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Recently, many people have begun talking about the US having a k-shaped economy. In it, a handful of wealthy people are doing very well financially, while many others are falling further and further behind. I expect that the low wages of the majority of workers will soon lead to adverse impacts on businesses, governments, and international organizations. This phenomenon is likely to lead to a very uneven world economic downturn in 2026.
The world economy is subject to the laws of physics. The world economy seems to be reaching growth limits because there are too few easily extractable energy resources (as well as other resources, such as fresh water), relative to the world’s population. The Maximum Power Principle strongly suggests that even as limits are hit, the world economy cannot be expected to collapse all at once. Instead, the most efficient producers of goods and services will be able to succeed as long as resources are available, while less efficient producers will tend to fall by the wayside. Thus, the Maximum Power Principle somewhat limits the speed of the world’s economic downturn.
In this post, I will try to explain the challenges the world economy is now facing. I will also provide some thoughts on how 2026 will turn out.
[1] The k-shaped economy that the US and many other countries are experiencing is an indication that resources are, in some way, “running short.”
Humans all have similar basic needs. They need food to eat, and they need to cook at least some of this food before they eat it. They tend to need transportation services, both for themselves (to get to work) and for goods, such as the food they eat. They also need governments to keep order and to provide basic services, such as roads and schools. All these goods and services require energy of a suitable kind, such as human labor, burned biomass, or fossil fuel energy. They also require arable land, fresh water, and minerals of many kinds.
If there are not enough resources to go around, the easiest way to accomplish this is by creating a k-shaped economy. One example is with farmland. In many traditions, when a farmer dies, his oldest son inherits the farm. Younger children are then forced to find other kinds of employment, such as being a craftsman, farmer’s helper, or priest in a church. Wages for these younger children can easily fall lower than the income of their land-holding older brothers, especially if large families become common. Creating jobs that pay well for all the younger children becomes a problem.
A similar phenomenon has been happening in many Advanced Economies (US, UK, and other countries included in the OECD) in recent years. Parents are doing quite well financially, but their children often have difficulty finding jobs that pay well, even after advanced schooling. Some adult children are also left with educational debt to repay. This is a new type of k-shaped economy.
[2] The world’s current problem is an ever-rising population paired with resources that are becoming ever-more “expensive” to extract.
World population has exploded since fossil fuel consumption became abundant. This has allowed more food to be grown, inexpensive transportation of goods and people, and the development of antibiotics and other drugs.
At the same time, the most accessible resources were extracted first. For example, fresh water initially came from streams, lakes, and shallow aquifers. As the population grew and industrial needs became increased, wells had to be dug deeper and aquifers began to be drained. In some places, desalination now needs to be used. Each of these advances in producing fresh water became more resource-intensive. It became increasingly difficult to gather enough fresh water using human labor alone. Instead, increasing quantities of physical materials, energy supplies, and debt were needed to make the new systems work.
The reason debt was needed to purchase capital goods, such as those required to obtain high-cost water, was because the devices purchased were expected to provide the desired output (water, in this case) for a long time in the future. Securing this future benefit required advance funding, using an approach such as debt. The sale of shares of stock, which are expected to appreciate over time and pay dividends, provides a similar benefit to debt.
A similar issue arises with the increasing extraction of minerals of many kinds, such as copper, tin, uranium, lithium, coal, and oil. Early on, extraction using manual labor and simple tools was sufficient. However, once the easiest to extract resources were removed, capital goods became necessary to make extraction efficient.
Capital goods, such as coal fired power plants, wind turbines, solar panels, and hydroelectric power plants also allowed electricity to be produced, extending the benefits of fossil fuels. Producing these capital devices requires physical materials and energy supplies, as well as debt or the sale of shares of stock for financing.
[3] A major limit on the system seems to be debt and the interest required on the debt.
In an economy, the growth of inexpensive energy supply acts very much like leavening works in making bread; it greatly helps economic growth. With the increasing use of inexpensive energy supply, vehicles can be made ever-less expensively, compared to using much hand labor for manufacturing (literally, making goods by hand). With this growing efficiency, wages rise faster than inflation. In the 1950s and 1960s, young people found that they could marry and live in nicer homes than their parents. Now, the reverse seems to be happening: many adult children are finding it difficult to keep up with the lifestyles of their parents.
Once the inexpensive-to-extract energy supply is depleted, economies tend to add an increasing amount of debt, in an attempt to pull the economy forward. It seems to me that a major limit on the system comes when an economy slows down so much that it can no longer repay its debt with interest.
Political leaders like to believe that growing debt, by itself, will pull the economy forward. In fact, this does work, for a time, as long as interest rates are falling. But falling interest rates stopped happening in 2022.
Of course, all the added debt contributes to the k-shaped economy. The already wealthy disproportionately benefit from debt payments. They also tend to benefit from dividends on shares of stock and from share price appreciation. The poorer people find that an increasing share of their wages goes to paying interest on debt, especially as interest rates rise.
As debt levels grow, governments eventually have a problem with repayment of debt with interest. They need to raise taxes simply to cover their rising interest payments. This is the reason why Donald Trump wants to get interest rates down. Interest payments are rising rapidly, with near-zero interest rates in the rear-view mirror (Figure 3).
[4] Added technology and economies of scale have been adding to the k-shaped economy.
Technology requires specialization. People with more training and higher skill levels tend to earn more than others. Economies of scale encourage the growth of ever-larger businesses. The people at the top of huge organizations tend to earn more than those at the bottom. Also, as international trade is added, low-wage people in the hierarchy increasingly compete for wages with workers from countries with much lower wage scales. Thus, the wages of less-skilled individuals are increasingly squeezed down.
Furthermore, both added technology and economies of scale require added debt. Again, the interest on this debt (and dividends on stock) disproportionately benefits those who are already wealthy.
[5] In a sense, artificial intelligence (AI) is simply an extension of added technology, with a huge need for electricity, water, and debt.
The hope for AI is that it will make our already k-shaped economy, a great deal more k-shaped. The hope is that AI can eliminate a significant share of jobs, with such high profits that the owners of this technology can become very rich. If it works, the wealth will be even more concentrated at the top than today.
I see the need for electricity, water, and debt as stumbling blocks for AI. I expect that, starting in 2026, the AI rapid growth spurt will seize up because it is already using more resources than are available in some areas. I expect that a significant downshift in AI will adversely affect the US stock market and the rate of growth of the US economy. My hope is that the loss of growth in the AI sphere will not, by itself, bring down the US economy–just nudge it toward recession.
