caps like this are that a retailer is concerned it may not be able to supply enough to fill demand, and it wants to make sure every customer gets some. The second reason given in the ariticle below is that Costco may be expecting the price of its oil to go up rapidly and may be expecting that price scares will drive customers to hoarding the oil. That concern is not just about some customers not getting any; it is also an awareness that Costco will miss out on selling the same oil at a much higher price soon if consumers all stockpile as much as they can right now to avoid buying later … and even a concern that consumers and other small retailers may hose it all up in order to sell it at a nice markup a month or two down the road.

So, we are at that clearing-the-toilet-paper-off-the-shelves-in-a-day mode where caps are essential to avoid hoarding and empty shelves. Only this time it is in motor oil, and it is not as if Costco’s motor oil is cheap anymore. The price of their 5-quart container of top synthetic (enough for one oil change on most cars) has already risen from the mid-thirties to $58. Costco had maintained the lower price for years. It’s gone … and may eventually be a distant memory.

You may remember months ago, when I started talking about shortages coming out of this energy crisis, I said they would likely show up first on the shelves of lubricants. Well, now lubricant shortages that some retailers did start to experience a couple of months ago are even hitting the mighty Costco. When Costco, one of the most efficient retailers at quantity purchases in the world, starts running out, you know the situation is getting squeaky tight. And you don’t want squeaky with oil.

US oil reserves tank

Well, in oil terms, they did the opposite of tank. They left tanks and those big, salty holes in the ground where they are stored. The US just sailed past another bad benchmark: the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) just hit a 44-year low. It had been hovering around a 43-year low, which took it back to when Reagan was still filling the new reserve up for the first time. Now we are back down to the level they had it filled at a whole year before. US commercially held inventories also fell by 1.2-million barrels last week. Crude-oil supply is still running in the wrong direction for the US, offering no hope to help take down those record diesel prices.

Oil is pumping up all other inflation

It is completely expected (here anyway) that CPI inflation was just reported to have back to rising. You probably remember my dismissing the two-month dip we saw in both CPI and PCE when oil prices fell during the now infamous Trump MoU. I argued, counter to Team Trump, that the MoU would fail, and crude prices would shoot back up as soon as it did, so the dip in prices would prove temporary. I warned you to expect to see the inflation re-emerge in the report for August. It did.

The rise is only a small return back up the inflation highway right now but that is because only the last week of August experienced the upturn in crude prices, and only this past week in September did they jolt back solidly above $100/bbl. So, when the CPI and PCE inflation data for September come in, expect the whole “transitory,” as I called it, price decrease to be over, and we’re back in reality land.

Nothing to treasure about oil right now

As a result of all of this turmoil that happened over the past week, especially the impacts coming to inflation, the 10YR US Treasury finally punched through 5%, hitting the highest point it has seen since 2007, almost two decades ago.

It’s sometimes hard for me to decide if I should put bond news under the “Economania” section, which is largely about market news or economic data, or “Money Matters” section where I usually put bond news. If the article is more about how bond yields will impact management of the nation’s currency, such as how bond rates are being manipulated by the Fed to fight inflation or how that inflation is the driver of interest rates, I put the article under “Money Matters.” If the story is just about the bond market or its impact on other markets, such as stocks, I put it under “Economania.”

With bonds just hitting a high yield not seen in nearly two decades, it was clear they go under the market news section, rather than the money news section. At 5% they have not only passed their own market milestone of nearly twenty year, but they will be impacting stock markets around the world as another article below explains today, most directly, of course, US stocks.

There is an equilibrium mechanism that kicks in here, though, that can mitigate the move in bond yields. The last time Treasuries cleared this bar, it resulted in a huge increase in demand for Treasury bonds because getting 5% interest for doing nothing but sitting on a pile of safely stored money is pretty attractive to many investors. That seems to be the case today, too, because yields took a big plunge after punching up to 5.011%, which indicates a flood of investors poured in to grab those higher rates the government will be paying out.

So, there we are, big crude oil prices, big diesel prices, big lubricant prices with short supply, big bond yields, all because of big losses on the battlefield resulting in a new big front opening up along the Red Sea, all being covered with more big lies.

(Today’s headlines are free for everyone, but please consider becoming one of those who help keep the truth in the mail, and thank you to those who do.)

Economania (national & global economic collapse plus market news)

10-year Treasury yield briefly tops 5%, hitting its highest level since 2007 as bond-market selloff deepens

The 10-Year Treasury Yield Briefly Makes it over 5%. Last Time, 5% Instantly Opened the Floodgates of Demand (Which seems to be the case today, too)

Long-Term Treasury Yields Spike, 1- to 7-Year Yields Explode, Mortgage Rates Hit 7.12%, Bond Market Gets Spooked

Scott Bessent warned president the bond market ‘has taken down more governments than howitzers’

Why 5% is the Treasury-yield level that freaks investors out

Stocks are in a late-stage bubble and poised to crash 21% next year, while Treasury yields above 5% will signal a new era of tight money, analysts say

Real-Estate Rubble (housing, commercial & global real-estate bubble trouble)

John Rubino's Substack

Spiking Interest Rates Freeze Housing, In Five Charts

Inflation isn’t moderating. Instead, it’s stuck at levels far above the Fed’s 2% target…

Read more

2 days ago · 34 likes · 17 comments · John Rubino

Money Matters (monetary policy, metals, cryptos, currency wars & going cashless)

Bonner Private Research

A Cage Fight on the White House Lawn

Monday, September 14th, 2026…

Read more

a day ago · 52 likes · 23 comments · Bill Bonner

More than 800,000 have applied for citizenship to new microstate aiming to become ‘utopia’ for crypto billionaires, founder claims

Inflation Factors (too much money chasing too few goods due to weather, sanctions, tariffs, quarantines, etc.)

Costco Starts Rationing Motor Oil. Could Walmart Be Next?

Saudi Arabia Could Run Out of Oil For Export Within Days as Pipeline Shut

U.S. Petroleum Reserve Falls to 285.4 Million Barrels (putting it now at a 44-year low)

Inflation Not Going Back into the Bottle: CPI, Core CPI, and Core Services CPI Bounce Back

US Energy Sec. Wright Says Saudi’s Critical East-West Oil Pipeline Will Restart “Very Soon”

Exxon Mobil refinery in Illinois that produces 10% of regional diesel and gasoline is investigating Sunday power outage that has stopped diesel and gasoline production.

Wars & Rumors of War (including cyberwar, civil unrest and revolts)

Saudi Arabia Faces ‘Worst-Case Scenario’ After Being Rebuffed by Trump

Houthis target Saudi base as Iran denies involvement in Yemen war

Saudi oil refinery up in smoke as huge fire burns amid Houthi strikes

Missile crisis: The hard truths about America’s military arsenal

Oil tanker exploded after colliding with mines in Hormuz, Iran’s Fars reports

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Israeli-made film about Gaza gets 25-minute ovation at Venice premiere

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The deadly shadow war unfolding on streets of Russia as Ukraine’s hit squads bring bombs & bullets to Kremlin’s doorstep

Digital Dominance (AI threats, transhumanism, hacks & cyberattacks, etc.)

America’s Fast-Food Chains Are Making a Big Pivot—Back to Humans

Political Pandemonium & Social Senescence (socio-political issues & events)

Trump implores Republicans to vote in November at unusual midterm convention

Conservative Fmr. Appeals Court Judge Explains How Republicans Are Trying to ‘Steal’ Midterms in Shocking Column: Trump Has ‘Doomed’ Us to Another J6

‘It’s a Cult’: Trump Raked Over the Coals for Bizarre Pledge as He Closed Out Midterm Convention

Israeli official calls for directors of “NAZA” documentary alleging use of AI in Gaza to have nationality revoked

Why a lawyer who launched the Christian legal movement believes it’s gone astray

DHS watchdog finds immigrants held at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ in outdoor cages the size of phone booths

Deep Domination (globalism, unelected government, unconstitutional government & censorship)

Calamity, Catastrophe & Climate Craziness

White House slammed for crediting Donald Trump for quiet hurricane season (Did he shut up so all the hot air went away?)

Off-the-Beat News & Just Plain Offbeat News

The Trump Alien ‘Disclosure Speech’ Rumors Are Reaching a Fever Pitch

An early sign of dementia may be hiding in your voice, new research suggests

Hope for Hard Times

Sometimes Hope Has Four Legs: Michael Hingson was on the 78th floor of the North Tower on September 11. His guide dog, Roselle, was under his desk when the plane hit.

Doomer Humor

Refer a friend

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Starting with the smallest point first, which is still of historic significance, diesel in the US just soared past its highest price in history! So, those rising fuel prices I promised would hit this summer are resoundingly and solidly here just as summer nears its close:

Diesel hits all-time high of $6 per gallon, and just about everything will cost more

The nationwide average price of diesel hit $6 per gallon Friday for the first time, an ominous record for the fuel that powers much of the U.S. economy.

The price was $6.05 as of Friday morning, according to data from motor club AAA. The national average price of regular gas was $4.29, up 15 cents since last week.

Since the war with Iran began in late February, the nationwide average diesel price has soared by 60%.

“The cost of diesel gets into just about everything,” KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk said in a recent interview.

“From running a farm ... [to the] cost of food, but also everything across the economy that’s shipped,” she said. When diesel prices rise, everything “gets that extra fee tacked onto it.”

Swonk predicted that the high cost of diesel will be an “inflationary problem” for months to come.

And we made it here even ahead of seeing those “spotty” out-of-fuel signs at gas stations that I said would be coming. I did report on a few, but there was no deeper explanation in those X posts as to whether the gas station owners just didn’t realize their tanks were nearing empty, as sometimes happens, or actually could not get fuel. So, I won’t claim that as an accurate prediction yet, but what that means is that fuel prices are still going higher once actual shortages do start to show up. (At least, one of those did sound like more than the station owner/manager forgot to order fuel in time as the person wondered out loud, “What’s going on?” as in “Why hasn’t my fuel arrived yet?”)

This week, Trump made the surprising (only in that it came from his lips) announcement of the obvious, which is that the war and the high prices on fuel will continue until the day after the election because Iran will do all it can to reduce his power while in office. He’s pathetically blind or just lying, though, to be claiming their pressure will end right after the election due to their desperation for a deal. Not everyone has the short attention span of Donald Trump. The Iranians have been in the long game for decades.

Today, Middle East nations are negotiating with Iran to see if they can get Iran to open the strait. Iran will use the negotiations as a process to keep buying time, as they always do, so that the war of attrition bites deeper into America’s back side. They will say something along the lines of, “Yes, we will open the strait if every nation in this room promises to kick all American military bases out of their country.” That would be a huge win for Iran, and such a negotiation point puts the onus back on the nations that are begging for strait mercy to change the situation in the Middle East. It would achieve one of Iran’s major objectives in this war, talked about in my last Deeper Dive.

At this point, as laid out in that Deeper Dive, it is actually within the realm of feasibility that Iran could get that kind of agreement and actually kick the US permanently out of the Gulf, and today’s blockbuster event really underscores why nations like Saudi Arabia will be seriously considering such a move. Moreover, the US has a huge financial burden to add to its toppling mountain of debt if it is going to rebuild all those bases, which means it might not press so hard to remain there. A US military official has just admitted the US received major damage:

Navy Secretary Casually Admits Iran “Blew the Hell” out of U.S. Base

Fox News’s Jennifer Griffin wrote. “Haven’t heard a senior U.S. official admit this on the record until now.” Others noted the Iranian military capacity does not seem to be as depleted as Trump claims. Naturally, the always-lying Trump administration has been underplaying the damage done by Iran; but it eventually gets out as ships limp home in worse states than the US originally admitted.

With Trump now promising a $5,000 economic stimulus check to every single adult American if Republicans sweep both houses of congress at an estimated cost of $1.25-trillion, adding the cost of rebuilding all those military bases and replenishing their military hardware is going to be a tough addition to the price of this war. So, if nations that have experienced heavy damage because of those bases now demand the US go away, the US might not push back as hard as it would when it was a more prosperous nation. That is the cost of having a towering national debt that now looks like the Leaning Tower of Piza.

Yet, the costs of this war are hardly done mounting because Iran plans to do a lot more destruction to US military bases in the region in order to drive the US out and a lot more destruction to US oil infrastructure. And events that happened overnight show how rapidly that can come about!

Most of those costs where that kind of damage was already rendered are not imputed yet into the cost of this war because it is not known if the US will rebuild. Most of the oil rebuilding costs will have to born by US oil companies that are making bank off the war unless the billionaires manage to get bailout money from congress—always a possibility in our brave new world; but that may be a tough sell in congress with the debt tower now leaning so hard that the Treasury secretary was unable with his first-round effort to prop it up at all. The props snapped immediately, showing he’ll need to place far stronger timber under the structure of US debt if he wants to prop it up.

We’re back to massive financial rescue measures -OR- just facing the impossible cost of soaring interest. That is a no-win scenario because, as the war continues to drive inflation up (sure to rise rapidly with diesel not over $6/gallon), interest rates will continue to rise, and with central banks lately casting off Treasuries like sand bags of ballast thrown off a falling financial balloon, financing that interest is a real problem.

So, with that, I said I would explain in the next Deeper Dive what I meant by death of the dollar and what that means to all of us, and then I will go through some of the exploding details of the war that I shared in headlines with paying subscribers on Thursday (again beyond the paywall because a person deserves to be paid for his many hours of work each day, and thank you to those who realize that and do something about it!) And finally on to the atom-bomb sized transformation in the ME that happened overnight.

The dollar’s demise

Many of the people who write about the dollar’s collapse envision a scenario something like Zimbabwe where the dollar spirals hopelessly into a vortex of lost value. If you haven’t hedged for inflation with bricks of gold, toilet paper is going to cost you your entire 401(k).

That’s not what I’m talking about. I won’t say that cannot happen, but it is not what I meant in my Deeper Dive last week. I’m talking about death of the “petrodollar,” which is the same thing as death of the world’s primary trade currency. The world has many trade currencies (currencies used for trade with many nations outside of trade with the nation that issues the currency). The euro, the yen, the yuan, the Swiss franc, all are used to store wealth in sovereign funds, to make foreign exchanges between banks; but none as widely as the dollar, and there are two reasons for that:

The dollar was anchored in global trade by Henry Kissinger when he negotiated the establishment of the petrodollar for all oil trade with Saudi Arabia back in 1974. Other smaller oil-producing nations joined in with the Saudis, and the US at the time was not the major exporter of oil that it has become. So, all oil trade came to be done in dollars, which forced other nations wanting to buy oil of the Middle East to exchange their currency for dollars before buying oil. That was typically done by using their currencies to buy US Treasuries, denominated in dollars, which could be moved like large sacks of money between banks. The US currency, thus, became THE dominant trade currency of the world.

That has now been blown to bits—hence my “death of the dollar.” With oil trade in the Middle East being throttled, the need for petrodollars has been throttled. Worse still, with so much animosity created toward the US and its dollar by decades of sanctions and now by the US starting wars all over the world at a level of new beginnings and major intensity not seen since the big wars of history, and with the US threatening to seize the lands of its friends and congress doing nothing to step in the way of that because it cowers before Trump, there is a LOT of hatred toward the US and toward using the dollar.

On top of all that, with this war going even further outside of US control as I’ll get to below the paywall, the damage being done to the petrodollar nations because of their close connections to the US makes it no longer worth participating in the petrodollar. You see, the original bargain was that, if ME nations signed on to selling their oil only in dollars, they would receive protection from other hostile entities in the region, such as Iran.

Well, we see where that promise has now gone. Instead of bringing protection as was the case (or, at least, appeared to be the case for decades), being affiliated with the US is bringing absolutely massive destruction to their oil economies and their newly minted tourist economies and never more so than over the past twenty-four hours. Having US bases in their countries, instead of offering security, is the same thing as painting a glowing red target on their backs that says, “BOMB HERE!”

The US, diminished in defensive weaponry from too many years of overextending itself, has been unable to provide a solid defense. That became abundantly clear in the past two days. The nations of the Middle East are, as a result, badly wounded; and, as the reports to be covered below show, the likelihood of even greater damage is EXTREME.

So, I cannot think of any reason those nations would want to participate in the US petrodollar scheme anymore. Iran will keep fighting this war, as laid out in the last Deeper Dive until it drives the US out of the Persian Gulf region. It won’t likely be driven entirely out of the Middle East, but Iran will be content to get the US back away from Iran and certainly out of the Strait of Hormuz.

The more the US fights back, the more Iran will destroy the petrodollar nations that house US military bases—not just the bases but their oil infrastructure … and even more if that is what it takes. That raises the amplitude of the cost of staying in the petrodollar. As the last Deeper Dive explained, Iran is on a graduated path of widening and enlarging the damage (called the “escalation trap”) until it succeeds in all of its three main goals laid out in that Deeper Dive, which it has held rock-hard to throughout all negotiations, so we know they mean business. They are not backing down on those demands.

With all of that said, death of the petrodollar does not mean the dollar has to go all Zimbabwe. As noted, many other nations have global currencies that are not petrodollars, and they have been advancing slowly in popularity on the dollar. Not having the unique trade status of the dollar has not thrown them into massive inflation, anymore than what the dollar has seen since the financial and economic profligacy of the Covidcrisis. So, there are other factors more related to inflation; so, there are other factors essential or inflation, such as Fed “money printing,” but that is, of course, where the death of the petrodollar could create an inflationary crisis, depending on the Fed and feds response. I’m just saying hyperinflation is not inevitable, but neither is it unlikely.

The alternative is uglier

The US, of course, could do as Trump has said he WILL do and utterly destroy Iran’s civilization, and that is why Trump is now campaigning with European nations to dissolve the International Criminal Court because that kind of genocide of civilians, which the US is certainly capable of, would bring the possibility of death sentences to Trump and any members of his administration that participate in the mass genocide.

The US could unleash all kinds of weapons of mass destruction or just conventionally bomb into non-existence every energy facility in Iran, making survival in high-rise buildings in the middle of a desert impossible, cutting off refrigeration, making feeding the masses in a desert impossible, cutting off water, making life in a desert impossible. The US has the power to do that, and anyone implementing such a plan will be taken to The Hague if ever apprehended and sentenced to life in prison or death. Hence …

US pressures NATO allies to destroy International Criminal Court

The U.S. attempted to enlist its NATO allies in a campaign to “systematically dismantle” the International Criminal Court, straining already fraught transatlantic relations.

During a closed-door meeting of NATO’s 32 ambassadors in Brussels in mid-July, U.S. envoy Matthew Whitaker asked NATO countries for help in disassembling the international body, and urged them to leave the ICC’s founding document, the Rome Statute, according to three NATO diplomats who were granted anonymity to speak freely.

Whitaker ended his intervention by saying: “We will be watching closely who stands with America,” the three diplomats said.

The pressure on allies to quit the court — driven by U.S. concern that its own officials could face war crimes prosecutions — is part of a broader Trump administration campaign against international institutions and rules seen as limiting U.S. freedom of action.

It’s pretty clear: Effort to end the war-crimes court is being pressed in order to prepare the way for genocide if all else fails in the Trump-Israel-Iran War, and all else is already failing (see the latest war stories below). I am sure the president will get little support on that because everyone his people are speaking to are well aware of where he is going with this. Therefore, Trump will continue to make more enemies out of our NATO allies by strong-arming them with his endless new tariffs or sanctions, such as banning them from SWIFT dollar transactions, thereby clubbing the trade currency even harder—the kinds of things that he imposes on friends anytime they don’t do what he demands, tiny tot wearing a crown in a crib that he is.

The U.S. mission sent out a paper to NATO delegations telling them: “The United States will systematically dismantle the capabilities of the ICC … we firmly request that you immediately take steps to withdraw,” according to details of the document shared with POLITICO.

It also pressed allies to “examine the threat” of the ICC to their own countries, “publicly condemn” its “overreach” and “cease … immediately” any material support to the court. “Let us end the charade of the ICC once and for all,” it reads. Although NATO is not a signatory to the court, all alliance members except Turkey and the U.S. belong.

The push against the ICC was launched this summer by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has accused the court of infringing on U.S. sovereignty.

That is because we like to bomb the heck out of anybody we want to bomb the heck out of whenever we want to bomb the heck out of them and to whatever extent we want. The ICC stands in the way of that, and it stands in the way of our seizing Canada and Greenland. It bars the door to our destroying Iranian civilian civilization. Notice the correlation in those two words. Destruction of the civilization, which is literally what Trump promised, is destruction of its civilians who depend on that civilization as the organizing principle that makes such highly populous life possible in a desert!

So, the ICC is an unhandy thing that Tyrant Trump wants out of his way. Those who support him are walking the path of global tyranny because, clear the path, and he will get worse. He has to get the court out of the way to protect himself as a tyrant, so he is making a full-court press to get rid of it. (No apology for the pun. I like puns.)

“The ICC and its friends are waging a war against our country not with bullets or missiles but with statutes, compacts and the force of so-called international law,” Rubio said on July 13. “If they believe they can deprive us of our sovereignty, we will teach them the full meaning of American resolve.”

Some extremely harsh words, so you can see how real the press of tyranny is. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO STAND IN THE WAY OF OUR IMPERIAL GOALS. Trump is serious about getting Greenland. He’s serious about getting Canada, and he’s holding back on his repeated pledge to wipe Iran’s civilization off the map because he and his officials fear The Hague will kill them if they go that far.

These are truly dark days because a good part of the US populace is going along with all of that by denying the reality that the Trump administration really does intend to do all of those things that Trump has claimed he is determined to do. Why? Because most people think he cannot really be THAT insane. They dismiss it by saying, “You know how he exaggerates just to wind up the press.”

Trump’s actions and the damage he has already brought to this nation’s integrity and global respect, to its military power and its broad acceptance in the world, and to our everyday prices, which we will be saddled with for a long time (such as that diesel I led off with) and, finally, the dismantling of the trade dollar, which brings serious destruction to the very foundations of the United States’ Toppling Tower of Piza, all say he is as serious as death, itself.

To conclude the Death of the Dollar explanation, the dollar has two ways that it is valued: One is on foreign exchanges where its function as a global trade currency is in play. That value, which is relative to other currencies, could blow to bits as dollars become less sought after. A devalued dollar on foreign exchanges will make our exports more successful, except for retaliatory tariffs barring the door; but it will also make our imports, which we US citizens highly rely upon, more expensive, which is where US tariffs are already beating us on the knee caps.

The other way the dollar is valued is its purchasing power as measured by CPI, PCE and PPI—all measures of inflation or the comparative buying power of the dollar one year or one month against the previous year or previous month. Those measures don’t track all that much with foreign exchanges of the dollar. They are an internal valuation. Those measures may be impacted by death of the petrodollar, but it does not mean a Zimbabwe style crash.

A Zimbabwe style crash requires massive money printing, and the US could respond that way in order to diminishing its debt burden when that debt burden becomes unmanageable because death of the petrodollar has left us without enough parties wanting to buy US Treasuries. Many alternative press sites have long suggested the US will try to inflate its way out of its debt problem. So, the Zimbabwe path is certainly possible as we try to print enough money with the Fed covering the bill, so to speak, to keep paying the piling debt.

The other path is we make massive cuts in our national budget and eliminate the deficit. That is something that should have been done decades ago, which makes it very hard to do now. In fact, it was done for a very small window of time. That is now a nearly impossible path because the cuts would have to be enormous, making them a huge shock. Another alternative (or likely something that would have to happen in conjunction with expenditure cuts) is that the Trump Tax Cuts are terminated.

Doing both of those things would take us back to where we were under Clinton and Gingrich for a blend of tax increases and spending cuts, and military fortress dismantlement across the Middle East in order to start living within our means, but that is VASTLY more difficult now than it was before George Bush blew those years of minor surpluses completely out of the water with his tax cuts and his candy of $4,000 to taxpayers. That was an absolutely stupid plan that completely terminated a brief period where America was actually realistic and fiscally responsible about what it would take to end deficit spending.

Is there any hope in this much more divided nation with a much more divided government in getting there? Not likely. So, death of the petrodollar may still turn into Zimbabwe, here we come! But there are alternative paths to, at least try.

A good start that many could get behind would be to COMPLETELY end the quest for American empire! Good luck with that because the MIC that runs the government will fight it in every way. However, Clinton did some of that when the Cold War ended, claiming what I think he called “the Cold War dividend” when the US was suddenly able to scale back from fighting the “Soviet Threat.”

We need to go a lot further with that and size our military down to just what it takes to actually defend our own land from real attacks and not to defend and CONTROL the entire world for the sake of oil and empire. I’m not saying we should not defend allies when they are actually attacked, but we need to get totally out of the imperial expansion business where we use the US military to achieve more control even where allies are not being attacked at all.

Our president is a runaway train in the other direction. One person in the publication RawStory wrote, and I think it is likely accurate:

My current theory of Donald Trump is that he is utterly gripped by the terror of death, and is desperately attempting to leave some mark on the world that history cannot erase — this is the point of the wars, the annexation threats, the D.C. vandalism. I think right now he is genuinely fixated on adding new American territory as the brass ring, the thing they’ll never be able to take away from his memory.

You are witnessing the death throes of a narcissistic emperor, grasping for the reins of absolute power to create some vain and lifeless form of immortality because he doesn’t like where he may be going after death. America’s long imperial quest has reached its ugly zenith in Donald Trump.

An empire is very expensive to hold together, much less to assemble in the final years of your rapidly waning life.

Said another in that article,

Rather than making America great again, Trump is inflicting grievous harm on it with tariffs, now upgraded to import bans against select Canadian goods; an illegal war; and a total ransacking of our public and private sectors for the enrichment of his courtiers and his family. And he is going to bury us all with him in a tomb of his own design — a ballroom.

With that, let’s go on to reincent outbreaks current oil war, starting with the first significant escalation of the week, reported on in The Daily Doom headlines on Thursday:

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Treasury yields took a rocket ride skyward today in another spectacular Bessent fail after all of his smug talk. Perhaps the more he plays his lame games the more the bond vigilantes will beat him up for it to show him who’s boss. Suddenly the US10YR is tickling the underside of 5% (which, of course, sent stocks down):

The Treasury market’s painful rout intensified Thursday, as a fresh auction of 30-year U.S. government debt and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s first beefed-up buyback operation failed to calm the market.

The tumult comes [as] oil prices jolt higher and inflation data increased the odds of a Federal Reserve interest-rate hike next week. That combination had the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield up 12 basis points to 4.96%—its highest level in about three years, and putting it in jeopardy of hitting the 5% threshold.

“Everybody is selling everything,” said Tom di Galoma, a managing director at Mischler Financial Group

This huge spike in yields happened, as the article mentions, in spite of the fact that Secretary Scott Bessent’s Operation Twist was intended to bring down rates on longterm Treasury bonds ranging from the 10YR up to the 30YR, which, instead, climbed a staircase today to 5.37%!

Earlier this week, Bessent dared traders to “bet against me if you want,” while also declaring: “I am the house now.”

Well, the house just lost a bundle on that bet, so his chest puffing didn’t get him very far.

Thursday’s reaction “shows the house is the market, not the Treasury,” said Horan at Chilton Trust. The Treasury may be “the big kid on the block” and trying to “draw the line in the sand with the buybacks,” but the market is “bigger than this line in the sand,” he said.

We call that MAJOR bond vigilante action when bond investors beat up the Treasury and/or the Fed and show them who is boss about where yields are going. Today was a head-slammer. So, here is how this likely goes if the Fed doesn’t cooperate by moving its rates to where the bond market is now telling the Treasury interest is going to go:

If the Fed doesn’t hike rates next week, there’s a risk that long-dated Treasury yields could become “unanchored” and more disorderly, said Ed Al-Hussainy, portfolio manager at Columbia Threadneedle.

If the Fed and feds know what is good for them, the bond vigilantes have them quivering in their pretty pink and rhinestone cowboy boots:

Al-Hussainy said the Treasury and the Fed likely will be more concerned about the potential for bond-market tumult to unleash financial stability concerns. He noted that hasn’t happened yet, but it’s something to monitor given Thursday’s violent moves, especially in shorter-dated Treasury yields. That was prompted by rising odds of a Fed rate hike and the leg higher in oil prices.

As the Treasury buys back its longterm bonds to try (very unsuccessfully) to pull down longterm interest rates on the national debt, they raise the money for those buybacks by selling a lot more short-term bonds. The increased supply of short-term bonds on the market naturally lowers the price investors are willing to pay to buy the surplus of short-term bonds. (Simple supply and demand.) When the Treasury gets a lower price for the bonds it is auctioning, that raises the yield on those bonds when they mature and the Treasury pays them off at face value—the effective interest the Treasury ends up paying once any semi-annual coupon interest paid by the Treasury over the years of the bond’s life is added in to the payoff.

So, short-term bonds are experiencing even greater upward yield pressures than longer term bonds, which were supposed to see the payoff of a drop in yields that did the opposite. And that is where the whole mess can get disorderly and see all bond rates take off. After this bruising tumult, you can be sure the Fed and feds are now both monitoring this trouble that suddenly emerged because it shows the bond market no longer has faith in the losing Trump Treasury. Too much game playing, too much jawboning, too much added debt, too much war, raising the price of oil and fuel and, thereby, the price of everything!

Speaking of which, how was that inflation?

Volatile fuel

Let’s start with crude oil as foundational and work our way up.

Oil prices launched to the moon in a single day. Brent crude, which had been hovering about two bucks below the $100/bbl elevation for the past week bolted up to $108.6 today, and WTI broke the $100 barrier, too, cruising in at $102.5 as of the time of this writing.

Next, we’ll move up to Gasoline. Try this headline on for size, which I’ve raised up to the editorial section here so even the non-supporting readers of this site can read it, because we just passed a critical juncture in the inflationary push I’ve been claiming you will see this summer due to this war:

Gas stations in America are starting to max out their displays with $9.999 prices

They’re going to have to buy bigger marquees and new pump displays in order to keep up or they can just hand-write “x10” with a Sharpie after the readout like Mexico does for pesos, so that the price reads “$1.09⁹ x10.” once they break into prices with a ten-buck handle. That is what we are coming to. We’re becoming that kind of country anyway.

There was a solitary reader who was telling me how wrong I was about all of this trajectory a month ago. I’m hoping he’s kindly recalibrating his opinion and decides its worth staying around.

“As the conflict with Iran drags on longer than many expected, inflation pressures are becoming increasingly entrenched.

That was part of the big news today. Trump gave up on implying the war may be up in a week or so and said clearly it will last through the November election. (I’ll come back to that because there is a detail I don’t want you to miss.)

The Producer Price Index edged up another 0.4% during the month of August. Wrong direction for voters sick and tired of rising prices! (But “B-b-b-baby you just ain’t seen nothing yet!”) Oh, and July got revised up (as these things tend to go), leaving us with an annual inflation rate in the PPI of 5.4%. Nobody wants to see that because that is what is coming our way down the pipeline. It’ll arrive here from producers … quickly now … especially with the clearly protracted war that even Trump admits will remain hot or hotter until the day after the election, and it is getting hotter everyday as we saw quite clearly today under Iran’s escalation plan. That will keep pressuring oil, which will keep pressuring the prices of everything.

