St Bessent will save the world

Pretty cool that General Motors was able to retool a car factory to make the outer shells of the Patriot missiles. They've managed to make the delivery to Lockheed just 22 days after signing the contract. (22 days!!!!! We still got it...🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸) Lockheed says this work normally takes months or years for the previous supplier (General Dynamics) to fulfill. There's a strain of neoliberal thinking that says if domestic carmakers can’t compete, they should just be allowed to fail. No bailouts. Just let Japan or China make cars because of comparative advantage or whatever. Imagine if we had believed that automobile manufacturing was something to offshore. It's now clear that the argument for preserving that industrial base is not simply nostalgia for a previous bygone era. It simply is the case that you cannot improvise precision manufacturing overnight once it has disappeared.

Let's all take a moment to understand how self-serving it is for OpenAI, Anthropic and other execs of big hyperscalers to talk of slowing things down. 1. LLMs are not AI and won't be AGI. There is nothing AI to slow down. 2. Competition is coming up fast, slowing benefits incumbents. 3. IPOs need hype & puffery; "we are so awesome it could become dangerous" is hype & puffery 4. Cover for real uncontrollable slowing growth as IPOs look to be pushed out

yall this shit is 2hrs … LMFAAAOOOOO

A new SpongeBob episode, Band Geeks, earns the show’s highest ratings yet as it ends with an epic live-action Super Bowl homage.

Delusional Canadians on Twitter trying to convince themselves they can take the US in open conflict.

Why Stablecoins Could Create Massive Demand for U.S. Treasuries Please ❤️like, bookmark🔖, and 🔁share with fellow investors In this Short video, @TheMichaelEvery and @AdamTaggart discuss why stablecoins could become much more than a crypto or payments innovation — they could become a powerful tool of U.S. economic statecraft, creating structural global demand for dollars and U.S. Treasuries while potentially helping lower domestic borrowing costs. * Imagine trillions of dollars of global capital flowing into dollar-backed stablecoins whose reserves are held primarily in T-bills. Stablecoin issuers would need to acquire those Treasuries, creating an enormous new source of demand. More demand for T-bills means higher prices and, all else equal, lower yields. * But the bigger idea goes beyond Treasury rates. If dollar stablecoins become increasingly important outside the U.S., America could theoretically create two different dollar environments: strong international demand for dollar-backed assets while maintaining lower financing costs domestically. The U.S. could reinforce that demand by encouraging stablecoins to become a settlement mechanism for international trade. * Imports could increasingly be paid for with dollar stablecoins, while major commodity exporters could potentially be encouraged to accept them for energy. In that scenario, the traditional “petrodollar” begins evolving into a “petro-stablecoin.” Countries and companies that need energy would also need access to dollar stablecoins, creating another source of structural demand for dollar-denominated assets. * The balance-sheet implications are particularly interesting. If a stablecoin issuer holds a U.S. Treasury bill domestically and issues a digital token against it, a foreign exporter can receive that token while the underlying Treasury asset remains inside the U.S.-centered financial system. The foreign holder receives a dollar-denominated claim, but the reserve backing that claim remains anchored in U.S. government debt. * And expanding stablecoin supply does not automatically create additional U.S. government liabilities. The Treasury liability already exists when the T-bill is issued. The stablecoin issuer simply purchases that security and issues digital tokens backed by it. That creates a potentially powerful flywheel: global stablecoin demand → stablecoin issuance → T-bill purchases → greater Treasury demand → potentially lower U.S. funding costs → deeper global dollar adoption. * That’s why the stablecoin story may ultimately have far less to do with crypto speculation than with the future architecture of the global dollar system. If dollar stablecoins become a major settlement layer for global trade, commodities and payments, they could simultaneously extend dollar dominance and create massive new demand for U.S. government debt. The petrodollar may not disappear. It may simply be going digital. #stablecoins #USdollar #Treasuries #yields 💡 Get access to my notes with the key takeaways from this interview with @TheMichaelEvery by visiting my Substack (link below)⬇️

Who up dredging they strait

U.S. military confirmed what many long suspected: Iran never successfully deployed mines into the Strait and in fact were so incompetent the U.S. found fewer than 5 active mines in the entire region

Adding to the tsunami of stories about the world system we knew collapsing, my own humble effort with the one and only @adamtaggart of @thoughtfulmoney

At the start of the war, the opponents predicted: $200 a barrel oil (its $88 as I type this). Sunk US ships (none). Hundreds of US deaths (its around 20). Total disaster for the US geopolitical position (instead Iran shot at 13 different countries.) Now the big pro Iran argument is "Reuters, which hates Trump, said the US doesn't have enough munitions to keep shooting down the missiles Iran is barely launching anymore." Moving the goalposts to "Iran hasn't totally collapsed" from the initial war goals of both sides is just clickbait. The actual truth is that inflation in Iran is sky-high, especially for food, and Iran's oil export driven economy is in a state of near collapse. Current US strategy seems to be...just waiting for that.