[6] In 2026, with an increasingly k-shaped economy, I expect that world oil prices will drift lower than today.
“Demand” for oil really means “the quantity of oil that people, businesses, and governments around the world can afford to purchase.” As the economy becomes more k-shaped, fewer people can afford to buy vehicles of any kind. Poor people, in the lower part of the k, are hardest hit. They will tend to increasingly rely on low energy approaches, such as ride-sharing, walking, or using a bicycle. They will tend to buy fewer goods that are transported internationally. Governments, as they begin collecting less in tax revenue from the many poorer people, will be inclined to cut back their spending on new buildings and road improvements. These changes work in the direction of reducing oil demand, and thus oil prices.
It is this increasingly k-shaped economy that has been holding world oil prices down in 2025. I expect that prices will drift even lower in 2026 because of the increasingly k-shaped world economy. There aren’t enough very rich people to hold up oil and other resource demand by themselves.
Oil production will not immediately drop in response to these low prices, although it may start drifting lower in 2027. The US Energy Information Administration is forecasting that world oil production will rise by 1.1 million barrels per day in 2025 and by 1.2 million barrels per day in 2026. These amounts do not seem unreasonable based on new developments that have already started producing higher amounts of crude oil.
[7] The heavier types of oil, from which diesel and jet fuel are disproportionately made, are in short supply now. They are likely to continue to be in short supply in 2026.
World oil production has risen in recent months. When I investigated, I found that the vast majority of the recent growth seems to be in light oil. Thus, the shortfall in diesel and other heavy fuels is likely to continue as in the recent past.
This shortage of the heavy types of oil has several impacts:
a. With a shortage of heavy oil, a fairly strong country, such as the US, is tempted to attack Venezuela, which has the world’s largest reserves of heavy oil.
b. Island nations without their own fossil fuel supplies tend to use a disproportionately large share of diesel and jet fuel, for several reasons: (1) Such islands often burn diesel fuel for electricity. This is an expensive way to make electricity; goods produced with this electricity become too expensive to export. (2) Imports and exports need to be shipped in by boat or by air, again using limited types of fuel supply. Physics tends to push these economies down by making their products expensive to sell elsewhere. Examples of islands with these problems include Cuba, Puerto Rico, Madagascar, and Sri Lanka. Such places tend to be adversely affected by shortages of heavy oil sooner than other locations.
c. Without enough jet fuel, long distance tourism is likely to be reduced in 2026. One issue is the lack of jet fuel for flying planes. Another issue is that an increasing share of the population will not be able to afford long-distance tourism because of the k-shaped economy.
d. Tariffs are a way of discouraging the shipping of goods long distance, to indirectly save on heavy oil. We should not be surprised by their increasing usage.
[8] In my view, deflation is a greater risk than inflation in 2026.
With a k-shaped economy, demand for apartments (especially smaller ones) tends to stay low. As an economy becomes increasingly k-shaped, low-paid workers tend to share an apartment with one or more friends or move in with family members to save money. In a December 23 report, Apartment Advisor writes that the US average asking rent for studio apartments fell by 2.81% in 2025 compared to 2024. The similar comparison for one-bedroom apartments showed a price drop of 1.72% in 2025. In an increasingly k-shaped economy, I would expect this trend toward lower rental prices of smaller apartments to continue and perhaps become more pronounced.
Real estate selling prices may also be an area for downward price pressure. Young people who have not built up equity through prior home ownership tend to find themselves shut out from buying homes. Also, commercial real estate of many kinds seems to be grossly oversupplied in many areas. Given this situation, downward price adjustments seem likely.
Underlying this downward pressure on prices may be some actual cuts in wages. One law firm reports that cuts in wages are becoming increasingly common, especially for employees of smaller companies.
There are precedents for deflation becoming a problem. The US had problems with deflation at the time of the Great Depression. Japan had problems with deflation after its crash in real estate prices in the 1990s, and China (with its real estate price crash) has recently been having problems with deflation.
[9] “Bread and circuses” become more important as the economy becomes more k-shaped.
Many readers have heard about bread and circuses. Before the Roman Empire collapsed, it used bread and circuses to keep its citizens from rioting from a lack of food. The way to prevent food riots is by making sure everyone has enough to eat through food distribution programs, described as “bread.” Providing circuses offers a distraction from the fact that there are not enough well-paying jobs to go around.
Today, with our increasingly k-shaped economies, leaders have figured out that meeting citizens’ basic needs is essential if unrest is to be avoided. Political leaders somehow need to provide food and healthcare to their poorer citizens. They also need to keep people distracted with entertainment. For many years, governments of Advanced Economies have been trying to provide the equivalent of bread and circuses. In the US, legislation providing Social Security for the elderly was enacted in 1935, during the Great Depression. Many other financial support programs have been added over the years. Today’s circuses today are provided through televised entertainment and video games.
A major problem is that the costs of these programs have become more expensive than tax revenue can support. This is especially true of the cost of “bread,” if its cost is defined as including healthcare and pensions for the elderly, in addition to food. Ultimately, these high-cost programs can bring an economy down. The high cost of bread and circuses is thus a second limiting factor, besides excessive interest payments on government debt, (discussed in Section [3]).
[10] Leaders of many countries are already making plans that can be used to deal with shrinking resources per capita.
If there aren’t enough resources to go around, what can governments do to prevent riots? Two obvious choices come to mind:
(a) Tighten controls on citizens to prevent riots. China has been a leader in this area, and the UK and US seem to be trending in a similar direction. In a sense, the Covid requirements of 2020 were practice with respect to restrictions on movement.
(b) Develop a rationing system that can be used, in case of a shortfall of essential goods. Many countries are looking at central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). These are a digital form of central bank money that is widely available to the public. In the US, I expect CBDCs will be rolled out initially as a way for those who are entitled to food stamps to easily access their benefits. If these digital currencies work, CBDCs can easily be expanded into a widespread rationing system. Government leaders will then be able to decide who can afford to buy what, rather than depending on the way the k-shaped economy currently allocates buying-power.
[11] What lies ahead in 2026?
I don’t think any of us know for certain. The general direction of the world economy seems to be toward contraction, but some parts of the world economy will fare better than others.