Here’s the detail: Trump, in all of his lameness, admitted to more longevity for the war than he has ever admitted to before (since he won the war back in March) but only by sugar coating it with another outright lie of the magic-thinking kind where he tries to speak new realities into being like he is some kind of god. He assured America that oil and fuel prices will plunge the day after the election because Iran desperately wants out of this war.

How MANY times does Trump get to tell this obvious lie before all his supporters finally yell in unison, “Shut up!” and flee the stadium? No, they applauded the good news that will never be, believing their demigod will bring it into being. Trump so completely underestimates his enemy, which is why he is losing this war without being able to understand why, that he thinks the Iranians are only keeping the pressure up to try to force him into losing the election. So, he believes they will finally run out of gas, so to speak, the day the election is over. Yes, they want that pressure to keep rising all the way to the election; but, NO, it doesn’t end there. And that also tells you how long Trump intends to keep feeding into this war.

What a joke. The Iranians will still want to grind him into the dust after the elections to humiliate him and America for what he has done to them, and the war news today was bad for the US, but I’ll leave it for you to read all about that in the headlines if you want, continuing my very brief step back from much war talk in the editorials to focus on the economy (and the election, desperately intertwined) directly today, though Trump’s two wars—on tariffs and on Iran—have everything to do with the economy right now.

Purchasing the election

So, what does Trump do now that he is getting more desperate because the election is so near that he’s now speaking from his convention podium on a day when the war is getting much worse and inflation is reported still rising? What new and outrageous thing could he do to try to turn this around for himself like a caged animal? Trump has decided to outright buy American votes!

Trump, hoping to salvage midterms, makes a dubious pledge to give every US adult $5,000 if the GOP wins (There that is two free headlines even for non-supporters just to be be generous.)

Within an hour, Vice President JD Vance appeared to try to walk back Trump’s proposal — at least in part — by suggesting the dividend payments would not go to the wealthy. Vance suggested it could be paid for by U.S. tariff revenues, though the suggested payment dwarfs what the U.S. has taken in through the protectionist measures.

Ah, so it’s a Republican downward redistribution of wealth then? It is mind-boggling that his remaining supporters, former fiscal conservatives, can endure the cognitive dissonance needed to buy that lame explanation. The tariffs have never brought in enough, even at their highest point, to eliminate the annual deficit. That means, if you add another $1-trillion plus to annual government expenses to create this enormous cash prize, ALL of it gets piled onto the debt! ALL OF IT! These guys just lie through their teeth on a constant basis. And most of the Republican Party doesn’t care. That or they went to those modern American schools that stopped teaching arithmetic because it is racist.

We’re already struggling to figure out how we are going to cover social security payouts each year, and now Trump wants to add another $5,000 per person in a single year right after the election (which he doesn’t have the authority to do anyway, but when has that slowed him down):

If you go down to the headlines section, I’ve posted a link to a convention video where you can watch the Republicans applauding enthusiastically because their president is BRIBING all voters in the USA to vote for him with a pledge that, IF his party wins the midterms, he will pay EVERYONE off with taxpayer money! They are openly applauding one of the most brazen public political bribes I've ever heard. “If Republicans win both houses, I will send everyone a government check for $5,000!”

Wow! His MAGA crowd is cheering the offering of public funds to try to buy everyone’s vote with a bribe that will make him the BIGGEST-BY-FAR deficit-raising president in history! Welcome to the completion of the transition to the NEW REPUBLICAN PARTY—something so utterly different from the Republicans of the past (at least, as they stood in word, though rarely in deed when in power) that he would make their former hero Ronald Reagan turn green in his grave and throw up all over his weary bones.

This is a plan of throwing candy to the taxpayers that their grandchildren can pay for as they hand them a bankrupt nation. Yet, the actual Neocons that filled that convention hall couldn’t help but applaud a spending plan that makes Democratic socialism look conservative.

Of course, a trillion or so extra dollars packed into the deficit that packs onto the mountain of debt is probably just chump change now that the government is rolling right through an additional $2.5-3-trillion added to the debt every year anyway, especially with all these wars over oil in Venezuela, drugs in Mexico, Central and South America, support for Ukraine and a failed-regime change/failed uranium recovery effort in Iran, plus the tidbits ongoing in African skirmishes.

I think we have reached the “Let’s just blow it all to hell” stage of imperial collapse. “Burn it all down.” I mean, now that it is all just one big drunken brawl already, why not have another drink and swing your fist another time before you topple over into the water trough in a stupor? That’s where we are when those who still pretend to think they are conservatives physically applaud a campaign pledge like this!

While politicians always promise to work to bring about legislation that creates big spending programs that they claim will serve all parties if they win, they don’t promise, as a single individual, to write government checks out of the Treasury’s bank account and pay everyone with taxpayer funds if their party wins an election, but these Republicans In Name Only LOVED it!

Why take more than $5,000 from every taxpayer so you can pay $5,000 to every American, which includes people who pay zero to almost-zero taxes? It will be a case of using the United States credit line to issue everyone in America a prepaid free $5,000 credit card where each gift gets added to the national debt so that no one has to pay. It’s FREE money because it is all on the plastic! (They think in their math-shy heads.) And what is one more trillion dollars, which it will take to do that giveaway, when we already have $40-trillion in debt anyway? It’s chump change for all the chimps in the circus.

This plan, if he pulls it off, will make 2027 the hottest consumer spending year on record with fiat money pouring into stocks from average folk using online retail investment services like Roadrunner and buying stuff from the big-box stores like they did during the Covid stimulus, creating even more inflation than that stimulus did, lasting even longer than that inflation has (which never ended to this day) because it is MORE money in the hands of consumers than what the Covid stimulus provided, and because it is piling in on top of already rising inflation and because it is all created out of thin air via government issuing a ton more Treasuries just like last time—the very government that cannot afford the Treasuries it has to service now to where they are already starting to pile up yields like a train wreck (even as Bessent can be seen in the video linked to below smiling bigly in the background when Trump announced the massive new electioneering stimulus package), which pileup is being made worse at this moment by central banks now ditching US debt as the petrodollar cracks to pieces under the Trump Tariff Wars and Trump War with Iran!

Now that’s a mouthful, and every word of it true! As I always say, “We learn nothing!” We repeat the same stupid cycles endlessly like rats running on a wheel in a cage. (You can read it all in my hopefully humorous little book DOWNTIME: Why We Fail to Recover from Rinse and Repeat Recession Cycles.)

Ultimately, though, all of that money does come out of your pockets, not just your grandchildren’s … in the form of slightly higher interest on your own credit lines as the expanding supply of Treasury bonds to raise that money increases the interest on US bonds (at a time when Treasury Idiot-in-Chief Bessent is already sending interest through the roof with his irresponsible smile-based money management). It comes in the form of an ever weaker nation surviving on the grift taken from the next generation. It comes at the expense of national integrity … though we really have none of that left now that we are openly trying to seize the lands of our former friends. And, of course, at the expense of all that massive inflation I just said will pile on top of the inflation that is already arriving if they do this lame-brain, free-lunch program for children from 18-118 years old (“every adult in America”).

There are still a few people in the land who understand math … and I suspect there are many among the readers here:

Marc Goldwein, the senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank in Washington, said Trump has no authority to send money to Americans without approval from Congress.

Goldwein added that dividends are something that companies pay when there’s a surplus, but the U.S. is running $2 trillion annual deficits and has $40 trillion in debt.

“The idea that we’ve had fiscal success is backwards and bordering on laughable,” he said. “We don’t have surpluses to give away.”

However, vote-buying is now becoming standard procedure in Republican campaigns anyway:

The move was reminiscent of billionaire Elon Musk’s efforts to buy votes in last year’s Wisconsin state Supreme Court race, where he handed out million-dollar checks to voters to try to boost a candidate who ultimately lost.

How far are Trump supporters going to go before they recognize what a national and international train wreck this is and jump off the Trump train?

Republicans in congress are actually still leaping onto the train:

“I will get a bill ready so that we can get the Trump Dividend passed immediately after the November 3rd election,” Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio wrote on X late Wednesday. “Because Republicans (and America) will win!”

There isn’t a conservative bone left in their spineless bodies.

A $5,000 check would give each American more money than they received in direct government payments from COVID-19 relief measures during Trump’s first term.

AND WE ALL SAW HOW THAT ENDED IN MASSIVE, RELENTLESS INFLATION!

So, we really need stimulus checks like that sent throughout the nation, paid for by no one, adding fuel to the fire that oil is already burning through all of our dollar bills. They just can’t burn up what is left of those petrodollars fast enough! What a grand ol’ party this next year will be!

This is some of the lamest, most fiscally irresponsible politics we’ve ever witnessed. Yet, look at their lawyers already bending over backwards to find ways to justify it:

Trump’s proposal would be legal because the payment would go to everyone regardless of how they voted, or whether they voted at all, said New Mexico-based attorney John Day.

“This is a campaign promise,” Day said. “It’s not a payment to individuals to try to get them to vote in a particular way.”

No, it’s not an attempt to sway votes! Not at all! How could anyone make such a slanderous suggestion that swaying votes in the intention?

Some Lawyers sometimes make me want to puke just like poor Ronald in his coffin.

Republicans are on defense as they look to defend their narrow House majority against strong headwinds. Trump is unpopular, and Americans overwhelmingly oppose the war in Iran. Even the Senate, which Republicans once were well-positioned to keep, is up for grabs.

With fiscal budgeting plans like this and marauding warmongers like Trump for president, who has profiteered off this war more than any president in history, having started more wars in his first year than any president in history … well, Republicans should be on defense because they just keep shoving the slop down the trough for the hogs to eat as willing Trump sycophants

“Let’s declare an enormous $5,000 ‘Free Feast of Fun for Everyone’ and send the bill to our grandchildren!” That should be their new socialist campaign motto. And let’s do that while we run low on ammo for our new forever war that the president pretends will automatically end the day after his party wins or loses, even as we are seeing the terrible results of war described in the headlines below.

There are still a few Republicans whose brains are not drunk on Trump who can see what this is because they don’t look at everything through a orange-colored glasses:

Some conservatives slammed the policy as an example of exactly the kind of socialism that Trump and the GOP warn Democrats will usher in if they regain power.

Yes, it is. I’ve always said it’s a uniparty, and I warned everyone back in 2016/17 he was nothing but a Trojan horse to kill conservatives in the Republican Party. They are mostly gone now.

Apparently the “post-conservatives” who make up today’s GOP will!

But just 90 minutes into his speech, Trump undermined all the socialist fear-mongering talking points by announcing the Trump Dividend, five thousand dollars to every adult citizen if Republicans hold Congress. That’s two hundred forty-five million adults getting five thousand apiece, which adds up to $1.25 TRILLION, or more than all three rounds of pandemic stimulus checks combined.

Will the utter nonsense and chaos never end?

This massively costly vote-buying is coming from the party that has made irresponsible and unfair wealth redistribution the central charge against its opponents for most of a year. And is proposing the largest one-time direct payment in American history from the stage of its own midterm convention? It’s either jaw-droppingly mind-numbing, or mind-numbingly jaw-dropping. You choose.

It was as if Trump said, “We’ve pretty well kicked the petrodollar down to the ground. Now let’s smack it across the bridge of the nose with the edge of this shovel and bury it.”

(Note that I have learned that simply clicking the “restack” button may do even more to get Substack to share articles than clicking the “like” button, though both are a simple finger click toward boosting the site that costs you nothing if you are getting value from it.)

Now, if you want to see how seriously the war intensified today, read beneath the line!

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After so many days of heavy topics like war, war and, well, war, it seemed reasonable to go for a little comedic relief with the assistance of the British government. So, here’s a story for the record books on inane government, brought to you today from that tiny island nation that long ruled the world. After today’s story, you’ll wonder how.

It’s such an oddball story I couldn’t decide whether to file it under “Just Plain Offbeat News” or under “Doomer Humor.” Finally, I decided to just lampoon the heck out of it right here in the editorial. I learned about it from an article titled “Key UK Nuclear Deterrent Link Destroyed Over Yorkshire,” a.k.a “Britain Uses Old-World Blimp as Essential Communication Relay with Trident Nuclear Submarines and is Shocked to Find a Blimp Can Be Disabled.”

The system was designed in case London or some other major part of the isle of Great Britain gets destroyed by a nuclear attack. It is meant to be the last-surviving, last-ditch method by which the UK can send a signal to its nuclear-armed subs to retaliate in order to fulfill the promise of “assured mutual destruction.”

I did not even find it published in humor publications like The Onion or The Babylon Bee. I had to check out the publication to see if it was some British counterpart to those; but, no, they are a serious group with fabled journalists from some of the big guys.

Really? This is your plan for nuclear communications, Britain:

You’re going to drop a wire from a big fat balloon? Have we not entered 21st century communications yet? You could disable Britain’s nuclear missile command with a cheap rifle. Oh, and the system was to be guarded by sailors armed with baseball bats! (And this is APPARENTLY not a joke, and they don’t even play baseball over there. They play some game named after a little grasshopper.)

Well, surprisingly (to the Brits in charge) the system, at last, experienced a technical glitch, which looked something like erectile dysfunction:

It popped. DOWN is not how you want your blimp to point. Yet, the story gets funnier. (My commentary interjected in brackets)

Until this week, official plans [yes, official] in a military emergency [yes, in an EMERGENCY] and if nuclear war seemed possible, [yes, in case of a NUCLEAR emergency] would instruct a secret convoy of trucks and specially equipped vehicles to leave from an army warehouse discreetly located in a Dundee industrial estate, with orders to head for the hills. The convoy would then hide as far as possible away from cities and other likely UK nuclear targets. When and if any surviving post-nuclear attack British government decided to order retaliation on Moscow, their order would go through to the balloon unit to send pre-arranged LF [low-frequency] messages, capable of being received underwater.

“To head for hills!” That’s great. The Keystone Cops are going all jump in some old army lories stashed away in a warehouse in Dundee, Scotland, and “head for the hills” to try to inflate a “top-secret” communications devise disguised as a weather balloon and send out Britain’s last-ever emergency command to destroy Russia for nuking London. Sounds like a plan concocted in Roswell! I can just see them arriving somewhere in “the hills” and saying, “Bill, did you remember to bring the helium? … Dang!” (Or whatever it is Brits say for such occasions.)

So, in an emergency, they not only have to spend 5 hours driving from Dundee to head for the hills of Topcliffe, Yorkshire, where they run their test flight (could they not have found closer hills to Dundee—Scotland has plenty of hills—or a place to stash the blimp closer to Topcliffe?), but then they have to inflate this thing when they get there and then get it aloft, perhaps in a windstorm. So, a day later, they’re ready to launch their retaliatory nukes. By that time, Russia has gotten wind of the retaliation and taken the rest of England off the map. Wouldn’t it work better just to stick the horn of a megaphone underwater and yell?

And here is how secret it was, which is where the story picks up some quaint British charm along the lines of Waking Ned Divine. OK, that’s Irish, but I recommend it as close enough for government work with good laughs.

In a ritual now familiar to residents of the Yorkshire market town of Thirsk, [you cannot make up humor this good] every September the convoy from Dundee has rolled onto the nearby former airfield at Topcliffe to conduct a nuclear war test drill. The Scottish soldiers taking part are mainly part-time members from a Territorial Army unit called 2 (City of Dundee and Highland) Signal Squadron (Volunteers).

So, every resident around Topcliffe knows the day and the hour when the top-secret blimp shall rise. They even set out lawn chairs to watch for it. The well guarded part of this secret, though, is yet to be revealed because the village folk do not know the PURPOSE, and for the watchful villagers speculation about the purpose of the big balloon is part of the fun … just like in the little town of Roswell, New Mexico, where I think they have a special day to camp out and watch for the next crash landing:

They erect security fencing [I presume to maintain the top secret about what they are doing] and inflate the aerostat balloon with helium gas, ready to fly when and if ordered. [Pretty sure that sticks up higher than the fencing.] Once aloft, simulated nuclear attack orders are sent to a Trident deterrent patrol boat submerged in the North Atlantic. [Is it a patrol boat, or a nuclear sub? I don’t generally think of Trident nuclear submarines as being out on “patrol.”] One test reportedly connected to the US Navy headquarters to pass on orders, according to an Army magazine report.

Let us hope their “simulation” is not as half-baked as the real plan, or their drill may accidentally send out orders misunderstood to be real commands to nuke Moscow. If I were Putin, I would be more afraid of this blimp than of NATO just because the Keystone Cops might accidentally wind up firing a real nuke toward the Kremlin on an otherwise benign day. You’ll see that I’m not going hard on them in a minute. Maybe that is why Putin must have sent out someone with a pistol to disarm the nuclear missile communication system during this year’s drill.

The Topcliffe event is a Top Secret UK Eyes Only and ultra-sensitive annual rehearsal for the last days of Britain, as depicted most graphically in the 1984 BBC drama Threads.

Or as depicted more seriously in the American drama Weekend at Bernie’s.

So, it’s “for UK Eyes only,” unless you happen to be a non-citizen of the UK in Topcliffe for a September visit. Then you can sit down with the rest of your family in one of the lawn chairs and/or friends and watch the “system launch.” This time, however, they got a “system launch error”:

Dang. (Or whatever they say.) With ED like that, it looks like the British military needs to be buying some major shipments of Hegseth’s US-military-grade, government-issue testosterone:

That will get them back up and running as well as the US military is running in Iran where we seem to be assuring the mutual destruction of all our allies by starting a war from which we were incapable of defending them or just making them all so mad they cease to be our allies. More than one way to skin an ally.

But, hey, the story gets better:

Once this balloon went up, if for real, [That’s the question I was asking: Is any of this for real?] former officials anticipated that signals from SUNFLOWER [gotta have a code name with a project this protected] would be the last military event before Britain’s rapid fall into a violent struggle for survival and then a decline to pre-medieval living standards and population levels in near-starvation conditions.

With military plans like this one, I’m sure it will be their last military event before Britain’s fall. As for those living standards, the present two major wars in Ukraine and Iran are providing that kind of mutually assured global destruction anyway as the UK has already warned its citizens to plan for food shortages. On that program, of course, they got help from the US, though not with the provisions side, just with assuring the shortages and borderline starvation because that is what we now do for our allies, here in the US, when not stealing their lands.

Ahead of each annual war rehearsal and balloon relay exercise, the Ministry of Defence publishes a “Notice to Airmen” (NOTAM) banning all aviation activity below the height of 1,800 metres (6,000 feet) within three nautical miles of Topcliffe.

In other words, they send out the location of their top-secret drill each year to all non-military pilots and anyone who happens to be having lunch with those pilots as they read the announcement. They, of course, don’t inform anyone of the purpose because THAT is the secret part, which you’ll see is carefully guarded.

Thirsk locals have become used to then seeing the balloon appear over their town about the same time as kids go back to school every year, and to then exchanging speculation about its real purpose. Residents usually guess, wrongly, that it is a “weather balloon”.

If they would just watch the dramatic television series Roswell, they would know not to fall for the weather balloon story! Of course, maybe this whole story was concocted by AI. When I asked Google, “Does Britain really use a blimp for nuclear communications,” their AI answered by default, “No information is available on this.”

OF COURSE, THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU WOULD EXPECT IT TO SAY IF I WAS INQUIRING ABOUT A TOP-SECRET NUCLEAR COMMUNICATIONS LAUNCH SYSTEM! AI HAS GUARDRAILS, YOU KNOW? So, that is practically as good as proof right there that the story is real! ; )

I had expected the AI to respond “Heck no!” … or whatever it is they say over there.

This September began as usual.

Don’t they all … in every movie of this kind? Then stuff like this starts to happen:

Scottish squaddies set up their balloon camp. When the balloon was inflated on Tuesday, local social media woke up. Locals passing on the A168 trunk road took and posted images to social media, showing the inflated balloon made ready on the ground. [I see the security fencing is working well.] A local businessperson reported he had been asked to deliver diesel “on the bounce, they’re Scottish, and there are lots of big computers in several trucks, wouldn’t even give me a clue as to what they were doing”.

Sounds like the diners gathering at the Crashdown Cafe in Roswell. Oh, and it’s always good to have a top-secret military plan that requires you stop at the local petrol station for refueling before completing your mission so that the locals get a chance to ask what you’re up to! You can just tell them, “It’s just a big computer delivery up in ‘the hills.’” Because annual computer deliveries by large canvas-clad lories to a vacant hilltop in the countryside would never raise suspicions. Of course, if they had picked one of the many Scottish hill that wasn’t five hours from Dundee, they wouldn’t need to refuel!

It all makes me wonder if this isn’t just the decoy plan: Convince the Russians that “Yes, we really are this dumb. This is our MAD nuclear strategy, and we’ve made the balloon bright white and chosen to set it up on a conspicuous hilltop to make sure you can see it” when their real plan is to row out to the deep-sea submarine in a wooden dory and drop a wire down to the sub with a plumb bob on the end. Two taps on the hull means “fire!” (Gotta maintain radio silence, you know. Run silent, run deep. The Russians might be listening.)

Although SUNFLOWER might have been assumed to be one of Britain’s most vital and precious national security secrets, [well, that wouldn’t have been my assumption, but … ] details of the system have for years been as visible as its sudden demise high in Yorkshire skies.

There’s a surprise. You know, the villagers probably could have figured out the purpose, even without the crash, if they just had an Ovaltine decoder ring. (Please pardon the frequent references to popular serious documentary films.)

The basic LFFB design was patented in 1984. Full details of the system, including its power design and technology, were published in a 1993 NATO conference paper.

And the Russians could never have looked at the plans to figure out what it was going to be used for. That would be as hard as backward engineering the secret craft scooped up at Roswell and taken to Area 51. Of course, Area 51 is probably just a decoy, too, and the actual craft was actually taken to a warehouse in Dundee, Scotland, where they clearly have people who know how to handle these things. Now we know!

Details of the acquisition, deployment, testing, exercising and nuclear role of the now-shredded balloon

That is exactly how these things always end up—just parts of a shredded weather ballon.

have routinely been published and described in open Army publications, notably the Royal Signals Corps magazine Wire. Wire featured the balloon with cover pinup prominence in its December 2007 edition (illustration).

Ah, so even the most “top-secret for UK eyes only” communications plan containing “sensitive information” was spread all over the coffee tables of every UK military base and sometimes hung on the wall as a pinup. (I could probably think of a prettier pinup than a BLIMP, but …) I guess this is the ol’ make-it-really-big-and-hide-it-in-plain-site strategy deployed on the basis that no one would ever expect a top secret to be hidden so openly, so they will ignore it. (Except the villagers who lacked a movie hall, so lounge chairs for launch chairs at the annual balloon festival were about as good as it gets.)

After a decade of LFFB operations, in 2014 the Royal Signals Institute awarded a Silver Medal to Dundee Staff Sergeant George Cowan, citing an “unsurpassed… contribution to the operational effectiveness of the LFFB and for developing a unique unproven civilian system into a deployable military system … whilst assuring its credibility within the Nuclear Firing Chain. Sgt Cowan was also commended for having a “the message must get through” attitude in the face of possible national nuclear destruction.

Well, that spelled the purpose out nicely for everyone! Oops, cat’s outa the bag! The message got through to everyone in Britain now. Not sure “credibility” would have been the adjective I would've used, though.

And here is the part that only government could do:

The citation also revealed that, despite the lifetime cost of Trident estimated by the House of Commons at £21 billion, with annual running costs of £3 billion, the former emergency war link was apparently being maintained on a shoestring.

Only in inept government would the cost of £3 billion to warehouse and annually run a a blimp up a distant hill and fly it be considered a “shoestring” budget. Why wouldn’t you just store the blimp in an underground vault in the English countryside or just a barn on a remote hilltop in Scotland locked with the same padlock you used on the industrial warehouse in Dundee? When you need to send out a smoke signal to your Trident nuclear submarines to destroy the Kremlin, just jingle your Scottish Shephardess and have her go out and make the launch. She could do a better job of protecting it with her grouse-hunting shotgun than those guards armed with mere baseball bats. That way you don’t have to raise the attention of 700 villagers by stopping to refuel your computer trucks as your caravan of blimp, helium plus computers & company makes it way far down into the English countryside. And you cut down the travel time, because the shepherdess only has to walk 400 feet to the barn. (OK, I know: they were talking about the cost of running the submarine program, not its blimp communicator; but they deserved that criticism since they are practically running the nuclear launch codes on a shoestring between two styrofoam cups.)

Sgt Cowan’s citation stated that he was the only person in Britain capable of getting a nuclear retaliation order sent out, as “he has been the solitary Flight Control Officer capable of flying the system for over eight years.”

Since it is unmanned, or easily should be since its only job is to run up a long wire antenna, it’s a bit amazing that he is the only one who can fly it. What does getting it up high enough to send the signal involve, unwinding the tether or filling the blimp with the helium? They should talk to my grandson, he could figure this out in three minutes.

However, if they are all as dumb over there as this article makes them sound, no wonder he is only person in Britain capable of getting an order sent out. The others are all too busy trying to figure out the blimp inflation instructions, probably written by someone in China! Always good to put something so critical in the hands of only a single person capable of running it. No offense, Brits. I spend MOST of my time reporting on how dumb the clowns over here are. Love you!

And good luck with your clowns. (Sounds like you’re going to need it.)

Despite the obvious security sensitivity of the Flight Control Officer’s job,

Yes, obvious security puts the operative word in place. No security has EVER been as obvious as a big white blimp launching over the English countryside every September right after the convoy of military trucks stops in town for refueling and a bag of crisps! (Or whatever they call those things.)

Cowan’s official mobile phone number was published in warning notices for each exercise. The current NOTAM warning for Topcliffe, available on the web at the time of publication, provides mobile phone numbers for SUNFLOWER’s current flight controllers.

I thought they only had one person who could control it. Ah well, always a good idea to publish the phone numbers of the official and flight controllers who have to issue the truly MAD “Mutually Assured Destruction” nuclear order. That way, the Russians can simply jam his phone by having all the agents at one of their Siberian troll farms dial in at the same time to reduce the likelihood that MI6 or the prime minister at #10 Downing (or wherever the heck? he lives over there) manages to get through from the “red” phone.” (That is, of course, if the troll farm is not busy running one of the many fake Russian/Ukrainian dating sites where, at least, the pinups are not freakin’ BLIMPS.)

The apparently unusual decision to allocate the nation’s most vital last-resort military mission to a Scottish reserve unit based in a Dundee industrial estate was historically the result of second world operations by MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service.

Second world? You flatter yourselves. Heck, this doesn’t even rise to third-world status! It’s barely a step above prehistoric smoke signals or cups connected by strings.

A secret agent radio control station to connect to Northern Europe was constructed near Forfar, 13 miles from Dundee….

And what was it made of? The box the blimp shipped in?

Like I say, just keep the darn thing in a stable and deploy the local shepherdess for a salary of £3 thousand a year, instead of billions, to guard the thing and test launch it each year. Maybe have a backup in some old abandoned coal mine in Wales somewhere just in case the Scottish Coleen is sleeping one off that day after a rough night working the pub. An old coal car that carries the folded blimp up out of the padlocked mine would raise far less attention than the caravan making fuel stops! And how big of a balloon do you need just to raise 1500 feet of antenna wire anyway?

With a United States President increasingly unstable and hostile to the UK,

OK, see, you got me on that one, Brits. I told you you would. Our president is clearly as unstable as your blimp that just popped, and many of us are wondering when he’s going to pop, being as overinflated both physically and in angry ego as he is. If you are lucky he won’t force you to build a golden Arc de Trump in Trafalgar Square or threaten you with 250% tariffs on all crumpets and Land Rovers if you don’t give “your attention to this matter.”

(Sorry, crumpets and Land Rovers were the only two things I could think of that we actually buy over here from Britain, albeit we are light on the crumpets. Well, that and the occasional Jag, of which I am a fan. They enabled me to make money by fixing three-year-old Jags and reselling them in operable condition again after enjoying them for six months many years ago. Come to think of it, I did attempt that once with a Range Rover, too, but it was beyond reasonable repair. So, I just enjoyed it for a year until it died. Heck, I only paid $4,000 for it, and I got most of that back, so it was cheap fun compared to a new car payment. And it would’ve worked great for hauling my blimp up into the hills … when it worked! If I had only had money back then for a blimp.)

the only obvious trustworthy military replacement for SUNFLOWER that could be available might be its French equivalent, Système de transmission de derniers recours (SYDEREC)….

Leave it to the French, inventors of the original balloon with basket, to come up with something better than the modern blimp! Remember the World’s Fair! They are always thinking, those French. I mean, look at the great job they did with inventing fries! (OK, they stole the credit from the Brits just by rebranding chips (if that’s what you call them over there) with the “French” moniker in America.)

Until last Friday, if the VLF stations were destroyed by attacks with advanced conventional weapons, the balloon could have gone up to provide a national emergency link.

Unless they were disabled with a sharp pin. Dang! It was such a good plan, and then somebody popped it while in flight with a .22. It didn’t even require a Kalashnikov. Hardly sporting.

The situation now has parallels to warnings written forty years ago by civil service planners advising Mrs Thatcher’s successor what to do if all links were destroyed: “This is not a situation easily provided for, but the argument is that if we do not provide for it – and should the Russians discover the fact [how would they on a carefully guarded secret like this?]– we do not have a deterrent which is credible in all circumstances.”

Hate to break it to you guys, but I don’t think you had a deterrent that was credible under any circumstances.

But this is why we pay for government!

(P.S. I perhaps should have made more clear in my last article that by “death of the dollar,” I meant death of the petrodollar, which means end of the dollar’s longstanding privileged status among the world’s trade currencies. It doesn’t mean the dollar ceases to exist or that it takes a Zimbabwe style swan dive in value, though it could; but it does mean some seriously bad things. Maybe I’ll delineate that in a Deeper Dive. We’ll see what else happens this week.)

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Those days that long floated the bloated US debt into something financeable, even if unsightly, are dying rapidly now thanks to the combined impacts of Trump’s War with Iran and Trump’s Tariff Wars. In fact, the dollar’s death has now been declared an accomplished fact—or, at least, something that has reached the point of being irreversible—by the Japanese press (The Japan Times being a Tokyo publication of record since 1897).

There just isn’t any love left for the dollar in this world nor much need for it, given so much less US trade requiring the use of Treasuries for dollar exchanges by central banks in both goods and oil. So, as reported in yesterday’s Daily Doom headlines, Central Banks have been turning toward gold, which can be used to cover major petrol transactions and all kinds of other transactions without shipping the gold just by earmarking who owns what gold that is stored in central banks and changing the designated owner as the transaction.

