Friday, April 17, 2026
Friday night fright night for Ukraine as Trump keeps Russian oil unsanctioned for a second consecutive month
Trump is an asshole.
Update from CNBC Saturday:
U.S. renews Russian oil waiver after pressure from countries dealing with Iran war price shocks
... “As negotiations (with Iran) accelerate, Treasury wants to ensure oil is available to those who need it,” a Treasury Department spokesperson said. Just two days earlier, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Washington would not be renewing the waiver for Russian oil and another for Iranian oil, which is set to expire on Sunday. ...
U.S. lawmakers from both political parties had slammed the administration over the sanctions waivers, saying they stood to help the economy of Iran while it was at war with the U.S. and of Russia as it was at war with Ukraine. ...
It's not
Published last night at 2040:
U.S. oil price plunges below $84 as Iran declares Strait of Hormuz open, easing supply fears
Published at 0900 this morning:
Iran declares Strait of Hormuz open to shipping but Trump says U.S. blockade still active
The Joint Maritime Information Center Update 033 for the Strait of Hormuz April 16 2026 15:56 hours includes 2 full days of the Iran blockade April 14-15
"Historically average daily transit through the Strait of Hormuz is approximately 138 vessels per day."
Transit Average April 9-15 Strait of Hormuz: 5.1 vessels per day
Thursday, April 16, 2026
Inflation, whether pandemic induced or war induced, has been berry berry good for hiding price increases to boost corporate profits
... Sonu Varghese, the global macro
strategist at the Carson Group, a financial firm, said many of the
companies he tracked viewed inflation pressures from “outside shocks,”
such as this war, “as an opportunity to raise prices and boosts
margins,” which can, in turn, raise profits.
“I think we’re actually going to get some margin expansion,” Mr. Varghese added. ...
A liberal who hates filing his very complicated taxes wants our payrolls run through the government, our incomes tracked, and our taxes automatically deducted
Yeah, that'll be popular.
... Some years ago, I traveled to the Faroe Islands, an autonomous territory of Denmark, to report on their tax authority, which is arguably the best in the world. There, all normal wages are routed through a central government database, which automatically keeps track of how much you are making, and what benefit programs you are eligible for.
While this computerized system is quite sophisticated and required a lot of initial investment, it is incredibly easy to operate. For an ordinary worker, what you owe automatically comes out of the paycheck, and any benefit payments automatically go right into your bank account. Ordinary employees don’t have to file their taxes or any enrollment paperwork (if they have a child and become eligible for the Faroese child allowance, for instance, the money just starts showing up), while employers don’t have to hire a payroll processor to handle their tax payments. ...
Why the world has the petrodollar, not a petroyuan
Don’t call time on dollar dominance just yet, say analysts as ‘petroyuan’ call sparks debate
... “Oil is not priced in US dollars simply because the United States has long acted as the world’s policeman,” wrote Sonal Desai, Franklin Templeton’s fixed income CIO.
“Oil exporters have a strong self-interest in getting paid in USD, because of what dollars represent: access to the deepest, most liquid capital markets in the world, backed by an institutional and legal framework that protects property rights and enforces contracts, supported by a strong, dynamic, and innovative economy.” ...
Franklin Templeton’s Desai added in the note that building the right infrastructure for a credible replacement, consisting of “deep markets, rule of law, full convertibility, a track record of macro stability”, takes decades, not years. ...
Desai added that the dollar’s recent weakness is simply a function of its characteristics.
“Some dollar softness is perfectly consistent with global reserve currency status,” Desai wrote.
“Unlike the renminbi, the dollar is a freely floating currency. It floats – up and down.”
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
My morning coffee, my Sunday hamburger, my Italian tomatoes, pasta and olive oil, and now even my salad
I coulda mentioned salad the other day, but I didn't.
The average price made a new record high in 1Q2026.
Why BLTs and salad just got more expensive — tariffs, war send tomato prices soaring
This story is about fresh tomatoes, not salad, and it is interesting, but the average price of tomatoes in 1Q2026 still hasn't surpassed 1Q2016.
Adjusted for inflation since 1Q1980, tomatoes could cost $2.64 per pound, but they were only $1.98 in 1Q.
As the story says, canned tomatoes are much cheaper. I make my sauce from stewed whole plum tomatoes from a can, preferably Italian, preferably San Marzano or Parma, but there are many acceptable American brands to choose from.
Mad King Ludwig can't get Kevin Warsh confirmed on time, throws another tantrum at Powell
Powell staying on as acting chair until Trump can get his shit together would be customary procedure, not an anomaly.
Trump threatens to fire Powell if Fed chair doesn’t leave office on his own
Fed nominee Warsh filings detail vast wealth, far exceeding past chairs
... Warsh’s filings detail roughly 1,800 individual assets. Many individual items are identified as being subject to “pre-existing confidentiality obligations” that prevent him from specifying the underlying assets.