Europe looks increasingly like it is an “also-ran” behind the US and China in the world economy. I expect its resource use will continue to shrink back in 2026, indirectly benefiting the United States and the rest of the world. I am hoping that with cutbacks in oil usage by island nations and Europe, and the resulting lower world oil prices, the United States will be able to avoid the worst of the recessionary tendencies looming in 2026.
There are some reports that AI, as it is being applied in China, is providing major success in reducing the cost of coal mining in China. If this is true, it may allow China’s economy to grow in 2026, despite downturns in many other countries.
I am fairly certain that AI, as it is being developed in the US and Europe, cannot continue its recent exponential growth trajectory, and I expect this to become obvious in the next few months. This shift seems likely to pull down US stock market indices. Here again, I am hoping that despite this issue, the US will be able to avoid the worst of the world’s recessionary tendencies.
I don’t expect a world war in 2026. For one thing, no country has adequate ammunition capability. I think civil wars and wars against nearby countries are more likely.
It is possible that the EU will collapse in 2026, leaving the individual countries on their own.
At some point in the future, I expect that the central government of the US will also collapse, in the manner of the Soviet Union in 1991. States will likely regroup and issue new local currencies; the new combined governments will likely provide much more limited benefits than the US government provides today.
Many people think that different leadership will change the current trajectory, but I am doubtful about this. Most of the world’s problems are “baked into the cake” by resource shortages and by too high a population relative to resources. Keeping immigration down is one way of trying to keep resources and population in closer balance.
All in all, I expect a very uneven world economic downturn in 2026. Economies will continue to become more k-shaped. Governments will do their best to hide problems from the public. Stock markets will likely not do well in 2026, if they can no longer count on AI for an uplift.
So this year has got off to a dizzying start. Yet Trump had come in offering no more wars and wanted a Nobel Peace Prize. So what went wrong? Did you hear his wheezing voice when he was announcing the events in Venezuela, with such childish excited glee? How long does this man have left to live, do you think? Is it even possible that he is sane enough to have personally planned this adventure and taken his fellows along with him?
There is no consistency in his policy any more. He is all over the shop. And then there are his open threats and demands to other countries, which remind of the Dubya government, and even more of AH and Stalin. In 1945, at the end of World War 2, Stalin demanded Subcarpathian Ruthenia from Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovak government meekly agreed (probably the wisest decision at that time), and Subcarpathian Ruthenia was annexed by the Soviet Union and incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Now Trump is demanding Greenland from Denmark.
Then there is the other question, already raised by analysts and commenters: “Is Trump senile?” His rapid changes of mind suggest that this is highly likely. So how do you get rid of a senile president when he is the top dog in the country? Look at how long Robert Mugabe staying in power to a very old age, despite losing the plot and ruining his country’s economy and currency.
And if Trump goes or is pushed or dies, would we really expect any changes in policy from this Republican government? And if so, what do you imagine they would be?
Not sure about your argument-thought vector there.
Don himself (+background team-allies) is very real in the sense of the agenda on mind aka ~very last time effort to slow down or bridge the looming domestic catastrophe in terms of uneducated, substances abusing, no skillz masses, of poor health, no cheap energy vs the churning factories around the world ran under very different social systems..with likely way longer future prospects ahead of them..
Not sure about your WWII point either, the Soviets lost +150k troops only on that tiny front when liberating westwardly – passing through CZE, and that Carpathian-Ruthenia appendage was likely not a large deal at all. It was attached as post WWI package anyway, almost nothing in common with the hinterland.
How to even connect / compare it to such recent Greenland thing? If I’m not mistaken large part – all Greenland is already featured on ~16-17th century world maps as barren landscape, despite some fur trading / fishing coastal (seasonal) outposts.. Denmark used to have some heft as naval Scandinavian and Baltic area power, lost almost everything in later centuries.
The US admin in specific terms mentioned it NEEDs Greenland NOW for ballistic missile installations (warning and perhaps even launching bases), plus as controlling naval passage and minerals-energy potential.
The Self-organizing system pushes Trump in the direction he is headed.
In fact, it would tend to push other leaders (Republican or Democrat) in the same direction.
Trump seems to have more energy than any recent leader I have run into. There are more changes from prior BAU policies. Is this what you are objecting to? Do you want Biden’s followers back?
Has Iran kicked off?
I can’t access any Iranian media.
Maybe so. I notice articles like this:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-cutting-internet-amid-deadly-protests/
Internet service in Iran cut off or restricted as deadly protests reach a possible tipping point
This is very recent (2 hours)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/internet-telephone-lines-cut-iran-protest-9.7038427
Internet access and telephone lines cut out after protests erupt in Iran
Protests escalated after exiled crown prince calls for mass demonstration
This is from 11 hours ago:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgm4y0ewe93o
Footage shows violent clashes as Iran protests spread to more areas
Also, from Zerohedge:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/iran-plunged-internet-blackout-protests-spread-trump-issues-new-warning
The country is nearly completely offline and in the dark as far as online communication and access. This is likely to only compound the nation’s problems, and stir up more sustained protests, after late last month a sudden currency slide amid already difficult economic conditions resulted in key central Tehran shops shuttering in protest and panic. US-led sanctions have loomed large over all of this.
Also:
People are watching President Trump’s reactions very closely, especially coming off his giving the order for military forces to go into Venezuela to oust Maduro. He has reiterated that the United States will strike “very hard” if Iran starts killing protesters.
However, he has also lately seemed to suggest that violence or deaths during “crowd control” can be ambiguous and hard to assess. This perhaps gives him an ‘out’ at a moment the US hawks are circling, and members of his own cabinet might be pressuring toward action.
But a fresh statement from Vice President J.D. Vance has just injected something new and raised the stakes in a significant way. He’s calling for the Iranians to enter fresh negotiations with Washington, or as he put it in fresh remarks to “actually have a real negotiation” over its nuclear program (which was set-back in a big way by the last June US bombing raid on three key nuclear development sites).
China got way ahead of the US in robotics, and now is increasing its lead, but it is not exporting the robots. This way, China can better compete with the US in the future. This is Kevin Walmsley, again.
Reza Shah Pahlavi, son of the Shah who was deposed on 1979, is gaining popularity in some circles and he will have a speech at Mar-A-Lago on the 12th. It is not known where the POTUS will be there, but his hangars-on will certainly be.
it seems at least Trump supports the restoration of the Shah, with SAVAK and all that , to Persia.