I must admit the dollar’s demise is not quite as confirmed as The Japan Times reports, but it does appear to be on its deathbed. It’s just that, along the lines of what Mark Twain famously said about his own obituary, the dollar’s obituary is a little premature. Still, it’s hard to avoid seeing the likelihood that the dollar’s vital statistics will continue to fall rapidly, making it a fait accompli.

The 10-year Treasury yield, rather than falling on safe-haven demand as it has in every major recent crisis, climbed from 3.9% at the end of February to above 4.4% within weeks. The rates desk at Bank of America offered a dry summary: “Foreign official sectors are selling U.S. Treasury bonds.”

So far, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s words about Operation Twist, intended to reverse that rise in yields, haven’t put a dent in the decline of the dollar or the rise in yields as they were intended to; however, the actual operation has not commenced yet, but the very fact that he desperately needs to do it confirms the dynamics just stated in that last quote.

Here’s a little free summary of Bessent’s program for you, straight from his false lips:

Hopefully, fake-AI Bessent leaves you feeling more assured than the secretary, himself, left markets feeling several days back with his signature smarmy smile. (Sorry about his final clipped word.)

The mechanism is straightforward. Turkey, India, Thailand and other oil-importing nations are caught in a brutal arithmetic: Oil priced in dollars surged past $100 a barrel at one point while their currencies weakened against the greenback. To limit depreciation — which would push domestic oil prices even higher, forcing either fiscal subsidies or household pain — central banks intervene in currency markets. That requires dollars. The most liquid dollar asset any central bank holds is Treasurys. So they sell.

That need coupled with the fact that they hate dollars because the dollar has been weaponized and used as a blunt instrument to enforce global US hegemony against them for decades, is compounded now that the US has become an absolute tyrant in how it wields the power of the global currency it has long been entrusted with … even against its allies. Now that all of that power is in the hands of President Trump because congress has completely abrogated its responsibility to lay down the law on tariffs and to declare wars, US dominance is feeling like global tyranny even to former friends of the US.

Congress has allowed Trump a free hand to trounce all over everyone until the Supreme Court reels him in, which the Supremes have proven to be more than half-inclined NOT to do. So, the devolution of US foreign relations and global economics has been rapid and chaotic, as I said it would be at the start of last year, upping the amperage of my prediction for the dollar’s death, which I have said would be a slow death at first due to the massive lines of historic support the dollar had built in back when I first made the claim and then die more quickly as inertia gave way.

This is not without precedent. Foreign central banks sold a record $109 billion in Treasurys during the COVID-19 panic of March 2020. But that episode resolved quickly. The Fed deployed dollar swap lines, calm returned and the money flowed back within weeks. The flight-to-quality instinct was temporarily scrambled but structurally intact.

Every other major crisis since — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s saber-rattling against Taiwan in August 2022, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March 2023 and the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel — sent money into Treasurys, not out of them. Yields fell. The playbook worked.

But those things worked because enough people/nations in the world still wanted them to work. Those that didn’t like the dollar still had to play with the reality of the petrodollar having deeply involved itself in their own sovereign wealth, underwriting the US debt. But now, with the oil market busting to pieces, and the value of existing US bonds consistently falling throughout the war inversely to rising yields, there is less reason to hold on.

With animosity toward the US for bringing this entire oily mess upon the world in a war that is proving hopeless for Trump to win, which will leave the world under the slop of its wreckage, there is more desire than ever before to ditch the dollar … to find opportunities in the war to sell Treasuries into. And, so Bessent’s little flip is likely to fail, and those opportunities to sell are plentiful because, you see …

This time, Gulf producers can’t get their oil out. The Strait of Hormuz closure has stranded their barrels along with everyone else’s.

No oil flow equals no dollar flow … right in the heart of the region that was the original core of the petrodollar’s existence.

The petrodollar loop requires two moving parts: dollars earned and dollars invested. Both have stopped.

That leaves central banks sitting on old US Treasuries that are rotting in value (if not held til term), adding reason to sell them before their value drops further. And, as more central banks sell them, the value drops faster, making the impetus to sell greater.

As more and more oil infrastructure is destroyed in the region with each new step in Iran’s escalation equation that I wrote about in my last Deeper Dive and in yesterday’s editorial, the duration of Treasury devaluation which central banks (and everyone else holding longterm Treasuries) will have to endure under diminished oil trade becomes more extended … by years, not just months.

The numbers on the exporting side make this concrete. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had a combined holding of about $300 billion in Treasurys as of January. These countries are now simultaneously earning less oil revenue, spending heavily on air defense and reviewing the investment pledges they made to Washington just months ago.

The dire needs of arming up for this war may also make those countries more willing to sell their existing Treasuries at a loss to raise emergency cash for their own much more important national defense, given how US defenses are failing them all too often. US defenses haven’t quite turned out to be the iron-clad dome US allies hoped them to be under Iran’s heavy bombardment.

There is a longer structural story that the war is accelerating rather than creating. The share of Treasurys held by foreign investors had already fallen to around 32%, down from half in the early 2010s. Central banks became net sellers in early 2025. [When the Trump Tariff Wars hit.] For the first time since 1996, global central banks now hold more gold in aggregate than U.S. government bonds. These were slow-moving trends, easy to dismiss as noise. The Iran war is making them look like signal.

Most financial publications dismissed it entirely. I kept pointing out why it was important because of why it was happening—tariffs stripping down the need for trade dollars. Then came the Iran war, and that problem escalated as oil trade also got taken down.

This is the prediction I’ve made to paying subscribers as being the number-one thing to watch for from Trump’s Tariff Wars, noting that I had NEVER predicted death of the dollar before the Trump Tariff Wars. I amplified that prediction when Trump’s War with Iran began because that is an even more direct path to death of the dollar for the reasons given above. The oil trade strikes right to the heart of the global trade currency.

Of course, the US Supreme Court eliminated a major part of the tariff wars at the start of this year, and Trump has been trying to backfill all of that; but the war with Iran more than makes up for that elimination. You can easily see, though, how Trump’s Tariff wars are angering nations that he keeps toying with by using tariffs to threaten them over everything he doesn’t like—even things having nothing to do with trade, such as trying to strong-arm them into ceding their lands to the USA! The United States has become a TOXIC relationship—the kind of former friendship you try to insulate yourself from once your friend has turned psychotic and starts threatening to move into your house or burn it down if he can’t. That has only been getting worse with every passing month.

The flight-to-quality trade has always rested on a political premise: That in a global crisis, the United States is a stabilizer or bystander, not a combatant. But the calculus changes when the U.S. itself is the belligerent; when the conflict is partly America’s war, driving the oil shock, straining Gulf relationships and generating the fiscal pressure that has bond investors worried about U.S. budget deficits. Not completely. Not permanently. But enough.

They don’t mention the tariff wars’ impact on the dollar, which all financial writers have missed since I started pointing out that connection during Trump 1.0 as doing essentially the same thing the war with Iran is doing—hugely amplifying hostility with formerly friendly trade nations and diminishing need for trade dollars, which have always been the flip side to the petrodollar. Same coin, different side.

As with oil, diminished trade means diminished need for the global dollar, and you can see how that played out by how central banks became net sellers of US Treasuries for the first time, suddenly preferring ample holdings of gold, early in 2025. That was the key principle I laid out only for paying subscribers to start to keep a watch on during Trump 1.0 when he started his trade wars, which became far worse in 2.0. I noted that was the first time I had ever predicted the dollar’s demise during the decade I had been writing on the economy.

Kissinger’s 1974 deal held through the Cold War, the Gulf Wars, the financial crisis and a pandemic. It has not survived this. The petrodollar loop was always a political arrangement dressed in financial clothing. Now that the politics have changed, the finance is following.

I truly believe NO presidential administration has done as much international political damage and global economic and financial damage as the Trump administration. I say “believe,” rather than “know,” because you haven’t seen anything yet and neither have I of the extent of damage that is coming from all of this. I believe it because everything is flowing down all the byways and dark alleys I’ve said the Trump Tariff Wars and the Trump War with Iran will go. I don’t see anything now happening that is out of line with any of those predictions, especially the impact of current events on the dollar.

In fact, just look at today’s news headlines to see how many stories are continuing to flow in the directions I’ve warned this war and the economy would travel together. They are nowmoving at a faster pace than they were. I know this sounds like a lot of chest thumping, but I really mean it in the sense of saying 1) here is proof you should be paying attention to these warnings but, even more, 2) to make it clear who is to blame in advance by laying out the cause and effect of their actions now so you know I’m not making up the causes and effects when the day comes when it has all happened just to fit the blame to someone when the guilty parties are all denying it was their fault! Those days are coming. They are actually starting to happen all around you right now, and the blame dodging will become fierce. Saying in advance how it is going to go and why and by whom while underscoring all along the way how it does go that way for those reasons strongly establishes a trail back to whose fault this dawning catastrophe is.

Consider these little factoids from the rubble of today’s news headlines:

• An internationally respected economist, who often speaks against the economic pack, and who was dead right in predicting the dot-com bust, lays out the reasons today that he believes the AI bust will will be worse than the dot-com bust.

• The Dow is plunging today and Treasury yields soaring to touch a high that was barely touched once during this war and otherwise HAS NOT BEEN SEEN SINCE 2007 in the face of oil prices that almost breached $100/bbl today.

• Major US financial institution flips its declining oil price calls skyward to place Brent Crude at a coming $120+/bbl, saying it felt obliged to reverse direction and lift its price assumptions, which announcement comes at the cost of admitting its former major calls (once counter to my own) were wrong.

• Serious threats building of a multi-front war between Israel and Iran, regardless of what America does, that will see focused bombing by Iran on Tel Aviv.

• Another major refinery blitzed in the ME.

• More on Iran’s threat to blow up US destroyers and aircraft carriers if Trump doesn’t leave.

• Iran’s interception and confiscation of a high-tech US submarine.

• A report about Netanyahu ignoring warnings about the Oct 7 “surprise” attack by Gaza Palestinians on Jewish civilians.

• New strikes on Iran and its oil tankers today by Donald Trump with nearly immediate retaliation by Iran, billed as the largest Iranian counterattack on US bases since Israel’s Operation Roaring Lion.

• Iran also warned all crew of all oil tankers connected with named nations to evacuate their ships immediately because bigger strikes are coming.

If you’ve been reading here, you know that most of those things are part of the list of things I’ve been saying to expect for months, and you’ll note Iran’s new escalation path I have been saying just since the start of the week you would see this week while explaining to paying subscribers in advance why you would see it.

Don’t miss the most important news: become a paying subscriber to The Daily Doom. When you do, you are underwriting the person who does his best to help you see what is coming and who tells you the facts as they are, whether you like them or not (and whether he likes them or not), despite what politicians in either party tell you or what the mainstream financial press has to say. It will be what it will be, but you are better off knowing what it will be, especially now that what was predicted is already happening.

Let me close by putting the usual Doomer Humor section up front today for everyone to enjoy:

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As the average price of Diesel in the US hit an all-time record high over the weekend and gasoline hit an historic high for any Labor Day weekend, Iran is driving the war toward greater intensity and far more danger. That is going to put a lot more pressure on those prices. Hormuz traffic dropped back to its lowest since May over the weekend, so the intensification is working, even though the US president has repeatedly let us all know that he controls the strait.

Now Iran has tightened up the tension screws by making it clear that, if it needs to respond to Trump again, it will destroy US-owned oil infrastructure throughout the Middle East and it will start destroying US Navy ships, including eventually the biggest of them all. It has said it will start the new escalation by just sending 300-400 US sailors to the bottom of the sea. If that doesn’t seal its objectives, it will do more. Iran’s top military commander explained that Iran could have easily sunk every tanker it has struck but said Iran always avoids sinking any tankers in order to avoid creating an environmental catastrophe on its own shores because of all the oil they hold. Instead, it completely disables them with its precision hits.

You may think that is just saber rattling and wonder, if Iran can really do that to US Navy ships, why it hasn’t it? This weekend’s DEEPER DIVE gives a detailed report on Iran’s resolved objectives in the war, as well as Iran’s recent major change to an offensive war strategy, which will significantly up the costs for the US. It lays out Iran’s calibrated plan, which explains why Iran doesn’t do EVERYTHING that it can do. It explains why Iran retrains itself.

Most likely, after being hit by Iraq with chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War, Iran has, by now, developed some of its own. The US government has long said it expects Iran has sleeper cells in the US, yet it hasn’t activated any of them so far. Why not? We know that it has recently conducted cyberwar against US water facilities, but has achieved nothing. Iran says it was only firing a few cyber shots across the bow SO FAR to show that it can easily reach inside the US.

This weekend Iran test-fired its newest anti-ship ballistic missiles at a US aircraft carrier. The US says the missiles didn’t hit. Iran says it conducted the test in a way to prove they could. At first, Iran even said they hit their target. Did the missiles just hit unarmed because they were intentionally fired as shots over the carrier’s bow to prove that Iran can destroy an aircraft carrier by how close they got? The US has provided no details.

If you received my weekend Deeper Dive, you know that Iran does not want to go as far as sinking US aircraft carriers and you know why. It is not just that doing so would result in much more painful US retaliation against Iran. The article explains Iran’s strategic escalation plan in succinct detail. Unlike Trump, it is actually following a clear plan. (Not clear in terms of what targets will be hit and how, but clear in strategy, and it wants the world to know this.) Though the Deeper Dive went out to paying subscribers only, it can still be read by anyone who upgrades to a paying subscription now.

Once you know Iran’s three main objectives, you’ll understand why it has been holding back—not using its WMD, not deploying sleeper cells inside the US, not causing any actual cyber harm even as it makes its cyber reach clear. Iran is providing intentional opportunities for Trump to cut and run before the next new escalation, but only as a clearly defeated loser. They are planning to keep escalating to the point of doing the things I just mentioned if that is what it takes to achieve all three of their major objectives. And they don’t care how far they have to go to make Trump the clear loser … all the way to all-out war, no holds barred.

The Deeper Dive will help you understand why Iran is deliberately following a path of slow, rational escalation in order to achieve the objectives I’ve enumerated without turning the world against it. As it is, the world is more against Trump for starting this war, which is exactly where Iran wants him to end up at the end of this war because its third objective requires that Iran consistently shows itself to the world as the only rational player here. So, it provides opportunities to exit and avoid harsher strikes but the opportunities make it hard for him to take the exit because he would be showing himself to be the total loser.

Most of all, the Deeper Dive, along with its accompanying videos—particularly one—explains how, so far, Iran is clearly winning this war on its terms and explains how they are playing Trump to do exactly what they want while keeping him boxed into the war!

Stepping back from Iran and Trump to news that I read today, Prime Minister Netanyahu just indicated that Iran and Israel are both preparing for the likelihood of a multi-front war, regardless of what America does.

Economania (national & global economic collapse plus market news)

The next financial crash: AI debt could spark a chain reaction

Treasury yields face 4.8% test on 10YR as fiscal risks threaten to spill into other assets

The wealth of the world’s billionaires reached $15.1 trillion last year

Money Matters (monetary policy, metals, cryptos, currency wars & going cashless)

QTR’s Fringe Finance

The Rush To Pull Gold Out Of The U.S.

It was reported yesterday that the Netherlands just shifted approximately 86 tonnes of its gold reserves from New York and Ottawa to London, explicitly citing “increasing geopolitical unrest” and the need to prepare for severe crises…

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12 days ago · 139 likes · 42 comments · Quoth the Raven

How about this mass migration from US Treasuries to gold and other alternatives:

World’s biggest sovereign wealth fund [Norway] plans to cut U.S. Treasury holdings

Japan Sold Almost $90 Billion In Treasuries To Fund Record Yen Intervention

Central Banks Bought 23 Tonnes Of Gold In July

Trump doubles down on threat to halt trade with top partners unless Fed cuts rates

Baby Trump say, “That’ll teach the Fed: Mess with me, and I’ll mess with the economy for you by terminating all trade with our most important trade partners! You want to hurt our economy? Well, then, I’ll smash it! I’ll make sure we suffer shortages.”

On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance called for lower rates, arguing it would be the “proper and responsible” response to recent U.S. inflation data.

What an idiot! How about stopping all the things you are doing that is creating the inflation.

Yes, Gold Pays No Interest. Now Look at the Alternative.

Silver’s Unsung Strength

Inflation Factors (too much money chasing too few goods due to weather, sanctions, tariffs, quarantines, etc.)

Diesel hits record high as Ukraine and Iran wars knock out refineries, fueling inflation worries (It’s $6.09 where I live over $8 in parts of northern California.)

Gasoline prices, over $4 per gallon, hit record Labor Day high

Oil prices rise to 6-week high after Iran and U.S. trade blows, Saudi Aramco facilities reportedly hit

Iran war costs Americans $100 billion in extra energy bills: How much are households paying?

And that doesn’t begin to consider how much extra the rise in energy prices is adding to price of everything else! You! ain’t seen nothing yet

Wars & Rumors of War (including cyberwar, civil unrest and revolts)

Transition Protocol

Pravin Sawhney:Iran FIRES at US Carrier, Hormuz WAR Escalates,Warning Shot at America’s Carrier

Iran fired anti-ship ballistic missiles at a US aircraft carrier and a destroyer in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran says they hit. US Central Command says they missed. Defence analyst Pravin Sawhney says the argument over damage is missing what actually happened — because the target was never the ship. It was the naval blockade…

Listen now

9 days ago · 70 likes · 5 comments · Transition Protocol

Iran’s Qasem Basir Ballistic Missile Targets US Nuclear Carrier in Combat Debut

Hormuz traffic dips to lowest since May after US, Iranian strikes on ships

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… This is a list of the 75 most corrupt things Trump did in 2026. These are not all of the corrupt things. There were many more, all of which I chronicled throughout the year in my daily column ‘Today in Politics.’ I was planning to list 100. However, to get it under the length restrictions for Substack emails, I had to cut the list down to 75…

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11 days ago · 1792 likes · 224 comments · Ron Filipkowski

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Israeli government cabinet member, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is Prime Minister Netanyahu’s hand-selected minister of national security. As such, he is in charge of Israel’s prison system. That makes the Palestinian internment video he has just posted doubly troubling. Ben-Gvir, never shy about fomenting hatred and heat, has raised a blistering level of international controversy by creating and posting the following pathetic and deeply disturbing AI video, promoting an obviously Hitlerian final solution for Palestinians as a campaign promise:

I guess making videos like this is what Ben-Gvir does for entertainment when he’s not trying to stir up riots on the Temple Mount, which he is also good at. The conveyor belt makes the fat Palestinians look a bit like sides of beef going into a slaughter house. In the very least, the Palestinians are going into a concentration camp but coming out as emaciated as holocaust victims. Clearly, Ben-Gvir made them fat at the start of the video so it would be clear they came out the other side looking like skeletons because he is campaigning on making Israel’s prisons harsher for Palestinians—not everyone, just all of them.

That beady-eyed snake in the grass named Benjamin Netanyahu gave Gvir this big national security post to get him to join his Jewish Power (Otzma Yehudit) party to Netanyahu’s government in order to establish a governing majority. Netanyahu, a man who, himself, seems to be trying extra hard to court controversy and stir hatred, may have chosen him because that is exactly what he wants to have running national security and prisons for Palestinians, or perhaps Bibi was just so greedy for power that he’d join anything to himself like a whore in order to form a government. There is not much daylight between their two parties. Therefore, it’s unlikely Bibi will do what needs to be done here, which is to spit this hate-monger out of the Israeli government, as that would dissolve his government.

The thing to particularly become aware of here is that Ben-Gvir did not rise to power in a vacuum. Other far-right parties in Israel are competing for votes by promoting increasingly extreme visions. Moreover, this is hardly just a Jewish phenomenon as we can easily see the same thing has happened under extremist president, Donald J Trump, and his Warhead Pete Hegseth, who could be called America’s Ben-Gvir.

American and Israeli German-style concentration camps

I’ve argued almost all my life we need to get illegal aliens out of the country; so, I’m not against removing illegal aliens, but start by arresting and jailing the Americans who illegally hire them because that cuts right to the heart of the problem! Without those Americans providing jobs for them, many of the illegal aliens will leave on their own. Treat the aliens with dignity because most of them are simply desperate to stay alive and feed their families, and they did good work for the US while here, even if many, I believe with reason, resented the suppression of wages they cause. To the extent you do it by capturing aliens and deporting them, do it humanely and kindly where possible.

Why should you punish someone who was a good worker, WANTED by an American employer, whose crime was being desperate for work to survive? That doesn’t make her an evil person just because she’s illegal. In fact, she’s probably a very kind person with a child she needs to feed, and a US employer lured her into working for him because he wanted cheaper labor than what he’d have to pay to entice Americans to that kind of work.

Israel’s situation, of course, is much different than the US alien worker situation, though Israelis have hired Palestinians for decades because they are cheaper labor, too. It’s much harder to treat people humanely when they have been blowing you up in cafes and on buses; but that doesn’t excuse an Israeli government official from producing a teaser that promotes Adolf Hitler’s final solution as the right one for Palestinians or acting like this: (I mean the conveyor belt might as well have been box cars stuffed with the people you hate.)

Ben-Gvir …

made international news when he filmed himself taunting bound activists who had been detained trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.

He also rose to his present position by promising …

to worsen conditions for Palestinian prisoners. An ambitious goal, considering conditions are already hellish: Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has likened the prisons where Palestinians are kept to “torture camps”….

Ben-Gvir, by the way, has some imaginative ideas for punishment. One of his sick fantasies is to put crocodiles in moats around prisons where Palestinians are held to stop prison breaks.

Well, that just sounds exactly like Trump’s Alligator Alcatraz. If they are truly terrorists, they may need alligators around them to keep the rest of us safe; but we know most of the people in Trump’s internment camps were not; and no doubt many of the women G’vir was harassing in another report were not either.

From October 2023 until June 2026, at least 104 Palestinian inmates died in Israeli custody, according to Haaretz, while Physicians for Human Rights Israel said the number was at least 94 Palestinians.

B’Tselem has reported that Palestinians have been subjected to sexual violence, abuse, humiliation, inhumane living conditions and denial of medical care under Israeli custody.

That’s the treatment he’s already giving them, and he’s campaigning on making worse. However, it sounds a lot like many of Trump’s new US concentration camps, except maybe for the sexual violence; yet he uses his office to shelter those who used Epstein Island for that.

The Israeli rights group said: “Ben Gvir and [Israeli Prison Service] officers put the abuse of prisoners on display, with the media playing the role of mouthpiece to the minister’s racist and violent ideology, with little to no criticism of the crimes and grave human rights violations involved.”

That’s a war crime under the Geneva Convention.

In May, for the first time in its history, the UN put Israel on a blacklist of countries accused of committing sexual violence in warzones. Mention was made of the role of the Israeli Prison Service in the assaults.

Do religious paraders like Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu really think God would be pleased with men presiding over a government like this? Is that the Israel God envisioned in Jewish scriptures?

“Rape and gang rape, in some cases repeated, were perpetrated against nine victims, the majority from Gaza.”

That part sounds like Trump’s America, too, especially like Epstein Island, which might as well have been a prison island for the girls, while this part sounds like Trump’s MO with aliens:

Thousands of prisoners, including about 200 children, are held under “administrative detention”: a technocratic name for a dystopian practice….

When you hear the word “prisoner”, people like Ben-Gvir want you to think of dangerous terrorists who deserve everything they get. In reality, many are people like Layan Nasir: a 23-year-old woman who was taken away at gunpoint from her parents’ home for no clear reason and only made international news because she is a Christian.

Some ultra-conservative Jewish extremists in Israel—say, of the Hassidic type—have become violent toward Christians, too—not just Palestinian Christians, but American Christians and especially Jewish Christians. (Yes, they exist in Israel … perilously.) They throw rocks at Christians on their way to church and even vandalize churches.

What was just described for Gvir above, of course, has been Trump’s approach with illegal immigrants—to make people think everyone who was being arrested and placed in concentration camps in Florida was a terrorist or a rapist, even if the worst thing they did, outside of coming illegally into the country, was to pick pumpkins or watermelons or make beds or wash dishes for a lot less than Americans would need to earn in order to get them to take those jobs. For that, their children got torn from their hands, just as Ben-Gvir has done. Pity the innocent children who have no idea where their parents are or why the past year of horror has happened to them in America!

Ben-Gvir doesn’t just want to hang his enemies; he wants more bloodshed in Gaza – which is still very much a killing field despite a so-called ceasefire. “I think we should be doing 30 to 40 targeted assassinations [in Gaza] per night,” Ben-Gvir recently said on a podcast. “Not just those who pose an immediate threat. There are people there who don’t deserve to live … They are not even people.”

Isn’t that what Hitler said???

I could go on and on: Ben-Gvir is a busy man. He recently filmed himself entering prison cells containing Palestinian women and taunting them. On the same podcast where he urged nightly killings in Gaza, he went on to say that he thought Israel should occupy the entirety of Gaza. And, on Monday, he stormed the al-Aqsa mosque compound in East Jerusalem, accompanied by extremist settlers and with the protection of the Israeli military.

He’s just itching to instigate riots.

Evil twins

The critical point I’m coming to is that we have two governments running major wars in the Middle East right now that are steeped in Hitlerian hatred. One of them is run by Trump, who has more than once publicly praised Hitler as a “great leader,” and many of his followers are Neo-Nazis that he courted in order to gain power. A love for Nazi tactics is evidenced by Trump’s unnecessarily violent, almost Gestapo-like immigration department, which separates children from their pumpkin-picking mothers in order to pile the mothers up in a prison surrounded by the nation’s largest alligator-and-snake-filled mote.

I’m not trying to get sentimental here about Palestinians who have perpetrated innumerable horrors of their of own by bombing cafes and buses full of civilians. I just want to point out that Israel and America have transitioned to extremist and dishonorable governments. Netanyahu even matches up well to Trump in the scale of scandals (if not also Trump’s extreme number of scandals) over which he has been tied up in legal actions. Many even believe Netanyahu was behind Epstein, whom they claim was used to compromise American businessmen and politicians for control and used to spy and with whom Trump seems wickedly connected, given how hard he is using his office to cover for all of that. (I don’t know if those theories are true or not, but they are popular beliefs that might be true.)

As both nations—Israel and America—have elected leaders who have shifted government toward those nation’s furthest-right fringes, the zealots who have been brought into their circle of power to run the government no longer represent true Jewish values or deeper American or Christian values. Both the Jewish religion and the Christian religion teach kindness and hospitality and JUSTICE specifically toward aliens … from the same books of the Bible.

That doesn’t mean you have to let as many aliens into your country as want to pour in, any more than hospitality requires you to let everyone into your house. It certainly doesn’t mean you need to let into your country anyone you have solid reason to believe wants to harm you, anymore than hospitality and kindness requires you to let burglars into your home.

However, it does mean you don’t treat every alien whose time it is to leave as if they are de facto terrorists and rapists. Most are just moms or dads cleaning hotel rooms for the governing elite who own the hotels and resorts and who knew they were hiring illegal aliens to save themselves money. Those migrant workers, as I’ve written before, have become the modern-day peasant class that the wealthy class in both nations long chose to turn a blind eye to because big hotels and restaurants (and farms) wanted cheap labor. Their governments were complicit in allowing the breaking of their own laws, which seemed to exist only to force the peasants to keep their heads down and not complain about conditions.

In Israel, the situation is far more complicated than just cheap labor, but some of the leaders carrying out policy in Gaza and the West Bank are as awful as the people they hate and as bad as the current leaders in America.

Both Netanyahu and Trump now share the risk of having their power stripped away from them in the next election because their extremism is turning the middle away from them, and they are both losing some of their extremists, as well. (Trump’s betrayal of some of the major objectives promised to his own supporters has lost him influential support.)

The prime minister has released several video and social media messages in recent weeks, publicly pleading with Ben Gvir, Smotrich and Winter to unite as one bloc instead of running as smaller parties. But so far, the right-wing parties are focusing on their own campaigns and leaning into a message that is becoming more extreme.

Such is the state of affairs going into fall elections for both nations. Iran is counting on watching them both flounder around in their own divided extremism to see their governing power fall apart. It’s treading water with mines and torpedos to buy time until the governments of those nations start to crumble because, if Republicans lose as largely as polls (often wrong) are indicating, Trump likely spend the rest of his presidency tied up in trials and unable to get anything passed through congress. Yet, who knows how wild that will make him—like a caged animal.

The center fringe

The cockroaches under self-serving commanders-in-chief like TheRump and NetanYAHOO have been given a voice and have been stirred up by these two men, who will gather forces from wherever they can find force by tapping into the rising magma of rage. So fringes, which were once largely ignored and a lot quieter, have crawled out from under the woodwork onto the center stage and have been empowered by the leaders whom they empowered with their votes. Together, they have forged a coalition—a support base that has been made into the core of government in order to form a government. In both nations.

Ben-Gvir is so shameless that there is no way to spin his conduct. He has been condemned and sanctioned by politicians and governments around the world. Nevertheless, Israel’s apologists have tried to cast him as a fringe figure.

But that is just it, both governments have made the fringe the new center. Ben-Gvir is an example of that.

“Ben-Gvir’s statements do not reflect the policy of the State of Israel and should be condemned by all who care about Israel’s future,” the American Jewish Committee stated in August, after the politician’s comments about settlement in Gaza.

But they DO reflect the official policy of Israel because the official government of Israel chose him to administer that policy, knowing full well what he is like and where he campaigned to run with those programs! The government can try to distance itself like that, but the fact is the coalitions in Israel and the US were built by intent in order to bring those same governments into existence.

Trump, for example, has tapped into years of rage that has built up from the insane triumphs of liberalism over conservatism in America that have delivered gay marriages, trans-genderism, men in women’s bathrooms at the same time the women are in them, children born whose parents and teachers pretend they are without gender like “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” mass immigration (which rich conservatives also wanted). A lot of nutty, once ultra-fringe, ultra-cringe ideas that liberals made central in American politics have made the Americans who once were at the center feel increasingly marginalized. So, the pendulum is swinging now to the opposite extreme.

Just look at the oddballs Biden put in office and how poorly they tended to the normal business of their departments because they were too busy using their departments to find ways to normalize and centralize their own fringe groups … like this ludicrously ugly male pair of wives:

That’s the New Democrat normal. Oh, but don’t speak the obvious and odious truth about their pretend gender transitions, blatantly and ridiculously failed as they are.

My point is not to argue those issues, but just to say, as society moved so extremely to the Left, anger burned on the Right until those who felt marginalized found a person through whom they could gain power to restore the balance, which is what Ben-Gvir probably sees himself as doing.

My secondary point would be that someone like Trump doesn’t even care about many of those issues, such as sexual deviancy (being a deviant by his own boasting about how he grabs women) or abortions. He’s just tapping into the anger to use it for his own empowerment because anger is powerful, even if disorganized and chaotic; but Trump loves chaotic, just like his father, the devil. And so the two nations are both cracking and crumbling from years of social wars between Left and Right that have pushed people toward extremes, and thinned out the middle that once could get along.

