This is an ETTD story, right?
Or is this the ETTD story?
and of course…
Tiger Beat on the Potomac (thanks Charlie) email thingie ledes with (emphasis mine):
A NEW PHASE: It’s Day 20 of the war in Iran, and the risk of a major escalation is spiraling fast.
The president speaks: Trump last night demanded Israel and Iran halt their tit-for-tat strikes against the vital infrastructure serving the world’s largest gas field. Analysts now fear an all-out energy war, with catastrophic effects for global supplies. Remember: This stuff doesn’t get fixed quickly once it’s been blown up.
While you were sleeping: Qatar said its oil fields got hit by Iran a second time last night. Markets are trembling, with Japan’s Nikkei down 3 percent overnight. (Keep a close eye on the Dow when it opens this morning.) “This latest escalation feels like a turning point for markets, because the conflict is no longer just about military headlines or Strait of Hormuz closure,” Charu Chanana, chief investment strategist at Saxo in Singapore, tells Reuters. “It is now hitting the plumbing of the global energy system.”
Get ready: This latest energy shock hits a U.S. economy increasingly vulnerable to risk, POLITICO’s Morning Money author Sam Sutton reports. “The guardrails that protected the U.S. economy from Trump’s policy jolts are wearing thin,” he writes. “Inflation is ticking higher … Hiring has stagnated, wage growth has fallen, and market-based interest rates are climbing.” Gregory Daco, EY-Parthenon’s chief economist, tells Sam that the “typical buffers that would prevent any type of external shock — like an oil price shock — from disproportionately affecting the economy are smaller than usual.”
Gulp: No wonder Trump is suddenly keen to halt the escalation. His dramatic intervention last night — a long Truth Social post promising Israel will carry out no further attacks on energy infrastructure, and demanding Iran pledge the same — carried with it a sizable threat. If Iranian strikes on Qatari oil fields continue, Trump said, America “will massively blow up the entirety of the South Pars Gas Field” — the Iranian portion of the colossal natural gas field that supplies energy around the world.
He’s nuts.
And now, an observation about the Chimpy McStagger threshold:
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:e62gb2ushvtvjvqcbrxeaw2n?ref_src=embed&...
Never fear, Cap’n Guyliner is here to make us feel better:
As they say in the South upon being handed a casserole, “Count your blessings, it could have been a pie.”
