Debt Rattle August 12 2026

“The Trump Administration Has Revoked More Than 175,000 Visas. Here’s Who’s Included in the Crackdown” Time

We have more than 200,000 visas operational at any one time? Many, many, many more? How many are there? For why? Wtf? TIME thinks this is a bad thing?

Yesterday’s headline was Hunter Biden and Tucker Carlson came out in favor of each other? Tucker, who read, reported, then refused to continue with Hunter’s laptop back when, now trusts Hunter that it wasn’t his. It was a Jooooooish laptop. ‘Cause Hunter sez.

What. The Literal.

Yup, that Tucker, a Pro-Hunter Biden guy. Hunter was all innocent, got a bad rap. Presidential material!

Nothing says “I’m Above the Fray, America First” like promoting Child Pedo (as point of official legal fact, in Thailand) human trafficker (as point of official legal fact, last month) Hunter Biden, and calling him and his father (“Pedo Pete”) innocent and personal friends and allies. Yup. People of America rejoice! your twin saviours are here. Backed by a woman who fled the country a day after she cashed her Congressional pension.

She said yesterday not to vote for Republicans, so I guess MTG and Tucker are the Kamala Harris/Hunter Biden Party now. That should go over well.

Also, if this is too obvious to be obvious, too dumb to be dumb, it’s something else. They are up to something else. Weasels are incapable of thinking in a straight line. They’re crooked as a dog’s hind leg.

“Voters are sick of the 2-party system. A new poll shows they’re open to big changes” NPR

60 seconds after Tucker starts a run. What are the odds??? And NPR is of course working for the same oligarchs. Always has. “Ford Foundation” “Bill and Melinda Gates”. “Carnegie”. So it’s all about how splitting the vote is a GOOD thing now. Wait! Didn’t they say Jill Stein, Jimmy Dore, Bernie Sanders, Ralph Nader, all split the vote and Were traitors to be shot? Huh. Well, I guess it’s a brand new day. All laws and physics true last week aren’t true now. Winston adjusted those records.

“Trump Weighs Federal Challenge To Mamdani’s Socialist Tax “Experiment,” Warns It Will Doom NYC

I don’t know about you, but I think this is a Beta. Like they Beta tested Argentina, which went Waaaaaaaaay better than anyone expected. El Salvador, Waaaaaaaay easier than anyone expected. But NYC gets a much needed re-set. And it’s all the DSA’s fault. All prices reset, property transfers, new laws are enacted, clean sweep for a pro-business New York on the other side, DNC unable to win for a generation. All Mamdani’s fault. Any losses: Democrat’s fault. And it is, sort of.
You can’t clean sweep, clean up the problems without this “Crash”. But the Crash can’t be Republicans, Trump’s fault. Which is pretty easy, since in general it isn’t. I’d pay anything I I had just to keep the DSA talking and in the news every day. You don’t even have to trick them into anything, it’s magic. What they say and do naturally is crazier and more violent than anything I can make up.

“Ex-DSA Member Blows Whistle Over “Mob Tactics” Used On Dissenters

We all know that, they backstab and cancel each other harder than even us. “Democrats Shocked By The Cancel Culture They Built”

“After Mass Migrant Invasion, 5 Girls Under 14 Reportedly Raped In Ceuta

How many over 14? A: Who cares? They don’t care about the ones under 14 either. Socialism at work, or they’d be mad, wouldn’t they? They’re not mad about it, or the visitors. They’re happy.

“Iran’s Military Command Reshuffle Digs in for ‘Hardline’ Confrontation: US Must Meet All Demands For Hormuz Opening” (Pic of a guy who isn’t alive, only pretending, with the flag of a nation now in 31 parts)

Please never open it. Please, please, please.

They can always snipe one ship and always will. But what good is that? What good does that do them unless they can make it pay? They are now Somalia, congratulations.

“Now, the new supreme leader, Khamenei’s son Mojtaba” ...who is dead and doing nothing, more of a puppet than even Joe Biden was, and “Ruling” by AI autopen…

“Iran’s Leader has appointed 6 top military commanders:”

Why would I believe any of this? Why would they give the actual names? They’re also not appointed, since the leader that appointed them, didn’t. They just PRETEND they are appointed by a PRETEND leader. All this Signaling, Pretending, running into the 2,000lb bomb Reality of “Make Me”.