This is, in other words, the outcome of longtime culture wars that constantly divided nations, which are now being reaped by power-hungry, maniacal leaders who are exploiting the anger to empower themselves. Trump’s evil genius is seeing how he can exploit anger for his own uses. Netanyahu, not much different. We now live in nations where humankind is falling apart at the seams with wedges being driven everywhere by intentionally divisive leaders.

Make no mistake: Ben-Gvir may be an embarrassment, but he is no anomaly. He is very much the face of modern Israel and his vision for the country accurately reflects the reality on the ground.

Same can be said of Trump, elected twice. The second time America knew what it was electing (or had no excuse not to), so he is what the majority of voters chose.

Marching toward Armageddon

I’ve said this before, but people like Ben-Gvir in Israel’s government will make Biblical prophecies like this one for Israel come true, and it won’t take much more time (particularly verse 14):

¹² “This is what the Lord says:

“‘Your wound is incurable,
your injury beyond healing.
¹³ There is no one to plead your cause,
no remedy for your sore,
no healing for you.
¹⁴ All your allies have forgotten you;
they care nothing for you.
I have struck you as an enemy would
and punished you as would the cruel,
because your guilt is so great
and your sins so many.
¹⁵ Why do you cry out over your wound,
your pain that has no cure?
Because of your great guilt and many sins
I have done these things to you. (Jeremiah 30:12-15)

Back in 2024, I wrote about that prophecy and another prophecy that says,

25 Therefore the LORD’s anger burns against his people; his hand is raised and he strikes them down. The mountains shake, and the dead bodies are like refuse in the streets. Yet for all this, his anger is not turned away, his hand is still upraised.

26 He lifts up a banner for the distant nations, he whistles for those at the ends of the earth. Here they come, swiftly and speedily!

I.e., he calls in the nations against Israel to make war on it.

27 Not one of them grows tired or stumbles, not one slumbers or sleeps; not a belt is loosened at the waist, not a sandal strap is broken.

They arrive around Israel ready to make war!

28 Their arrows are sharp, all their bows are strung; their horses’ hooves seem like flint, their chariot wheels like a whirlwind.

29 Their roar is like that of the lion, they roar like young lions; they growl as they seize their prey and carry it off with no one to rescue.

30 In that day they will roar over it like the roaring of the sea. And if one looks at the land, there is only darkness and distress; even the sun will be darkened by clouds. (Isaiah 5:25-30)

That is saying the nations will overwhelm Israel because so many have been made angry with it, creating a time of darkness and distress in Israel—ha’aretz, the land.

I noted back in that article,

It’s not hard to see the many nations of the world that are Muslim would turn in unison against Israel if the sites Muslims consider sacred on the Temple Mount were threatened [which Ben-Gvir has done], but those nations may also include Russia as an ally of Iran and other nations that turn against Israel—Islamic Turkey seeming more on sides with Russia now than with the US or Israel (“Thundering Toward Armageddon”)

We now see that exact formation shaping up, as I suggested, as we read in the news that Russia is now supplying Iran with the cruise missiles it needs, which Iran is using to attack its enemies in the Middle East, which means Russian missiles may soon be directed at Israel if it steps back directly into the Iran war, though for now Israel seems to be sidelined from making direct attacks on Iran. Israel’s relationship with Turkey has also become much more strained since I wrote that comment. So, it is all quickly moving in that direction.

Electioneering

Ben Gvir is perhaps the best known of Israel’s far-right politicians, a provocateur with his hands on the country’s levers of power. As the minister of National Security, he is in charge of the police and the prisons as his politics have become a defining feature of Israel’s image abroad.

With two months until the elections, Israel’s far-right field is becoming increasingly crowded, packed with small parties vying for a finite pool of votes. To stand out, politicians are unabashed in their messaging and their vision for the country.

It’s a race to the extremities almost perfectly timed to match up with US elections. In both countries right now, the extreme right is driving the nation.

The far-right is a dominant feature in Israeli politics – and a key component of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition.

It is obviously the dominant feature in US politics, too, although many of Trump’s own supporters are not happy with the Israeli war path Trump has run down, nor with his deployment of everything he can find to obscure the Epstain scandal to save his cronies and likely himself. MAGA has splintered badly over these issues.

In Israel, the situation is a little different. The old splinter groups are competing to be more extreme than each other, and new splinter groups are forming. There is no cohesion in the madness in either Israel or America. Anger doesn’t know cohesion.

In Israel, we read,

That electoral arithmetic is intensifying competition for right-wing voters and pushing politicians to adopt even harder-line positions….

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich repeatedly celebrates the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, openly boasting of destroying the possibility of a Palestinian state. A cornerstone of his election campaign is called “Yes. Let’s Judaize!” – a plan which aims to change the demographic reality in the Negev and Galilee, areas of Israel with substantial Arab populations, by applying settlement strategies from the West Bank: bringing a million additional Jewish residents and establishing about 40 new communities alongside dozens of individual farms.

Meanwhile, Ofer Winter recently launched his new “Your People Israel” party. The retired brigadier general is popular among Israel’s right-wing and religious Zionist movement. At the party’s launch event in late-August, he said, “There will never be a Palestinian state here. The solution in Gaza is simple – emigration.”

It may be that no solutions worked out by humankind for the violence that Palestinians have also rained down on Jews in Israel will ever work, but neither will this one as the extremists separate Israel from the rest of the world, until they leave Israel without any allies because they have made it into its worst version of itself. That’s when Israel will be pressed toward a nuclear solution that will only bring global catastrophe.

America is also becoming its worst version of itself in the eyes of all the world over which Trump has rampaged, seriously threatening to grab the land of long-time allies, bulldozing through their economies with tariffs, flip-flopping all over the place so they don’t even know where the solid ground on treaties is, deriding their leaders constantly, driving wedges between America and its old allies from World War II days. Trump, too, said this week he has been seriously considering a mini-nuclear solution, which could open Pandora’s Box, but has decided not to go that route … for now.

False religion

All of these guys are guided by bastardized religion. Gvir believes he is guided by biblical prophets and prophetic rabbis and that God will empower him for helping to bring the Jewish messiah to rule Israel. Such brazen beliefs embolden him to take actions others despise because he believes God will make him triumphant if he is so bold.

Trump is surrounded by his own nest of prophets, led by prophetess Paula White Cain and joined by Lance Wallnau, who all tell him that God will empower him if he defends Israel.

Pete Hagsbreath is filled with violence and machismo guided by Christian Nationalism (and his own ego), which is built on a twisted view of biblical prophecy that says, just like Wallnau, that it is the manifest destiny of Christians to rule the earth now. That is a doctrine of the “Church triumphant” that once empowered Catholic pogroms against Jews and crusades against Muslims and inquisitions against Protestants. It is a misconstrued prophetic belief, but a long popular one, with a history of epic destruction. The belief has long been used to co-opt religion to gain political power.

Christian nationalists believe under that “prophetic mandate” they are to seize power by military effort and violence, the exact opposite of everything Jesus lived and taught. Trump believes he is to do it for his own empowerment, and that’s all he needs for motivation. If God helps him, great; but he’d do it anyway. Zealot Ben-Gvir and many Zionists of a white and blue stripe (rather than red, white and blue stripes) are enlivened by similar beliefs that they are working out their Jewish destiny. All of these people working out their own versions of destiny, but none are waiting for God to deliver. They believe arrogantly they know the plan and the path, and it is their calling to make it happen. There is no humility in them whatsoever.

As a result, human evil is manifesting again in global imperial wars, and the world marches restlessly toward Armageddon as these people create massive hot wars that are now burning up the whole Middle East. The flaw is not in the ancient religions, which also contain harsh warnings against people who want to make the end come quickly in order to see it happen and specifically against taking the timing of prophecy into their own hands.

The actual religious writings are also filled with virtues that must govern all human action, which naturally curb the extremes. It is the human lust for power that drives narcissists and despots and maniacs to use those religions to empower themselves and to justify themselves while ignoring the imposed and inconvenient virtues. The words of the prophets draw out human nature as leaders lust for the powers talked about in those prophecies while ignoring all the impositions and warnings they don’t like. The prophets, thus, lure human nature to expose itself and bring on humanity’s own judgement because it is human nature to believe the parts that serve us and ignore what we don’t like.

Leaders like Trump and Netanyahu, and their underlords like Hegseth and Ben-Gvir, ignore the tempering parts of those belief systems that are inconvenient truths to their lust for power. Their own self-righteousness leads them to storm ahead of the texts they claim to believe in; or, in Trump’s case, his endless quest for self-aggrandizement with no interest in righteousness or virtue of any kind, causes him to cut his own trail.

Perhaps instead of thinking from the standpoint of whether God is on their side, they should have started by asking if they are on God’s side.

This weekend, I’ll dive into how badly the main war in the Middle East is going for these warriors. It does not appear God is on their side, given that they are so much more powerful than their enemy, yet their enemy appears to be winning its objectives, which will eventually heat Netanyahu and Trump up to even more aggressive attacks OR cause Trump to back out defeated with some lame claim of victory, leaving Netanyahu to complete the war on his own. Trump certainly wants out, but will he be able to find enough of a claim for victory to protect his ego from the enormous loss? He might not find that path, and Iran is trying to make certain he cannot. Netanyahu, on the other hand, clearly will not back down now that he’s gone this far in his lifelong quest to rid the world of his Iranian enemy. (Become a paying subscriber, and you won’t miss any of it.)

(Articles for the quotes above appear in boldface among the headlines below. You can also read about the latest oil surge taking diesel to a five-year high and why analysts are saying it is no temporary blip, the soaring 10YR yield, the Netherland’s big rush to move gold out of the US, and the rising likelihood of a major global dollar sell-off and how that would work.)

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The naming of names

No sooner did I say it late yesterday than I read this morning, “Trump floats renaming Strait of Hormuz the ‘Trump Strait.’” So predictable. Trump, however, went one step more egotistical than I was thinking when I expressed my surprise that he hadn’t already named it “Strait America” to go with his new “Lake America” because that would sure show Iran who won!

I actually hope he does do something this egotistical and pointless because then he will be memorialized on maps and blamed for decades for turning Hormuz, the strait of formerly free international waters that is now claimed by Iran, into the strait that now charges massive tolls for Iran that the rest of us will pay for shipments to pass through, thanks entirely to him. That can be his legacy throughout the world for as long as the situation stands. He’ll have his name plastered all over this extraordinary war failure. So, let’s hope he lays claim to his biggest failure, which the whole world will despise for decades, since that is the likely outcome of this war.

“Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT???” Trump wrote in the post Wednesday morning.

Practically begging for praise he could read in the replies as well as justification that would allow him to say his usual, “I don’t know, but many people are saying I should. They keep telling me, ‘Mr. President, since you freed up the strait, you should name it after yourself.’ Maybe I will. I don’t know. I’m thinking about it. We shall see.” And then the next day he does what he had already decided to do.

“Like America itself, it would be ‘hotter’ than ever before! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP,” he wrote.

Oh, it’s hotter than ever before! That’s for sure. Between my last editorial and this one, the war around the strait blew up like nobody’s business! That took about twelve hours. The final war video posted below does a great job of explaining how Iran’s strategy changed in exactly the manner I said it had the day Trump’s MoU was broken, transforming Iran from what had been a defensive war posture into a determined offensive posture that is no longer aimed at ending the war.

The analyst in the video explains how Iran has continually dialed up the damage to Trump and the US by teasing Trump into escalating this war of attrition, then using Trump’s escalations as justification for their own intensification because their goal, after receiving so much pain and damage and seeing so many “deals” go nowhere, was no longer to escape the pain but to do everything they could to make Trump feel as much pain as possible in order to drive the US out of the Persian Gulf forever. It explains how well they are succeeding in each movement toward that goal and why their moves are working and why Trump’s are not. Last night that all blew up into a huge regional conflagration that I’ll write about; but, for now, I’ll stay with subject of the moment:

Trump loves to give things new names to honor himself, even though they are often names that no one but he and his sycophants and billionaire buddies (when they are around him) will ever use:

The order renaming Lake Ontario directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and his department to update the Geographic Names Information System with the new name. Canada rejected the change, though Google and Apple have recently updated their maps.

Figures. Google and Apple should have ignored him, but he controls them because the billionaire consortium/cartel/cabal/coven of witches and warlocks that operates this nation solely to the benefit of the 1% sucks up to him daily in order to get those big Mar-a-Lago invites where the big deals get made over “the best chocolate cake anywhere,” as well as to get advance notice on White House insider stock, bond, and oil trades based on shortly upcoming Trumpian war announcements.

It is no wonder a Gallup poll in the news today says a record number of Americans (89% or “more than ever before,” as Trump would exclaim) believes the US government is corrupt—that number having soared over the past year “like never before!”

See, perception of corruption took a hockey-stick bend:

Fooled but not fueled

The US energy secretary, Christ Wright, sort of backed up the president’s claim that, thanks to Trump, the Strait of TheRump is hotter than ever before by saying the amount of oil now passing through has hit the biggest “record EVER since the conflict began.” Huh? Break that down for me. How is it the biggest record of oil shipping through the strait EVER, if it is just the biggest amount shipping through after this six-month conflict began? Doesn’t that wording betray just how much all the king’s men (and women) try to pump up every claim in Trumpian exaggeration to their administration’s favor?

“The biggest EVER! … (whispered:) since this year.”

Uh, huh, sure! Maybe as a spurt, but not a continuing flow. If the flow is up in the numbers the secretary gave, the reason I claim it is just a spurt is that Iran just reported today that it hit and disabled two tankers traveling through the Strait of Whatever in response to the United States’ latest escalated attack on Iran, which was in response to Iran attacking US bases in Jordan, which was in response to earlier US efforts to try to get or keep the strait open by destroying Iranian mining operations, which are what blew holes in the ships just reported about a day after the US announced all mines had been cleared. So, the strait is in constant flux under the president’s full control. Therefore, so is the flow of oil as we have all heard several times by now, how ships did u-turns as soon as the missiles were flying. Since Iran is clearly far from done exercising its own control over the strait, missiles and mines will continue to interrupt things:

Two oil tankers hit naval mines while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said, as U.S. and Iranian forces exchanged a fresh round of strikes in the region.

In a statement shared by state media, the influential hard-line military group said the vessels had been disabled and forced to disembark their crew after ignoring warnings on taking an “illegal route” through the strait.

But the president says he has the strait under full control now.

President Donald Trump said he was “not trying to force Iran to the bargaining table,” as U.S. forces completed a fresh round of attacks against the Middle Eastern country on Tuesday stateside….

Of course not. Iran has made clear it will not ever return to the bargaining table with Trump because, for some reason, they think he lies all the time.

In a Truth Social post, Trump reiterated that the U.S. has “almost total control” over the Strait of Hormuz, while adding that Tehran’s economy was collapsing.

OK, so he’s faded back a little to “almost total control” because the tanker blasts by mines that he has just said were “completely cleared” forced a little retreat in his wording from the recent days when he was boasting of “total conrol.”

And that is where the big news hit today, which started with Trump’s “fresh round of attacks against the Middle Eastern country on Tuesday stateside.” Iran didn’t hesitate this time, but immediately engaged in larger attacks, it claims, than it has ever made, causing massive damage to US bases throughout the Middle East (they claim). However, I am going to save the huge news of escalation in Trump’s War (and it really is major) so I can stay in context here with tracking all the misstatements and lies that swirled around today to contribute to the fog of war that smogs up our economic decline.

If things are always going as well as this energy secretary says every time he speaks, then why are we now starting to see signs that say gasoline and diesel are “out.” The anecdotal report by Hal Turner in the headlines that follow may not mean much in that, across an entire nation, there are, every day, gas stations that didn’t get their fuel orders in on time to avoid running out of fuel. People may be especially keen on watching that and reporting it in a time when everyone is wondering if shortages will hit.

Except … in this case, one person making the report says she travelled to several gas stations in the same area and most of them were out of fuel. That never happens without a regional shortage or a major incident, such as an evacuation order, forcing everyone to leave at once fuel up at once. She reported that even the store owners asked, “What the hell is going on?” apparently wondering why they had not received fuel deliveries.

Notices that say “NO GAS or DIESEL till further notice” are also not normal. Most establishments that forgot to order in time would tell their customers when their regular shipment will be arriving when they apologize for the missed service … unless they have no idea when they will be able to get more fuel:

Stations that didn’t notice their tanks were close to empty in time to avoid winding up empty would usually find out right away from their supplier how quickly they could get fuel delivered and would let their customers know. So, we’ll have to see if this phenomenon spreads. Reports came from individuals in several states. It may be the beginning of exactly what I warned of for “this summer,” starting out “spotty at first.”

You can see other reports like this in Hal Turner’s article. Back to the secretary of energy’s braggadocios claims:

Iran is losing its ability to “hold the world economic hostage” as the U.S. military helps oil tankers sail through Hormuz, Wright said. Tehran is “causing some disruption but they are losing that card,” he said.

The energy secretary and his boss with a flamelike swirl of gasoline-colored hair have both been proclaiming this for almost half a year. When does it start to become true? We’ll see that it is far from true when I cover the latest outbreaks in the Trump-Iran war, which you can also read all about below.

Fed up with falsehood

The energy secretary’s claims rang about as true as official Fed Joker John Williams, who patted down the big escalation in bond yields by saying the yield surge on US Treasuries is “due to strong economic prospects.” Hmm. Really? The surge in sovereign yields, which is happening globally, not just in the US, is due to US economic strength right now? It couldn’t have anything to do—happening simultaneously all over the world as it is—with the global inflation from world war and international tariffs imposed on the world by Donald J. Trump on top of the risks from soaring government debt, piling up under Trump “like never before,” as he would say … could it? Williams did admit, when asked at the end of his joker routine whether the war had anything to do with rising yields that it may have contributed a little. What a funny guy. He probably just doesn’t want to upset his orange boss.

Trump’s tariff trickery

But not as funny as this guy: President Tromp-all-over-the-world’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnik, said he didn’t want his agency to be responsible for raising the price of pasta, so he dropped the tariff on pasta. Yet, he’s the lying nutball who claimed with a crooked smile (and still does claim) that tariffs do not cause inflation! Liars to the core of their being, now by their own admission.

Here is how disingenuous they are and destructive to all of the rest of us:

Agency leaders first stepped in late last year, after a Commerce Department investigation determined in September that leading Italian pasta makers had been underpricing the products they sold in the U.S., in violation of trade rules. The proposed punishment — sky-high tariffs on the pantry staple — drew headlines at a time when the administration was trying to convince Americans its trade agenda was not driving up prices.

So, the Italians were offering Americans a special bargain on their spaghetti, which would be a nice help for the average American, struggling with affordability. The administration saw this and decided it needed to impose a suddenly higher tariff on noodles to raise the price so American companies wouldn’t have to lower their prices in order to compete! Then they argued that tariffs don’t raise prices for Americans! Such audacity! (Even though raising prices that were too low was their whole justification for raising the tariffs sky high.)

But now that the war is making inflation more problematic, they are stripping away their own tariffs, conveniently in time for the election because affordability has become a hot campaign issue. Of course, they always KNEW that tariffs raise prices for Americans. That was why they added the import tariff to Italian macaroni! And they believe—and it appears they are right—that most of America is dumb enough to believe such self-contradictory lies.

Secretary of Commerce Coward Sputnik sputters lies like an antique engine sputters droplets of slick oil and backfires out poorly burned exhaust fumes. They are the smelly air he expels from his lungs on a regular basis … just as his gasoline-colored boss emits fumes of fake news and random lies daily.

“Lutnick was very upset that the work was making it on the news, from the perspective that he was responsible for inflation,” one of the people said. “Then he became a micromanager. He micromanaged every decision that came out to try to water down enforcement and compliance.”

All this noise and trouble to create tariffs, just to undo them behind the scenes!

In particular, he and other top Commerce officials have discouraged staff from pursuing the most aggressive possible tariffs in the pasta case and other similar investigations into trade violations, according to four people familiar with the matter, granted anonymity to share unreported details about the internal discussions.

Does Trump talk big and carry a puny stick? Some of his mistresses like Stormy Daniels have claimed so. His prolific history of short-lived TACO tariffs certainly seem to say so.

In some cases, senior officials instructed staff to recalculate rates that were deemed too high, two of the people said. The result has been much lower duties on violators in recent months compared to the past.

Those decisions are worrying career Commerce officials as well as other trade and legal experts, who say the rates for any new duties should be based on hard data and legal criteria. And it illustrates how concerns about inflation and affordability approaching the midterm elections have begun to override Trump’s desire to crack down on foreign companies that cheat domestic industry.

Let’s lower those tariffs behind the scenes before the election and try not to breathe a word about it because they are shoving prices up so high! No wonder the tariff impact has not been quite as obvious by now as I thought it would be (though it is still bad enough). The man and his band of merry men (and women) in charge of implementing Trump’s tariffs have been secretly reducing their damage—the resulting inflation that was never supposed to happen—as we run up to the midterm elections to make it appear they are not causing the inflation.

A Commerce official denied that Lutnick had intervened in the rate decisions, or that the agency had changed its practice of assigning higher duty rates to companies that don’t participate in its investigations.

“Secretary Lutnick has not directed Commerce staff to apply or avoid any particular rates or set of rate options,” the official said in a statement to POLITICO. “Commerce follows a transparent and established decision making process for each case.” The official was granted anonymity to speak about the department’s decision-making.

Uh, huh. Sure! It wasn’t Lutnik’s fault, prevalent prevaricator that he is, that all these tariff retreats happened. It was just the people beneath him who saw a need and responded to it, even though some of those complaining about what they say he is doing are the people beneath him!

The optics of the extremely high proposed rates on Italian pasta and other consumer products and manufacturing inputs, including Chinese wooden cabinets and Russian palladium used in auto parts, have alarmed Lutnick and other senior agency officials as the administration works to tamp down affordability concerns.

That’s more like it. In other words, tariffs are driving inflation sky high (or would if they were actually imposed per Trump policy), and that can’t be seen to be happening right now because we are heading into an election, which many are saying will greatly curtail his presidency’s unconstitutional government, including particularly in declaring wars. No wonder more people than ever before are saying the US government is corrupt.

The Commerce secretary, who has fought to keep himself at the center of the White House economic agenda, was determined not to let his department’s decisions feed one of the president’s biggest political vulnerabilities.

Lutnick signaled to staff across meetings and private correspondence in the fall of 2025 that the administration would no longer prioritize the most aggressive forms of enforcement, according to the four people.

He would be wise at any time to not carry out those orders, except that the president hired him TO carry out those orders. But Lutnik is saving the president from himself, so I suspect he will be forgiven during this vital election season as we are about to enter the final fall stretch.

That same month, the Commerce Department finalized the tariffs on the Italian pasta companies at a maximum rate of 7 percent for Garofalo and a minimum of 2.65 percent for La Molisana, while 11 other Italian companies were hit with a 5.21 percent duty — far lower than the 91.74 percent rate initially proposed.

Mama Mia! Pasta was about to get as hot as oil! And I’m not talking the olive oil that is sometimes cooked in with it. I almost want to thank these clowns for undermining the big boss’s tariff policies, except that the whole outfit lies all the way along about what they are doing and especially about the inflationary impact of tariffs, and are now likely just lowering tariffs to lower prices until the election has passed. So, it’s all a cloud of deception like the fog of war. It’s the fog of tariff wars.

Like Trump’s TACO trades throughout his tariff wars and during the Iran war where he switch-hits every time he’s up to bat against Iran—you know, the sweet times Kushner and the White House execs cast bets moments before Trump publicly announces his switch—the White House avoids its own policies every time they turn out to work against it as bad polices want to do. The rest of us suffer through the chaos of being bounced endlessly up and down. Take, for example,

… the Russian palladium case, where they say producers refused to cooperate — normally a trigger for the harshest penalty available. Yet Commerce in April set a final antidumping rate of 132.83 percent, far below the 828.09 percent the petitioners who requested the investigation had sought. The duties never went into effect, however, after the International Trade Commission, which determines whether imports are harming a U.S. industry, did not find evidence that imports were hurting U.S. producers.

What? I thought that was the whole reason for the tariffs (besides the false claim of making other nations pay our taxes for us). Wasn’t it because imports were hurting US producers? If they weren’t, then why the negotiated tariff on those items in the first place? Reckless abandon in the drafting of the tariffs? I think the US just found itself desperately needing palladium when the tariffs suddenly caused the very shortages and supply-line troubles that the administration had said they would never cause. The problem with rule by king has always been that it winds up depending on the whim of the king on any given day. So, with Trump, it has endlessly been tariff on, tariff off, tariff on again, rinse, repeat and recycle.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter last month stressing that the process for determining trade penalties must “remain apolitical and free from conflicts of interest,” citing the case of a South Korean aluminium company whose parent company reportedly paid $2 million to the Trump Organization last year while its aluminum affiliate was fighting proposed Commerce Department duties.

Well, that is one way to wrestle value out of a tariff: Drop the duty if they pay the president’s business directly! (Of course, the family business is now under the administration of his offspring in order to maintain an arm’s-length relationship—measured by an arm made shorter by very small hands)

Other cases reflect similar reductions….

The laws targeting trade cheats are some of the most precise trade statutes on the books, laying out strict criteria for when the duties can be applied and lifted, as well as what Commerce and the ITC should look for when determining rates and outcomes.

Trade attorneys say the administration could face lawsuits if the lower rates can’t be justified by the economic data.

Highest-ever rating for corrupt government, is what the polls say today.

“The statutes tell them how to calculate a rate. It doesn’t tell them to pick the lowest one because they’re worried about grocery prices. That’s the problem,” a lawyer who works on trade remedy cases said. “Is it legal? I have some serious questions about that.”

Well, one thing it certainly is: Their willingness to bend their rules that far is proof they don’t believe their own lies about tariffs not raising prices paid by Americans!

Iran war escalates BIGLY

Lots and lots of stories and some good videos of the hyuugely (as the Donald would say) escalated action in the Trump-Iran War follow. I will cover them tomorrow or in my weekend Deeper Dive since this post is long enough already, but let me just touch on one of the lighter notes:

The president flaunted his naiveté today asking

When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?

Are you kidding? This shows how badly you, Mr. president (and most previous US presidents), just don’t get it! Did you not see the funeral for the ayatollah you killed? Millions attended, and half or more probably hate him; but what the funeral revealed is that they hate YOU a lot more, given their burning effigies and signs and chants. They also know you will not send the cavalry to their rescue if the more hardline regime arrests them to execute them. They know you will TACO on them BECAUSE YOU ALMOST ALWAYS DO, just as it appears you did today when Iran says it retaliated “bigger than ever before” after you told them that, should they retaliate, you would blow them up bigger than ever before. This evening … silence so far.

This is what tends to happen when the US arrives as the “Great Liberator,” as GBII liked to say during his Iraq and Afghanistan “100-day” quagmires. It’s what happens when you blow gaping holes in many of their favorite buildings, knock out their bridges and railroads, pound their economy into the desert dust, sanction all the people to death, regularly threaten to remove them from Earth’s future and (most off all) kill many of their fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, such as happened at a wedding party last night that was hit by US missiles or bombs. They tend to not love your “liberation” as much as they loved the loved ones you killed.

So, dream on, Donald. They are not rising up, unless against you.

Read more

The US attacked Iran today in retaliation for attacks Iran made on US bases in Jordan in retaliation for the attacks the US made against Iranian efforts to place mines in the Strait of Hormuz. After this latest US attack, Trump preemptively warned Iran that, should Iran have the audacity to respond to the United States’ latest and “very justified attack” with another attack of its own, it will be hit “again at a much harder and higher level, but it will not be the biggest attack of them all, that is waiting in the wings.” Then he added his usual bullhorn threat amplifier: “When it is over, there will be very little left of the Islamic Republic of Iran!”

Iran responded that it most certainly will retaliate for today’s reprisal with an attack that is “several times larger” than its last attack.

“The more the terrorist US military persists in its malign activities in the region, the heavier the losses it will be forced to bear. We have repeatedly declared, and are resolved, that under no circumstances will we yield on the rights of the heroic Iranian nation, and we will impose a heavy cost on the American enemy,” [Iran] stated.

Trump tirades

To show them who is boss, Trump also posted an AI-faked video of the US blowing up numerous targets on Kharg Island, which he has many times threatened to take over. What a tease, that Trump. It scared Iran so badly they went back to eating breakfast.

We know Iran will follow through with the larger response it has just promised … after dinner. It always does follow through with what it says it will do.

We don’t know if Trump will follow through with the “total decimation” of Iran he has promised in return. He most often does not follow through with what he says he will do. Most of what has come out of his mouth during Trump’s War has been vain threats and easily disproven boasts about major US accomplishments, such as achieving victory in the war against Iran, beating them better than Bush in less than 100 days, then gaining complete control over the strait months after he had beaten them into total surrender, regaining total control several times more, even though he is still clearly battling for control, then actually declaring the strait as new US territory. I’m surprised he hasn’t already ordered Google to rename Hormuz, “the Strait of America” while the rest of the world continues to call it “Hormuz.” He has more control over Google than he does over Iran.

So, Iran ignores everything Trump says and just does whatever Iran last promised it was going to do, while telling Trump to go home before he gets hurt.

Trump trades

In what likely made for predictable and highly profitable insider bets at the White House, US stocks plunged, bond yields took off to heights not seen in a few years, and oil soared today. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) shot right past $90/bbl, and Brent bolted above $95/bbl (at the time of this writing).

“Always and forever, the stock market is going to struggle to digest big and kind of volatile moves in the bond market,” said Ross Mayfield, Baird investment strategist. “I think this is with us for the near term and the long term.”

Just like the war. Sadly.

The sovereign bond route has become global due to the war’s threat of increasing inflation on top of the impacts of constantly changing tariffs, making it increasingly hard for governments to fund their massive debts. When asked about how the bond route affected his work, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent literally laughed off the bond troubles today by claiming it didn’t matter because the US is the best horse at the glue factory.

Thus, September started in the red for all three major stock indices

Rounding up images for paying subscribers of the catastrophe along the border of Nepal and Tibet as well as explanations of how it all happened, I’ve posted several stories below with before-and-after photos of villages COMPLETELY erased in seconds from the map, including the border gateway building. All of these stories now say the unusual cause of the massive flash flood was the collapse of the small peak I wrote about, including the underlying bedrock shelf along the terminal edge of the glacier, which took the overlying ice down with it.

Read more

Two videos report some interesting confirmation today of my weekend Deeper Dive, where I hypothesized that the extremely rare event of an entire mountain peak breaking off in Tibet caused the Nepal catastrophe when it slid down into the river followed by the glacier that was wrapped around it, damming the river and setting up a massive flood. Since I published that piece, scientists are now leaning toward the idea that the entire peak broke off first, not the glacier (a far more common event); and one video below explains why something so unusual is likely in this case.

