Narrative Control And Human Behavior   “Our human actions and reactions are not rooted in statistical data but are determined instead by emotions and sentiments — narratives drive our behaviour.” — Klaus Schwab,  Covid-19: The Great Reset , p. 246 By now, most of us recognize that all media is a battle space in the information war. We see competing narratives and grab on to the one that feels like the truth. But in recent years, our media feeds have been flooded with narrativ

Strait of Hormuz, the Dollar, and the Coming Energy Crisis  Iran is already turning the Strait of Hormuz into a geopolitical toll booth—restricting traffic, charging transit fees, and shutting out the US and its allies. If this continues, what happens to oil, trade, and the global economy, and is there anything the US military can do about it?  I did a bit of research. Definitions are important; poorly defined words can only confuse issues. A "strait" is a narrow, naturally o

Oil Is Over $100. The Strait Is Closed. The U.S. Just Blockaded Iran. And the S&P 500 Is Back to Where It Started.   A reader wrote yesterday, confused. The gist: there’s a war on, the  Strait of Hormuz  is closed, oil is above $100 — and the stock market just shrugs it all off. What gives? It’s a fair question. And I think a lot of people are asking some version of it right now. So let’s look at something. There’s a measure called the  CAPE  — the cyclically adjusted price-t

Downfall While we all know that the feds can ‘print’ money, what few realize is that the private sector has printing presses too. All sector debt in the US—household, corporate, and state, local, and federal government—hit $107 trillion by the end of 2025. Only recessions tend to slow debt growth by destroying money and credit. ‘ War is the state’s escape from a collapsed internal economy. ’ —Frank Chodorow Blowing things up didn’t work in Vietnam. It didn’t work in Iraq. It

Welcome To The Theater Of The Absurd The real world no longer matters, what matters is the performance on stage. Welcome to the Theater of the Absurd. In the present era,  all the world is a stage  and everything is a performance on that stage: welcome to the Theater of the Absurd , a Hollywood set fabricated of cardboard and plaster made to look like gold leaf and marble columns, where the contraptions and ropes that do the magic are hidden behind purple velvet drapery. Ever

The Roman Empire's Fatal Mistake—and America May Be Repeating It in Iran Crassus was one of the richest and most powerful men in Rome. He rose to the top alongside Julius Caesar and Pompey as part of the First Triumvirate, an informal three-man alliance that dominated Roman politics even though it was not an official office. Crassus wanted military glory to match his wealth and political influence, so in 53 BC he led a Roman invasion of the Parthian Empire, which then ruled m

"Modern Money Only Works By Cheating": If You're Long Bitcoin (Or Not Long Bitcoin), Read This... Tl;dr:   Bitcoin exists not to replace fiat money but as a provocative "hard object" in an elastic monetary world. Modern fiat succeeds by cheating - deferring pain, socializing losses, and bending rules to absorb crises (Weimar rigidity led to hyperinflation; 1929 rigidity was abandoned for elasticity in the 1930s; 2008 and COVID responses bent rules to survive). Fiat buys time

Commodities Will Be The Biggest Trade Of The Next Five Years - Michael Hartnett's Bold Call Bank of America CIO Michael Hartnett declares commodities will dominate the second half of the 2020s as globalization gives way to nationalism, fiscal excess drives inflation hedging, and nations scramble for chips, rare earths, minerals, and oil to win the AI and energy wars. Canada's vast, stable-jurisdiction resources position its mining sector as a prime beneficiary.   I. Introduct

Most ambition is just unresolved pain. ** A lot of people practice what's fun, but the very best practice what no one wants to. *** Pressure feels like a threat, but it's not. You feel pressure when your decisions matter, and people depend on you. It can feel uncomfortable at times, but it's also a privilege. When no one relies on you — when no one expects something from you — you're irrelevant. Pressure is a privilege. Insights * Writer Alice Rollins on what makes something

Red in tooth and claw Overall, an estimated 20 to 40 million people died in the Mongol conquests. And Genghis, taking advantage of the young women who were captured, has left more descendants than any other known human. “ Raising the stakes so high beforehand, he [Trump] maximized the damage to [...] global perceptions of U.S. power...this is a clear strategic defeat for the U.S .” —Jennifer Kavanagh, the former director of RAND’s Army Strategy program The costs are being tal

"Shocking Levels Of Distress": CMBS Delinquencies Unexpectedly Soar To COVID Highs With market focused on private credit as the next credit market crisis vortex, many have forgotten that CMBS, the asset class that was smashed in the aftermath of covid as hundreds of office buildings were suddenly left vacant, has been teetering on the edge for years. For some, it proved to be a lucrative bet as the "next big short" after various office-heavy CMBX tranches collapsed in 2020 an

The Housing Affordability Trap Donald Trump sure has a strange approach to making housing more "affordable". He apparently wants lower costs for buyers and higher prices for owners and sellers! " I don’t want to drive housing prices down .  I want to drive housing prices up for people who own their homes." Needless to say, as the Donald’s scrambles about seeking housing affordability "solutions", we’d rather suspect that higher house prices are not quite what the economic doc

The Fog of Peace In this plan, America is fundamentally committed to guaranteeing non-aggression, the continuation of Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz, the acceptance of enrichment, the lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions, the termination of all resolutions of the Security Council and the Board of Governors, the payment of Iran’s damages, the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from the region, and the cessation of war on all fronts, including against the hero

The Market Law Of One Price—How The Donald Bombed Energy Consumers, Too The Donald plunged into one hell of a hornets nest when he took the bait from Bibi Netanyahu and launched an all out "kinetic" war on Iran (as distinguished from the brutal economic war Washington has been waging for decades). But now that the gasoline pump price has breached $4/gallon and is heading higher, he’s desperately looking for an off-ramp. Yet the one he has seized upon in the last 48 hours or s

The New Financial Iron Curtain: Taxes, Capital Controls, and the War on Your Wealth There is a term called "gating" in the fund management world. It refers to blocking investors from redeeming their funds. Funds do this sometimes as a precaution… and other times when they are in the poo. Well, governments are the same. When they are in the poo, they also resort to their version of gating. It’s just called taxes. I’ve always loved the Dutchies. Growing up in South Africa with

It’s You Against Everyone  You are born into a system that feels natural because you never saw the version of life before it. From your first day of awareness, everything already exists. The rules, the expectations, [music] the structures, the invisible boundaries. You inherit them before you question them. That is what makes it powerful. There is no moment where someone sits you down and explains the full picture. Instead, it is absorbed gradually through routine, through re

Nobody wakes up thinking about your problems. That truth feels harsh when you first hear it. Yet it is freeing once you accept it. People are busy carrying their own weight. They have their own stress, their own fears, their own plans. Your story matters to you because you lived it. To others, it is [music] just information. This is not cruelty. This is how life works. When you understand this, you stop expecting sympathy to carry you. You stop waiting for someone to notice y

The Present Age The present age is the age of advertisement. Nothing happens. But what does happen is instant notification. Have you ever felt that the modern world is sort of empty in a way that is difficult to define? You trudge along in your day-to-day existence, but it all has an underlying pointlessness to it. It is like you are watching yourself just get through life without ever truly engaging with it. Philosophers have given this problem a whole host of analyses over

Courage: The Most Important Trait (Philosophy & Psychology) Courage isn't a brilliant dash, a daring deed in a moment's flash. It isn't an instantaneous thing born of despair with a sudden spring. It isn't a creature of flickered hope or the final tug at some slipping rope, but it's something deep in the soul of man that is working always to serve some plan. Courage isn't the last resort in the work of life or the game of sport. It isn't a thing that a man can call at some fu