“, people have been leaking that there are not enough Patriot missiles, for example, or Harpoon missiles, older ones, Tomahawk missiles. We’ve heard there are not enough bunker busters. I don’t know if any of this is true, but it’s been leaking.”

Leaking on purpose, duh. And finding the moles. This is always going on, we’ve seen it a dozen times. Whoops, not this time! This time the Reporters iz Schmartz!

“Why the Air Force LIED about the B-2’S MAX PAYLOAD” – Youtube.

The military LIES about their capabilities? Instead of being honest to the enemy? So as to critically misguide them and CAUSE (i.e. Iran) to think they should keep going since our 6-gun is blank? Jesus Christ they’re stupid. Or maybe they’re not (see Marandi yesterday) but reporters sure are. There’s no SR71 Blackbird either and we have no space planes. VDH says we have 50% — who knows – but that means we can run another whole war on Iran again today. We also didn’t use the massive busters, so 95% of those. We also have new stuff we haven’t admitted we have, so 100% of that, whatever it is. Blue Space lasers that never run dry. Right? Or only Lahania have those?

“why Trump is so angry, is we have enough, we have about 40% or 50%, likely, of our arsenal, …While we’re engaged with Ukraine and Iran, they might want to try to see if they could go into Taiwan, and we wouldn’t have enough missiles.”

He is not angry, it’s a con, we are clearly NOT engaged in Ukraine OR Taiwan, so none of that is relevant. Also the “Leak” is up to something, I mean Duh, the WaPo hasn’t reported accurately in 20 years and is literally a direct merger with the CIA. They’re the Google of news.

“”Warsh can talk tough, but the math indicates he has no choice but to keep the printing presses rolling”

Warsh merely prints what Congress orders him to. That’s it. Nice of Congress to tell him not to and blame him for doing what is their job. …Or for us. We showed the waste, showed DOGE, showed dozens of others. About half the country would go mad if you cut a dollar. Nevermind why, or Congress: that’s US. I don’t do it, but everyone I know will. There are like 10% of us left who would even try. So be practical: what do you do then? Don’t bitch: solve it.

The Left would “Burn it all down” and kill their next 160 Million people. For the Oligarchs. Is that your plan, or would you like something better?

Today:
“Karoline Leavitt says today’s Democratic Party is no longer the party of JFK or even Barack Obama, warning it has been taken over by a radical far-left”

Always has been. This was the same natural outcome of their foundational premises with Woodrow Wilson, 1912. FDR’s Bureaucratic Statism, 1942. He was “Leader-for-life. Don’t know why it took 100 years to see the obvious. Their principles of “Helping” – that is, telling everyone what to do – don’t have any natural end point. The end point is Stalin.

“Elon Musk: “My essential philosophy is curiosity”

There’s a difference here. That means you start with what DOESN’T work, where the pieces do NOT fit correctly. The Appeal to Authority, textbook people never look there and cite ONLY the things we DO know – but know wrongly. They attack YOU if you point out places their answers don’t fit. They are therefor violently Anti-Science and Anti-progress. You cannot progress by citing scripture. Worse, they don’t even understand the science of what they’re saying, nor examine their own contradictions.

“• I Liked the Dems Better When AOC Was Their Craziest Commie (Stephen Kruiser)

AOC say She no Woke. Woke is Cray-Cray! She was never Woke, what you talkin’ about? She als don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no DSA. …While she is STILL a member.

If only there weren’t Tucker THAT would have been the craziest thing said all week.

““During lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.”

You mean rhetoric like rounding everyone up and murdering them with lack of access to health care at a minimum? It’s not the “Signaling” we need you to refute. It’s the fact of you doing it.

“Pledging to freeze rent prices and wants to borrow $70 billion for more affordable housing.”

Yes, well Rents have spiked 10% in months. He’s going to go to BANKERS and borrow $70 Billion – for one CITY!!! — from OLIGARCHS. Socialism 101. What’s Florida’s standing debt, for comparison? ($25B)

He’s going to add that in one MINUTE.

“• Radical DSA Platform Grabs Spotlight As Candidates Surge In Primaries (JTN)

One of the two has all the attention, and that means they win. …Exactly as I point out with Trump, where THEY are the ones who empower him and keep him both in office and with unlimited power to act. Not the Republicans, that’s for sure! The LEFT, Media.