A massive earthquake in this same area occurred back in 2015. The video shows the earthquake. It shook the mountains so hard that it caused numerous immediate landslides; you can even see large clouds of dust rising from avalanches right behind the same Nepal-China border crossing that has been highlighted throughout the latest event. For months thereafter, a higher-than-usual number of landslides plagued the region, and the video reports that cracks were seen in mountains, which had opened up in the earthquake.

It’s likely the cracks I showed in my Deeper Dive had been around long before that, but the major quake made those weak spots worse. The video even seems to suggest that. It also notes lots of major blasting around the region of the mountain that fell by the Chinese who are building a lot of hydro projects and roads in that part of Tibet. The video suggests it’s also possible that the shocks from blasting may have weakened existing cracks from the earthquake as the final trigger to the peak’s collapse or possible road work, cutting into the mountain’s flank, may have undermined the already unstable peak above.

The video shows some still photographs taken half an hour before the peak failed, captured by a hiker, who reported huge rumbling sounds and photographed clouds of dust rising around the base of the peak, as though smaller tumbling rocks were beginning to land at the base, or the base was cracking as the mountain was beginning to give way. (He did not, however, capture the moment the peak cracked off and slid half an hour later .)

War breaks out

Speaking of things breaking lose, hot war broke out in Iran again when the US blew up Iranian vessels that were attempting to re-lay mines in the region the US just announced it had fully cleared. That resulted in Iran retaliating by blowing up major parts of US bases in Jordan. That resulted in Trump saying he will retaliate with more blowing up of Iran, again making one of his favorite threats of possibly seizing an island in the strait, having already claimed he seized the strait. To which Iran said, essentially, “Do that, and we’ll retaliate again.”

As could easily be expected, oil shot back up, taking North Sea Brent over $91/bbl and US WTI over $85. The president quickly announced the Pentagon (not sure why the “Pentagon” and not just the “US government”) will be getting 35% of Venezuela’s oil, which the US will be placing back into its Strategic Petroleum Reserves.

That announcement may be what cracked the price of oil back down to a little over $90 for Brent. It undoubtedly also made for another nice White House insider trade opportunity, a routine activity that has been hitting the news frequently these days.

Thank you to everyone who has been joining in on clicking the “like” button on recent articles they liked. (Never if you don’t like them.) Again, it’s not that I’m looking for the affirmation, it’s that I’ve noticed Substack seems to only promote articles that have many likes, even ones on the same topic as mine, which they ignore. That appears to be one of their preferred gauges of popularity, more than the size of a site’s subsribership, in determining which articles to put on their various lists of recommended reads. So, I HOPE that clicking the “like” button may help this site get wider publicity from Substack, which so far has given it no such support in all the years my site has been here.

(Of course, it could easily be that Substack just doesn’t like what I have to say ; )

Money Matters (monetary policy, metals, cryptos, currency wars & going cashless)

Gold’s Huge August

Fed’s Warsh Sticks to his Guns on No More Forward Guidance, Treasury Yields Jump

Inflation Factors (too much money chasing too few goods due to weather, sanctions, tariffs, quarantines, etc.)

Oil Jumps at Week’s Open as US Military Hits Iranian Launchers

Pentagon Grabs 35% Equity Stake In Venezuelan Oil As Trump Vows To “Fill Up” The SPR

Trump-Promoted “Freedom Fuel” Gas Stations Accused of Selling Stolen Fuel

America’s next grocery shock is brewing

‘Trump in purgatory’: A White House plan to lower beef prices is dividing the president’s supporters

The UK paid farmers to stop producing, and now blames a food crisis on the weather

Wars & Rumors of War (including cyberwar, civil unrest and revolts)

Russia steps up ’gray zone’ attacks across Europe as NATO tensions rise

Russia is bombarding Europe with a new wave of ‘gray zone’ attacks

Putin to unleash 300,000-troop ‘hammer blow’ as desperate Vlad goes all-out

Estonian intelligence chief says Russia could collapse rapidly

Are Russians turning on Putin? The race to pull BILLIONS from clutches of Kremlin as tyrant ‘scavenges for war cash’

Russia Hits Kiev Ammo Dump Next To Homes; Ukraine Admits 90% Of Retail Food Logistics Wrecked

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Iran retaliates after first US strikes in a month

Trump Vows US Will Respond to Iranian Ballistic Missile Strikes on Jordan

Military leaders warn Hegseth against extending Iran war operations

—

These Generals Fought for Israel. Now They See ‘Jewish Terrorism’ as the Threat.

‘I Am an American Citizen Under Siege by Israeli Settler Extremists’

Digital Dominance (AI threats, transhumanism, hacks & cyberattacks, etc.)

BOE chief warns G20 of AI threats to financial stability, equity markets

Trump Trade Wars & Turf Wars

The shadow of the United States lengthens over southern Greenland: ‘We are going to lose our homes’

‘Cuba is opening up.’ Reforms begin as US tightens grip

Political Pandemonium & Social Senescence (socio-political issues & events)

Republicans hit with ominous ‘historic losses’ warning

Three-time Trump voters turn on him in stark warning

Trump’s Quietly Working to Give Part of Yosemite to a Private Developer

Pete Hegseth Is Talking about a Possible Run for President in 2028

US judge rules Pentagon blacklisting of Anthropic unlawful

Hegseth blocks promotions of 4 Army officers with ties to sacked generals

Deep Domination (globalism, unelected government, unconstitutional government & censorship)

Tech backlash reaches fever pitch as AI angst collides with social media fears

Icelanders vote ‘no’ to talks aimed at joining the EU in close referendum

Calamity, Catastrophe & Climate Craziness

Confirmation the Tibetan mountain moved first, then the glacier: (Some images clearly AI simulations, but provide good visuals of how it may have happened.)

More confirmation that the peak failed first and possible reasons why it failed:

The Resurrection of Dolly: Tropical Storm Could Reform Closer to US on Labor Day

Illinois sets US state record for most tornadoes in a year

Grand Canyon flash floods leave 1 dead, about 15 missing, park officials say

Off-the-Beat News & Just Plain Offbeat News

Influencers, treasure hunters or ‘mole people’? No one seems to know what is going on underground in NYC

Hope for Hard Times

When All Seemed Lost, Salvation Arrived by Volunteer Elephant

Doomer Humor

Share The Daily Doom

Since an enormous volume of ice and water, turning to mud mixed with car-sized boulders flowed down and hit the mountain villages below, the next hypothesis was that a hanging glacier had broken loose, knocking a lot of rock off the mountainside as it tumbled. Once the area of the break was observed by air and satellite, however, it became clear that it wasn’t that big of a glacier, and only a relatively small section of it slid.

The initial fall of the glacial ice was a nearly one-mile plunge that sloped over a length of about a mile, so it was a very steep drop into a trough that then turned and fell another four miles or so into a river valley below. So it certainly could deliver a shock to the valley floor when it hit. However, where did that enormous volume of water come from?

There was not a lot of flow in the rivers of the area prior to the quake, yet the eventual wall of water that ran down the valley was massive and continued to flow at a high rate for a long time. Was there a glacial lake above the glacier that gave way—so that an ice dam in the glacier broke and the lake and glacial ice suddenly all flowed off the mountain into the river valley that ran crossways to the glacier.

The answer, again, was, “No.” There was no evidence of a glacial lake above where the terminal edge of the glacier broke off. Nor was there enough ice in that much glacier for a nearly instantaneous pulverizing of the ice into water. Nor was there any massive heat like there would be in a volcanic blast that would melt pulverized glacial ice into a lahar. There was no volcano involved.

And, so, the next hypothesis was that the glacier and the rock that slide down with it must have formed a dam when it hit river in the valley floor that crossed its path, which blocked the river that flowed perpendicular to the glacier’s plunge off the mountain. The dam then held back the river’s water until enough water accumulated behind the dam of crushed ice and rubble of broken stone to create enough pressure to burst the dam.

The earthquake was believed, therefore, to be not the moment things broke loose but the massive crash that occurred when the glacier exited its trough down the moutain, and slammed into the floor of the river valley below in a large enough collision to dam the larger river valley. In the video I present below (which is kind of long and slow because it is a teaching video by a geologist), the dam hypothesis is borne out by his calculation of time between the major seismic shake and the time when the first wall of mud and water and ice struck the large ornate border crossing structure seen in many of the videos of that dramatic moment when the lahar-like flow almost instantly engulfed the Chinese-Nepal border gateway structure, which was built over the river as a bridge to Chinese Tibet.

Almost two hours elapsed between the quake and the wipeout of that first major structure, but the time it would normally take for a liquid ice and mud flow to get that far down the river with its particular geology the professor calculated to be about ten minutes. Why was there nearly a two hour delay between the glacier’s collapse and its arrival downstream, yet no warning signs coming down the river to the inhabited area below? Why did the initial avalanche hit with such a huge thud that it shook the surrounding mountains, waking up the seismographs in the region, and why did ALL of it apparently stop right there in its tracks?

No increase of muddy water came running down the river during those hours to indicate something had happened. One would think there would be smaller amounts of mud and river water that made it down the main river before enough built up to create a dam. The regular flow of other tributaries into the river downstream of the collapse continued to come down clear and clean, so the river water did not just shut off completely down below either. That would have alerted villages below if the dam occurred two hours before the arrival of the larger flow.

Why didn’t some of the loose slurry of ice and water and crumbled stone bend around the corner when it hit the first valley floor and flow on down the river to the villages below if the easily crumbling glacier broke off and was leading the way down, scouring the rock off as it went? That kind of material flows.

In the video, the professor shows that the glacial ice, when it collapsed, took a lot of surrounding stone with it. In fact, it dragged down a major piece of the mountain. There is a small peak beside the glacier that formed a foothold for the glacier keeping the glacier from sliding off the mountain where rock broke away.

My hypothesis

I’m going to dive a little deeper into this event than the professor did and show you what I think the initial trigger for all of it was. It wasn’t the crashing of a hanging glacier, pulling some surrounding stone down with it. It was something so much more rare and so much bigger than a falling glacier that no one seems to be quite grasping what happened.

Photos reveal the entire mountain peak at the base of the glacier went down with the glacier. I believe the small mountain peak broke off first. Since it was the foothold of the glacier with lots of ice pressure pushing against it, the glacier slid when the entire peak sheared off. Since the peak started the fall ahead of the ice, the entire peak slammed into the valley below, creating a dam almost instantly. It probably mostly hit the river valley primarily as one giant chunk of mountain that slid about 8,000 feet in elevation because it had a long smooth, steep trough with soft sides to slide down.

Let’s explore that together with some images I’ve extracted from videos. Here is an overview of the total glacier taken by satellite before the event, which I extracted from the professor’s video:

You can see the glacier rests on a broad shelf at the base of a larger peak that lines the bottom of the photo while a rocky arm descending from the peak embraces the glacier along the right edge of the photo. The wide glacier narrows as it flows toward the top left of the photo to get around a triangular area of rock that blocks its path, which rises to form a small triangular peak. As the glacier goes around the small peak, it forms an ice falls that hangs over the end of a deep ravine that exits out the top left corner of the photo.

Look closely, and you can see a thin yellow line where the professor marks the furthest extent of the glacier before it bends and hangs over the edge of cliff. The gray above that line is eroded rock, not ice. The gray below it is ice covered with fallen rock debris. This photo shows the glacier as it was before the incident. You can see the glacier turns and falls down into a steep ravine that is also gray because so much ice over the years has tumbled down there that it has eroded the sides of the ravine that is lined with a flank of eroded material from the cliffs above. It has eroded down through that material and angles out of the picture toward the top, left corner of the image.

The river valley where the dam occurred is actually some distance below that top left corner. The initial drop into that ravine is almost a mile. Then four more miles of a steep slide along the ravine to hit the river valley. So there is lots of steepness and length of the initial plunge to grind up ice and stone. As the peak slid down that steep ravine, lined deep along its sides with fine erosion material, it scooped a lot of that loose debris with it, which became part of the eventual mudflow.

Notice that behind the flow of dirty ice as it approaches the glacial falls, the larger area of glacier presents no evidence of a glacial lake held back by the obstruction at the falls anywhere within the glacial cirque of the mountain. What I want you to really notice is the obstruction, itself, that holds the glacier back—the peak that I’ve circled in red in the duplicate image below:

You can tell by the shadow to the left of that peak that one side was a steep cliff into the upper end of the ravine. I believe that the entire peak broke off, which allowed some of the glacier trapped to its right and all of the icefalls just above it in the satellite photo to all slide down into the river valley once that peak, which was an obstacle holding back the main body of the glacier, broke off.

Of course a PEAK breaking off and falling as a whole enormous rock down into a valley is so rare it is not the first thought that comes even to the mind of a geologist, but it does explain the entire sequence of events, including the severity of the sudden quake two hours prior to the deluge, when the peak thudded into the mountain valley 8,000 feet lower than where it original stood. It does fit perfectly with the aerial photo of the area taken after the event, which shows the entire peak NO LONGER THERE AT ALL.

Now, I’ll dig into the evidence that takes us there:

In this first photo, which is a closer view from the same angle, you can see the line of travel this glacier normally takes, as delineated with a centerline of flow by an actual geologist. You can see the flow of ice gets shouldered off the edge of that peak as it goes AROUND the peak, which means it also presses hard against the peak because ice doesn’t bend around things very easily:

The yellow pin marks the center of the section of glacier that broke off. You can see the peak just below it. (Not “below” in the sense of elevation but below the yellow marker’s location in the photo. The peak is higher in elevation, but oriented below in the satelite photo.) Centuries ago, the glacier was much thicker and pressed harder further up the triangular peak than it does today.

Now, I want you to look at an amazing image that the professor in the video I present below shows of this same area BEFORE and AFTER the big event. Notice the peak, which is the dark triangular area near the center of the left image, is gone completely in the right image—completely wiped off the moutain—and notice the escarpment in the glacier where part of the glacier is also gone.

Here is the BEFORE and AFTER:

The thin white line in the before-and-after images, which is hand drawn in by a geologist (don’t know if it was the professor), marks the original extreme edge of the glacier and the adjacent peak. The peak has slid in its entirety off the top of this lower region of the larger mountain. In fact, it looks as if the whole peak smoothly slid off, rather than crumbled into pieces.

While both images are blurry, you can notice a lighter colored smear of a line of material that runs from the top of the peak downward at a 45-degree angle to the right in the BEFORE photo. In the AFTER photo, you can see a remaining part of that line, albeit a lot fainter because of how blurred the photo is, and the peak IS COMPLETELY GONE.

Now, I’ll show you why the peak slid first, which is for some reason, something the professor never mentions. Maybe I’m wrong because I’m not a geologist, but I expect sometimes some events are so large and catastrophic that they don’t come first to mind even for geologists. Let’s start with his image, where he hand draws a line on the satellite photo that represents roughly the section of the glacier and the stone peak that broke away.

You can see now that the area that is missing includes almost all of that triangular shaped peak (even its BASE), which just slid off the mountain. In the AFTER photo above, it is no longer there to hold back the area of ice inside the yellow line in the photo just presented, so the ice slid right after it. All gone. The professor says this whole thing slid when the glacier broke, but I’m going to go a little further and say that the event did not start with the glacier calving, as a number of geologists have said and as this geologist seems to be speculating, taking away such a massive piece of stone due to the movement of ice. It started with the peak breaking off the mountain, rare as an event like that is, and un-damming the ice that flowed inch by inch each year around it. And here is my evidence—something that shows up in closeups of the satellite photo and that follows very close to where the professor drew his estimated line around the suddenly missing material, details that the professor never mentions:

Look closely and you’ll see evidence of a number of cracks in the ice and rock that run very close to the professor’s yellow lines in the satellite photo of the area that disappeared over the edge. I’ll add lines below so you can look back up at the photo and see where the indications of cracking prior to this event are visible: (I drew the lower line just a little offset below the crack so you can see the actual large crack.)

There are other cracks as well, but these red lines match up with the section that actually slid away. At the bottom there are several major cracks in the bedrock, and I picked the one that comes closest to where the final break appeared to happen, but the view angles of the photos are slightly different, so it could have been any of those cracks that change direction from the major diagonal crack. I drew the vertical line directly over the crack, but if you look at the photo above this one, you’ll see a very fine line in the overlying ice that indicates a crack could have been there under the ice for years right where the rock actually broke off.

The ice and stone to the right of my vertical line remained behind because it rests on a flatter part of the large shelf the main part of the glacier sits on, but the peak and the icefalls was part of the shelf that rounded downward. It broke loose along that rounded underlying foliation and slid off.

I think thousands of years of ice even deeper than the present age, pushing against this knob, cracked it loose from the rest of the mountain after millennia of wedging against it, and it finally slid off in a clean break. The professor comes close to going there, but never points out the preexisting crack lines, nor the idea that the peak breaking free was the event that initiated all the other movement.

The final event that pulls everything together

And here is where I think this completes the scenario. If the trigger event was the actually minor peak breaking loose along its pre-existing fractures, due to the pressure of ice for centuries around it, and sliding off the mountain, that would explain the massive quake when that entire peak slid all the way down the slope and crashed into the valley below, and it would explain why nothing flowed on down the river valley, which you can see in this image runs off to the bottom in an angle to right, perpendicular to the trough-like ravine the peak would have traveled down:

In this image, taken before the event, the professor drew a yellow line with red dots, starting at the center of the glacial icefalls, and running down the center of the ravine that the glacier and rock would have travelled to get down to the river valley that it ultimately flowed down. You can see the ravine is very smooth and covered with thick layer of fine debris along its sides that accumulated from years of erosion off of the ridges that line the ravine, which thick cushion of loose, fine material would have made it possible for the entire peak to slide down the steep, smooth ravine to the valley below as a large mass so that it would hit the valley with an enormous thud!

The peak had a sharp left turn to make once it reached the river valley, but because it was massive rock (likely breaking up some along the way) and since it broke off first, it had so much momentum compared to the glacial ice shoving down behind it that it led the fall. It had too much momentum to turn, and unlike pulverized ice, lacked the flexibility make the turn. So it drove straight across the river valley and slammed into the opposing mountain side and valley floor, forming a huge plug across the river.

Using the angle of this aerial view, the ice of the glacier would have been released to slide down the left side of that path (from our aerial perspective in the photo) when the peak gave way, and rock peak would have traveled more along the right side of that centerline since the peak in the photo is well to the right of the centerline. Again, you can see how steep the cliff was along the lower reach of that peak, leaving it so it could break off as a whole.

That means almost no ice would have landed in the valley downstream of where the mountain peak piled into the river. The glacier would have largely piled upstream of the dam formed by the peak (upstream being toward the top of the photo). The river that runs from the top of the photo down to this junction eventually built up enough water behind the dam, floating the ice and pressing it to dislodge some key pieces of rock and earth that suddenly allowed the whole dam structure to fail and start sliding as a now liquified mass again down the fairly steep river to areas below what is shown in this photo to where the first damage was videoed at the Chinese border crossing.

Here is one more image where you can see the professor’s yellow line where he approximated the breakage line, and I’ve put red lines over the stony parts to the right of or below various cracks, which from this height look like barely visible hairline fractures, any of which could have been the actual breaking point:

Those cracks may have been there for centuries before the large piece of mountain finally gave way and slid down the slope. It’s hard to conceive of things that big; but the fact that it is no longer there tells us IT DID HAPPEN. It is just a question of which moved first, the rock or the glacier. I just say the rock broke away first and caused the ice around it to fall away because it no longer had the rock to press up against. The falling rock likely did some major ground rumbling, shaking ice loose even before its final slam into the mountainside or valley floor far below. The ice caught up and piled right behind the dam of rock and pulverized earth.

Now, here is the professor’s video. Anyone who is so inclined can watch it to see how my explanation dovetails with the professor’s to (hopefully) make full sense of all the mysteries that have been mentioned as to how this event occurred in the way that it did:

Below, for paying subscribers, are a few more excellent videos of the event. The first one is an update with many videos I hadn’t seen earlier, as well as some of the oft’ repeated videos of the cataclysm that happened all along the miles of river. Then another video explains (with some lousy fake voice) why the death toll may be far higher than anything we’ve heard. I’ve included it because I felt, myself, that the numbers officially given are way too low for the number of villages and structures wiped out in various videos for miles and miles along the main river, given the surprise by which the whole event came cascading down on people. And then a couple more collections of videos of the event.

Along with all that you’ll see some other regular headlines, such as yet another report about yet another major government revision down in previous year of jobs reports after those reports have already seen several revisions down already, proving the stealth recession to be as bad as I’ve claimed all along … once the reported numbers are finally squared up to reality.

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The passing away of Dolly Parton seemed a good time to put a story in my occasional “Hope for Hard Times” column. It may even be an auspicious time, given that a tropical storm broke out on this week of her passing that got named “Dolly”—not by a choice to create a tribute to Parton by giving the storm that name but because that name was selected for it many months ago, as all storm names are laid out on an alphabetical list months in advance of tropical storm season, and Dolly just happened to die right when her storm came to life.

Dolly Parton kind of was a storm—a tour-de-force at least. She was a nice storm, but I mean what a whirlwind of ambition, positive energy and accomplishment her life was. Yet, her lifetime swirls of grand activities began in poverty, as Dolly often humbly described. She is a living of example of hope for hard times because she emerged from hard times, yet always treasured those times as her humble beginnings.

She even many times modestly called herself an expensive, trailer-trash kind of gal! That’s what I loved about her—the way she always lightheartedly joked about herself as she proceeded to accomplish great things. She would have easily become a billionaire years ago with all of her earthly and highly successful enterprises from music to films to Dollywood and many other endeavors, but she chose not to. She enjoyed luxuries, but she also gave lavishly, so that she never accumulated her first billion dollars. She kept enough to have fun and to invest in more enterprises, but gave a great deal away all along the way to help others less fortunate.

She always remained endearingly humble for all of her accomplishments, beauty and fortune, finding it almost more interesting to talk about her hillbilly side that was still part of her soul as she did to talk about the bountiful side of her life. That could be seen in how she lived happily with her husband for many decades, though he, as I understand, remained a truck driver who didn’t seem to want anything to do with the limelight that flooded most of her life. She talked about him like he was her stable and friendly tether to reality. Her rock.

I think Dolly’s relationship with her husband, Carl, was so close and important that his death in the spring of 2025 might explain why her own health finally started to diminish over the year that followed until she passed away. Prior to that, I don’t recall ever hearing about her having major health problems. It reminds me of a friend who was much older than I was who was a close companion with his wife for many decades. When he died, she, who had been in good health all of her life, died at his funeral right as it began. The pastor and family paused the funeral for an hour or so, asking people to wait, then came back and announced they were going to continue by spontaneously changing to a double funeral for both of them right then and there. That is testimony to a deep and enduring bond that transcends the grave.

Dolly was also a liberated woman, but she never talked like a man-hating feminist. In fact, she would often say outright that she loved men. “Sure you have to put the odd one in his place once in awhile, but I love men” is the kind of thing she would say when asked.

She loved her almost miraculous figure, too. She had fun with it. She played it to her advantage. She said she was glad for what she was blessed with, laughed about it and rolled with humor about it. She practically fell over backward laughing when Johnny Carson said of her revealing neckline, “I’d give a week’s salary just to have a look down there.” She wrote a song among her thousands of songs just for Johnny and let him know she thought the world of him and loved being on his show and was thankful for the help he gave early in her career.

She never let any man (or woman) hold her back. She did what she wanted to do the way she wanted to do it. She ran her own show. She did it with panache in her own trailer-flash style. She even payed a lead role in the famous film with a feminist message, 9 to 5, but it was all done with a lot of fun and a lot of laughs, nothing mean or preachy. And that kind of attitude is refreshing in a time we live in like today where one of our news stories is the widening gender gap in Gen Z.

An article titled “Peak Feminism” says that only 35% of Gen Z women have a positive view of men. That’s a sad statement about women that says those in the other 65% have become the very thing they declared men were when they all started talking about misogynists. It stands out because the men in that Gen Z group have a contrastingly higher opinion of their female counterparts than the women have of men. They are less misogynistic than the women are misandristic (to use the corollary but seldom heard term for women who scorn men). Here’s how much so: 72% of US men under age 30 say they have a positive view of women. Only 50% of women that age can say the same thing about men. For women 25 and under, however, the percentage falls even further, down to 35%. As a result, Gen Z is mating a lot less and producing fewer children.

Now, if you’re a woman who thinks I’m wrong in saying the majority of women (not all, just the 65%) in Gen Z are misandrists, then ask yourself this simple question, and ask it honestly: How do you feel about men who frequently claim that women are to blame for most of men’s problems? You probably think they are misogynists. Flip that around to women who frequently claim men are to blame for most of women’s problems, and I rest my case.

That’s what I like about Dolly. She lived a liberated life in that she reached for the brass ring wherever she wanted to. She didn’t let men or women hold her down, and some women were as hostile to her as any man because of her breasts and her ample but not risqué display of them due to the apparent envy or competitive drive of some women to cut down the competition. (Women can be a lot worse to women about their bodies than men are.) She just did what she was going to do, and treated both genders kindly almost all the time. She didn’t waste time or energy grousing about how the other gender held her back. She moved forward with making a fortune, just reaching and going and doing and being … and sharing. And I think that is a great attitude of abundance to live with.

She seemed to be truly joyful most of the time and to enjoy life. She also didn’t let anyone tell her how to be a Christian, such as how to dress the part by being less sexually appealing or spending less on her looks or her wardrobe. She didn’t do augmentation, she claimed, but she did admit that she had gotten “a little nip and tuck here and there” to put things back into place where God meant them to be. Yet, Dolly lived, I think, an exemplary Christian life by treating others with dignity, helping many, many people get started in music, giving to the poor, singing Christmas Carols and gospel songs, though most of her music was completely secular love songs.

She also talked about how her belief in Jesus empowered her life with hope that helped her rise above the hard times she had been born into, but she never preached or judged others. Her approach to living the Christian faith kept her positive and focused on building the right kinship of joyful relationships with men and women wherever she could. She made the mold for herself, she didn’t try to fit anyone else’s mold or fit anyone into hers.

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Her nephew Bryan Seaver, speaking on behalf of the Parton and Owens families, said their grief was tempered by their Christian belief that Parton had entered heaven.

“Sadness lies with us, not with Dolly,” Seaver said. “Dolly has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus,” adding that she was “surely met by Carl, her parents, and countless others who have watched her and longed for her to meet them in the heavens….”

“Dolly was a farmer, just like her daddy,” he said. “He farmed the soil. She farmed songs and happiness.”

“A belief in God is essential,” she once said. “You have to believe in something bigger than yourself. We grew up believing that through God all things are possible….”

Her parents had little money, but music and faith were central to family life. Her maternal grandfather, Jake Robert Owens, was a preacher at the House of Prayer, the small mountain church where Parton worshipped, and she began singing hymns and playing guitar in church as a child….

“I pray every day. I pray about everything,” she added. “I ask God to lead me and guide me in all the decisions I make—and to bring all the good and right people into my life and to let me do something to glorify God and uplift mankind.”

Said one of her longtime collaborators, Zach Williams, with whom she won a Grammy as recently as 2021,

“Dolly, your songs, your faith, and the way you loved people impacted me more than you probably ever will know,” he wrote. “You showed all of us that success didn’t have to change your heart, and that we could use what God gave us to make life a little better for somebody else.”

Her friend Reba McEntire wrote the following tribute,

Dolly, thank you for all the wonderful things you did for us here on earth… Your love, your music and you gave so much with your huge huge heart. There will never ever be another you.

“Thank you, Lord, for Dolly,” she added. “She’s gonna have a blast in heaven singing all her favorite songs with all her family and friends who have gone on before her.”

“Dolly Parton’s legacy is not celebrity, but humanity,” said Kyle Young, chief executive officer of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

Young described her as “a champion of equality and literacy” who shared her success with others.

“She came from poverty to become the most important native of Tennessee,” he said. “She shared her fortunes for the good of all of us, and shared her soul in every note she sang.”

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That love of life, love toward others, great generosity, and living her faith abundantly and openly her own way, not as others said she should live, is why Dolly was so loved by America that President Trump ordered flags to be flown at half mast this week in honor of her, as one would treat a great American hero. Just like she never got into the battles of feminist politics, but lived a kind, laughing and gently liberated life, she never got into partisan politics either. So, even Trump had no reason to hate her.

“Rest in Peace, Dolly!” the president added. “The World loves you….”

Tributes crossed America’s increasingly bitter political divide, reflecting Parton’s unusual ability to remain widely admired by Republicans and Democrats.

Now, the experts say “hostile wind shear [from the El Niño] may threaten [the] survival [of Dolly as the storm] nears the Caribbean.”

I would say, “Don’t underestimate her. If the storm lives up to her namesake, nothing is going to tear her down or stop her. She’ll rise above it all and show the rest of the world how it’s done … flamboyantly in a whirlwind, Dolly style!”

So, Farewell, Dolly! God loves you. So do we!

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Economania (national & global economic collapse plus market news)

SpaceX shares are doing something very unusual. Options traders are taking note

Real-Estate Rubble (housing, commercial & global real-estate bubble trouble)

Cash buyers of homes are dropping out faster than the overall market decline.

Money Matters (monetary policy, metals, cryptos, currency wars & going cashless)

Inflation Factors (too much money chasing too few goods due to weather, sanctions, tariffs, quarantines, etc.)

UK to warn citizens to stock up on food amid threat from climate crisis and hostile states

Kansas City Fed’s Schmid says inflation ‘stubborn’ and ‘sticky,’ policy rate not restrictive

U.S. reportedly close to striking ‘massive’ deal for Venezuelan oil

Qatar And Kuwait Restore 70% Of Pre-War Oil Exports Through Hormuz

Wars & Rumors of War (including cyberwar, civil unrest and revolts)

Russia threatens to bomb UK military bases over support for Ukraine

CIA chief John Ratcliffe reportedly made secretive Moscow trip to warn Russia against attacking NATO

Vladimir Putin’s own officials worried Russian leader could be about to use nuclear weapons on Ukraine

Ukraine Expands Deep Strikes In Russia As Moscow Pushes Toward Sloviansk

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US Patriot missile stocks in Europe are ‘beyond critical’ due to Iran war, officials say

U.S. weapons shortage from Iran war alarms allies confronting China

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China deploys record number of ships around Taiwan as pressure grows

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Israel plans development of space weapons capable of striking targets on Earth

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US May Cut Troops from NATO

Digital Dominance (AI threats, transhumanism, hacks & cyberattacks, etc.)