Warsh in the filings pledges to divest these assets if confirmed. ...
Tuesday, April 14, 2026
CNBC wholesale prices headline spin zone: "rose much less than expected"; Ragin' inflation reality: "the biggest 12-month gain since February 2023"
And core wholesale inflation in 1Q2026 also rounds to 3.8% yoy, and is right back where we started with Trump in 1Q2025, if you give me 0.04 for 3.77% year over year.
Wholesale prices rose 0.5% in March, much less than expected despite war impact
The producer price index, a gauge of pipeline costs for final demand goods and services, increased a seasonally adjusted 0.5% for the month, well below the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 1.1%.
Excluding food and energy, core PPI was up just 0.1% against the forecast for 0.5%.
On an annual basis, the all-items PPI accelerated 4%, the biggest 12-month gain since February 2023. The core PPI posted a 3.8% annual gain. ...
All items
 |
| Core |
Monday, April 13, 2026
Ann Coulter, born in 1961, is looking pretty good for a 64 year old boomer, but she is a little testy about it lol
I can see the jowls of 74 forming already. 🤣
My favorite part of this is her concern for the little girls of Iran.
After 911 she didn't care about their little girls at all, when she wanted all these countries invaded, their leaders killed, and everyone converted to Christianity. She didn't want us to be too careful about it either, because we carpet bombed Germany in WWII and killed civilians because it was a war then, and 911 was also a war, even though it wasn't. It too was undeclared just like this one now against Iran, but Ann pretends otherwise.
If Trump had a decent PR machine, he'd be talking about how awful the crackdown in Iran was after the Christmas 2025 university demonstrations. Thousands of Iranians desiring freedom were brutally massacred by the regime. Trump wasn't ready for that, but he did begin the airbridge to Europe and the Middle East in mid-February, beginning the process of shuttling military assets in theatre to confront the Ayatollah. I know because I monitored it myself day after day. This was not a surprise.
Those military assets weren't as strong or ready as they needed to be in the last week of February when Trump got the call from Bibi about the decapitation opportunity, but he pulled the trigger anyway. That's Trump, always reactive, not proactive. He's not the commander in chief many of us would choose, but you fight with the commander you have.
If we had taken Ann's advice in 2001, the Persian Gulf would be a Christian paradise today, and we wouldn't be having this stupid conversation about the terror regime in Iran yet one more time a quarter century later and how to solve that problem.
They have missiles to destroy their neighbors and reach Europe, and they have demonstrated their willingness to do so. It doesn't matter now how it started. They must be stopped.
Sunday, April 12, 2026
Tanker transits in both the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea crawled to a virtual halt on April 10-11
Just two out of the Strait of Hormuz April 10-11, just nine through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait in either direction after Iran attacked the Saudi pipeline to Yanbu on April 8-9.
Gold is up 9.9323% YTD, silver 5.9767%
Silver and gold had a good week:
Silver: $76.60 USD +$4.04 USD +5.57% 1W
Gold: $4,764.80 USD +$112.50 USD +2.42% 1W.
Silver was $72.28 on Jan 1, gold was $4,334.30.
Prices are per APMEX, where the 3M and YTD results just happen to be nearly identical as of April 12th, indicating more stability actually Mar 31 to Apr 12.
The war in Iran has been net negative for both gold and silver in the last 30 days, however, as oil prices rose in a volatile manner, which is where all the betting action went. Gold was down over 7% and silver over 10% in the last 30 days.
The blockade of Iran is likely to cause oil prices to spike much more this week, and precious metals to fade, but you never know from day to day with you know who in charge.
Stackers of precious metals will view future price drops as buying opportunities.
Trump cuts off the flow of Iranian oil with blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, about 1.5 million barrels per day, China most hurt
Trump says U.S. will blockade Strait of Hormuz after Iran peace talks fail
Iran sends millions of oil barrels to China through Strait of Hormuz even as war chokes the waterway
Saturday, April 11, 2026
Friday, April 10, 2026
Post-Reagan GDP underperformed the immediate post-war by over 26%, Trump-era GDP underperforms it by almost 32%
Ronald Reagan didn't make America great again, and neither has Trump.
The watershed tax changes throwing away the threat of high ordinary income taxation under Reagan in 1986 and Trump in 2018 have got to go.
The country needs genuinely domestic, long-term investment to bring back economic growth. Reward that with low tax incentives and penalize everything else.
Rich people OBVIOUSLY haven't demonstrated that they know best what to do with their own money, otherwise they would have done it already.
We watched helplessly year after year, especially after 2000, as one business after another moved its production abroad seeking lower labor and regulatory costs to make themselves rich, not us.
We have to make them reverse it, because they aren't going to do it otherwise. Tax the shit out of them until they do the right thing, and keep the threat of taxes hanging over their heads to keep them doing the right thing.