“CNN hunts down and confronts a doctor for spreading “misinformation” online”

CNN, a Corporation run by Oligarchs, joins with another Corporation Run by Oligarchs, to MERGE WITH GOVERNMENT, and FORCE people to take live human experiments using their infinite Police State and Social campaign. So as they are all Billionaire Oligarchs, in a fascist merger with State, showing EVERY feature of Fascism, where CNN – Anchored by another BILLIONAIRE Oligarch (Vanderbilt) family, and aligned with ANOTHER Billionaire Oligarch family (Getty) and working closely with a THIRD Oligarch family (Cuomo) while literally having CIA agents both as guests and anchors —

Well, That’s why I trust CNN today implicitly! Whatever they say about Trump and Iran must be true!

So long as they are the mouthpiece of the CIA-Oligarch-Fascist merger, how could they lie? Most trusted name in news to me! After RussiaRussiaRussia I’d never doubt how many missiles they say we have! …While they continue to hunt down normal Americans at home and harm them. (Don Lemon)

“• Massachusetts Legalizes Abortion Up To Birth As Liberals Cheer (MN)

Yeah, but they’d never move forward from this into open Eugenics and murder. Oh they did in Canada? Starting almost the very day MAID was passed? And reduced the age to “sad children of any age”? Yup, 100% of the time, for people who applaud fascists in public, as both they, and the Democrats do.

And look at all those happy women! They’re going to have abortions of healthy babies ONE DAY before birth, save themselves the trouble of stretch marks. WHACK! Crack that baby on the head, just as we said yesterday, our most unconscionable arch-enemies did, cracking that infant’s head against the cabin wall. Considered a war crime in all cultures over all time, ever. Women have never been happier, I think. MAID in the shade.

Obviously no legal break, so “South Park did it first” your 37th trimester abortion. Why not? Life isn’t sacred, it’s just “A mass of cells”. Just like you are, comrade.

““Nice SROs did not want to arrest children. Nice police officers thought of themselves as well-meaning.”

Argument rests on Telepathy. ONLY THEY are aware that all white people, and all policemen – even the black ones – are seething cauldrons of racism and hate. You can’t see it, even they themselves are unaware of it. But they’re Demonicly-driven Sinners! …Stop me if this sounds familiar. Like you saw this in Massachusetts, 1650. Only Father Sergio of the Inquisition knows! Only AWFULs know what’s inside your secret mind, Mom.

Or put shortly: You are dangerously, criminally insane.

“Three Things We can Do Now as the US Empire Ends”

Yay! We’re winning! So “Karen” is happy! She says “Thank you sooooo much President Trump, how can we ever repay you?” Right? Or else she must love and want Empire to stay, right? She and I seem to disagree.

She supports anarchy, in fact! We should have the structure and power of the Manhattan Indians, only that would be moral! And even that is almost too much power. Because that will work wonderfully to keep off our enemies worldwide including…hmmm…English man o’ war. Yes! She’s a genius.

So she’s disbanding the CIA then, right? Scattering it to the winds? Leaving Bill Gates, ChatGPT and Elon Musk in control?
I’m sure there is no downside to this, especially to Globalists and the Epstein Class. Recommend!

We can’t vote our way out of this matrix
We can vote for politicians, but the bankers hold all the power and we’ve no way to overturn their policies at the ballot box. This will have to be fought, sooner or later.
Alex Krainer
Aug 12, 2026

Western “liberal democracies” seem stuck on the road to nowhere. The most dismaying aspect of this is that voters seem entirely unable to effect any course correction of their nations’ ruinous trajectories. If anything, we are only hurling toward collapse faster and with greater conviction. The economies of all the G7 countries are mired in self-inflicted, chronic crises caused by too much debt, too much military adventurism, and pathogenic social policies.

And yet, our elected officials seem determined to deliver more of the same. Even when the people vote for change, the candidates who propose changes are either disqualified from holding office, sabotaged in their work, or otherwise co-opted into perpetuating the same agendas that the voters rejected. The most obvious example was President Trump who won three elections on his MAGA platform, promising to end the forever wars, bring troops home and make the United States a global manufacturing superpower.

