Mario and I discussed the escalating tensions in the Middle East, the draining of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, oil market manipulation, and China’s surprising role in keeping prices low.
On Reinvent Money, we discussed the puzzling state of oil inventories and prices, potential market interventions, the situations in Ukraine and the Middle East, gold’s behavior, and broader economic risks ahead.
Something that has been puzzling me for the last month or so is the Aluminum futures market. Aluminium in London has returned to a normal, undisrupted state, with pre-war prices, and even a little contango up front. A little odd given the damage, but OK. But the Comex futures are in severe backwardation. I watched someone cross to the $250 for rolling short July to short August. That’s right, someone just paid 8% to rent Aluminum for one month.
Based upon my conversation with Grok, the Marxists seem to think that AI will exacerbate the Wealth gap and make the divide between the rich and poor even more sharp, narrow, and extreme creating a Revolutionary situation in the Society.
According to Grok, the only way out is to socialize or nationalize AI to generate wealth for all of society. If the AI’s are left in private hands, then the likely solution will be for the Owners to use the AI to repress the People.
China will likely socialize the AI’s whereas the U.S. will leave the AI’s in private hands.
I wonder why the great Michael Yon leaves open the question of whether the Zi…nsts will succeed in creating “The Greater Israel Project”?
Given that every War in the Middle East (with the arguable exception of Gulf War I) has been a disaster, it seems like an audacious plan to grab Iran, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey would quickly go down in flames?
Chris, you did an excellent extemporaneous speech on American values. My country has lost its sense of unity, values, and culture. No way exists to instill them in the young people anymore. The media is for whatever works. The degradation of Europe is a lesson without a teacher. The teachers rely on school boards to tell them what to teach and board members are hardly paragons of virtue, truth or honesty. Universities have become agents of the political left. Business, like the media could care less about culture and unity. The attitude is just get the job done and could care less about the mayhem their employees may cause elsewhere. America is left with little more than what money can teach and what it teaches is power and avarice. As for the billionaires almost all are very strange, hopelessly unbalanced people.
With your gifts, you could really help the youth of America, who really have nowhere to turn for structure and guidance.
Could someone comment on Graham Summers’ claim that AI isn’t a bubble?
Micron is making bank apparently. My friend has gone all-in in the stock market. In the last year I made $100 k on shiny rocks, he made $30 million in the stock market.
"What is clear, right now, is that the AI revolution is currently translating to higher profits. And until this trend reverses, it is unlikely that a bear market will hit.
First and foremost, profits are increasing. This year, 2026, S&P 500 profits are on track to grow 23%. As Warren Pies notes, since 1995 there have been six instances in which corporate profits grew by over 20%. All but one of them saw the S&P 500 rise by double digits. The one outlier was 2018, when the Fed aggressively tightened monetary policy resulting in a mini-bear market into year-end."
For the “Greater Israel Project” to succeed the US will ultimately have to be removed from the region. The region is far too important for any superpower to simply ignore, and so long as the US remained Israel would be chained to its interests which are different from their own.
The US is far too powerful for that to be done with one fell swoop, and so it appears that it was bled, slowly, in forever wars of dubious value to the average person (while the collaborators profited greatly from it).
Do they actually like “the West”? Or have they always harbored resentment towards “Rome”?
Apparently, Washington DC, or a part of it, was also called “Rome” at one point.
To understand History’s Shadow is to understand … reality(?) or am I just choosing shade because the temp over 100.
Here I would like to share a link to JSTOR where I found this amazing periodical image of one of the greatest shadow masters of America, which resonates with todays reality: Overthrow on JSTOR
Is anyone researching how the American teenagers and 20-somethings now think, and how they view the world generally? I’ve heard generalized remarks and anecdotes that members of the young Chinese generations now tend to be very “Mean”, but I don’t know what this means?
I recall from my first trip to Cambodia in the mid-1990’s that some young Cambodian blokes post-Khmer Rouge genocide seemed to literally admire the ruthless, powerful “…very strange, hopelessly unbalanced people.”
Does this also describe young Americans today? My impression is that young people think that you’re literally a “Huge Idiot” unless you’ve got tens of millions of dollars….
“My country has lost its sense of unity, values, and culture. No way exists to instill them in the young people anymore. The media is for whatever works. The degradation of Europe is a lesson without a teacher. The teachers rely on school boards to tell them what to teach and board members are hardly paragons of virtue, truth or honesty. Universities have become agents of the political left. Business, like the media could care less about culture and unity. The attitude is just get the job done and could care less about the mayhem their employees may cause elsewhere. America is left with little more than what money can teach and what it teaches is power and avarice. As for the billionaires almost all are very strange, hopelessly unbalanced people.”
“Business, like the media could care less about culture and unity. The attitude is just get the job done and could care less about the mayhem their employees may cause elsewhere. America is left with little more than what money can teach and what it teaches is power and avarice. As for the billionaires almost all are very strange, hopelessly unbalanced people.”
“After Russia breaks the “Fortress Belt”, there is almost zero Ukrainian defenses left.”
This sounds like yet another one of those things we have been kept on tenterhooks about for years.
Ukraine about to collapse
Oil about to run out and skyrocket
Currencies and Japan about to go down the pan
Comex about to default
A good politician about to get elected and/or do something
Deportations about to happen
Politicians about to be arrested over Epstein/Panama Papers/911/Kennedy Assas/Pearl Harbour/the death of Jesus … etc etc
There’s always a new “this weeks reason why” (I got it all wrong - but also didn’t get it wrong - please continue subscribing - for the past X years) and some of them are getting increasingly complicated.
Sorry. Not aimed at you. Some may have picked up from recent posts that I’m increasingly cynical and tired of the various internet commentators out there. And, I guess, affairs in general. Time to go and spend time in my woodland! That’s a super happy place away from it all!
you are correct that there is lots of noise, chaff, distraction. That is an integral part of psych ops, or 5th (6th…). gen warfare. There is a valid thread in there, IMO just keeping focused (resilient) is the goal, spotting the planted alarm(s) for what ii is. Propaganda is being cranked up, fog generated, the losing side now desperate for advantage
Well, our generals, politicians, and MSM have made those claims of Russia blustering then straw manned them for all those years. Neither the Russian government nor Russian active duty generals have said anything other than what they’ve faced via drone warfare and their methodic movements on the battlefield.
Having watched daily up until last Feb 28th the geolocation, cell mappers, casualty exchanges that have never been recognised by any western politician, media outlet or general, Russia has been doing what they promised to do after their asses were waxed in May, ‘22.
If you’ve watched their slow movements toward the Dneiper along the over 1200 mile front since Dec ‘23, these past few weeks have been extremely fast in comparison. Their recent destruction of simple Uke defense, gas stations throughout the north and central parts if Ukraine (east of the Dneiper), has crippled Ukraine’s defenses.
Russia never blustered. The west has then mocked what they assigned as Russia’s strategy. They’ve been moving at their own speed, ignoring the west’s lies and bluster. The absence of the EU and US military capacity by orders of magnitude compared with Russia’s has also been ignored since Dec, 2023.
OK, the list is far short of the predictions list, but a lot is actually happening. Not decades worth in the space of weeks, but also not weeks worth in the space of decades. We’re up to the 1:1 part. You have to wait a whole year for a year to happen, sorry.
I’m reminded of playing Hearts of Iron 4. At the start, in most countries, there’s not much to do. But as World Tension rises, the effort to justify a war falls dramatically, and various government types can start wars with minimal effort. Our World Tension is rising and wars are sprouting. But we’re still years away from the situation where the big players are too busy to settle Thailand vs Cambodia.
