Jason Sattler writes:

Everyone has finally picked up the pattern. When the stock market is open, Donald Trump is a peacemaker — Mr. Art of the Deal. Then the closing bell rings and the monster awakes. He becomes the sort of bloodthirsty beast who nods along to Pete Hegseth quoting Pulp Fiction as if it’s the Bible. And the march to global war continues.

The rally that followed his latest peace headfake made real people real money. The peace was a fraud. And it’s like the tenth time he’s done it, just about Iran?

This market-rigging has no institutional check that can halt it, given that the Republicans in Congress have gone full Putin’s Duma over the war, despite some grumblings. And there’s simply no way to shut this man up. The Fed cannot fact-check a presidential ceasefire tweet. The bond market can price in risk, but cannot indict a man for manufacturing fake peace treaties timed to trading hours, especially not when so many people are getting rich off the volatility. And the crimes central to the whole charade will never be investigated by the crowd in power, especially because we can’t get the FBI Director out of bed.

But we need to understand, as badly as the rich want to be lied to, the mess Trump has gotten him and us into will only be evaded by a miracle. And that miracle would have to begin with the people who want to be lied to the most getting a grip and recognizing they’re the imaginary bridge under Trump, who weeks ago walked us off a cliff.

We’re passing day 50 of what Robert Pape is calling a supply shock, not a price shock. The distinction matters the way a diagnosis matters. Price spike becomes physical shortage becomes economic contraction — and we have already crossed into step two. The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly 20% of global oil; it is now constrained by both Iran and the United States. Factories may not slow down when costs rise, though whole airlines might. But they definitely stop when materials don’t arrive.

Pape’s sequence from here is predictable: Asia first, then Europe, then global compression. The U.S. won’t be spared. Energy independence can’t protect a globally integrated economy from a supply chain seizure.

All that can change is the U.S. backing out of the region and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump can’t do either because he refuses to accept all the leverage he gave up by starting this disastrous war and giving the people he claims are too dangerous to run a peaceful nuclear program the power to choke out the world’s economy. [Continue reading…]