Worth reading .
https://open.substack.com/pub/futuredude/p/why-china-wont-fight-the-us-over?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
This is a fairly good explanation of why China wouldn’t bother to fight over Venezuela, IMO. The author suggests that many people believe that the reason is because China is afraid of the US’s nuclear power–something that seems strange to me.
Excerpts:
This isn’t a story about morality. It’s a story about material constraints, imperial geography, and a world order transitioning in ways the U.S. ruling class cannot control.
This part is indirectly the issue of limits on manpower, and today, on heavy oil, IMO:
Power is regional first, global second. Always has been.
China’s military doctrine, force posture, logistics, and strategic planning are overwhelmingly concentrated in East Asia. That’s not accidental. That’s history. . .Venezuela is on the other side of the planet.
How China is different from the US:
The U.S. empire was built through overseas military bases, permanent garrisons, regime change, financial coercion, and dollar hegemony enforced by force.
China’s rise followed a different historical path: industrialization first, export-led growth, infrastructure diplomacy, credit instead of conquest, influence without occupation. . .
Venezuela is not existential to China.
The real issue:
The U.S. Isn’t Strong — It’s Cornered
A confident hegemon doesn’t kidnap foreign leaders, sabotage economies with sanctions, weaponize courts and financial systems, or violate its own “rules-based order.”. .
The Western Hemisphere remains one of the few regions where the U.S. retains overwhelming military superiority. Venezuela sits at the intersection of energy, ideology, and defiance. That makes it a target—not because it’s powerful, but because it’s symbolically dangerous.
Meaning that China relinquishes all its SA infrastructure. The ports in Panama and Peru, the transamerican railway. Either they are idiots, or there will be a fight.
We will have to wait and see. There is a whole lot of money owed to China, and China would like it back, with interest.
Meaning they are in the pickle with said investments locked-drawn in South America..
[ Modus vivendi ] could be found in the end, they would perhaps have to abandon critical infrastructure at places and shar% the remaining with the US somehow..
The Chinese are NOT at this point or ever able to mount any serious merchant turn around or kinetic policy opposition.. They will simply hide embarrassment and revert into waiting mode for the self-demise of the hegemon.. Yes loosing lot of their money already invested around the world in the process..
While there is a lot of rhetoric about ” lawless ” in the geo politics world . The financial world is still run by laws and rules . This was the reason that the EU abstained from impounding the Russian funds at Euro Clear . So continuing has VZ said they will not ship oil to China as per their agreement and payment into an escrow account as per my earlier post ? No . Have they said they will default on the Chinese loan of $ 50 billion ? No . Have they said they will declare the Chinese loan as ” odious ” . No . Donnie , Marco , Petey can shout but they have to do that to please the MAGA crowd , their vote base who have the IQ of the temperature of their body . If VZ will repudiate it’s obligation to China there will be no bidders for treasuries at the next auction . China has nothing to worry about the investments in SA . The Panama game is $ 1.3 billion and add Peru port , railways etc . The total is not above $50 billion . At the same time it manages to get the US engaged in expending its already declining resources and power .
Never disturb your enemy when he is making a mistake . —- Napoleon
Now I have come to the second topic which is the Russian carriers . First they were Russian flagged and not Russian owned . Everybody here understands the concept of ” flags of convenience ” in shipping . These carriers carried no oil and were rusted , destined for the breaker yards in Alang ( India) ; So why the charade ? How about cooperation between Trump/Putin ? Trump needs a way out as Putin is not budging in the peace talks that are not going anywhere . This gives Russia a clear excuse to no longer entertain Witkoff / kurshner . At the same time it gives Donnie to exhibit his strength to his allies as he leaves them by holding the s°°tbag called Ukraine . Win / win . Conspiracy theory ?? . There were many until they all turned out to be true .🤣
Maybe you are right; I don’t know:
” If VZ will repudiate it’s obligation to China there will be no bidders for treasuries at the next auction . China has nothing to worry about the investments in SA . The Panama game is $ 1.3 billion and add Peru port , railways etc . The total is not above $50 billion . At the same time it manages to get the US engaged in expending its already declining resources and power .
Never disturb your enemy when he is making a mistake . —- Napoleon”
There is a whole lot of Chinese debt around the world. China has been very unforgiving so far, as far as I know. Maybe it has to fail on its own.
Perhaps I am dense, but why would VZ create and sell treasuries in this day and age?
Ravi perhaps meant it as in effect on US treasuries suddenly deemed less/not valuable on the int markets.. should China be seriously robbed blind. I’d not be so sure about it – not likely now..
If I get it correct the previously horrendous trade deficit is turning around for the US, chiefly because Don successfully (for the moment) strong-arming everybody around, i.e. forcing to buying US passenger jets, weapons, LNG, etc.
Venezuela can be a Pirro’s victory for US.
It could be too late to refit Venezuela.
Years of sanctions and degrading economy have ruined Oil industry.
The business needs now great investments and need a social and economic stability to do so.
Sizeing a single President and almost Star Tek ‘teleported’ him to Brookling can just a Pirro’s victory for US.
Venezuela is far to be a stable Country and it probably won’t be in the near future.
US with help of UK can go on sizeing some Oil tanker here and there, but it won’t fix the desperate and perennial need of heavy oil (than light Oil) by US.
“US oil companies say they need guarantees to invest in Venezuela, FT reports”
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-oil-companies-say-they-need-guarantees-invest-venezuela-ft-reports-2026-01-08/
Yes, the over-all hist-story of US oil biz vs local govs is even more granular.
The oil majors were planting various legal traps into the contracts and when it went against them (nationalization of stake- industry is covered by int law which VZ complied to) they called upon DC for further-wider sanctions instead etc.
So the return of industry in full spectrum (incl. cadre) won’t be easy – yet we don’t know the exact situation – if the US is really desperate now for blending that type of oil – surely at least “one” of their major oil companies would work it out eventually..
The things the Reuters article talks about (lack of infrastructure and lack of stability, plus underlying high costs of extraction) are pretty obvious. There is a reason why these companies have stayed away in the past. Chevron has been the one company that has unusual expertise with heavy oil extraction.
For the English speakers:
Pirro is Italian for Pyrrhus, a Greek ruler who tried to save the Greeks in Italy against Rome. He won most of his battles but his losses were great, so the term phyrrhic victory has stuck to this day.
Still, when Hannibal met Scipio in some Turkish court , Hannibal said the greatest general of all time was Alexander the Great and the second was Pyrrhus.
And Pyrrhus did leave a word still being used today, so his life was not entirely a failure.
