Middle East Tanker Traffic April 30-May 6, 2026
... A 70-year-old Dutch man was the first person to die on April 11 after experiencing days of severe illness, followed by his wife two days later.
... Six Americans disembarked MV Hondius on April 24 on the island of St Helena, 13 days following the first death on board, operator Oceanwide Expeditions revealed on Thursday.
... Oceanwide Expeditions, the Netherlands-based cruise ship company, said Thursday that 30 passengers left the vessel at St. Helena.
The company had not previously revealed publicly that dozens more people left the ship.
The first hantavirus case on board of the vessel was not confirmed by authorities until May 2. ...
"Well, our loyalty lies with little taxpayers, not big taxspenders. What our critics really believe is that those in Washington know better how to spend your money than you, the people, do. But we're not going to let them do it, period."
-- Ronald Reagan, Nationally Televised News Conference, June 30, 1982
The secret of Ronald Reagan's success was that he stroked the vanity of the people.
Nominal return from SPX since he made those remarks has been 12.48% per annum through April 2026.
Just socking away a one time investment of $2,000 in the S&P 500 that summer and forgetting about it would have yielded you almost $353,000 by now.
But today just 2.6% of Americans in general have at least $1 million in a retirement account, and HALF of retirees aged 65-74 have only $200,000 or less.
Meanwhile, our betters in Washington have put the country $39 trillion in debt, and 73% of us die in debt ourselves, with the average owed just under $62,000.
The government we deserve!
"Our Government is spending money at a rate that is intolerable, if not incomprehensible. Almost $2 billion a day, $1,400,000 a minute... We must reverse the process."
-- Ronald Reagan, 1982
Federal outlays in 2025 are estimated at $7.266 trillion, or $19.9 billion per day.
I guess it takes but a decade for something to become tradition at the FBI:
“The bottles in question are part of a tradition in the FBI that started well over a decade ago, long before Director Patel arrived,” a spokesman said.
More.
... In interviews across the state, Hoosier voters described being inundated with television and digital advertising and daily mailers from candidates and the outside groups supporting them. The numbers back that up.
The political advertising tracking firm AdImpact said that $13.4 million was spent on advertising in this year’s Indiana state Senate primaries. For comparison: In the 2024 election cycle, about $280,000 was spent on state Senate primary ads in Indiana — in all races combined.
The bulk of that spending came from a group linked to US Sen. Jim Banks, a close Trump ally. Club for Growth led the direct mail effort for the pro-Trump forces, Indiana Republicans said, and Turning Point USA supplied ground troops for door-to-door get-out-the-vote efforts as the group sought to carry out one of the last political stances taken by its late co-founder Charlie Kirk, who was killed weeks after urging Indiana Republican lawmakers to redistrict.
The incumbents and their supporters bemoaned outside forces’ role in the Indiana primary. Indiana Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray said the primary contests were “really driven from outside the state of Indiana, mostly in Washington, DC, and the money’s coming from outside Indiana as well.”
But the flood of advertising spending — more than 47 times more than was spent on state Senate primaries just two years earlier — proved too much for most incumbents to overcome. ...
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.