The MAGA mirage
Trump had a certain credibility. For one thing, he wasn’t a typical politician and in many ways, his rhetoric seemed like s a breath of fresh air. During his last electoral campaign he called on voters to join him in the battle against the global financier class, suggesting that he understood the ultimate source of our problems. Unlike his predecessors, he didn’t start any new wars during his first term, and tried to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan and Syria. He even talked about withdrawing them from Germany and made a serious attempt to reconcile the two Koreas.

During the first year of his second term he re-established US diplomatic relations with Russia, pacified the Balkans (which were on the precipice of a major war, brokered a cessation of hostilities between India and Pakistan and between Azerbaijan and Armenia. He even pressured the Israeli government to stop their rampage in Gaza and allow humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people.

Then, in February of this year, he shocked the world and many of his supporters by joining the Israeli attack against Iran which he clearly and explicitly promised to his voters that he would not do. It seems that when push comes to shove, our elected leaders can all somehow be coerced to implement policies that serve certain interests, regardless of what the voters demand.

This is even more obvious in the case of Great Britain where for decades, cabinet after cabinet, whether conservative or labour, pursued the same ruinous policies without even pretending that there’s any other alternative on the menu. The will of the British people is hardly an afterthought for their supposed servants in the political class. The same can be said about France and Germany, none of which are ever shy about lecturing other nations about “our values,” freedom, prosperity, human rights, transparency, etc.

What’s the explanation?
If economic, social, and foreign policies are voter-proof, we must conclude that the policies must be formulated, not at the grassroots, but elsewhere. But that “elsewhere” is clearly concealed from view and anyone who begins to notice is dismissed as a communist, conspiracy theorist, transphobe, islamophobe, antisemite, antivaxxer, or some such label. We are also instructed never to ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. Stuff just happens because we somehow consistently elect the most incompetent losers to shape our future. So unlucky!

However, even if they are incompetent losers, our politicians seem to be strangely consistent in their policies, and if we draw the line under their performance, it’s clear that we can never seem to get what we want (peace, prosperity, clean and safe streets, etc.), but keep getting more and more of what we don’t want (more taxes, more immigration, more surveillance, more censorship, more wars…). The system’s performance is clearly not random. It follows that there must be some driving force behind it all, and that driving force must have certain objectives in its sights.

About this we have many clues almost as soon as we open our eyes and observe what’s presented around us. Perhaps the best clue was dropped by Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who said, “Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.” Another clue was dropped by the current Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, a former Goldman Sachs banker and governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.

In November 2020 Carney was the appointed global czar in charge of fighting climate change and at that time, he smugly explained how he planned to do that:

“We need a whole economy transition… it’s really about looking for, and at the transition plans from all companies and backing those who are part of the solution and talking capital away from those who are part of the problem.”

Carney’s statement revealed that the bankers have the power to fund their pet projects and kill the ones they don’t care for. If they can effect “a whole economy transition,” then they hold the power to shape the future of society. We might like freedom, but they prefer us under surveillance, so we get surveillance. We might like peace, but they need wars, so we get wars. We might like to feed our children healthy foods, but they prefer that we all eat fake meat and insect fodder, so they’re killing cows and building insect farms. That, by the way, is part of Carney’s fight against climate change, since science says that cows are destroying the planet.

Another important clue came from Britain’s former Prime Minister Liz Truss. In February 2024 she appeared in Steve Bannon‘s War Room and said this:

“What I found out when I got into No. 10 is, I thought that if I got to the top of the tree, I would be able to implement those conservative policies… And what I discovered was that I was not holding the levers. The levers were held by the Bank of England, by the Office of Budget Responsibility, they weren’t held by the Prime Minister or the Chancellor…”

Truss then pointed out the obvious problem with this: you can sack the Prime Minister, but you can’t sack the BOE officials who hold the levers of power. This all dovetails with the quote that, “the issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the bankers.”

That quote has been widely, but mistakenly attributed to Lord Acton (including by yours, truly). Thanks to AI, I was able to check and find its real author, so I thought I’d set the record straight: apparently, it was Sir Alexander James Edmund Cockburn (also known as Alexander Cockburn), Lord Chief Justice of England from 1859 until his death in 1880.