Tim had said that UK used Russia as a matron to discipline the Continental powers.
And now the continental powers have all been emasculated, I have said that it is time to fire the matron since the children are all dead.
In Henry James’ Turn of the Screw, a governess is entrusted protecting a rich man’s nephew, and she fails to protect the boy. The narrator states that it is a manuscript left by his sister’s ‘late’ governess, meaning the governess died, one way or another, shortly after this incident (most likely a suicide, forced by her employer). Of course her worthless life cannot be compared to that of the boy she failed to protect.
In places like India, such maids are killed by the employer and no one questions it. There was an incident in pakistan where a 9 year old servant girl killed a parrot owned by the owner and was killed for it; I don’t think anything was done about it. That is the way it be.
I have said several times that now UK has nothing to worry about the prostate continental powers, it was time to deconstruct Russia, break it into 100 countries and shooting nukes to each other.
The ‘wise’ people, ‘cooler’ heads running foreign policy failed to end Russia and China, and instead propped them up.
I see Trump’s moves as desperation moves. He can only attack pushovers like Venezuela or Greenland. He cannot attack ‘serious’ countries because he is afraid of the consequences.
I agree with you about the continental European powers. Although I would lump in today’s UK (the country, although perhaps not its establishment or deep state) in with their fellow Europeans and with the Americans as the emasculators, with their military bases, their intelligence agencies, their strategy of tension pitting extremist factions against each other and against the state itself in every major European county.
Just look at the formerly proud and progressive Germany, which between 1871 and 1945 was Britain’s most powerful and formidable European rival.
I told them not to mollycoddle the militant left. When they superglue themselves to railings, doors, or pavements, just leave them there, I advised. But what did the German government do? It gave these people carte blanche or Get Out of Jail Free cards to act out and inconvenience the public. So of course the bad behavior only got worse, expanding into outright sabotage bordering on actual terrorism.
Result? Now they can’t even keep the lights on in Berlin and are having trouble trying to stop the pipes from freezing.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgrpzn6gz4o
As for Trump, what can I say? It’s not often I’m shocked by international political theater, but Trump is acting like the proverbial bull in a china shop. I can’t tell if he’s exhibiting desperation born of dementia, if he is simply working to a script written by his handlers, or if he’s the smartest leader on the planet and is playing 6D chess.
It’s beginning to look like Norman has been partly right all this time, and we have a geriatric Caligula occupying the Oval Office. Rome’s most erratic emperor was renowned for his sudden, shocking shifts in behavior and outlandish decrees. He attempted unsuccessfully to conquer Britain, and he would doubtless have craved Greenland too had he known of its existence.
Beware of what the western press tells you. 2011 was worse or at least equal but the press chooses to minimize and maximize. In the case of Lybia there was an agreement too, just before they started what was and remains peak bombing. Venezuela as we speak is the very definition of gunboat policy, yet this policy is not new in the world. At the same time resources are dwindling. I do not think it is Trump, and I do not think it is erratic.
these are the same people who won Syria. Once Cuba and Greenland are won, Trump will be accused of polluting the pure american soul, but they will not be given back, while they retool and rethink the next process (which has to be Brazil).
The link you show says:
Berlin power outage highlights German vulnerability to sabotage
Power is being restored to the last homes hit by a five-day blackout in Germany’s snow-covered capital, Berlin.
The outage was caused by a suspected arson attack and came as temperatures dipped below freezing.
More on Venezuela—This time, a long article about the history of Venezuela’s relationship with the US since the discovery of oil there over a century ago and with a special focus on the attempted coup and failed invasion of Venezuela in 2019-20 under the previous Trump presidency that most of us have forgotten about if we were ever aware of it in the first place.
Substacker Unbekoming (who manages to put out at least one substantial post every day—I suspect this entity is superhuman) has summarized the book Corporate Coup: Venezuela and the End of US Empire (2024) b By Anya Parampil in the form of a 35 Q&A essay.
https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/corporate-coup-venezuela-and-the
Unbekoming writes in their introduction:
Parampil’s book covers the period between the 2019 coup attempt and the failed mercenary invasion of May 2020. It names the actors, traces the money, and documents the mechanisms. For readers who absorbed the January 2026 outcome, this is the essential backstory—how the groundwork was laid, who laid it, and whose interests they served.
The questions and answers that follow draw entirely from Parampil’s documentation. They cover the historical context, the coup’s mechanics, the corporate backgrounds of its key figures, the economic warfare imposed through sanctions, the mercenary operation that ended in farce, and the international response that is quietly reshaping global finance. Together, they provide what mainstream coverage withheld: the evidence trail for a corporate coup conducted in plain sight.
Adding context, the commenter Cosmic Onion noted:
This piece is intentionally detailed. Not to overwhelm, but to avoid the usual fog. Instead of blaming an abstract “system,” it names people, institutions, contracts, and court moves—because power today operates through procedures, not speeches. If you stick with it, you’re not being asked to agree with a worldview, only to follow a trail. Long essays aren’t for everyone, but for those who like to see how the machinery actually turns, the details are the point.
Wow! We have sad stories before about America’s willingness to grab resources from other countries. I hadn’t expected the situation to be this bad.
I didn’t get all the way through this article. I could see that the deck was stacked against Venezuela.
Isn’t this how biology works? There is no economics without biology.
Dennis L.
All dissipative structures seem to work the same way. Survival of the best adapted, at that time. What is most effective, given the changing circumstances.
The reason behind pirate Trump’s robbery of Venezuela is not his personal greed, but the very serious national decline in cheap oil of the appropriate type, compounded by the so-called “environmental” regulations in California and nationwide distribution problems of Gordian Knot proportions. In effect, in America, the long-forecast diminishing returns are beginning to make themselves felt. Just-in-time economics, the USD as global reserve currency to shift U.S. debt onto the rest of the world, offshoring, insane levels of hubris (ὕβρις͵ ὕβρισεως, ἡ “overweening behavior, wantonness, insolence, licentiousness, violence, outrage, assault and battery”), reckless squandering of national resources, techno-mythology, forcing Europids to commit economic suicide to benefit Washington, and similar attempts to escape reality, have defeated the “indispensable nation” and are spelling out 𝖒𝖊𝖓𝖊, 𝖒𝖊𝖓𝖊, 𝖙𝖊𝖐𝖊𝖑 𝖚𝖕𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖘𝖎𝖓 on the national wall.
You may very well be right.
“Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin” is an Aramaic phrase from the Book of Daniel, meaning that God has numbered the days of a king’s reign, weighed him and found him wanting, and declared that his kingdom will be divided and given to the Medes and Persians. This phrase signifies impending doom or judgment.
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Seems the US will keep upping the ante until they get slapped down like in Yemen or by China with rare earth restrictions. Putin doesn’t want to learn this and instead plays Frogger trying to dodge US-directed drone attacks.
Grab your popcorn and hope you’re well away from the blast zone and downstream winds.
I got a good laugh out of Martyanov, who pretends the tanker didn’t reflag as Russian and get approved and registered by Russia as being Russian flagged. So now it’s Russian-flagged, but not truly Russian, apparently. What a cop-out.
I know. Some of these people are worthless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU0kR5GmHhI
Yanis (I think the real one) says China will build cars in Europe. Since car factories are robots not much employment for Europe. By passing all tariffs for China.
Trump is creating a world economy without the U.S..
This is another AI video. We don’t know whether it is true or not.
There are a whole lot of Yanis Varoufakis fake videos. This one looks fake.
Where will China get the electricity to build cars from in Europe?
This article suggests that some of the oil that previously went from Venezuela to teapot refineries in China will now come to the US.
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/chevron-contracts-11-tankers-venezuela-port-calls-don-roe-doctrine-begins
About 20% of all global oil tankers are used to smuggle crude oil from countries under international sanctions, with 10% of these ships carrying Venezuelan oil. With Maduro out and the U.S. taking control of the Western Hemisphere, we suspect the dark fleet tanker industry will be dramatically hit – bad news for China’s “teapot” refineries.
One view of the last 20 years of climate change narrative:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/01/04/my-twenty-years-of-watching-the-thermometer-and-the-narrative/
Some headings:
2006–2008: When Thermometers Were Still Just Thermometers
2009: Climategate—The Sound of Trust Hitting the Floor
2010–2014: The Pause That Wasn’t There (Until It Was)
The next few years delivered an unexpected plot twist: the planet declined to follow the script.
2015: Paris—Promises, Promises
The Paris Agreement was hailed as a turning point. World leaders gathered to save the planet using pledges that were voluntary, unenforceable, and carefully worded to sound impressive while committing to very little.
2018–2019: The Emergency Button Gets Stuck
2020–2022: When Everything Was an Emergency
2023–2026: The Era of Unquestionable Certainty
Now, at the twenty-year mark, the climate narrative is polished, institutionalized, and remarkably immune to evidence.
Sea level rise continues at rates best appreciated with tide gauges and patience. Extreme weather remains stubbornly inconsistent with apocalyptic claims. Crop yields rise.
Twenty Years Later
After two decades of watching this unfold, I’ve learned that the most remarkable thing about the climate scare is not how much the climate has changed—but how much the rules of discussion have.
Gail, you do realize the source you provide is rather one sided view, don’t you?
I’m not going to press the issue for it matters not in any case.
We in this so called modern advanced society will not function without consuming (root meaning “to destroy) resources of all kinds…especially those that convert to heat (energy).
It is interesting that whatsupwiththat.com started in 2006, before there were two sides to this issue.
I have attended actuarial conference sessions on this subject. The big increases in insurance prices do not seem to be particularly climate linked. They are linked to large numbers of people building in high-risk areas, and reinsurance coverage purchased by insurance companies being on an aggregate basis. Also, the lack of availability of replacement parts, changing building codes, and inflation in rebuilding costs. Also, growing fraud risk. Everyone wants to have an insurance company replace their roof. Now, insurers often need to pay for mold removal.
See, why trouble myself..
Trump moves to pull US out of bedrock global climate treaty, becoming first country to do so
By
Andrew Freedman
Samantha Waldenberg
Updated 2 hr ago
The Trump administration is pulling the United States out of the bedrock treaty that underpins international cooperation on climate change, along with dozens of other global bodies, according to a memorandum released by the White House Wednesday evening and an accompanying social media post.
…..Trump also moved to withdraw the US from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC — a Nobel Prize-winning group that publishes reports on global warming. While the president likely can’t bar US scientists from participating in IPCC reports, the move could have ramifications for federal scientists who would otherwise contribute.
So, no point in “debating” the laws of physics ..
Been there, done that….with 9 billion we shall burn, baby, burn
the don is now running the United States with the political finesse of a mob boss.
That is not mere rhetoric—it’s—-do as I say, or face economic ruin…..A US senator is paid $17400 a year, plus expenses. He risks losing that if he doesn’t fall into line with the don.
Same for an army general, they have families and bills to pay just like the rest of us.
The mob boss throws a molotov cocktail through your shop window—but the effect is the same…..
the supreme court has been bought, (I know that from independent sources) and have given the don immunity from any act while president…
Ao what’s his likey course of future action??
He (and those around him) cannot afford to lose the position of president.
that leaves only one course open.—-he owns the military (via the generals), congress are terrified, and he owns the supreme court.
and he has recruited ICE as his private army—with allegiance sworn to him personally..
They are now shooting innocent people in the street, with impunity. Trump insists it was self defence—it clearly wasn’t.
Check Hitler’s S.A. in the 1930s…
so……….
with those stumbling blocks removed, what’s to stop him ordering the military into congress and senate and shutting it down?
Outlandish???—couldn’t happen??
why not?—what is now there to stop him doing just that? Nutcases in ICE think democracy is an irrelevance—Just as Hitler did in the 30s….the mindset is exactly the same.
Tell me why it couldn’t happen??
We think alike on all this Mike—my question is directed at a few other ofw’ites.
He knows that if the mid terms go ahead, his power will evaporate at the end of this year.
And I’ve been pretty good on my forecasts on all this so far.
And the difference being to previous “order of things” where entire policy was cloaked under GOVs-NGOs double speak of goodness – while stomping on necks of others around the world taking with same intensity as well.. ?
Sorry, if Don is more open-straightforward about hegemonic status it’s better to all of us.. in the long-term.
–
If by ICE – hint you meant that Wen MN. incident “shooting into face”, the situation backstory from the start was like pre-ongoing ICE raid in neighborhood (cops, agents, cars, ..) where they were picking up illegals.
One women befriend by illegals in “the hood” blocked temporarily the road in her SUV during ongoing gov action, i.e. most likely some disruption-protest attempt in the operation. That was settling down but when agents approached the car with intent, i.e. ALREADY grabbing handles and rolled down door windows of said stationary car, that women panicked, sped up the car, the agents reacted and shot her to death.
