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There are times when I feel that I am writing blog posts more for the archaeologists coming along later to figure out what actually buried this late stage Idiocracy, than I am writing for anyone reading this contemporaneously. This is one of those times. As always occurs during frothy rallies, my Twitter stats collapse and stock gamblers flock to whatever bullish media are willing to extrapolate record excess to infinity. Needless to say, it seems somewhat redundant to write

The mainstream media have been fully complicit in giving this Roman Circus the patina of respectability it does NOT deserve. They take every Trump lie and obfuscation at face value, which means they contradict themselves daily. The most obvious example being his claim that the war will be over "soon" - Trump's patented market manipulation claim that has kept markets at all time highs TWO MONTHs into the worst oil crisis in history. Today via the Wall Street Journal, we learn

Two months into what was originally supposed to be a two week war, fake peace talks just failed. So begins the next round of an escalating war... To recap: The U.S. and Israel have pounded Iran for the better part of two months while Iran has kept the Strait of Hormuz closed. The stakes are rising on both sides, but MOSTLY the stakes are rising for the rest of the world which is now hostage to this cage match. The first round of peace talks took place two weeks ago (April 11t

The world is perfect except for the humans screwing it up. There is no cause for pessimism aside from the people around us acting irrationally because they "expect" something they won't get. Gratitude is the primary driver of happiness. These are the thoughts that keep me sane in this period of mass insanity. Unfortunately, this also means that we live in a very dangerous time in which expectations and reality are going in OPPOSITE directions. Economists are calling this the

This is week 7 of the war with Iran. Bulls predicted the war would be short. They were wrong. Not only is this war not short, but the war just escalated to include a double blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. That said, oil experts predicted that the global economy would implode by the end of April if the Hormuz remained shut. This is the middle of April and nothing has imploded so far. So who will be right in the end? The next two weeks should be decisive. In Phase 1 there was

The most bizarre aspect about this era isn't just Trump's increasingly deranged mental breakdown culminating in his threat to totally destroy Iranian civilization aka. what I call Level '11' End Times; the other bizarre aspect is how easily the mainstream business media can pretend that Trump's derangement syndrome is not an ongoing market risk factor. According to today's pundits, just like the trade war last year, this totally unexpected Iran "detour" is merely a speed bump

If you told anyone thirty years ago that the U.S. deficit would be 6% of GDP, the AI bubble would be bigger than the DotCom bubble, stock valuations would be at all time high, consumer sentiment at a 50 year low, the Strait of Hormuz is shut, the U.S. is waging an ongoing trade war against the entire world, and Donald Trump was president, anyone would think that investors would be panicking. But they're not. All of that risk can be easily swept away by simply ignoring it. The

Circus Donny is about to find out who is really in charge around here. In my last blog post "Now For The Main Event" , I surmised that Trump was about to begin an imminent ground invasion of Iran, based upon the escalating build-up of ground troops. That scenario is still very much on the table, however Wednesday night Trump raged in his address to the nation that he is planning to bomb Iran into the "Stone Ages". Iran has made it equally clear they will retaliate by destroyi

Writing Tuesday morning March 31st, another huge short covering rally is taking place on the optimism that the war will be ending "soon". Over the past several weeks we've seen this movie at least a dozen times, however, bulls keep believing it over and over again. Trump's goal with all of his massively contradictory messages was to lull Iran into a state of complacency while he built up ground forces in the region. However, the net effect of these "hopeful" message was to ro

This marks the end of week four of the U.S./Israel war on Iran, with no end in sight. Clearly Trump totally underestimated Iran's will and ability to go toe-to-toe in an ever-escalating war, as Iran has shown no sign of capitulation. The U.S. troop build-up continues in the background as Trump attempts to intimidate Iran into surrender. Both sides are far apart in their negotiation demands, because Trump's standard negotiation tactic of "escalating to de-escalate" is backfiri

Trump has been building up troops in the Middle East in order to prepare for his Plan B ground attack. We don't know exactly where ground troops will be deployed, but the highest probability target remains Kharg Island. Nevertheless, it doesn't matter where U.S. troops land, because the market reaction will be the same: Panic, over the idea that this war could go on for several months or longer, and in the process implode the global economy. Markets know that there are only a

This is now week four of the Iran war with no end in sight. The pattern of the war has stayed fairly consistent from the start - the U.S. and Israel pound Iran incessantly with their air superiority while Iran blocks the Strait of Hormuz with their superior tenacity. The strategic miscalculation the U.S. military made was believing that after having attacked Iran last June that they can just show up whenever they want and start carpet bombing the country without any consequen