Growing Number of Cities Getting Rid of Flock Cameras

1200 AI bots conspired with each other in hacking attack of Hugging Face

Trump Trade Wars & Turf Wars

Dean Blundell

VIDEO: Mark Carney Just Became The Most Important Leader In The Free World

August 22, 2026…

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24 days ago · 3697 likes · 177 comments · Dean Blundell

President Donald J. Trump Declares a National Emergency to Secure America’s Bulk-Power System

Trump signs order to rename Lake Ontario ‘Lake America’ amid Canada trade war

Political Pandemonium & Social Senescence (socio-political issues & events)

Peak Feminism: Survey Finds Only 35% Of Gen Z Women Have Positive View Of Men

Trump’s oil and gas stock trades continued during Iran war, filings show

Controllers warned Trump copter pilots about radio failures 1 week before they came close to jet

A Pox Upon Us (the plagues, pandemics & health police of the 2020s)

RFK Jr. Says Pennsylvania Officials May Have Fabricated Measles Deaths

Calamity, Catastrophe & Climate Craziness

Astonishing new footage emerges from Nepal - with bus-sized ‘boulder’ pushed by floodwaters to last-second escapes from tsunami

Nepal at risk of second flood

How 50-acre chunk of glacier unleashed destruction on Nepal

Off-the-Beat News & Just Plain Offbeat News

Weird UFOS? AI Freaky Fakes? Or Elon’s Litter?:

Kilauea puts on fiery show as 54th eruption episode sends lava fountains soaring

Hope for Hard Times

Why Dolly Parton Never Became a Billionaire

America Mourns Christian Country Legend Dolly Parton, ‘In Arms Of Jesus’

Tropical Storm Dolly forms in Atlantic, tracking toward northeast Caribbean

Doomer Humor

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How they just DON’T get it! The following three articles all commit the same blunder, claiming that new retaliatory tariffs imposed by Canada on toilet paper will increase the cost of toilet paper for Americans. Canadian tariffs on US toilet paper do NOT raise prices for Americans! They raise them for CANADIANS.

Now, I wouldn’t expect the average reader to get this, which is why I write about it; but I certainly do expect most financial writers to get it; but they clearly don’t even after years of Trump Trade Wars. They’ve had plenty of time to figure it out.

If you read this article and are an American, you will come to know, if you don’t already, that you don’t need to rush to the store to buy toilet paper before the price shoots up…. WELL, EXCEPT FOR THE FACT that the dumb mainstream media may have just CREATED a completely unnecessary rush to hoard toilet paper because it has no apparent knowledge of how tariffs work; so, let me help because that is what I’m here for.

The only way that Canada could raise the price of toilet paper for Americans would be if it placed export tariffs on its own manufacturers, but that is not what any of these articles claim Canada is doing. They are all about tariffs placed by Canada on US-manufactured goods. Canada can ONLY tax US goods coming INTO Canada. The damage to the US by these retaliatory tariffs is not higher prices paid by Americans but loss of business by US manufacturers who lose sales to Canada because the Canadian tariffs raise the price of their goods FOR CANADIANS so that Canadian are much less inclined to buy US toilet paper. Yet, all of the articles claim Canada’s retaliatory tariffs will raise the price of toilet paper for Americans!

Here are the errant stories:

Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada

On a roll: Canada trade war could hike toilet paper costs for Americans

Flush with tariffs: US-Canada trade war could make toilet paper costlier

All totally untrue in claiming the cost of Canada’s new retaliatory tariffs will be paid by Americans

AI just as dumb

I supposed I have to excuse to some extent the financial media in America because even AI was too dumb to get it. However, AI learns by what it reads from us, so “garbage in / garbage out,” as they say. When I asked Google’s AI search assistant “Is Canada placing EXPORT tariffs on toilet paper?” I got the following answer:

Yes, Canada is imposing tariffs on toilet paper, with rates expected to be between 25% to 50% starting in September 2026, in response to U.S. tariffs….

It just assumed that the tariffs were export tariffs or that all tariffs are the same and then made the following claim:

The tariffs on toilet paper are part of a larger trade dispute between the U.S. and Canada. The U.S. has already implemented significant tariffs on various Canadian products, prompting Canada to retaliate…. The introduction of these [Canadian retaliatory] tariffs is expected to increase the cost of toilet paper for consumers in the U.S.”

Baloney! AI likely came to that conclusion because it took at face value everything it was reading in the brain-lame American media. That, or its own logic is lacking. (I’ll actually have AI prove to you that it doesn’t even know what it is saying after I state my own claim.)

There are only two ways tariffs could raise the cost of toilet paper FOR AMERICANS. One would be if the US places tariffs on Canadian toilet paper coming into America OR on the timber from Canada that comes into America that is used in the US to manufacture toilet paper. The other would be if Canada placed export tariffs on its own products going to America. Neither of those was what happened here.

To prove how confused AI even gets on the question of tariffs, look at its own internal contradiction, which proves its original answer did not know what it was talking about:

“Canada is imposing retaliatory tariffs of between 25% and 50% on toilet paper exported to the U.S. This is in response to the U.S. implementing a 50% tariff on Canadian goods.”

Pretty clear: They are imposing an export tariff on their own toilet paper that ships to the US, EXCEPT, right after that, the AI search assistant writes:

“Canada is not placing export tariffs on its own toilet paper. Instead, it is imposing retaliatory tariffs on toilet paper imported from the U.S. These tariffs are a response to the U.S. implementing a 50% tariff on various Canadian goods…. In summary, Canada is retaliating against U.S. tariffs by imposing tariffs on U.S. imports, not on its own exports.”

So, the same AI says both that Canada is imposing tariffs on its exports of toilet paper to the US and that it is NOT imposing tariffs on its exports! Ring the dumb bell!

To get the facts straight: Canadian import tariffs are what Canada is actually imposing in retaliation for US import tariffs. Those are charged when the product from the US crosses the border into Canada, and they are charged against the Canadian importer, whoever that may be. Then they typically become part of the cost of goods sold that the importer passes on to Canadian consumers with a markup, meaning the tariff may even cost the consumer more than the tariff cost the importer in cases where it gets included in the markup. It doesn’t have to be included in the markup, but it sometimes is.

Canadians will be paying more for toilet paper because of Prime Minister Carney’s new retaliatory tariffs. However, thanks to all these dumbbell articles in the mainstream press, many Americans may rush out to beat the imagined soaring prices, which could cause sudden shortages on the shelves that raise prices in America, too! So, thanks to the mainstream press, you might not be safe from those higher prices unless most Americans are smart enough to not believe everything they read. (Highly doubtful unless it says what they don’t want to believe anyway.)

Thank you to the few extra people who clicked the “like” button (the heart near the top of the page) on the last article. If everyone reading an article that they actually like would be so kind as to click that button from now on, I’ve learned it actually may help my site succeed—not because others will say, “Oh, that was popular, so I’ll read it,” but because Substack appears to use that metric in deciding what articles to promote to other readers who are not subscribers on this site, and those promotions can go out to a lot of other Substack readers who have never heard of me. (I, of course, would not ask you to click the like button if you don’t actually like the article.)

So, anytime you actually do like an article, please do me the favor of clicking the little heart. Maybe Substack will FINALLY start sharing some of my articles outside of my own subscriber circle, which I haven’t seen it do. (My articles do get shared by other sites that read here and pick up the occasional article or that have decided to recommend my site, but they don’t go out in the once-a-week lists of “articles you may be interested in” put out by Substack … not that I’ve seen anyway. I notice ALL of those article have a LOT of “likes,” which are different than “shares.”

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Before we get into Trump’s suicide mission to end the Iran war by destroying the US dollar, we should lead off with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s confession about how stupid he is because we have to grasp the ignorance level of those in charge to really believe they are embarking on their dumbest war plan to date.

The Jerry Lewis Klutz Award for Mental Gymnastics has to go this week to this statement by Secretary Bessent:

On Thursday, hours after announcing that Washington would keep its naval blockade and hit Iran with the too toughest sanctions in history, the Treasury Secretary watched crude climb and told CNBC, “I’m not sure why oil has popped up on this.” He called it a spike he doesn’t understand, and waved it off as noise. Buried in the bafflement is a remarkable assumption: that slapping draconian sanctions on a major oil producer should make oil cheaper.

It actually includes a lot more asinine assumptions than the overall thought that Bessent’s new financial war against Iran will make oil cheaper. For example:

• It assumes Iran won’t fight back with its own economic warfare against the US and many other Western nations.

• It assumes that Iran won’t even think up the possibility of fighting back with heavy artillery in the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el Mandeb to disable more tankers, making the blockades complete.

• It assumes they won’t start wildly destroying oil infrastructure again all over the Middle East to up the cost for the the entire world every day that the US imposes its tough sanctions in order to pressure the US to drop its sanctions.

• It assumes Iran will not fight back with physical destruction brought to American soil, perhaps even chemical or biological, to cripple the US economically and seriously raise the cost in US lives and suffering, even if Iran does not, yet, have a nuke, and missiles and bombs are not the only means of delivery.

Bessent’s ignorance as to why on earth laying siege on Iran with the most hostile and crippling sanctions ever imposed would possibly cause a rise in the price of oil should scare anyone into realizing that the people who have devised Trump’s new warfare strategy haven’t thought anything through past Day One—economic D-Day, as Trump & Team were calling yesterday when the plan commenced.

Iran immediately promised it would retaliate with a much hotter war within forty-eight hours—a countdown that is now down to something around twelve hours. Oil did go down today, slavishly following any headline by Donald Trump, who told the same old lie that the US fully controls the strait AND that Iran desperately wants to make a deal!

Meanwhile, Iran kept running the clock toward whatever higher escalation its next salvo will bring. However, Bessent’s likely satisfaction today that oil finally moved the direction he thought it would should be short-lived because Iran has been very good about no longer engaging in mere saber rattling, as was long its practice, and actually carrying out, unlike Donald Trump, every threat it makes. And they have been very measured in their responses—not being the ones to wildly escalate the war, but increasing pressure with new types of impact whenever they see escalation by the US.

Blowback is certain

Before we even get to Iran’s war response, let’s consider how shortsighted Trump’s promise of a huge economic war that will devastate Iran is in terms of how the shock waves from his attack will ricochet and cause severe economic damage to the US even if Iran does nothing.

Bessent just published an article in the FT. It reads like an economic suicide note. I think the US is legit about to blow its brains out by imposing secondary sanctions on China as the USD global system unwinds.

Bessent’s threat in broad strokes was this:

The alternative for those who tether themselves to Tehran is the foreclosure of any path to lasting prosperity. Illicit finance will flourish, as it so often does, where confidence has collapsed. And any nation that serves as a financial artery of a withering regime should expect to share in its isolation. To become a sanctuary for terror is to become, in the eyes of the United States, a global pariah.

In an announcement ahead of the move,

The Trump administration on Monday announced a plan to isolate Iran’s economy by threatening to impose secondary sanctions on the “enablers” keeping the Islamic Republic afloat.

“We are launching an economic onslaught against Iran’s financial connections around the globe,” Treasury Scott Bessent said as he unveiled the new sanctions scheme, dubbed “Operation Economic Outcast.”

President Donald Trump is calling world leaders and making “specific requests to cease their interactions” with Iran, Bessent said at the Treasury Department.

That means an onslaught against the nations that trade with Iran, as if Trump has the right to tell other sovereign nation whom they can trade with. To be a little more specific, here is one of the big actions carried out since economic D-Day:

The Trump administration’s “Operation Economic Outcast” has expanded the sanctions campaign across China and Hong Kong, targeting dozens of individuals and businesses while intentionally holding off on sanctioning major Chinese banks that keep Tehran connected to the global financial system. Beijing, meanwhile, signaled earlier Tuesday that it would not retreat from its economic relationship with Iran, raising the risk that Trump’s economic war against Tehran could evolve into a direct confrontation with China, the largest buyer of discounted Iranian crude.

First, by ruling out fooling around with China’s big banks, the plan practically renders itself too harmless to make a big enough change.

“Sanctions against specific entities are meaningless, as entity-specific sanctions can’t be applied quickly enough to match the speed at which substitute entities can be created,” said Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who tracks Chinese trade, according to Bloomberg.

Scissors said some sanctioned entities could create pop-up shell companies to evade Treasury sanctions, adding that the dozens of entities named by the US “exist in a universe of tens of thousands.”

“No one is above the reach of US sanctions,” Bessent warned during Monday’s press conference.

To be effective, the sanctions will have to be against major banks, not just against specific companies or individuals. So, this will escalate in time into sanctions on banks if it is to have any serious effect.

Beijing has said it will not back down to this siege being laid against its own economy by the US; so, of course, it will heat the trade war with China back up.

Bessent responded,

“This is a sustained campaign to collapse every last option for Iran. Let there be no ambiguity as to the position of the United States: an economic engagement of any kind with this murderous regime will expose those responsible to the full reach of American power.”

The starting salvo looked like this:

Late Monday afternoon, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled nearly 60 Iran-linked sanctions under what he called Operation Economic Outcast, a campaign designed to sever Iran’s remaining trade, technology and financial lifelines.

Is the Trump administration seriously dumb enough to think that all of those nations involved will not fight back with their own raised tariffs and embargoes on US goods? Obviously, it is that dumb, given Bessent’s total dumbfounded bewilderment over how oil rose upon his announcement before finally falling obediently today. These nations that are now being pulled directly into the war by Trump’s effort to economically damage them for not obeying his demands will exact their own damage on the US in creative way we haven’t even thought of.

“China’s cooperation with Iran has always been conducted within the international framework and should not be interfered with or undermined,” Lin said. “China is closely monitoring relevant developments and will take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its own interests.”

Financial Times reports that Beijing could retaliate if Chinese firms are included in any expansion of the economic war against Iran.

Most importantly, Treasury stopped short of targeting large Chinese banks because doing so could have derailed next month’s summit between Xi Jinping and Trump.

With their economies already being damaged extremely by Trump’s oil war, and with some facing food shortages already because of Trump’s War, and with the promise of US sanctions severe enough to turn them into economic outcasts along with Iran, we can certainly expect an intensified financial war against the US petrodollar. As noted in my last Deeper Dive, dispatching of US Treasuries picked up some during the last month reported, but nothing severe as of yet. That could become severe if a number of nations are finally just done with the dollar, given how Trump has now promised his war will be fought by using the dollar as the primary weapon. This is the part where it gets really dumb:

“Any entity that facilitates money laundering on behalf of Iran will be removed from the U.S. dollar system,” he said. “The clock just started ticking.”

Every time the United States has weaponized the dollar by cutting those it doesn’t like out of the global financial system, it has weakened the dollar’s value as a global trade currency. It has increased distrust and left nations to wonder when they will be next to be hated for some unexpected reason by the mercurial Trump, like Canada just was for blowing smoke up our backside, resulting in newly imposed tariffs has high as 50% and the schoolboy wail that he will rename Lake Ontario as Lake America just to show them whose boss (as if such a lame move would do anything to change what all Canadians call it!)

So, the new economic war will work by pulling out the old US trick of cutting anyone seen as an enabler for Iran out of the SWIFT dollar transaction system.

“We want to make clear here today that no one is above the reach of U.S. sanctions,” Bessent said when asked if the administration would target Chinese banks, or if it would avoid doing so in order to preserve relations with Beijing.

“If they facilitate transactions and are part of the ecosystem that turns Iranian oil into money, into repression, they will be targeted,” Bessent said….

Bessent said Monday that the new U.S. objective “is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone.”

The regime’s enablers include those who buy or transport its oil, facilitate its financial transactions, accept its flights and allow it conduct seaborne transfers, he said.

What Trump’s plan will actually accomplish is to make sure the US stands alone. The US will be the economic attacker here against nations that did nothing expressly against the US simply because Trump demands that he has the right to unilaterally control their trade and punish them with sanctions that will leave them isolated financially as economic “pariah” if they do not cooperate with his imperial demands. As Hal Turner comments,

Bessent threatens to turn China, the UAE, Türkiye, Iraq, the EU, India, Pakistan, Russia, Afghanistan, and Oman (Iran’s top ten trading partners) into global pariahs.

That won’t fly with any of those nations. So, it makes all of them direct enemies of a US economic war agains those nations, not just a war with Iran. It turns the Trump-Iran War into a defined world war against the economies of other nations, intended to hit them so hard as to “obliterate” them, to “decimate” them, as Trump likes to say—to turn them into isolated outcasts wandering the most austere steppes of the global economy.

It is not Iran that will be seen as the hostile attacker against these nations. They WANT to trade with Iran, and Iran simply wants to trade with them. So, Iran will not be viewed as the enemy by any of the nations Trump takes action against. The US will isolate itself as being the sole threat in all of this turmoil against all of those nations. Can anyone even for a moment believe this won’t strengthen their determination to destroy the tool that is specifically being used to crush them—the US dollar? After all, the damage to them by the dollar will now be part of an actual war plan by the US. Talk about currency wars!

And that is why others are writing that Bessent’s plan reads like a suicide note.

The U.S. is also expanding its sanctions scope to target those who participate in Iran’s digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping sectors, said Bessent.

Bessent added: “Iran’s enablers purchase and transport its petroleum. They facilitate the flow of its finances through exchange houses and free trade zones.”

All of that will come under economic fire, and the dollar will be the gun—cutting off their ability to move US dollars through the international banking system.

US Treasury Secretary Bessent announces any country that helps Iran will be removed from the US dollar system, any country that supports Iran in any form globally including China should now be prepared to face US sanctions, and countries that “stick with Iran will be isolated alongside them,” as Trump is now making phone calls to world leaders to cut economic ties with Iran.

By removing them from the dollar system, we are the ones sabotaging the petrodollar system that has served the US well for decades by financing our now highly burdensome and imperiled debt. Each member of the system that we totally remove takes all of their dollar transactions out of play. If they don’t immediately bend to the United States’ iron will, they have no other choice but to find a different currency for trade, and I think many will be disinclined to treat this time of their cancelled membership in the system as temporary. They would be wise, I think, to say, “You know what? The US has just taken us out of the dollar’s global trade currency system. Let’s just plan to stay out for good and finish establishing other alternatives.”

The US will be reducing the size of the petrodollar system with every participant that it disconnects—likely for good if those nations have any sense and any courage.

Escalation promised

Now let’s get to Iran’s response. First, the overview of how Iran says it will escalate the war during the new war plan:

“Any country that becomes a partner in creating economic restrictions against us will be regarded by us as an enemy,” he said in an interview with Iran’s state broadcaster.

Meanwhile, the flow of oil but also other goods through the strait will not be anything like what the oil markets just repriced following Bessent’s bewilderment over their disobedience to his will:

In a series of posts on X on Sunday, Iran’s state-controlled Persian Gulf Strait Authority, or PGSA, warned that vessels violating its transit rules in the Hormuz Strait could face penalties, including “fines, seizure, or confiscation” during future passages.

Clearly, Iran will intensify its effort to bomb tankers, but it sounds here like they will become hostile toward confiscating the goods on cargo ships as well.

Tehran’s parliament approved on Sunday a provision stipulating that ships passing through the Hormuz choke point will pay for services provided by Tehran.

Read the words not quite said: the tolls that Trump has ruled out will be imposed on all ships going through the strait. “Paying for services” does not mean paying for refueling while at sea or paying for food services. It means paying insurance money for being assured safe passage when only Iran is threatening your passage.

BREAKING: Iran directly warns it will massively escalate the confrontation with the United States within the next 48 hours, declaring that its response to Washington’s economic war will carry “consequences” and that Tehran is “not empty-handed.”

“The necessary warnings have been issued,…” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said, confirming that any country cooperating with the U.S. campaign will face retaliation.

They are giving a chance for countries to declare their unwillingness to go along with the US before attacking any of them. The day before D-Day Iran said it believed kinetic hostilities in the Persian Gulf region are “likely to resume in the coming days.” Iran is not going to be dumb and agree to fight the war by US rules and keep this to just a purely economic war, as Trump would like. They will force Trump to keep expending his diminishing weaponry by fighting the economic sanctions with “kinetic hostilities.”

If Bessent & Buddies didn’t realize Iran would not play by US rules but would return to a hot war, they were as naive as Bessent’s statement about oil prices indicated. That’s scary to think they would be that stupid. And its stupid on oil traders’ part to not realize that this guarantees a return to hot war—likely hotter war than ever by Iran who has also said,

“any country that joins in the U.S. effort will be considered to be engaging in an Act of War upon Iran - and will be brutally attacked militarily.” Then, specifically mentioning Persian Gulf countries, Iran said “Not one drop of oil will flow from the Persian Gulf; triggering a global energy crisis and economic disaster.”

All of that as a response should have been a no-brainer for the Trump administration before they even announced their attempt to try to turn this into a war fought only on financial fronts. Of course, Iran will launch a brutal military response! Of course, oil is a big play in how Iran will fight back economically against the sanctions. It is their BIGGEST economic bomb! Only idiots would think they would not, first and foremost, resort to the weapon that has worked best for them, but with intensified measure.

Who can miss the likelihood that Iran will engage its allies, the Houthis to attack the

Saudi Arabia port of Yanbu on the Red Sea … already known to be one of the primary targets for Iran, to halt the estimated 5.5 million barrels of oil per day flowing from there.

Why would they not seek to destroy it entirely? Up until now, Iran has seemed to want to contain its damage to levels that could be repaired within months of an actual end of the war. But, now that they know they must survive an all-out siege against their nation on every front, they are not likely to hold back on the damage they seek to bring. They are not likely to care if their warfare destroys entire ports that will take years to rebuild if their alternative is to be on the long and exhausting, torturous and eventually dying end of a war of attrition … as firmly laid sieges are.

The Oman port of Fujairah is known to be a second major port facility shipping oil, which has also been previously named as a target by Iran.

All of these places likely become intensified targets for total destruction. The one thing holding Iran back is likely not wanting to get all of those nations engaged in a much more intense hot war against them, but that becomes a less significant concern once you see your enemy is fully intent upon starving you until you surrender because Trump’s siege, means Iran has ZERO income, ZERO imports. Its people starve to death slowly, at least to whatever extent Trump is actually capable of carrying out his threat, and assuming this is not going to be just another big TACO switch where Trump & Friends pocket huge gains on insider market trading when they announce tomorrow that Iran is so desperate to make a deal that Trump is going to give them more time.

And, oh, the naiveté:

Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, says war is about to enter a new phase:

“We expect the war in Iran to soon enter a new phase, and that ‘American allies will assist the United States in ending the war.’”

What an idiot. When have America’s allies helped in any part of Trump’s ill-conceived, poorly planned war with Iran, other than with the rare use of a few bases? What a joke! But these are the fantasizing brains we have in charge. Totally delusional. Maybe it was an implied threat: Help us as we fight a war you never wanted or become one of those cut out of the dollar’s global trade currency system. But then, you might as well say, “Help us, or we move you from being our ally to being one of our direct enemies in long war.”

Iran’s response:

“The third wave of the war is approaching, and this round will be the fiercest. The UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Israel will participate in it, and most likely, this round will be the reason for the United States’ withdrawal from the region, unleashing a wave of change in American society.

So, Iran has made clear the first areas into which it will aim with escalated attacks. Those areas will receive more destruction, not less, than what they’ve seen so far; but it won’t be limited to those named areas. They are just the certain spots to be attacked.

The idiots now running our country believe they are invincible. They believe in magical thinking, where they can just declare how the facts on the ground in a new war will go based on their own will. So far, nothing has gone as they planned. The situation has become the total quagmire, I said it would be, and Iran is now promising that, once the US has launched its new plan (so that Iran’s actions can be seen as purely defensive), Iran will greatly intensify its attacks on others in the Middle East, which clearly translates into longer-lasting damage to oil.

Expanding the types of damage and the fronts of war into cyberspace

BUT don’t think for a minute that Iran’s intensified attacks are limited to just more oil damage in the Middle East or just those nations named. Look at what we already witnessed in the UK:

Iranian cyber attack shuts down UK power plant for four days.

Attack appears to be the latest escalation after London allowed Washington to use British bases in ‘defensive operations’ against Iran.

According to the newspaper, the incident appears to mark the first time Iran-linked hackers have successfully shut down such a British facility.

The incident occurred alongside a series of attacks on US water infrastructure last month, which affected at least 12 states and caused concern in the White House.

These are shots over the bow, intended to show us the reach that Iran is capable of. They intentionally did not cause serious lasting damage. Reportedly no one in the UK was left without power because other sources on the grid were able to take over the load from the facility that was put off line.

The attack appears to mark an escalation following the UK’s decision to grant the US permission to launch “defensive operations” against Iran from British bases.

In March, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government had granted permission to the US military to use the Royal Air Force base in Fairford and the joint facility on Diego Garcia, for limited operations against Iranian missile facilities that “directly threatened British personnel”, regional allies, or sovereign assets….

In June, an Iran-linked hacker-activist group, Handala, claimed responsibility for a cyber intrusion targeting water facilities in California, saying the action was carried out in retaliation for alleged US strikes on water infrastructure in southern Iran.

This can readily escalate into a no-holds barred round of cyberattacks far outside of Iran, and it could go from that to more humanly destructive actions like destructive shutdowns of major power grids, shutdowns of complete regional water systems. Iran seems to be meting out its actions based on some sort of human proportional justice system, not doing its most cruel attacks unless and until it has no other recourse.

The group said it had obtained data from the systems and described the breach as a warning to Washington.

Exactly, these are small warning shots over the bow to show what they CAN do. They are not the worst Iran can do, but are intentionally limited strikes—stings to say, “BEWARE!”

In a statement, Handala said it had the capability to disrupt water supplies but “stopped short of actually cutting off water to American cities”, citing a different ethical code than its adversaries.

As we shut off the dollar banking system to everyone who attempts any trade with Iran, who knows what hacking abilities Iran has to shut off parts of our own banking system to us? Trump and Bessent are playing with some serious fire here, and the fact that they seem surprised when oil goes up for a couple of days because of their high-risk adventure indicates they really haven’t thought things through at all. I would expect them to experience many more days of “surprise.”

IF they are telling the truth, we have to assume they are truly stupid human beings running our nation who have no ability to see even the most obvious cause-and-effect reactions. The alternative, of course, is to believe they are just lying about not seeing or understanding the consequences and are willing to have us take the consequences. Either one does not look good for them … or for all the rest of us, especially, as TheRump is now back to engaging full-on dollar warfare against our former trading partners like Canada, ostensibly (at least, as first claimed) because they let their forest-fire smoke cross the border as an illegal alien entry into the US.

It’s easy to imagine many answers to this dilemma: are they intentionally destroying the US financially, or are they just this dumb?

Watch oil prices return to rising as the truth about Iran’s increased hostility proves itself out in the ME and in entirely new battlefields. Only the oilbots are dumb enough to believe that won’t happen at this point because they take headlines at face value. It’s getting real with fuel prices regardless:

Already, the price of diesel is now at $6/gallon in parts of Pennsylvania, $6.35 on average in Washington State, and around $6.50 in California. Woohoo! We haven’t even hit the part where spotty fuel shortages start showing up in the US yet. Stay tuned until next month—just a week away—when we are likely to have a much clearer picture of how hot the war is going to get.

All headlines are free to everyone today, as I’m treating this like a Monday publication since I was occupied with family stuff over a long weekend.

Economania (national & global economic collapse plus market news)

It’s Crunch Time For Bonds | Bill Fleckenstein

The bond market is going to burst the stock-market bubble

As debt surpasses $40 trillion, the bill for Washington spending comes due

Why the bond market is flexing its muscles, and why everyone needs to care

US borrowing costs rise as attempts to ease rates prove short-lived

The ‘debasement trade’ returns after Bessent bond maneuver. Crypto and gold are back in style

John Rubino: So America Is Bailing Out...Itself?

Bessent’s Former Mentor Druckenmiller Slams Treasury Bond Buyback Plan

German Finance Minister Blames Trump’s War for Surge in German Bond Yields

Bonner: One preposterous flim-flam after another

The truth comes out. That’s what busts are for.

Jim Cramer says there’s an ‘incredibly jarring gulf between stock prices and reality’ [Even as he still hocks stocks.]

‘Absolutely crazy’: Here’s what South Korean stock investors are doing in U.S. markets

Japan, China and the United Kingdom all reduced Treasury holdings in June. Then. . .

Dalio Says Sell Bonds, Buy Gold, Bitcoin as Debt Crisis Looms

Real-Estate Rubble (housing, commercial & global real-estate bubble trouble)

Fannie Mae Hit by Turmoil in Senior Ranks as at Least 10 Executives Depart

New Home Sales Collapsed In July As Consumer Confidence Hit 7-Month Lows

US Home Prices Are Rising At Their Fastest Pace In A Year

Money Matters (monetary policy, metals, cryptos, currency wars & going cashless)

SNAFU Investing with Lau Vegys

China Just Pulled the Plug on Paper Silver

Last month, ICBC, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the largest bank in the world by assets, suspended retail leveraged precious-metals margin trading on the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE…

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24 days ago · 9 likes · Lau Vegys

Bessent could tap near $1 trillion Treasury General Account to fund bond buybacks

A massive trade just happened in gold. The options market is buzzing

Crypto extends gains after biggest 3-day rally since 2023

Inflation Factors (too much money chasing too few goods due to weather, sanctions, tariffs, quarantines, etc.)

Food Supply Alert: Ukraine Grain Exports Collapse As Black Sea Attacks Choke Global Shipments

US says oil is pouring through Hormuz. Trackers can’t find it. (If oil is actually pouring through, why all of the following:)

The Cushion Ran out: Bessent’s Oil “Mystery” Isn’t One (He’s just dumb.)

U.S. Crude Oil Inventories: 50-Year LOW:

Chris Martenson: Extended ALERT: Oil Supply Collapse, Exponential Debt, and Why You Must Prepare Now

Wars & Rumors of War (including cyberwar, civil unrest and revolts)

"Economic Onslaught": Trump admin unveils anti-Iran global sanctions plan against Iran “enablers,” signals China not exempt [Dedollarization through weaponization]

U.S. to unveil ‘greatest financial offensive’ against Iran as Tehran threatens ship seizures

Bessent Drops Iran Sanctions Hammer On Dozens Of Chinese Firms, Spares Big Banks As Beijing Threatens Retaliation (Hence making itself almost useless.)

US Treasury Secretary Bessent announces any country that helps Iran will be removed from the US dollar system

BREAKING: Iran directly warns it will massively escalate the confrontation with the United States within the next 48 [now 12] hours

Iran: War Likely to Resume “within days”

Bessent just published an article in the FT. It reads like an economic suicide note

China threatens Trump with retaliation over Iran sanctions

Same Endless Lies: “We have total control of that entire region having to do with the Strait of Hormuz…. Iran would love to make a deal.”

Details of Iranian cyber attack that shut down UK power plant for four days

China needs U.S. dollars but is building a hedge against Washington’s sanctions

US military jet mysteriously lands in Moscow before motorcade speeds through city as Kremlin denies knowledge of visit

CIA Director Ratcliffe Covertly Flew To Moscow For High-Level Meeting

US Army attack helicopters crashing at historically high rate amid mechanical issues

The Warnings That Came Before the Iran War

—

UK defies Russia’s ‘consequences’ warning with more weapons for Ukraine

Russia sabotages weapons factories across Europe

Russia’s Bank Run — When Confidence Begins to Crack

Digital Dominance (AI threats, transhumanism, hacks & cyberattacks, etc.)