By US standards completely ~OKish scene.
I can guarantee you even in Euro/Asian or Latin based situation when (riot/spec)cop approaches you in car – YOU continue to sit tight and try to avoid any suspicious move.
Yes, if the situation escalates they would first shoot in the tires and then with delay at the car / driver.. that’s the only difference.
–
The above context is also corroborated from bystander vids, where some hysterical girlz shouting profanities at cops/agents and commenting how they are horrible in picking out their neighbors up – hence evident confirmation of long time illegals functioning settlement there..
No, Mike, we shall not burn. It is far more likely that we shall freeze.
A Nobel Prize-winning group?
That says it all, really.
I wouldn’t be too impressed if they had won the Physics or Chemistry Prize.
But what Nobel Prize did the IPCC actually win?
That’s right. The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize— jointly with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, recognized for their work in building knowledge about man-made climate change and establishing the foundation for countermeasures.
What can I say but Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Haaa!
For those who don’t recognize it, that’s the very same prize that has been given to at least a dozen Chaucerian frauds such as Al Gore (who could be considered a modern iteration of the Pardoner—purchase my carbon credits and thy climate sins shall be forgiven—that sort of thing), the Dalai Lama, Elie Wiesel, Barack Obama, and Kofi Annan, and more than a few Machiavellian monsters such as Begin, Arafat, Kissinger over the past few decades. Goodness, even the European Union and the United Nations got one each for their services to peace.
I won’t list all the individual recipients. You can check them out at Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Peace_Prize_laureates
But I will state the obvious facts that the Nobel Peace Prize is in every respect a political prize that has no connection with and no bearing on scientific merit, and to that extent it is an extremely fitting honor for the IPCC because that organization is in every respect a political body.
Hence, there’s no point in debating the laws of physics with or within the IPCC. They are not the least bit interested in gaining a correct understanding of science, but only in using scientific-sounding language as a pretext for justifying whatever polices they are intent on recommending.
I wonder, are they still standing by that hockey stick graph?
You’ve reminded me of one thing, though. As much as I worry about the mess Trump is making with his delusions of grandeur, pulling the US out of the IPCC, UNESCO, and WHO are among his greatest achievements.
Also, for your information, WUWT allows a broad range of opinion both in their choice of articles and in their comments section. Where they draw the line is they will not allow the publication of articles that deliberately lie or obfuscate the facts. There is a lot more diversity of opinion on view there than there is at the IPCC conferences or in its reports.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/soaring-silver-prices-force-solar-makers-rethink-materials
Longi Green Energy Technology Co. is preparing a major shift in how it makes solar cells, moving away from heavy reliance on silver and toward lower-cost base metals as the industry grapples with rising material prices and shrinking margins, according to Bloomberg.
The company said it will begin large-scale production using base metals in the second quarter, a step it expects will “further lower the costs of solar modules,” according to a regulatory filing on Monday. . .
BloombergNEF notes that copper and other alternatives raise assembly costs and create reliability concerns, particularly for TOPCon cells, whose manufacturing process makes substitution difficult.
Efficiency?
Dennis L.
Probably more research is needed. And copper is in short supply, also.
This seems to support a claim on YouTube that a pentagon meeting a few day ago determined that the USA govt would run out or silver in ten days and that action would be necessary to ‘acquire’ more urgently using the various methods available to the government to forcibly get what it wants from wherever it is (in the USA or compliant allies?).
China and some other countries have already prohibited the export of silver and silver mining cannot be practically increased as existing mines cannot significant increase silver output and new mines take years to establish ( even if a source to mine can be found).
Silver is used in large amounts in military aircraft and missiles so obviously solar panels will need to find some other material.
I know that China has stopped exporting silver to the US, and I can easily believe that silver mining cannot be easily increased in the near term.
The price of silver seems to be down a bit from its peak, right now. This helps prevent a crisis.
https://sdbullion.com/silver-prices
But speculation in paper silver can easily become a problem, it seems to me.
The US has seized two more tankers, one of which is Russian flagged. I say for the time being the US has escalation dominance, and Russia and China are learning their first baby steps.
Wow, time for Russia to put up or shut up. Front page on CNN.com – not a site I visit, but wanted to see if the news made its way to the Western press.
Putin and Xi seats have to have become a bit hotter.
I am eager to see how Martyanov tries to spin this as a victory for Russia 🙂
According to msm – the tanker sailed under no specific flag through Caribbean; previously also identified as the same vessel going to Iran’s oil ports.. aka not only breaching various ad hoc sanction regimes but also basic int naval conduct statues.
In latest development, supposedly escorted by RU sub and perhaps more other vessels, not clear yet. Nevertheless, the US took over the ship via commando dispatched from a chopper. Lost comm contact since then. No phys-kinetic reaction from the RU side – however the govs pleaded for humanitarian ways of dealing with their abducted crew though.
🙂
The action took place in Northern Atlantic after weeks of ~hunting. During the later stages this ship was hastily filed under RU papers/flag to have better legal standing.
The operation was assisted by the UK, no details, perhaps only re-fuel services provided..
that changes everything. no, really. Peskov can stop fretting about losing his ral estate holdings in Paris.
Ooops, allow for a bit of added literary flavor for dramatic effect previously above.
In fact the story was rather about two individual incidents, the more lengthy-escaping was the Caribbean one. And the newish case supposedly escorted one was that taking place in North Atlantic though..
Nevertheless, the key story remains, push of sanctions lead to acquiring of (mal) un-insurable ghost fleet of decrepit oil tankers..
Hm, plot thickness, perhaps the #1 ver was more correct after-all..
One wonders why the escalation run away trend now – just seizing the opportunity to “scaling-up” the chaos strategy doctrine way up.. ?
What is so different for the moment?
Multitude or just one core pressing aspect?
US synthetic debt paper about to turn on final leg vertical rise..
US proxy war near plain-view debacle resolution..
US proxy war addon/refocus (new one) about to escalate soon (ME?)..
US ally – vassal system near disorderly reset both in Euroasia and ME domains
US domestic political cycle..
US internal recalculation of thresholds in PO-timing assessment..
..
.
The musical chairs problem is beginning to play out, now. This is the problem.
One only wonders if one’s mental timeline was late, as was your leaning. But that wonderment will be brief because you know exactly what the score is, and why now. For us who’s timeline was early it’s BAU tonight baby! The tables have turned because the money changers’ tables are about to get turned over. The only thing that can save us now is a Princess of Peace.