Getting a lot of breakout signs over the past week. @TankerTrackers have been great on things as they’ve been shifting

🚨 Real-time tanker tracking shows the U.S. increasingly controls the flow of Persian Gulf oil while the Islamic Republic is being completely shut out of it. TankerTrackers reports at least 15 simultaneous ship-to-ship transfers underway in the Gulf of Oman, involving roughly 25 million barrels of crude oil, plus refined products. Oil from across the region continues moving. None of it is Iranian. The Islamic Republic spent decades threatening that control over the Strait of Hormuz gave it the power to choke Persian Gulf energy exports and hold the global economy hostage. Instead, enormous volumes are being transferred outside the most dangerous part of the chokepoint while Iranian exports remain under intense U.S. pressure. The contrast is striking. Regional oil keeps reaching global markets while the Islamic Republic watches its own oil revenues being strangled. There is also a brutal irony. Iran perfected ship-to-ship transfers as a tool for sanctions evasion. Now the same basic method is helping regional producers reduce the Islamic Republic’s ability to weaponize Hormuz. The regime threatened that nobody would export oil if Iran couldn’t. Instead, everybody else’s oil is moving while Iran is being isolated.

📗 Strait of Hormuz Satellite Imagery: Tracking Ships Gone Dark "Tankers have appeared to teleport inland, or sail in circles over an airport." 😂 Good article to learn more details about the difficulties of ship tracking in Hormuz. geopera.com/blog/strait-of-h…

I largely agree with the underlying American concern. If Canada and Mexico are going to benefit from preferential access to an integrated North American market, it is reasonable for the United States to expect that this access will not become a back door for Chinese transshipment, tariff circumvention, or other activities that undermine U.S. economic and security policy. That can reasonably include concerns about illicit finance and drug transshipment as well. Mexico appears to have been more receptive to American pressure on several of these issues than Canada. Where I differ is in how we should judge the current administration’s approach. The relevant test is not how confrontational the policy appears, but whether that confrontation produces the desired strategic result. Tariffs, economic pressure, and hard bargaining can all be legitimate tools of trade policy. One reasonable interpretation of Mexico’s response is that American pressure has worked. But Mexico also has unusually strong incentives to accommodate Washington. Its economy is deeply integrated with the United States, and Mexico must simultaneously manage American pressure over migration, border security, fentanyl, organized crime, cartel influence, and security cooperation. Cooperation on China and trade therefore has value to Mexico within a much broader and considerably more difficult bilateral relationship. That does not establish a quid pro quo, nor should we assume one. It does mean that Mexico’s cooperation cannot automatically be attributed to the effectiveness of confrontation alone. Canada has its own legitimate issues involving drugs, transshipment, illicit finance, and Chinese economic activity, so I would not give Ottawa a pass on the substance of the American concerns. My question is whether the way Washington has pursued those concerns makes Canadian cooperation more or less likely. Repeated tariff threats, public antagonism, and rhetoric questioning Canadian sovereignty raise the domestic political cost of cooperating with Washington. Measures that might otherwise be considered on their economic or security merits can become politically entangled with questions of sovereignty and resistance to American pressure. That does not excuse Canadian policy choices, nor does it prove Canada would have behaved differently under another administration. It simply means the consequences of American tactics should be considered alongside the legitimacy of American objectives. There is also a strategic tension here. The United States is asking its neighbors to reduce their economic exposure to China and deepen their alignment with the North American market while simultaneously creating greater uncertainty about their access to the U.S. market. Perhaps that uncertainty creates sufficient leverage to produce concessions. If so, the strategy deserves credit. But if it instead encourages Canada to diversify further toward China, that outcome should count against it. That is why I think the distinction between performance and results matters. I agree with much of the objective described here, and I do not object in principle to economic pressure as a means of achieving it. But escalation and confrontation are tools, not measures of success. The measures of success are more concrete: stronger rules-of-origin enforcement, less transshipment and tariff circumvention, better control of illicit trade and finance, greater scrutiny of Chinese investment intended to exploit North American market access, and closer Canadian and Mexican economic alignment with the United States. If those outcomes improve, the strategy is working. If they deteriorate while the confrontation intensifies, then we should be willing to distinguish the performance of toughness from the achievement of strategic results.