ChatGPT can now write and send texts for you automatically without your input, if you wish, with new Apple Messages plug-in

Apple users beware: ChatGPT’s newest Mac feature could pose a major privacy risk

Singapore unveils world-first biological data centre with 16 million living human neurons powering 20 computers in a landmark moment for AI

When I’m 85 and my relatives all tell me I’m too old to stay in my home, I’ll say: Screw that. I’ve got Tesla Optimus.

Trump Trade Wars & Turf Wars

Betrayal: Trump Announces 300K Tons Of Tariff-Exempt Imported Beef to Help with Rising Prices, But No Help For American Ranchers (But tariffs don’t raise prices???)

Trump’s new 50% tariffs on Canada take effect as Carney vows to retaliate

Carney says US ‘attacked’ Canada with tariffs and promises retaliation

Carney says Trump’s demands would dismantle Canadian auto industry as Ford warns US could be cut off

Trump Tried To Slip A “Snapback” Provision Into Canada Deal. Carney Caught It. Told Trump To F*** Off. Now Trump Is Threatening Military Force.

Trump threatens to rename Lake Ontario as ‘Lake America’ as Canada trade war escalates

Canada unveils retaliatory tariffs on about $20 billion of U.S. goods

‘Reagan would be throwing up:’ Ontario premier unloads on Trump and threatens to cut electricity to US as trade dispute escalates

Wall St. Journal scorches Trump for re-upping ‘dumbest trade war’ with Canada: ‘Makes no economic or political sense’

Political Pandemonium & Social Senescence (socio-political issues & events)

From a man who hated Biden as a “horrible person” and thinks our nation and its media has to be deeply broken in order to elect either Biden or Trump:

Trump’s border wall construction in Texas threatens rock art as old as the pyramids

Texas conservatives are ‘breaking rank’ and pledging to vote Democrat

The Trump Comedians Are Tired: The president’s first administration was a boon for satirists. Today, many of them are sick of the shtick.

Vance says Bessent has ‘discreet’ plan to address $40 trillion national debt

The Socialist Promise: Temporary Shortages

Supremes: Trump Can Keep Building Ballroom While Supreme Court Weighs Appeal

From Australia to Germany: Growing global pressure on Israel

The Collapse Has Already Happened, but its Social

Intellectual Dork Web

Against Ethical Granola Bars

Yesterday, against my better judgment, I bought a package of granola bars from Walmart. The package read: “KiZE: Life Changing Bar…

Read more

22 days ago · 2 likes · Intellectual Dork Web

Deep Domination (globalism, unelected government, unconstitutional government & censorship)

Data centers’ ‘oh s--t’ moment

A Pox Upon Us (the plagues, pandemics & health police of the 2020s)

(Included particularly for its Fauci summary:)

Pippa's Pen & Podcast

Science, the Bond Bloodbath and Electile Disfunction

What is science? You think it’s obvious. But it is actually a hotly contested issue right now. The argument about what science is fundamentally underpins the bloodbath that’s happening in the bond markets. It is causing a profound breakdown of public trust. It is also leading to what I call electile disfunction, meaning the inability of electoral systems to produce reliable, scientifically verifiable and trusted results. The equity markets now also hinge on this same question: what is science? Both the bond and equity markets are making massive bets on the ability of science and technology to solve monumental problems. That’s why so much money has gone into AI. Into data centers. Into space. Into medicine. But will science deliver, and deliver in time, for equities to rise in value, or are the markets overinvested in overhype? These questions have all become more acute because of recent revelations. Science and scientists are under the microscope…

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21 days ago · 50 likes · 6 comments · Dr Pippa

Calamity, Catastrophe & Climate Craziness

Another 7.2 Mega Earthquake in Northern South America: (Venezuela’s Double Quake, Columbia, now Peru.)

The ocean just broke a temperature record that may have stood for millennia

A relentless heat dome is expanding from Texas to California, challenging records

Off-the-Beat News & Just Plain Offbeat News

Lab-Grown Brain Organoids Age Like Real Brains and Record Development

Doomer Humor

Video: The Chinese are now making fun of the US financial situation and the massive $40 trillion debt

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The warning I wrote on Wednesday afternoon about Scott Bessent’s big intervention in the Treasury market already proved itself true by Thursday morning—more quickly than I expected. (I would have given it two days to fall apart.) So, I will lead off this Deeper Dive with some headlines for everyone in this part that is available to all readers, starting with these, which were Thursday morning’s lead headlines on Drudge:

Treasury yields rebound, wiping out the decline following Bessent’s intervention

And this one:

The Treasury Market’s Coveted Status as a Safe Haven Is Fading (Two new studies find signs investors aren’t as willing to accept low yields because of Treasurys’ safety)

Dollar Risks Becoming Biggest Loser From Bessent’s Bond Buying

In the whirlwind of news this week about a GLOBAL bond market collapse, it was hard to figure how to cover it all appropriately. I decided in the end to focus primarily on the thing that matters most: What are the risks for all of us? Rather than digging too much into the details about what they did and what is it that is blowing up. Instead looking at what is really at stake here? How will it impact us?

These headlines that address some of the questions I was going to cover came along the very morning I set out to write about it. So here is an introduction based on Thursday’s headlines for everyone in a Deeper Dive I’m putting out early because I’m taking the weekend off for family stuff, barring any news so major that it draws me back in before Tuesday, when I hope to be back on the job here. (That’s when visiting family leaves after arriving late Thursday.) Then I’ll dig in deeper for paying subscribers.

Be sent back

The top headline on Drudge about Scot Bessent’s plan being sent backward caught my attention the most because you may remember my writing just the day before:

It is not as surprising as it is sad that the feds came to the rescue today, nor surprising stocks rose in response to horrendously bad news about a global bond default because it means there is a big new money dump in town. Stocks rose and Treasury yields fell as they were rigged by the Treasury to do, sliding on the long end of the curve. It went according to plan.

Yet, it is precisely because we always solve these things with rescues and never with true fiscal reform that we have built up the biggest bond crisis in history that now needs another rescue. It is because other nations like Japan did the same thing that those nations impact ours because they are so wedded to the global dollar. It is the global dollar that is at stake again, hence the Treasury’s rush to the rescue….

But here’s the problem. The knock out drugs [intended to put the bond vigilantes into a deep sleep], massively powerful as they are, don’t last long. They always require another hit … a bigger hit … and then another to keep the new high going. So, the rescue plans, as we particularly saw during the Great Recession where I cut my economics writing teeth, get bigger and bigger and more drawn out and filled with fancier new tricks. (That path has been my biggest and most consistently accurate prediction ever since that time.)

We just saw all of that play out more quickly than I imagined—in just about twelve hours! While I have yet to be wrong in saying that any of these rescue plans will demand bigger and bigger hits, I’ve never been right this quickly! But there it is in the morning news. The high from Bessent’s rapid intervention has already faded to nothing but a hangover, and the press is already pointing out, as I said in that warning, that the number-one ultimate risk is the dollar! Actually, the dollar and the solvency of the national debt as both are at stake together.

Getting some sense whipped into ‘em

So, let’s go through those articles in order because they summarize well what I set out to write Thursday morning, though I have more to say:

Bond yields climbed Thursday morning, erasing most of the pullback they saw the previous day after the Treasury Department announced an intervention aimed at easing pressure on longer-dated government debt.

One of the biggest problems Bessent sought to overcome was the sudden rise in bond yields tied to the overall global bond crisis. In this part of my Deeper Dive for every reader, the exclamation point here is that Bessent failed with his one bold move to hammer yields back down, and that is MASSIVELY important. Why? Because the national debt yesterday also soared past the cliff-edged mile marker of $40,000,000,000,000. That’s a lot of zeros—a long way to fall. It means a LOT of interest—a lot of which was funded with those long-term Treasuries where Bessent’s move was aimed at bringing down those rates by rolling them over to short term Treasuries that have lower rates.

Of course those short-term Treasuries will go up in interest as soon as the Treasury starts issuing a lot more of them in order to fund the buybacks of the longer treasures. Enough on the mechanics, as I promised not to focus on that. The important part is that the plan immediately flopped on its face. Long term rates shot right back up to the scary elevation they had reached just before the plan.

Now, nothing magical happened when we hit $40T in debt, except the psychological impact, but that can be important for interest rates, too. However, impact or no impact from the big number, it’s a whole lot of interest, and Bessent cannot let those rates soar like they are doing because of a global bond bust that is broader than just US troubles.

The 10- and 30-year yield levels were right around the level they held before the 8:30 a.m. announcement Wednesday that Treasury would be stepping up its bond buyback program.

The yield on the 2-year Treasury note, which more closely follows short-term Federal Reserve rate decisions, was last seen up 1.5 basis points to 4.1927%.

So, longterm bonds are back up to where they were before the intervention, but short-term bonds also nudged up a hair, so everything is immediately as bad or worse than what it was before the intervention. Time already for a much larger hit if we’re going down the path of doing everything the Fed and feds can think of to avert collapse of the dollar and a debt catastrophe.

The moves underscored the difficulty of market interventions, particularly at a time when U.S. debt faces a slew of factors that have been pressuring yields higher.

Even the mighty US, struggling to fund its imperial wars, cannot afford higher interest on a $40T debt.

In a move announced Wednesday morning, the Treasury Department, led by Secretary Scott Bessent, announced it would at least double the size of its government debt buybacks, starting Sept. 9 and running through Nov. 4.

That was a small move. It’s importance, as I said yesterday, was that it showed this IS a debt crisis that required Treasury intervention, but it’s far too big of crisis for that small hit of Treasury medicine to do the job, which bears out the next part that I wrote yesterday:

It is not normal for Treasury rates to fall on the day after massive bond problems blow up in global markets, especially a blowout as tightly wedded to US Treasuries as Japan. The announcement by Be-sent of Trump of a major rescue would spark fear into the hearts of bond investors if not for the fact that the Treasury money will be massive enough to outweigh the risk … so long as there is more to come … as there always is.

The move failed to help because it did, in the end, trigger as much fear as any kind of safety it might have offered. In fact, I am sure it will trigger waves and waves of fear as investors see the scale of new Fed meds rise alongside Treasury drugs, indicating how big the problem is, and Bessent is already calling in the Fed. That is what we saw back in the Repo crisis that I mentioned (the Repocalypse). The more they, did, the more they had to do, until they finally went for broke with TRILLIONS of dollars of intervention, which looked like this:

The Repoaclypse was a crisis in normally very boring interbank lending that happens at foundational low interest rates, but the crisis immediately sent those boring interbank interest rates through roof. I don’t mean in the fractions by which such loans are usually measured but a leap right up to 10%, which the Fed tried to clobber back down with larger and larger incremental steps that failed to hold every time. Hence, you see all the little stair steps rising in the red circle.

Then Covid hit, and the Fed did massive interventions with new money for Covid, so that ended the repo crisis, “repos” being what these kinds of loan between banks are called without getting into the gritty detail. We will never know how much it would’ve taken to end the repo crisis. We only know that it was never enough until the Fed did massive intervention for other reasons, creating trillions of new dollars on bank balance sheets (the sudden massive rise in the graph), and that huge burst of new financial liquidity finally drowned the flames out.

The Treasury right now, has just stepped into that small red circle of small interventions, mere billions, that accomplish nothing. As with the repo crisis that I compared to yesterday, each interventions of tens of billion dollars had to be redone in larger amounts only a day or two later, going up to hundreds of billions.

And, so, my warning yesterday went on to this:

We have seen how these game plans go—in 2008 with the almost endless rounds of nearly almighty easing for years and in 2019 during the Repocalypse that ultimately forced the Fed BACK into quantitative easing after its brief experiment with quantitative tightening that former Fed chair Yellen had promised would be as boring as watching paint dry, but it wasn’t.

What happens every time, is they do more, then they have to do more. So get ready for another rodeo ride as the Fed and feds go back to bronco busting the dusty “OK Dollar Corral.” It’s going to be a long ride, fraught with new perils. Just another prediction in which I have total laid-back confidence.

And that prediction is already proving true, less than twelve hours after I wrote it.

Yields tumbled following the announcement, with the 30-year down about 10 basis points after previously hitting its highest in about 19 years, predating the global financial crisis in 2008.

However, the trade quickly unwound, with yields higher Thursday as the market digested the move, as well as the longer-term structural problems facing the fixed income market.

The interventions “belie the underlying structural challenges and do nothing to address them,” Maia Crook, senior research analyst at JPMorgan Chase, said in a client note. “While [Wednesday’s] action forced some decline in longer-dated yields, the more lasting impact is the potential for higher risk premia reflecting a Treasury Department that is intervening in the market and moving away from its ‘regular and predictable’ tenet.”

Uh huh. EXACTLY as I wrote yesterday. The premia are that everyone now sees the Treasury intervening, so they want higher doses of med to compensate for the risk the Treasury just woke them up to by trying to send them all to sleep with short-term drugs. And they are, like “Whoa! What was that quick trip all about.”

Unsurprisingly, the stock market, which I said reacted stupidly on Wednesday, caught up Thursday, too:

Dow tumbles 700 points, S&P 500 falls as Treasury plan to subdue yields fails

Reality is a harsh teacher, so they are getting whipped around because they were dumb yesterday, but then woke up with a heavy hangover from the hard drugs administered by the Treasury yesterday.

U.S. stocks fell on Thursday as Treasury yields reversed course from the decline seen in the prior trading day following the Treasury Department’s debt buyback announcement….

Also weighing on equities, oil prices rose again amid increasing tensions between Iran and the U.S. President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post late Wednesday that the U.S. would begin “most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country” against Iran. “This will be Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale,” he wrote.

Yeah, well the lasting and escalating impacts of Trump’s War should have been abundantly obvious to everyone by now. So, there are plenty of wakeup calls left to come because an economic war is guaranteed to create all kinds of NEW ECONOMIC CASUALTIES. The other side DOES fight back, and the economic bombs we drop will send out shock waves that reverberate back to us in ways little tiny Trump doesn’t even begin to imagine (just as he still doesn’t imagine that his tariffs are hitting you with inflation or that his war is going to hit you with more than rising gas prices. Oh well!)

Brent’s now at $93. Just one of the little ways that even the announcements of major economic warfare come back to cost you out of your pocket, but we knew the war, one way or another, was going to continue to escalate and drive oil prices higher. However, as I’ve warned all along, wait until you see what happens at the pumps when actual fuel shortage arrive here, as I’ve reported they already have in large ways in Russia. It’s an interconnected oil world, and Russia’s vast oil and refined fuel used to flow everywhere, but now they flow nowhere, except within Russia.

Safe-haven status blown up

The next headline among the three I led off with, I’m going to mostly cover in the Deeper part of this dive for paying subscribers because it takes a lot more digging; but note how major the importance of all of this is. It all calls into question “the Treasury market’s coveted status as a safe haven.”

That status is being blown apart by everything. Literally blown apart by a war that no one but the president and Israel seems to want. That’s driving up US debt at a time when the Treasury market is getting more sensitive about the humungous US debt load, and I’m sure the president’s constant and obvious lying throughout this war is not building trust in the US as a safe and predictable haven.

Neither is the president’s CONSTANT renegotiation of already renegotiated tariffs like the new blowing-smoke-up-the-Canadian-behind tariff he came up with recently because of the smoke drifting into the US from Canadian forest fires. His tariff tactics are more like the old fashioned “rack” used to wrack your bones. Tariffs, as I pointed out long ago, diminish the need for trade DOLLARS, which means they diminish the need for US Treasuries, which are the big packages those dollars are most often transacted in between central banks. A diminished need for the global currency due to restricted trade will impact the value of the dollar. A diminished need for Treasuries will raise the cost of financing them.

So, yes, Treasuries are losing their safe-haven status, and that means the dollar is being dented, too. This war is giving nations a lot of reasons to hate dealing in the petrodollar at the same time that Trump has been giving them a lot of reasons with his endlessly volatile tariffs. They change all over the place all the time. He can never be trusted when he does make a deal to even stay with it for a mere year (which is forever in Trump time). So, the US is increasingly becoming an increasingly unstable financial partner all over the world because of the increasingly unstable person it chose for president.

Investors in US debt are looking for higher and higher risk premia in this unstable world of Trumpian chaos and conflict in which the US seems to be creating most of the instability.

Dollar damage

If we keep proceeding as recklessly as we have been, this will become dollar destroyed. The third headline that I led off with take us from the damage to Treasuries as the longstanding global safe haven to the dollar’s risk of becoming the biggest loser due to the damage happening in the Treasury market, but particularly due to the kind of salvation plan that Bessent has baked up:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s bold intervention to stem a potentially damaging rise in US borrowing costs has some investors saying the dollar will ultimately pay the price….

Coming after other recent efforts to rein in long-term yields, it’s reviving a concern that US policy could weaken faith in the dollar and push investors toward alternatives.

I think EVERYTHING is doing that right now—wars with their enormous debt burden and especially their destruction of the petrodollar via destruction of reliable oil trade; tariffs with their lessening of need for a global trade currency denominated in dollars as nations move toward less trading with the US and more with each other because US consumers or businesses don’t want to pay the tariffs that make those nation’s products too expensive; a mercurial president who cannot be trusted, who said on Thursday he wants to move to the harshest economic warfare ever seen, oblivious apparently to how the enemy will fight back with its own aims of economic wreckage, which it is doing an outstanding job of already. This all just spirals more and more out of control due to the orange nutball in the White House.

“The dollar certainly is the biggest casualty,” said Gerald Gan, chief investment officer at multi-family office firm Reed Capital in Singapore. He sees Bessent as deliberately pushing down long-term real rates and signaling a tolerance for a weaker dollar to keep the economy afloat.

“I would further diversify away from the dollar,” he added.

And with that, we move on to the part of the Deeper Dive for paying subscribers (because a guy HAS to make a living to keep giving so much time to this.)

First, here are a few more headlines for you since Thursday (when I’m writing this) is usually a daily headline day, too, and these ones aren’t ones I want you to miss because of their economic significance:

Walmart Posts Weakest Sales Growth in Over Six Years

When Walmart is falling back, it means consumers are seriously dialing back due to all the inflation. If they’re dialing back at Walmart, one of the cheapest stores, they must be dialing back at all stores, and that is seriously recessionary. The passthrough of inflation from oil and tariffs is happening.

Personal bankruptcy filings are surging as Americans struggle with debt

People kept up their lifestyle, meaning also their retail purchases, in spite of inflation, by using more credit. That is now collapsing. Debt is becoming an end-of-the-road problem for consumers just as it is for the US Treasury.

Nato jet destroys [Russian] drone ‘loaded with explosives’ metres from Black Sea gas project as ‘irresponsible’ Russia slammed

7 questions about the national debt hitting $40 trillion

Now, on to the deeper troubles hidden in the global Big Bond Bust:

Share

Death of the dollar …

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As I said, I’ll need to cover the Great Bond Collapse in a Deeper Dive because of its breadth and depth, but let me give you the gist of some of the craziness that is swirling around this story here. In short, what the Treasury announced was a form of the Fed’s former Operation Twist, which was one of former Fed Chair Ben Burn-the-banky’s forms of QE.

Because bond yields blew out so high on the US30YR Treasury this week, the Secretary Scott Be-sent-by-Trump announced today that his Treasury Dept. will begin massive cannibalistic buybacks of its own bonds in the higher-aging maturity tenors by financing those buybacks with huge issuances of shorter-term Treasuries that have lower rates. This is aimed at having the effect of lowering rates on long-term bonds by raising rates on short-term bonds as the Treasury now floods the market with shorter-term bonds to try to secure lower interest rates on the bloated national debt, using that new funding to reduce supply of long-maturity bonds, thereby driving up price, down yields.

Out of the mouths of babes

Even CNBC’s Crazy Cramer, as I like to call him because he foams at the mouth over stocks like a rabid stock broker, gets it! “Stop!” he in essence yelled. “Stop the lunatic rescue operations, and let markets finally JUST BE MARKETS.” That was a surprise bolt of sanity from an insane source. It is my summary paraphrase of his words since the original story requires a paid subscription; here is someone else’s summary (because I make an effort to take you to stories where you can read the news without subscribing to every source as one of the benefits for subscribing here, unlike The Drudge Report):

Jim Cramer argues that aggressive Federal Reserve Treasury purchases can distort markets by inflating bubbles and masking the economy’s true health. He advocates allowing market forces to operate with less intervention to support sustainable growth and reduce the risk of unintended consequences.

Never thought I’d hear that from him.

The stance underscores a debate about how central bank actions shape valuations and investor expectations. The takeaway is a call for caution about excessive intervention and a reminder that true fundamentals should drive long-term performance.

Did I even wake up this morning, or am I writing in my sleep while still dreaming?

In this case, it is not the Federal Reserve but the US Treasury. However, the two have sometimes worked in tandem; so, it doesn’t really make any difference who does it since both are in charge of the dollar and have effectively infinite money by decree; it’s just that they have different mechanisms available to them. This time the Treasury is copying from the old Fed’s play book right when new and green Fedhead Warsh said he was going to let the market do more of its own intervention. (Is this a feud between government and Fed to push Warsh into Trump alignment by doing what normally was his work in the old Fed?)

Cramer highlights the Federal Reserve’s Treasury purchases as a central factor influencing stock-market dynamics and valuations.

He expresses concern that aggressive buying can create distortions, potentially inflating asset prices beyond what fundamentals would justify.

A key implication he notes is that such interventions can make it harder to accurately assess the economy’s health and to gauge sustainable growth.

Cramer emphasizes the importance of allowing market forces to play a larger role, aiming to reduce unintended consequences from heavy intervention.

I could have written all of that myself—and almost certainly did nearly two decades ago in the heat of the Great Recession.

The overall message frames intervention as a double-edged sword: it may support near-term liquidity but risk longer-term valuation and risk-assessment challenges.

The guidance suggests investors should consider fundamentals and avoid relying solely on central-bank actions when evaluating market prospects.

OK. I’m feeling lightheaded. Somehow Trumpworld has knocked my brain into Cramer’s crazy head.

He’s right about all of that (of course since he is thinking with my brain ; ) It is practically word-for-word what I have been arguing since the Great Recession. In my little book made of my writings from that time when I was a mere babe in economics, I laid out how we endlessly repeat these big crash cycles because we bail them out. (You can buy that humorous little book here and learn from history: “DOWNTIME: Why We Fail to Recover from Rinse and Repeat Recession Cycles.”)

We never learn from history. We don’t let all the dead wood burn, so next time the forest is loaded with even more tinder from the last fire that we rapidly hosed out. Then the next forest fire is worse still. And so the cycle repeats in ever larger loops. All along the way, markets follow the money, and the big money is always either the Fed or the feds (the Treasury). They have seemingly bottomless pockets, so they become almost the only game in town with all markets betting on where they will move their money next. Market follow the money.

Thus, it is not as surprising as it is sad that the feds came to the rescue today, nor surprising stocks rose in response to horrendously bad news about a global bond default because it means there is a big new money dump in town. Stocks rose and Treasury yields fell as they were rigged by the Treasury to do, sliding on the long end of the curve. It went according to plan.

Yet, it is precisely because we always solve these things with rescues and never with true fiscal reform that we have built up the biggest bond crisis in history that now needs another rescue. It is because other nations like Japan did the same thing that those nations impact ours because they are so wedded to the global dollar. It is the global dollar that is at stake again, hence the Treasury’s rush to the rescue because the dollar is largely controlled through major bond actions by the Fed or Treasury, called quantitative easing (or tightening, as the case may be), which is why I often list bond-market headlines under the “Money Matters” section of The Daily Doom, rather than with other economic stories.

Because our markets get so used to operating from one major rescue plan to the next, the bond vigilantes fell asleep in the poppy fields for years. They finally woke up for a bit because of all the noise from the Trump-Iran War, but even then they have settled back into semi repose. Then, today, the Treasury gave them knock-out drugs to sink them into a deep sleep in order to keep them out of the way of servicing the national debt, which was suddenly under great peril from rising interest rates and extremely large Treasury auctions (though they are, of course, not breathing a word about Andy that, lest they multiply their peril into panic).

But here’s the problem. The knock out drugs, massively powerful as they are, don’t last long. They always require another hit … a bigger hit … and then another to keep the new high going. So, the rescue plans, as we particularly saw during the Great Recession where I cut my economics writing teeth, get bigger and bigger and more drawn out and filled with fancier new tricks. (That path has been my biggest and most consistently accurate prediction ever since that time.) Eventually, they get the forest fire out, but then we do nothing to fix the fundamental problems because, “Hey, the rescue saved us. Back to greed and easy money as usual.”

If you let all the rubble burn up in their own wreckage, then they don’t get to repeat their mistakes on grander scales, and you don’t create the moral hazard of enticing others to repeat those greedy mistakes because of how well they worked out. Back in the Great Recession I observed that the truly greatest banksters are the ones who can bust their own massive institutions in a way to qualifies for practically free $20-billion Fed bailouts! You had to be a masterful captain to pilot your ship to strategic ruin on those rocks in order to achieve greater wealth. (Just giving you some samples here of the writing in Downtime.)

We are back to abnormality as the new norm

It is not normal for Treasury rates to fall on the day after massive bond problems blow up in global markets, especially a blowout as tightly wedded to US Treasuries as Japan. The announcement by Be-sent of Trump of a major rescue would spark fear into the hearts of bond investors if not for the fact that the Treasury money will be massive enough to outweigh the risk … so long as there is more to come … as there always is.

BUT that doesn’t stop bond investors from now being unsettled by the sudden realization that things really did suddenly emerge as bad as they were starting to fear as they were slowly waking from the poppy fields again and imposing new interest rates of their own due to a gentle slap in the face by the new Fed chair who said he was going to let bond markets do more of the muscle work in adjusting the dollar and the economy. Well, that natural rise in bond rates didn’t last long because Trump’s other guy, Big Bessent, jumped in to the rescue.

However, we have seen how these game plans go—in 2008 with the almost endless rounds of nearly almighty easing for years and in 2019 during the Repocalypse that ultimately forced the Fed BACK into quantitative easing after its brief experiment with quantitative tightening that former Fed chair Yellen had promised would be as boring as watching paint dry, but it wasn’t.

What happens every time, is they do more, then they have to do more. So get ready for another rodeo ride as the Fed and feds go back to bronco busting the dusty “OK Dollar Corral.” It’s going to be a long ride, fraught with new perils. Just another prediction in which I have total laid-back confidence.

In the headlines below, you will find lots of other news today about the total Big Bubble Bust that is starting in bonds this week with some of the big news being the rushing collapse in the housing market. If they let it go, which they never do entirely before they huff and puff their hardest to blow it back up into an even bigger bubble, it will be boon to first-time homebuyers who will finally find a new path back in to homeownership.

However, based on the patterns of The Great Recession, it will have to fall harder to where it starts causing bank failures or comes close to that before the Federal Reserve is likely to jump to the rescue. So, maybe next week? ; )

That’s hard to say with Warsh saying he wants market forces to do more of the driving. All of this will test his mettle to see if he really won’t meddle. Good luck with that. He’s be a rare breed if he holds out against that temptation with the Trumpet blowing up his back side.

There are lots of massive headlines about the Treasury’s out-of-the-blue major emergency rescue today, which does not just cover the problem of turning down rising longterm Treasury interest on the US debt, but also dives deep into rescuing Japan to save the dollar—because the yen has a statutory tie to the dollar since the biggest of rescue plans after World War II—and into the dark news of other quavering and quaking bond markets all over the world this week as Trump’s War on oil continues to undermine global financial courage.

Those are highlighted even though I am not digging down into them today in case you want to do advance reading before I can get to that Deeper Dive, which might be slower in coming, as I hinted yesterday, because of family coming in for the weekend. (Or maybe I’ll skip regular editorial writing and headlines tomorrow to dig into it as much as I can in a single day before ehe company arrives. depending on whether there is other severe news that demands coverage tomorrow). It’s getting hard to keep up with the big flush.

All of this on the day when the national debt finally topped $40-Trillion! There’s a grim milestone perfect for the occasion. Yet, you’ll find so much more in today’s headlines:

• There is more on the coming food crisis.

• There is an article about US gold confiscation (of Venezuela’s gold out of the UK central bank).

• There is more on Russia’s gas shortage, telling how it has taken then next step that I just said was coming—with gas stations/the government now setting limits on how much fuel each customer can buy in order to ration limited supply (just like in the 70s in the US as I’ve said we’ll see this turn into, except this crisis will be a lot worse).

• There is more on Trump’s big re-ignition of tariff wars with Canada because Lord knows we need those sources of new inflation and economic demolition in times like these! New big deal struck, getting him to jettison his 50% tariff in exchange for something like a more reasonable 20% (and, yes, YOU pay).

• Iran threatens to expand the war to Europe,

• and Ukraine continues blowing up Russian refineries, crippling the heck out of Russia as Russians begin to openly fret that Putin (and all of Russia) are about to feel the “August curse” that Russians have come to superstitiously believe in.

• UK energy bill set to run up to a three-year high because of the wars.

• Murban Crude Jumps to 4-Month High.

• Iran calls Trump “delusional.”

• Why Japan is leading the global bond selloff.

• US Democratic socialists stack up wins by competing against Trump in his home state. (“Nixon Wins!”)

The size of the super bubble that is now imploding in global bond markets perhaps forces the Treasury to take action (followed by a lot more action, I assure you), but that is only because we kept building bubbles on top of bubbles with each similar bailout of the past. We NEVER fixed the fundamental flaws because bubble rescues are the core flaw!

The reasons Republicans have stopped talking about the national debt or claiming they are going to do something about it are two-fold: 1) They were never serious about doing anything about it, or they would not have kept expanding it. 2) They now know there is NOTHING left they can do about it! We are, as I promised we would be way back in the Great Recession—BECAUSE OF THE BAILOUTS—finally way past the point of no return. (Again, you can read about all of that here in a simple, short, and fairly humorous (I hope) work (because the comedy in those days practically wrote itself by how dumb the ideas were).

Here is one headline for everyone as a good summary of the state of things today:

M.D. Creekmore

The Economy Is Throwing Up Warning Signs Everywhere

I spend a lot of time watching what is happening with the economy, the national debt, inflation, energy prices, trade, tariffs, and the supply chain, not because I enjoy doom and gloom, but because every one of those things eventually works its way down to ordinary people like you and me…

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a month ago · 7 likes · 3 comments · M.D. Creekmore

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The decline of all three major stock indices today was blamed on the wildness in global bond markets and on the return to rising oil prices. We may want to look at all the wild rides in global bond markets in this weekend’s Deeper Dive to see if we can figure out what is really happening there and how much is likely at stake. Are we looking at the start of a global bond crash or something less horrendous?

In summary of today’s related stock action,

The S&P 500 fell on Tuesday, pressured by a run in sovereign bond yields to multidecade highs amid concerns of persistent inflation and elevated oil prices. A pullback in semiconductor stocks also weighed on the broader market….