It’ll have to be fought, sooner or later…
If we accept the premise that the bankers are in charge, and not our democratically elected officials, we can begin to analyze why bankers do what they do, and what incentives drive their conduct. Thankfully, that’s not as complicated as it seems. In a nutshell, Bankers are after quality collateral, wherever and in whatever form it can be found. Collateral enables bankers to issue loans, which become assets on their institutions’ balance sheets, and which all the rest of us get to repay with interest.

If they can issue and control a nation’s money, and the rest of us are obliged to use that money (or else..), then all our debts become their assets. Effectively, we all become their serfs and our democracies provide no mechanism for us to overturn that arrangement at the ballot box, since our central banks are all “independent.” As Alan Greenspan famously told us, no institution of government can overturn the decisions made by the Fed. Therefore, it will have to be fought, sooner or later.

Alex Krainer – @NakedHedgie is the creator of I-System Trend Following and publisher of daily TrendCompass investor reports which cover over 200 financial and commodities markets. One-month test drive is always free of charge, no jumping through hoops to cancel. To start your trial subscription, drop us an email at TrendCompass@ISystem-TF.com, or:

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Makkah Joint Defence Agreement is Not a Threat to India

HORMUZ AND JAPAN TO CRASH U.S. ECONOMY – w/ David Lin

USS Lincoln in FATAL Mutiny, Iran FORCES US Navy to TURN on Itself | Larry Johnson

The ZAPPER – Trump’s Secret Wake-up Assistant

CALAMITY: Oil Blows out. So Does War. So Does Finance. So Will Food.
Monday’s headlines collide into a major storm of troubles.
David Haggith
Aug 10, 2026

So many big stories in the news today, it’s hard to know where to begin and end. Let’s start with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). It fell below 300-million barrels, just reported for last week.

The energy department claims today that the effective bottom (the level at which you start destroying the salt caverns by going any lower) is 70-million barrels. That’s nonsense. It’s what the government wants you to believe or what it wants to believe it can do if it has to, or what it wants Iran to believe, which is all just more denial of reality. Throughout the entire time of the war, the oil industry has been saying the effective bottom of the SPR is around 250-million barrels.

The oil industry has generally accepted that the operational minimum for oil in the SPR, a point at which it would be more difficult to pump out the oil, is somewhere between 250 million and 300 million barrels. Meanwhile, sizing studies done on the SPR in the 1970s recommended an inventory minimum of 250 million barrels….

That means we are there … or very close.

“The SPR’s drawdown, distribution and fill capabilities are currently limited and are at risk going forward due to longstanding issues with aging infrastructure compounded with ongoing major construction intended to address them,” the GAO warned in the report.

“When you do a drawdown, then you accelerate kind of the degradation of the wells themselves and some of the equipment,” Goldwyn said. “It’s like anything else — you use it a lot, you have to maintain it.” (Morningstar)

The Government Accounting Office says that partial collapse has already been happening. Additionally, equipment failures have left us to where the government cannot pump as low as it claims, even if it decides it wants to.

More than a quarter of that [remaining] oil is physically inaccessible, blocked by failing pumps, corroded pipes, and underground salt caverns that have deformed beyond their operational parameters, according to internal government documents. (Eastern Herald)

Somewhere not far below the present level, you start to increase the risk of collapsing the salt caverns. (Because they pump water down into the caverns to float the oil up, and once they have to pump that much water in, the salt dissolves enough to collapse.)

The mechanics of salt cavern geology mean that caverns left idle, or drawn down rapidly and then not refilled, can shift in ways that compromise the borehole integrity needed for reliable extraction. Repairing that kind of structural degradation requires engineering work that goes well beyond standard maintenance: remediation of the cavern walls, replacement or relining of wellbore casings, and in some cases the permanent abandonment of caverns that have deformed beyond recovery.

So, we are now close to what we might call “cavern bottoms,” like the phrase “tank bottoms” where they really mean the effective bottom of oil tanks because the final 10-20% fills up with sludge composed of sand, water, paraffin, tars, etc. that you can’t get much fuel out of.

Energy executives made their concern explicit to Congress in June. Oil company representatives warned Trump administration officials and lawmakers that the country’s energy price shock exposure had grown sharply with each successive drawdown, pressing the administration to prioritize refilling over other uses of the reserve

Keep taking the caverns down below their present level, which now has a 200-handle, and we start significantly increasing the risk of severely damaging the caverns. In fact, they say we should begin refilling them now to avoid causing damage because just sitting at the present level will cause deformity over time due to lack of oil pressure against the sides of the salt and due to the water.