The US in 2026 lacks the leverage (trade and military-industrial) to control China. China is obviously too powerful now. Maybe 10-15 years ago it was possible but that moment has passed. It looks like the current US strategy is to apply leverage to smaller countries to form an economic and military industrial bloc which, together, does have the leverage to control China. For me, this is the best explanation of this Canada-US trade war (and other recent US-led international events). Chinese cars are banned in the US. Canada just started taking them in. This is a major economic, military industrial, AND political issue for the United States, and must be addressed. That may be why the US insists on controlling Canadian trade policy with other nations. Canada wants to be able to trade with China because its economy is otherwise dominated by US trade and because high resource low population Canada complements China (the opposite). In my humble opinion, the US is doing too much right now. We should be focusing on a smaller geographic area, and putting money and attention into reducing crime/drug use and improving education domestically for at least 10 years before we reassert ourselves. We do not have to control China. We can simply cooperate (or not) and compete (or not) with self-respect. *************** Some notes: These words and opinions are mine but were heavily influenced by the work of @ektrit and @TheMichaelEvery I wrote military industrial when referring to the differential between US and China, not military. I’m not qualified to speak on military alone. That said, we’re clearly both better off if it never comes to that.

MOTIVE: In 2019, Mark Carney was the head of the Bank of England, he called for the end of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency. He spoke of a New World Order and suggested the Chinese Renminbi as a successor. Full text: bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/…

Read this however many you times you need to do so in order for it to sink in

This angle of Ronald Acuña Jr.'s throw is absurd 😯 How did he stop his momentum?!

I’ve already commented on this video below once, but some takes on it from ‘sophisticates’ demand another. Yes, it’s funny to quip, “Bomb bond holders?” I laughed. But the U.S. is slipping global hegemon because it won WW2 by force (yes: with others); then built a benign, inclusive world architecture for 1/3 of us when others might have nuked a few capital cities and taken over the world; then won the Cold War, via the threat, and use, of force (yes: with others); then lobbied for a utopian neoliberal world architecture that was never going to work, as I argued over two decades ago, which has weakened it. We didn’t get to where we were pre-Trump via neoliberalism; we got there via *power*: neoliberalism was a villa built on violently cleared ‘jungle’, as Polanyi put it decades ago - and one that didn’t learn anything about the dangerous climate, flora, nor fauna there. If you really think the market treats powerless pacifists and nuclear-armed states as true equals when push comes to shove, I have a bridge to sell you. (And it goes nowhere.) There are a staggering number of Schmitt’s “Sovereign is he who decides the exception” examples out there already on various scales in various geographies. (As well as central banks buying their own bonds and this being treated as “sensible centrist technocracy”.) And sovereignty starts with power: sorry those thinking it’s solely to do with paperwork and courts. When Trump implies the U.S. military effectively backs the bond market, he’s not wrong. If you think that military can OR can’t project U.S. power globally as it once did, that matters VASTLY for market dynamics. Just don’t ask bond analysts to have any idea about it; they have as much of a clue there as generals do about bonds. Which speaks to why the U.S. is openly —and as predicted— going back to the pursuit of *power*, and a new economic and financial architecture to match, via economic statecraft that can join those dots. That has already seen massive intervention in parts of the economy. That will logically see massive intervention in markets —as we saw from 2008 to no real end economically, or politically looking at the current U.S. Watch and see what happens to the Fed and the Treasury. That will logically include the U.S. physically threatening others via action or INaction (“Nice NATO you have there…pity if anything happened to it…”), If you can’t see this you are either very kind; and/or very ideological; and/or not very well read; and/or the kind of person who got their lunch money taken at school and who now lives in a nice area where that doesn’t happen - but where your kids might be learning things about liberalism and capitalism that echo Leninism’s view of the world. It’s a depressing world where Schmitt is relevant again. But he is. Separate but related point: as I said to @izakaminska re: our global system crumbling, an inverse 70s is the 007-ties: spies, guns, war, world-shattering plots. Yet ‘James Bond’s “next chapter” needs to make 007 “relevant” to modern audiences, says Amazon MGM Studios boss’. radiotimes.com/movies/james-… If you think that’s not seeing the forest (or box office) for the trees, neither is thinking bond markets just happen without tanks, bombs, and Bond.