Hopes for an end to the Middle East conflict continued to fade Tuesday after President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post Tuesday that the U.S. is not currently engaging in any “talks or conversations” with Iran, nor are there any scheduled. He also said that the naval blockade “remains in full force and effect.”

Yes, because Iran controls the strait and still has its blockade fully enforced. So, the US must maintain its blockade of Iranian ships, or Iran would have a huge advantage over the rest of the world in the oil crisis it is creating because it is not retarded enough to block its own ships. If Trump had control of the strait as he continues to claim, he’d get all of that oil moving. What a moron to think that lie is believable. Believing he controls the strait requires believing he wants to hold the whole world hostage to an oil crisis that is still raging; otherwise, the guy in control of the strait would simply end the crisis!

Bond market fears are rising in the US to where some are predicting we could see 6% Treasury yields this year, which they claim would rip the stock market wide open and gut it from the competition with bonds. What will really scare the stock market they claim is if bond yields quickly rise to that level.

The move isn’t just in the US; it’s global. So, we’ll likely dig down this weekend into what is going wrong all over the world right now. (Depends on a family wedding we are having where my wife is officiating and family members from Arizona are staying with us for the wedding. So, there might not be time enough.)

TRUTH BE TOLD, the president would do this

JPMorgan has jumped on the food crisis bandwagon for 2027 that I brought up a few days ago as a prediction that many are making and I am, too, saying that it will arrive due to severe shortages of fertilizer AND that it won’t end quickly. If Trump controlling the strait is the straight truth, he could end the fertilizer crisis and curtail food shortages by getting liquid natural gas, which fertilizer is made from, and refined fertilizer shipping right away. What’s he waiting for?

Because liquid natural gas is such a tight market due to Trump’s War and Putin’s War right now, Pakistan just saw its power rates rise by 38%. Pakistan was an ally of the US during the Afghanistan war. You’d think Trump would want to help Pakistan get its soaring electrical prices down now that he fully controls the strait by getting some of the LNG they desperately need for their energy production headed their way.

The EIA (US Energy Information Administration) just forecast a continuing deficit in oil supply of 600,000 bbl per day in 2027. I feel that is far too conservative of an estimate of how short we’ll be, but that is the figure Trump’s Energy Information Agency is putting out. Still, it’s high enough that you would think the man who now controls the strait would be on that—especially since he also announced that all mines have now been cleared. Now the continuing deficit may be only due to damage infrastructure, but let’s get on the rest of it NOW. (“Thank you for your attention to this matter” as Trump would say in a Truth Social decree.)

Instead, we read the following in the report, which I am also sure is entirely wrong:

Most of the crude oil production in the Middle East is expected to return to near pre-conflict averages in early 2027. However, some output of about 600,000 barrels per day (bpd) will continue to be offline through the end of 2026, the EIA reckons.

Iran said it is going to sustain the war through the end of Trump’s term. Since they have done everything exactly as they said they would and were never lying when they said they were not negotiating with Trump nor itching to make a deal with him, I’m inclined to take their word over his.

After all, our own president has done nothing in this war the way he has said he would, including the primary fact that the war exists at all. As he was with tariffs, so he has been with war announcements and ceasefire announcements, TACOing every week.

Iran’s assurances that they will not let the conflict end for as long as Trump remains president, means oil cannot return to pre-conflict averages in early 2027. Iran has now promised a more offensive model of warfare, not reduced war.

Here’s the kicker:

This forecast is based on the assumption that oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz will remain severely constrained through August, with flows slowly increasing in September.

A ridiculous assumption that requires the EIA to believe their boss, Donald Trump, really does control this strait and really has cleared all mines, and simply believes that it will take until August to convince ships there is now safe passage through the new US territory of Hormuz—something he also just declared into being as he was spouting off words that had no grounding in reality or truth whatsoever. Well, let me clarify. The EIA folk are either MAGA ideologues who believe their boss’s obvious contradictions with logic (as laid out above) or they know what they have to say to keep their jobs.

The EIA, however, does not expect that the Houthi threats to ships transporting Saudi crude oil through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait have resulted in any additional shut-ins of crude oil production.

How dumb are these guys, and where do they have their heads shoved? It must be darker than crude and cruder than oil inside of wherever their heads are. But then, this is a US government administration, so it probably is just using Trump’s magical thinking to declare facts into being. We’ve read repeatedly of ships turned around near Bab el-Mandeb and we read again of non-Iranian ships making a U-turn in Hormuz today (because that is what ships do in American waters when America is in full control).

Tanker traffic at the Strait of Hormuz has become even more erratic than before, with vessels meandering and U-turning, unsure how to proceed amid escalating security threats and Iran’s insistence of control over the chokepoint….

The security situation in the region has further worsened in recent hours after a cargo vessel was struck by an unknown projectile in the Strait of Hormuz early on Tuesday local time.

Then we have this interesting set of self-contradictions:

Today, the US leader claimed all talks to end the war with Iran were over.

He said on Truth Social: “There are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“The Naval Blockade remains in full force and effect. The Hormuz Strait is open and operating.

“All water mines have been removed or detonated.”

The Naval Blockades is in full force and effect, so the Strait of Hormuz is open and operating. Is it blocked or open?

In spite of the president’s full control of the Strait of Hormuz of America, Brent crude managed to defy the president’s endless jawboning all day by holding solidly above the $91 mark that it easily benchmarked yesterday while WTI is hovering still at $85.50.

It seems to me there are many problems President Trump should be solving via his usual decrees today if he truly “fully controls the strait” that the US now owns as a US territory.

Ah, but what do facts matter when the all the king’s men issue fake news multiple times a day, as does the king; and people believe them just because they believe the king, obvious reality notwithstanding? Obvious self-contradictions like a fully blockaded, fully open strait notwithstanding. In their view the president and his people are not lying; they are merely decreeing a reality that does not currently exist into being. Now it does.

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If oil were really flowing back at normal levels as Team Trump just announced, Brent would not have risen back above $91 again today. It would have fallen. Yet, this time, for some odd reason, even the oil algorithms didn’t believe the administration’s word. Maybe it was just because it wasn’t the main Trumpet blasting its horn, but one of Trump’s team liars.

Iran triggered the rise back to reality in crude prices by saying there was no chance they would ever agree to an extension on President’ Trump’s badly failed Memorandum of Understanding, which had slightly opened up the strait for a week or two and allowed a surge of oil through that helped delay hitting bank bottoms. So, the MoU expired today for good.

Iran went further than just saying no more negotiations will happen. They threatened to escalate the war, but it turned out to be much more than a threat when clandestine conversations between Iran and its proxies were discovered and reported today by the Wall Street Journal.

President Trump responded by saying Iran needs to put up a white flag of surrender, obviously totally out of touch with the fact that most of the world is saying Iran has already won a total victory over Trump because he clearly got nothing at all out of his war and his only way out right now is either to greatly intensify bombing with his diminishing weapons or to retreat by leaving everything in and around Iran in worse shape for the US and the rest of the world than it was before he began his war (in something like Joe Biden’s Afghan style.)

Trump also warned he’d bomb the United States’ ally, Oman, if it got in the way, but his most obtuse boast was that he is going to turn the Strait of Hormuz into a US territory.

“Pretty soon, I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States… we [have the blockade…] no ships get through unless we want them to,” he said.

Yeah, well, no ships get through unless Iran wants them to, also, and that’s the bigger problem!

Brent crude isn’t about to stop at $91/bbl, however, because another bad turn happened in the oil market. China re-entered as a major buyer, possibly feeling it was time to start restocking its huge reserves that it had been relying gone. Other thoughts are that it is sucking up crude now in order to allow its refiners to cash in on huge windfalls that American refiners are in the news for doing today. China will need and can afford the foreign crude if they are going to make bank on fuel sales, which is getting easier to do by the day.

“China coming off of its crash diet is is not consistent with Brent prices being stable,” the analyst said.

In fact, China already increased its international imports by 22%, and that’s even in the face of a falling economy.

China, however, is a major opportunistic buyer of crude, taking advantage of low oil prices to stockpile reserves, which allows it to reduce crude oil imports if oil prices spike or if supply is choked, as it has been in recent months due to the Middle East crisis.

Total Chinese crude oil imports rebounded in July from the decade-low in June, with a 22% jump from June to an average of 8.45 million barrels per day (bpd) last month, customs data showed earlier this month.

Their purchases will raise the price of crude, which will keep the price of fuels rising, even as they begin selling into the international fuel market, just not rising as quickly perhaps as they would be if China did not leap into Russia’s former refining role. I did start warning a couple of weeks ago that China most likely would very soon be jumping backing the international crude oil market.

Russian oilmageddon

Russia’s situation reveals an example of the tight fuel market China can sell into if it starts buying US and European crude oil. In fact, it can help Russia by selling fuel to Russia now. One of today’s articles reports that a second wave of fuel shortages at gas stations has just swept across Russia as Ukraine has knocked more and more Russian refineries out of production. Russia is experiencing spotty fuel shortages in ten different regions spread across the nation.

This is working out in Russia just as I said it will eventually in the US based on how it did in the 70s: As some gas stations run out of fuel in Russia, others nearby are winding up with huge lines. These spotty fuel shortages are happening regions all the country. That gives the stations with fuel the ability to raise prices under diminishing competition, and the huge lines at those higher prices means many of those stations will soon run out of fuel, too. I didn’t see anything about price curbs, as Nixon tried, but Russia is banning exports of both diesel and gasoline now to keep enough for its own citizens and its own economy. Originally, it had just banned the export of diesel.

To increase fuel supplies to the domestic market, the authorities introduced a ban on exports of gasoline and diesel fuel, lowered quality requirements and began importing petroleum products.

That means Russia is creating new demand for your fuel because this situation didn’t exist before when Russia had a surplus and was exporting its fuel. Outfits that once bought Russian fuel will now have to turn to the US to a greater degree or to other nations for fuel supply. I’ve been warning this would be coming our way as both major wars are creating record energy crises.

The fuel crisis, which began gaining momentum in May and by July had spread to almost all regions of Russia….

Russia had eased its export restrictions at the end of July, which may have helped international fuel prices some. It did that because its restrictions had been effective enough to allow a short reprieve. That ended when Ukraine attacked more refineries with its suicide drones.

A crisis of government lies

Of course, your own government is responding to the spreading crisis by continuing to lie through its teeth to all Americans in order to do everything it can to jawbone fuel prices down at home or, at least, to try to prevent them from rising even higher. To wit, the Trump administration announced that oil flows through Hormuz have significantly rebounded now that the president controls the strait.

But an article on the reliable Oilprice.com asks, “Have Middle East Oil Flows Rebounded to 15 Million Bpd as U.S. Claims?”

The answer is, “NO!” Simply “no.”

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright this week said that the oil exports from the Middle East have rebounded to 15 million barrels per day (bpd) and even topped the pre-war average of 20 million bpd on Sunday.

That’s a pretty big and blatant lie as Oilprice.com goes on to explain:

Vessel-tracking services and commodity analysts are baffled and struggling to reconcile these numbers with their observations of tanker loadings and traffic in the region.

Ship-tracking data shows oil flows out of the Strait of Hormuz are, at best, half the volume cited by Secretary Wright.

How big of a lie is it?

Of all oil exports out of the Middle East, various tanker-monitoring data show a gap of between 3 million bpd and 5 million bpd, as most vessel-tracking companies are estimating only about 9 million bpd leaving the region via all its export channels so far this month, per the data compiled by Reuters columnist Clyde Russell.

So, in the very least, our energy secretary overstated the truth by 100%

The U.S. energy secretary posted on X that oil flows from the Middle East have normalized, with Sunday traffic alone above pre-conflict averages, in a claim that appears not to be backed by ship-tracking data.

OR ANY DATA!

“It is not possible to reconcile the disparity between what we see and what he is quoting,” Matt Smith, director of commodity research at Kpler, told CNN, commenting on Wright’s claim….

Kpler data showed earlier this week that vessel traffic at the Strait of Hormuz continues to decline as last week’s hopes of negotiations of a U.S.-Iran deal began to fade, yet again….

The U.S. official did not reveal how “the best available data related to oil and oil products leaving the Arabian gulf” is being compiled and/or analyzed.

How convenient. Everything from the Trump administration is always the best. “No one has ever seen anything like it.” In this case, no one has seen it all all—the oil, that is, or the data.

The private businesses tracking the shipments estimate current oil flows out of the Strait of Hormuz at up to 5 million bpd at best, and at about 9 million bpd-10 million bpd for the entire Middle Eastern region.

The administration is pretending Trump controls the Strait of Hormuz, but 5-million- bpd proves that is a lie.

They can’t even get their fact straight within their own agency:

Even the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said this week in its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) that traffic at Hormuz remains “severely constrained” and assumes this would be the case throughout August.

You cannot get to the number of barrels per day the secretary claimed with “severely constrained” shipping traffic.

The article does provide this caveat that could make the secretary’s words not a lie if it proves out:

Of course, there is the possibility that vessel-tracking services could be underestimating the Middle East’s current export volumes, due to heightened dark-mode activity of tankers.

However, the private companies trying to analyze this are looking for signs of dark-mode activity getting through, and they are not seeing anything that significant. So, where is the oil going once it makes it through and is far enough from Iran not to have to remain dark anymore? The Trump administration has a solid reputation for lying now to where even Oilprice.com closes with,

But it is equally possible that the U.S. Administration is spinning a wishful thinking of one outcome of the war in Iran, as this week showed a new deadlock in the U.S.-Iran talks and the contrasting claims of control over Hormuz.

Or simply the U.S. Administration could be trying to talk down oil prices again, with the midterm elections in November approaching but Americans still paying high gasoline prices.

I’m past extending the administration any caveats or benefits of the doubt in the face of facts that clearly don’t appear to agree with them. I’m banking on their flawless track record for lying every single time throughout this war when Trump said. “We’re going to bomb them out of existence” and especially things like “We’re holding off on that bombing because Iran really wants to make a deal badly right now.”

I was right to continually discount that as a lie; that much is certain because Iran now claims it never did any negotiations. It just held out the same list of demands in case the president actually wanted to end the war, which it did not believe the president intended to do. That has now become a tougher list in order to make him wince a little more. In fact, a few sources in Iran said today that Iran largely used Trump’s pauses to replenish its weapons in readying itself for a larger more offensive war that it intends to initiate upon the slightest provocation.

In fact, the WSJ reported today on Iran’s secret plans for intensifying the war, which certainly prove it was never “negotiating,” just stalling by offering Trump a deal he would never take or that they would be glad to accept if he actually did take it. They never took Trump seriously:

The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report detailing how, behind the scenes, Iranian hardliners dug in this summer to prepare to escalate the war with the U.S. amid negotiations to resolve the conflict, which they viewed as a delay tactic by the Trump administration.

The report by Benoit Faucon and Summer Said titled, “Iran’s Secret Plan to Escalate the War,” is based on intercepted communications between Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, which raised alarm within Arab intelligence agencies in the region. The Sunday evening report dropped just hours before Trump threatened more strikes on Iran as the current memorandum of understanding is set to expire.

The report details how, after Trump signed the memorandum of understanding in mid-June to take steps to resolve the conflict, “Iran’s hard-line leaders huddled in Tehran and came up with a different plan, according to Iranian and Arab officials.”

“In their view the pact was likely just an attempt by the U.S. and Israel to take pressure off the global economy and buy time for a bigger attack down the road. Instead of putting faith in talks, they took the past two months to prepare for a bigger fight,” continued the report before detailing the steps Iran took to widen the conflict….

Today, the headlines are available for all, so you can read the details of how Iran plans to expand the conflict in the headline section below by shifting from defense to offense. (I have done as I always try to do and found a version of the story for you that does not require a WSJ subscription to read it for those who are not WSJ subscribers.)

“Their overriding goal is to inflict enough pain to ensure the kind of attacks Iran has endured with the 12-day war last year and the continuing conflict aren’t repeated.”

“There is also a widespread view in Iran that the main war has not yet begun.”

Let those last words sink in.

Prediction: Fuel prices will rise more

The national average price of gasoline remained above $4 per gallon this week.

“While gasoline demand is down, crude oil prices are keeping pump prices higher than normal for this time of year,” AAA said on Thursday.

“So far, this is the highest August on record when it comes to the national gasoline average.”

To calm Americans, Trump said it might be necessary …

“for you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline….”

“Remember that when you have to pay a little bit more, you’re at $4,” before declaring he would “never apologize” and adding, “I did the right thing.”

Trump still hasn’t figured out how to get any of that uranium out of their hands, and he said again today that is an absolute imperative; so, gas prices are not going to freeze “at $4.” That’s the new American Dream price. With Iran set to escalate and both sides saying “no more negotiations,” as Trump also said today, and Russia’s situation getting worse, and China back to buying crude in large amounts, price contagion will spread. I will be surprised if we don’t hit a national average of $5/gal. before this war is all done. In fact, I think I’m hedging my prediction bets by giving a top number that low. I’m playing it safe.

My only caveat would be if the American economy crashes so severely and so quickly that it even sucks the heat out of fuel prices because no one and no thing is going anywhere. In that case, it will hardly matter. The economic damage that can be expected from an energy crisis will have merely arrived before the energy crisis could even reach its peak prices as a testimony to how fragile other parts of the economy are like those private credit loans that are hitting the news with bigger defaults today and rising Treasury troubles and AI stock bubbles.

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Economania (national & global economic collapse plus market news)

AI Bubble: “The Moment they Stop Spending on CAPEX, they Crash Markets”

So apparently Norway’s oil fund just had the best six months in its history. At about $2.34 trillion in the bank, it’s the largest sovereign wealth fund on earth.

Oil Majors Reap $93 Billion Windfall From the Iran War

Refiner stocks are on a nearly unprecedented run. History says it could end soon

Private credit under strain as troubled loans swell

Money Matters (monetary policy, metals, cryptos, currency wars & going cashless)

Hold onto your hats!: Reports coming out of CHINA about total Treasury dump (Unconfirmed and unknown source. Also read similar unconfirmed report out of Japan.)

What rising Treasury yields are telling us

30-year Treasury yield tops 5.31%, the highest in 19 years

The Trumps’ Crypto Project Just Got One Step Closer to Becoming a Bank: “The most brazen act of self-dealing our system has ever seen.”

Three Funerals and a Death

Inflation Factors (too much money chasing too few goods due to weather, sanctions, tariffs, quarantines, etc.)

Brent oil rises to $91 as Iran rules out interim deal extension, threatens to escalate conflict

Second wave of fuel shortages at gas stations sweeps across Russia

Have Middle East Oil Flows Rebounded to 15 Million Bpd as U.S. Claims? (No.)

China Oil Imports Jump 22% Even as Economic Data Disappoints

Depleted strategic oil reserve nears level that raises concerns about damage to caverns, operations

Why Haven’t the Tanks Run Dry? What Investors Are Missing in Oil.

Iran defiant on strait as Trump tells Americans to accept high gasoline prices (Concerned about inflation, “Get over it” President seems to say.)

UK Inflation Set to Rebound as Energy Bills Surge

Wars & Rumors of War (including cyberwar, civil unrest and revolts)

Iran’s secret plan to escalate the war

Trump makes new declaration that he’s making the Strait of Hormuz a US territory

Trump threatens Oman as US-Iran agreement expires

Iran Strikes Push US Navy Logistics to Diego Garcia as USS Abraham Lincoln Strains

Trump sends aircraft carrier to relieve crisis-hit Abraham Lincoln

Trump says USS Abraham Lincoln deployment ‘not nearly long enough’ amid outcry from families

MTG: White House is discussing using nuclear weapons on Iran in strategy meetings

War and Eschatology: How Iran’s Mahdist Ideology Shapes the U.S.–Iran Conflict

—

Moscow ‘under siege’ as Ukraine onslaught starts inferno at ‘Russia’s Amazon’

Ukraine launches one of its largest drone attacks on Moscow Oblast

VLAD’S CASH CRASH The suicide drone onslaught shattering Putin’s ‘Amazon’ empire as Ukraine plots next death blow to paralyse war machine

Russian state bank fires economist who warned Moscow was losing ‘war of attrition’ with West

—

Russia builds secret drone bases in striking distance of Nato

NATO fighter jet opens fire as warplanes scramble to intercept ‘Russian’ drone

—

Street rallies held as Taliban govt marks five years ruling Afghanistan after US fled

Political Pandemonium & Social Senescence (socio-political issues & events)

SNAFU Investing with Lau Vegys

The Government Just Asked for Another $739 Billion in Debt. For One Quarter.

If you needed any more evidence of just how far gone the U.S. government’s finances are, look no further than the Treasury’s own latest projections…

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a month ago · 43 likes · 7 comments · Lau Vegys

(Meanwhile, tariff revenue came in below zero, and interest now costs more than the military; yet, Republicans want another major tax cut like Big Beautiful Billionaire.)

Massive Trump merchandise store goes out of business - because nobody is buying anything. (“He admitted that Trump’s popularity was ‘dwindling’ and noted that a lot of people are struggling with their finances in the face of Trump’s tariffs and high gas prices resulting from his war in Iran.”)

Most US voters say they are worse off under Trump

Why Americans now hate each other more than ever

The buck stops somewhere else: A look at Trump’s tendency to avoid blame when things go awry

Dems now favor socialism over capitalism by this overwhelming amount

Trump’s Rump: What is going on with that? [It depends.]

Calamity, Catastrophe & Climate Craziness

It’s Getting So Hot That Nuclear Plants Are Being Forced to Power Down

A 7.7 just slammed Indonesia, and it’s the sixth magnitude 7+ quake the planet has taken in only two months.

Magnitude 7.7 earthquake kills at least 47 and toppling buildings

Lala floods Hawaii, knocks out power after brushing just beyond the Big Island as hurricane

Off-the-Beat News & Just Plain Offbeat News

Canned food storage facts

Recalls surge for millions of vehicles as parked cars are bursting into flames

Why Three Minutes Of Sprinting May Beat An Hour+ Spent Exercising

Hope for Hard Times

Construction Workers Dig Up Ten Million Dollars in Gold and Turn It In (Some people still do the honest thing.)

Doomer Humor

Share The Daily Doom

Refer a friend

The truth about the economy has been buried for a few years in flawed statistics and shielded from view by the high gloss of easy gains for the rich. The real economy has been crushing down on the masses for more than two years. And now, we have a broad enough look at the revised stats to prove the stealth recession has been riding the backs of the tired and huddled masses for a long time, and it’s only getting worse. I’ll prove it here at last with the basic facts that matter most.

Trump promised a new golden era. In fact, he announced that we are already in it, but Americans aren’t buying it. I mean that literally and figuratively, and I’ll show why.

Literally, they are not buying, period: “Retail sales slump as consumer spending falters.” That’s our current starting point-of-reality on this backward-looking quest for truth about why the economy is worse for most than what they are told. How much worse than told is the reason the rich have referred to this period as the most hated “expansion” in history. You’ll see why it was far from a real expansion for most of America in considerable detail.

In a significant development for the U.S. economy, retail sales have experienced an unexpected decline, according to the latest data release. Retail sales, which serve as a critical indicator of consumer spending and overall economic health, fell by 0.6%. This decline is notably below the forecasted growth of 0.1% and marks a deterioration from the previous month’s increase of 0.2%….

As retail sales account for a substantial portion of economic activity, this downturn could signal broader economic challenges ahead…. The actual figure of -0.6% indicates a more significant contraction in consumer spending than previously anticipated.

Consumers cutting way back on their retail spending is not the kind of activity that indicates anyone is feeling like they have entered a golden era or have been living through a period of economic expansion in their neighborhoods. They are downvoting that idea with their dollars and their feet by walking away from retail. It’s a clear sign of economic unease, and the first that we’ve measured in terms of consumer activity. Until now, people have been maintaining the lifestyle they are used to in the face of constant rising inflation by taking out more debt; but as debt defaults are rising quickly now, that method of continuing one’s behavior is giving way to curbing one’s behavior.

Not believing it either

Figuratively, Americans are not buying the golden era, as in not believing in it, because there is nothing there to believe in. Only 30% of Americans, based on the latest poll, approve of Trump’s handling of inflation, while 31% listed inflation and prices as their most important issue, 17 percentage points more than the second-most important topic, jobs and the economy. Americans are concerned about inflation (made worse by tariffs, in spite of the lies Team Trump tells on that matter) and about jobs.

So, inflation is the driving concern of the majority right now, and jobs come second. Does the arrival of a golden era for a return of manufacturing to the US and the jobs that go with it, as Trump has claimed for his tariffs on foreign goods, graph out like this:

Trump promised his tariffs would cause factories to return to America, which he said would be a boon for American jobs and wages. Since then—even with the AI datacenter buildout, which is creating demand for manufactured materials—we have seen nothing but a steepening decline in factory construction. After a year and half, there is no sign yet that more factories are moving here from afar.

As we enter the election cycle, Republican politicians are growing nervous, so they want Trump to offer their usual tired stimulus ideas to boost the flailing economy to try to save them at the polls. They want him to offer even more tax cuts. Never mind how severely the last tax cuts (Big Beautiful Bill) did NOT pay for themselves with economic growth (as you can get a clue about from what is happening with manufacturing expansion in the graph above). Never mind that those massive tax cuts, along with Trump’s massive tax increases in the form of tariffs, increased the rapid bloating of our national debt that is now treading near the insane $40-TRILLION level thanks to rapidly growing war expenditures. Empire doesn’t come cheaply as we spend ourselves into a grave of our own digging.

It’s a solution that is so tried and tired it should be mummified by now. It’s an endless effort to try to get quick, easy growth by paying for NOTHING as we go and sending the bill into the future for our children or grandchildren to pay. It has been an endlessly reckless path. Cutting taxes when they are extremely high makes sense. Cutting taxes when you’ve already cut them to the bone makes no sense when your nation is now getting crushed under its own debt, unless Trump were to do it by getting rid of his business-killing tariffs.

Go back and look at the latest news in The Daily Doom headlines about Treasuries this week to see what is happening there due to expanding debt and the tariffs resulting in diminished need in the marketplace for foreigners that are doing less trade with us to bank US dollars in Treasuries. It is rapidly looking like a disaster that will only grow worse if we cut taxes as our debt to GDP ratio is now at 123%.

Of course, most of Trump’s huge initial tax cuts inured to the filthy rich, by which I do mean “filthy,” given how they are cavorting with presidential buy-ins in the most extreme amounts ever seen, becoming a part of the $2.2-billion added to the president’s wallet over the past year (though much of that visible gain was through his apparent insider trading on war announcements) while getting some nice contracts for their pay-to-play bribes that come in the form of buying his crypto or buying memberships at Mar-a-Lago or promising to help cover the costs of his billionaire ballroom legacy expansion to the now comparably tiny White House.

Thus, we live in the “K-shaped economy” where it is true that the billionaires ARE experiencing a golden era befitting all the extra gold gilding/spray paint added to Washington statuary and White House decor. For those of us who live on the lower leg of the “K,” more tax cuts of the kinds Trump and the Republicans gave last time aren’t going to help much because they clearly are not—once again—trickling down as promised.

If the president is going to cut taxes, the ones he should cut would be all of his tariffs that add inflation to the prices we all pay since 94% of the total amount collected in tariffs was born for by US citizens/businesses, while only 6% was offset by price cuts from foreign suppliers.

Marc Short, who served in the first Trump administration, [says Republican politicians] “are reluctant to criticize, because they think the president will come after them, but ultimately I think a lot of their voters want to see them stand up for their interests” on issues like trade…. Trump has plenty of achievements to highlight but “it’s hard to argue that his tariffs are not contributing to the affordability problems….”

Many economists say the higher costs from Trump’s tariffs and uncertainty around them have held back hiring as well as potential investment, especially outside of AI. The US added 16,000 manufacturing jobs in the past two months, but up to that point it had lost almost 100,000 in Trump’s second term. Factory construction is also down from the record it reached in 2024 after Biden-era incentives….

There are intense election-season debate around many other aspects of the US economy, including how “K-shaped” — skewed toward the rich, and hence against most voters — it is.

Bessent told CNBC last week that “the K-shaped economy is over” and he’s “sick of hearing” about it. (“Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ Economy Pitch Fizzles with Midterm Voters”)

Well, of course, he’s sick of hearing about his abject failures, but it is about as over as the Iran war was over based on his assurances some 45 times over the past few months. With Iran saying, as I reported yesterday, they intend to keep the war hot until the end of Trump’s term so as to make it clear that he got nothing for going to war with them but an endless headache, anything Bessent says should be immediately dismissed as part of his endless smarmy lies. He doesn’t want to hear about the bottom leg of the “K” as he reclines comfortably on the heights of the “Ks” upper slope.

Other measures suggest disparities persist, with hourly earnings for nonsupervisory and production workers lagging behind inflation. New stock-market wealth flows mostly to already-prosperous Americans, and that group also stands to benefit most from any proposed cuts in capital gains taxes.

Always.

Ah, life on the upper slope which already benefits massively from capital gains tax cuts, and which benefited before that by the fact that all asset gains are as tax-deferred as a 401k until you actually cash them in. So, the Republican plan, being championed as usual by Krackhead Kudlow, Trump’s former economic ill-advisor, is for more capital gains tax cuts to try to boost the trickle that is supposed to run down the K’s lower leg (like an old man lacking bladder control). What you get from trickle-down tax cuts is—pardon the clarity, but it’s accurate to the motif—pissed on by the rich.

The tariffs obviously aren’t bringing in a bumper crop of new manufacturing jobs so far; and, with consumers now cutting back on spending, there is even less chance of more manufacturing plants being built in the US. With inflation set to grow again (having only cooled off a mere 0.1% during the fake schmeasefire that temporarily brought down oil prices), this all looks and smells a lot more like stagflation.

The new president promised to bring down prices “on day one.” Instead inflation has accelerated again this year.

Wages have gone soft in the latest report, rather than improving, which Trump said would be our bonus from tariffs heating up the manufacturing sector. The latest jobs report was the worst for wages so far. Even worse than that, however, was what the latest reports showed about actual jobs. They have suddenly fallen through the factory floor. So, let’s talk about that …

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Where have all the promised jobs gone?

The latest headline was NOT GOOD for Republican politicians (or for any of us really):

"Job losses in July and negative revisions reveal a weakening U.S. labor market”

This report was so bad that we actually had a net loss in jobs, rather than what has become a fairly common diminishing gain each month. Then there’s the part about the last two job reports being revised down in this present report, which is so typical to what I’ve been telling you about how the government only makes the facts real (in a downward direction) after they are no longer the primary facts in focus. The policy is to give a better report today; revise it down to reality in a month or two when people are paying lest attention to months further back. Here we see that happening again as business as usual.

In a troubling sign for the economy, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that it revised down the prior two months’ jobs by a combined 103,000.

Those months were, as I reported here, already languishing. Now they are pathetic. Yet, they are nothing compared to how bad the latest month is or how, the deeper you look into this report, the worse and worse it gets:…

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