Real GDP Compound Annual Growth Rates
GDPCA 9 April 2026
1947-1984: 3.638%
1984-2017: 2.679%
2017-2025: 2.476%
Thursday, April 9, 2026
Real GDP for 4Q2025 was revised lower to 0.5% from 0.7% last month in today's final estimate, and CNBC buried the story of a stalling economy
The 0.5% estimate is the annual rate of real GDP growth in 4Q, and the figure doesn't sound like much of a revision until you remember that the estimated annual rate in 3Q was 4.4%.
That's one hell of a drop, whether it's to 0.7% or to 0.5%.
In other words, the economy nearly stalled in 4Q.
Meanwhile real GDP for full year 2025 increased at a measly 2.1% rate.
CNBC buried the bad news in a different story, seven paragraphs down:
Inflation held sticky at 3% as U.S. headed into war with Iran, key Fed gauge shows
... Separately, the Commerce Department reported that economic growth was even slower than previously reported for the fourth quarter of 2025.
Gross domestic product, a measure of all goods and services produced, rose just 0.5% on a seasonally adjusted annualized rate, down from the prior reading of 0.7% and the initial estimate of 1.4%. The full-year growth rate held at 2.1%.
The department said the downward revision came primarily to lower investment than previously indicated. ...
Gee, I thought Trump said $18 trillion in investment was flowing into the economy?
Golden Age, my foot.
Meanwhile the initial estimate was cut in half by the second estimate, and the final estimate cut that by nearly 29% more. They were off by only 64% in the end.
Remember, this is all pre-Iran-War-induced oil crisis, too.
It's going to be ugly.
Kevin Asshat says even one tanker is big
Hormuz strait oil traffic way down after ceasefire; Hassett says even one tanker is big
"... being mindful of the fact that if you get one of those big tankers through, that’s 2 million barrels. So that’s a huge chunk of what’s missing," he said.
Before the war, about 20 million barrels of oil were transiting the strait per day. ...
Estimates of supply lost which I have seen today say 9 million barrels per day of supply have been lost, worse than the COVID shutdown.
Some 230 tankers are loaded with oil and waiting to sail out of the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, but they can't
The Strait of Hormuz is not open as Iran controls access after ceasefire, UAE oil CEO says
... “This moment requires clarity,” said Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber in a social media post. “So let’s be clear: the Strait of Hormuz is not open. Access is being restricted, conditioned and controlled.”
Iran has made clear that ships must obtain its permission to pass through the strait, Al Jaber said. “That is not freedom of navigation. That is coercion,” the ADNOC chief said. ...
Trump ceasefire failure: Strait of Hormuz eastbound tanker traffic averages 3.57 tankers per day 2 Apr-8 Apr 2026 lol
Just one tanker out yesterday.
Vessels and deadweight tonnage out are both in the toilet.
Have fun out there, world, filling your tanks, courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue.
America is no longer a world superpower because it doesn't have a Navy capable of maintaining freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, let alone in the West Philippine Sea or the Taiwan Strait
But we can still put people in a tin can and send them around the moon like we did already in 1968.
We also don't have a military capable of stopping Russian aggression in Europe, because we're too tired after Iraq and Afghanistan.
Put up or shut up, Ben.
In all four corners of the world, Trump's name is a household name for . . .
... childish, dumb, embarrassing, ignorant, idiot, immature, incompetent, joke, moron, ridiculous, silly, stupid, uneducated, unfit, unpredictable, and unqualified ... bigot, corrupt, crazy, delusional, disastrous, disgrace, evil, greed, hate, horrible, insane, prejudice, racist, sociopath, trash, unstable, and vile ... “ass” or “asshole”, bad, bully, crass, disgusting, disrespectful, jerk, liar, mean, obnoxious, pig, rude, and stubborn ... arrogant, cocky, confident, egomaniac, loud, megalomaniac, narcissist, and selfish.
And that was in May 2020.
Trump on the Strait of Hormuz toll booth: We’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture. It’s a way of securing it - also securing it from lots of other people. It’s a beautiful thing.
This guy needs to be slowly keelhauled on a VLCC.
Wednesday, April 8, 2026
Where is this complete, immediate, and safe reopening of the Strait of Hormuz?
Is it in the room with us right now?
DEEP RED GA-14 which elected Marjorie Taylor Greene by 29 points in 2024 has elected another Republican endorsed by Trump to fill her seat by . . . 14 points
Not as deep red as it used to be when your margin of victory is more than cut in half.
Trump's UN ambassador put this up about an hour before Trump decided to let Iran, out of all the countries in the world, charge a toll to get through an international waterway
20 millions barrels a day passing through is $20 million a day or $7.3 billion a year, going straight into the hands of Iran to build more missiles, drones, and nuclear weapons for to wipe Israel off the map and rule the Middle East.
Brilliant.
I'm sure all our new friends in the Persian Gulf who let us build bases to protect them are just thrilled.
Trump belongs in a padded cell, not the Oval Office.
The world is spitting at us in contempt this morning.
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