Middle East Tanker Traffic April 28-May 4, 2026
Real GDP in 1Q2026 reached $24.175 trillion.
Had real GDP continued to grow at the pre-1984 rate to now, it would have been $35.273 trillion, 46% more than it is.
That's the difference between a compound annual growth rate from 1947 to 1984 at 3.585% continued to 2026 instead of at 2.657% since 1984 to now.
IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.
‘Misplaced euphoria’: Markets are sleepwalking into a recession amid Iran war oil price shock
Global economies could be “sleepwalking” into a “big recession”, as investors continue to underplay the impact of the oil price shock, Amrita Sen, founder and director, market intelligence at Energy Aspect, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday. ...
“This is a massive, massive energy crisis. I have been equally amazed at how the equity market is completely dismissing it, talking about how great Q1 results are. They are not going to be great nearly to the same extent in Q2.” ...
Middle East Tanker Traffic April 26-May 2, 2026
What?!
A barrel of oil in July 1973 at $3.56 is $26.54 in March 2026 adjusted for inflation.
I keep hearing that Baby Boomers are just sucking this world dry. Keep telling yourselves that, suckers.
https://archive.is/uceDe
... the United States lacks the military means to impose its will on Iran in a long conflict. In 1991 a million soldiers from more than 40 countries were needed to reverse the invasion of Kuwait carried out by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a country less sophisticated than Iran and a fraction of its size. When Iran and Iraq fought each other to a standstill in the 1980s, deaths ran into the hundreds of thousands on each side. The United States would have to send a significant portion of its armed forces — which total only 1.3 million troops — to stand a chance of subduing Iran, and that force, if successful, would have to stay for a long time. ...
Here.
Caldwell is just as blind as Trump.
Neither one gets it that the lowly Houthis already beat us to a draw last year in the Red Sea.
Nothing is moving out of the Persian Gulf today, and tanker traffic through the Red Sea is less than half what it used to be in 2022, even under the new conditions of a world desperately thirsty for the Middle East oil no longer coming out of the former.
And neither one gets it that you can't have an American Empire without paying for it.
We're $39 trillion in debt and can no longer impose our will in the world's vital choke-points because elites have pretended since Reagan that low marginal income tax rates are sufficient to maintain American Empire when what those rates have done is impoverish us and enrich our adversaries.
1,135 billionaires are the symbol of our lost empire.
Caldwell steers well clear of naming the obvious remedy, and Trump's Big Ugly Bill will do nothing but put America $62 trillion in debt by the end of 2032.
Taxes must be raised . . . a lot.
I view fixed representation at 435 as a crime against the Founders and a crime against the people, and all the recent developments involving this subject simply rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Representation was meant to grow with population, and Republicans stopped that in 1929.
Political power is now more concentrated in fewer hands than ever, resulting in sharply more polarized politics where more is riding than ever before on the outcome of U.S. House elections.
Anti-federalists sought representation at 1:15,000 of population. An early compromise settled on 1:30,000, which grew to 1:50,000 but was never ratified in Article The First.
At this moment in time we have representation at 1:787,290 thanks to the Republicans in 1929.
Now your congressman doesn't know you from Adam, and couldn't care less what you think. Write him or her about an issue, and you'll get a nice form letter back thanking you for writing if you're nice. If you're not nice you will not hear back from your lords and masters.
6,849 U.S. representatives is unimaginable to most people today, let alone 11,415 or 22,831.
The problem is 435 for a country this size would be unimaginable to the Founders.
Trump’s ‘bargain’ $1m Gold Card backfires with just 338 applications
... The Trump Gold Card, which offers purchasers an expedited route to American residency, was unveiled with great fanfare in February 2025. ...