For now, the United States is carrying the lightest emergency oil buffer it has held in more than four decades, and a significant portion of that buffer cannot be mobilized at the pace the reserve was designed to provide. What the Department of Energy decides next, whether to fund the repairs, begin purchases, or defer both while oil prices are relatively low, will determine whether the SPR exits this period as a functioning emergency instrument or continues to erode toward a level at which it cannot absorb a serious shock.

That paragraph was written more than a month ago. The whole situation is only worse now.

Spotty fuel shortages start to hit
The shortages in fuels are starting to emerge. I covered this at greater length in my weekend Deeper Dive, but will add a little here from the latest headlines:

First, let’s note that US oil (West Texas Intermediate) has broken back solidly above $80/bbl ($82.20 at the time of this writing), and Brent Crude is pushing back toward $90 ($87.89 at the moment).

Airlines are now scrambling for jet fuel. I already reported on how Gatwick told all pilots flying into London at the start of last week to tank up before heading to London because Gatwick would be out of fuel before the end of last week. (Whether they got their hands on any additional fuel and/or staved off enough refueling to end the week with some jet fuel still in their tanks, I haven’t heard.)

In July, several European airlines announced that they were at risk of running out of jet fuel. Europe has turned to the United States and Asia for alternative fuel imports in recent months but continues to feel the strain of the shortages. The United Kingdom, France, and Germany are extremely vulnerable due to their heavy reliance on the Middle East for their fuel supplies.

Europe set itself up for this to happen if a situation like the present developed. It did that by dialing back its existing refining operations in preference for green energy, and not approving new refineries, making Europe more reliant on fuels refined in the ME. It has regulated itself into deep troubles. The US has done somewhat the same, but still refines enough to export fuels to Europe; however, doing so at such an accelerated rate raises fuel prices for Americans.

On 18th June, the consultancy Energy Aspects forecast a jet fuel supply deficit across Europe of almost 600,000 bpd in the third quarter of the year, compared to surpluses of around 116,000 bpd in the United States and 425,000 bpd in Asia-Pacific. Europe’s inventories totalled around 38 million barrels at the beginning of June, equivalent to roughly 30 days of its fuel demand. The International Energy Agency (IEA) made a similar estimate.

That situation, too, has only gotten worse in the month that has transpired since that report.

EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen said that the region could face jet fuel shortages near the end of the summer season but that Brussels plans to coordinate releases of national reserves as required. Several European countries have also turned to alternative suppliers to fill the gap.

Even if they step in with the remainder of their crude reserves, they are going to find they don’t have the refining capacity to utilize that crude, now that so much of their supplemental ME refining has been knocked out along with so much Russian refining. It won’t matter that they have the crude, if they don’t have available refining capacity—something I’ve always pointed to as a major chronic problem that would come out of both the war in Iran and the war in Ukraine.

The U.S., Nigeria, Canada, India and South Korea have all stepped in to provide Europe with jet fuel. Meanwhile, in Italy, refiners boosted jet fuel production by around 10 per cent during the first four months of the year, helping to meet national demand….

As jet fuel contributes around 20 to 25 per cent of an airline’s operating costs, keeping ticket prices down has been difficult. Some airlines have already been forced to cut flights….

The low-cost Irish airline Ryanair said that 20 per cent of its unhedged fuel was hit hard by price spikes, leading operating costs to increase by 11 per cent.

Californian government operates with the same kind of heat-damaged brains that Europe does, pushing for more green energy by tightening the noose on the energy they already have, so it is in the worst condition of any US state as we move now into the tighter phase of the energy crisis where physical fuel shortages are just starting to emerge in major parts of the world, putting more demand on US fuel, which will raise US fuel prices.

More war, even with less war
From there, let’s talk about the war because that will have something to say about how much worse the crisis gets (which is already going to be way worse than most people realize because we’ve been riding on buffers that are now pretty well wrung out). As I’ve said, when the buffers run out completely on their ability to deliver, then the fuel shortages will start showing up. In some countries that is already happening, but not noticeably yet in the US, though things have gotten really tight for airlines, and prices on Ag diesel have been through the roof compared to anything farmers have seen in years before.

Trump has now caved in on his air strikes, as I said in my last Deeper Dive was looking much more likely now. Today he announced that, instead of relying on more bombing, he’s going to rely on the effectiveness of his own blockade at laying siege to Iran. That means Iran keeps its blockade in place, something it has announced in the headlines below that it will do, regardless, until the US meets several of its demands, which present a very high bar for Trump. So, that means no flow of oil as Iran will continue to enforce its blockade via its war on shipping.

Those banking on the deal between Iran and Oman to open the Strait of Hormuz, have been breathing the carbon monoxide of burning oil wells, pipelines and refineries far too long. As I made clear in my Deeper Dive (“Oil Pressure on Prices Is Rising Dramatically and Has Just Entered the Danger Zone”), Iran has said several time in the last few days (officially) that the deal it is striking with Oman will NOT open the strait back up!

The deal only determines how navigation through the strait will be controlled and profited off of by Iran and Oman after it finally does open up. As I noted in the Deeper Dive, some other Arab states have already signed their acquiescence to the new agreement, so Trump’s opinion on it no longer even matters. You can read in the headlines below about all the demands Iran has now added to Trump that must be met before it will reopen the strait.

In fact, the war continues to rage on from Iran’s side as it attacked several more ships over the weekend, noted in that Deeper Dive and in the headlines below. This it does to continue to rigidly enforce its own blockade. So, no, there is no reprieve in site for the flow of oil out of the either of the bodies of water that line the Arabian Peninsula.

To put a good face on it, President Trump now says he is only “semi-negotiating” with Iran. That is all he has been doing, according to Iran, for some time, because they kept telling him, “We don’t know who it is you think you are negotiating with, but it isn’t us!” When they announced weeks ago they would no longer negotiate with Donald Trump, they meant it; but he kept saying they were begging him for a deal and were deep in negotiations with the US. Their list of their demands that emerged over the weekend, which they say must be met before they will end their blockade on either major body of water, is certainly not what “begging for a deal” looks like. As I reported last Thursday, “Iran Has Trump Right Where it Wants him and Is Turning up the Heat!”

As I also said over the weekend, Trump will do his best to spin his retreat into something that helps him avoid losing face, and that’s why he’s calling it “partial negotiations.” “Whatever,” says Iran. “Still not negotiating.”

The perfect storm
Another powerful story is told by Bob Moriarty in the the video I’ve posted below. He notes the same confluence of storms coming against the US and the world that I’ve been calling out this year and says they are going to merge at a catastrophic level this fall. (I’ve started the video at the part where it gets dangerous, but you can also take it back to the beginning to get a good overview of the precious metals market as it stands right now.)

Just as I’ve been doing, Bob connects the dots of our many shortages with troubles in Japan and says the troubles being faced by the yen and supported by the US Treasury are going to become a lot worse than what we’ve heard so far. A financial typhoon has broken out in Japan, and it is on a path directly toward the US since Japan is the largest foreign bond holder of US debt right now.

Bob also predicts a serious global famine due to the fuel shortages, fertilizer shortages, worker shortages (in the US) and the Super El Niño—risks I’ve been tracking here as well, though I haven’t been as strong on the famine prediction, aiming more along the line of food shortages. That is something I’ve never heard him predict this forcefully in the past either, but risks of the perfect storm in food and finance are certainly compounding, and some parts of the world are almost certain to face famine.

There is also a lot of powerful stuff about the collapse of the labor market in the headlines today and how bad it really is. I’ve been saying all year that the labor situation is worse than the headline figures would let on—calling it a stealth recession—and now we are seeing, just like with the distortions that have already formed in those salt caverns, that, beneath the surface, the trouble is deeper than headline numbers like the unemployment rate let on. I may get to that in a Deeper Dive, but this is enough for today.

https://www.thedailydoom.com/p/calamity-oil-blows-out-so-does-war

Understanding the World Economy

Fauci KNEW COVID Jab Was Dangerous for Pregnant Women

Iran’s Strategy – Divide & Conquer

This collapse of the imperial system

An Alternative to War and Looting in the Americas,

projects that can cement such a new, just world order based on peace through development.

https://eir.news/2026/08/news/upcoming-eir-roundtable-an-alternative-to-war-and-looting-in-the-americas/

Larry Johnson: “Outlast Trump” – Iran’s Move vs. Trump’s “Bankrupt Iran” Strategy