Well, timing is everything.
And although have been on the case relatively soon and always allowed for faster scenario option – yes you are probably correct “late leaning” tendencies of mine (some of us) were likely not to an advantage comparatively speaking..
We could compare notes again in a while, should the over-all situation escalate even more or on the other hand get cooled-/bogged down – and postponed somehow yet again.. on the expense of someone OTHER being subject to PO dynamics suffering first instead..
Btw. the good folks at Surplus are bit ~panicking as well, e.g. commentariat member DaveINmegaYRS and few others.. are re-balancing a bit towards closer collapse sequencing in the light of recent events.
No shit. You gotta crosspost some davidina gems for us please. Pretty please. I was sure he would sit tight and play it cool until the point of absurdity. Which means I respect the fact that he’s owning up to events.
Vlad’s and the decorated boyz demeanor looked quite unlike on previous orthodox festivities past y/y.
Perhaps we indeed have had close encounter with the mushroom thingy few days ago as that aerial attack on their gov site (likely) took place.
The pros always maintained such annihilation would most likely come not from ~cpu / sensor random tech error but from fools – creti#ns of the day at the helm (wink wink golden decors & toilets faction of the world)..
Iran recently seized 2 tankers headed through the Straits. It took them a couple of hours. This took America 10 days. Art Berman was making fun how difficult the whole process was. Seems a bit embarrassing to me.
Straits being the operative word? And I don’t imagine they were Russian flagged. And it also might have to do with waiting til the ship got close enough to the UK fighter swarm. Maybe the US will plant some materiel evidence for framing Russia with.
Initial Encounter (December 2025): U.S. forces tried to board the Bella 1 (flagged to Guyana) near Venezuela but the crew refused.
USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group: The world’s largest aircraft carrier remains in the southern Caribbean with a loadout of more than 70 aircraft.
USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group: Recently relocated slightly north toward Cuban waters but remains under U.S. Southern Command for regional operations.
Support Vessels: At least one special forces support ship and multiple supply and transport vessels are present in the Caribbean Sea.
There was no UK fighter swarm. It was a couple of surveillance aircraft.
American here. Embarrassed that all this is happening, and even more so that we don’t seem to be very efficient.
Thanks runaway nice to have you here. Here’s the AI bot confirming that at a distance from the interdiction, there were UK fighters providing cover for the inderdiction by swarming Russian naval assets that were allegedly heading towards the Marinera in order to presumably escort it the rest of the way:
:Yes, both Russian naval assets and UK air and naval forces were in the broader area where the tanker, previously known as the Bella 1 (and renamed the Marinera), was interdicted by US forces.
Russian Navy: According to US and other officials, the Russian military had deployed a submarine and other navy vessels to escort or protect the tanker as it fled across the Atlantic toward Russia. Reports indicated that some Russian naval vessels were in the vicinity when the US boarding operation occurred, though it is unclear exactly how close they were, and no direct confrontation took place.
UK Forces: The UK provided “enabling support” to the US operation at the request of the US. This support included using UK bases for US military assets (such as V-22 Ospreys and AC-130 gunships) and deploying Royal Navy and Royal Air Force (RAF) assets for surveillance and refueling. The UK Defence Secretary John Healey confirmed that UK forces, including RFA Tideforce and RAF aircraft (such as Typhoon fighters for air cover and KC-2 tankers for refueling), were involved in the supporting operations in the North Atlantic area between the UK and Iceland. No British personnel were involved in the actual boarding of the vessel.”
As I’m sure you’re aware, I believe that aspects of the American clown show that you yourself attest to, are by design. Clearly that must not be an idea with which you’re comfortable. Yet, what is more plausible? That the US forces in the Caribbean were physically unable to board the then- Bella 1 in the Caribbean, or that they wanted to embarrass Russia as ivan and drb alluded to?
Other recent aspects of the American clown show as political cover for the covert Degrowth Agenda are arresting Maduro for being a drug kingpin, suppression of the Epstein files, creating a culture at ICE that enables Renee Good to be murdered in cold blood yesterday, etc. You can think of many more examples even if you don’t agree that it is all next-level Consent Factory BAU by an intelligence services think tank (the TT in MICIMATT) complex that has relentlessly consolidated its covert power in this age of mergers and acquisitions.
At this next level (loony tunes?) questions naturally arise, such as, is the Renee Good murder authentic? Why wasn’t the doctor bystander allowed to check for a pulse? Why did none of the ICE officers provide medical assistance? Why did some of them leave the scene in plain sight? Clown show or statecraft?
If we are political then our minds are being intensely farmed right now for the purposes of statecraft because looming Collapse ideally requires a political sea change…which requires farming that sea change into existence. I’m American but I’m not the slightest bit embarrassed by the American clown show, because my mind can’t be farmed.
Meanwhile, the ~younger more bearded Greek making fun of Tulsi today – as she posting her Joga pic on the beach and congratulating Donald for the narco war successes.. at the moment when the security state upgrades itself to $1.5T and beyond..
Reante> just observing – not disrespecting you/rs perhaps long-term argument.
Nice JR! Please don’t tiptoe around me. I was a basketball player. Talk good-natured trash to me whenever you like, and talk serious trash to me as you see fit. And as I’m sure you know there’s a long history of trash talking in all manner of intellectual circles. Constructive competition breeds greatness. The heyday of cultural anthropology was seeped in trash talk amongst the heavyweights, and nobody did it better than Marvin Harris.
Here’s the abominable Gabbard X post, for posterity’s sake; I would have just copy and pasted the text but my phone wouldn’t do any more than highlight it:
https://x.com/DNIGabbard/status/2008643620
686229736
Read her statement carefully again a few more times.
The Hand presents us with mental bottlenecks every so often, and with that in mind, plus a mixed metaphor, allow me to try and thread the needle for you like I did for myself. 🫣
National Socialism is a Conservative politics that does not tolerate hard drugs. Nevermind Hitler’s use of amphetamines because he presumably had a prescription for that seeing as how it was the good old days and amphetamines are straight edge drugs – like coffee on steroids. But for some reason cocaine was never quite seen the same way lol. But I digress.
Tim’s posting of Thierry Meyssan’s article was important (Thanks Tim!) and, given this conversation, serendipitous, even though I said I preferred the energy-hip article that Tribal Matrix posted in response. I think highly enough of Meyssan that if he says that Maduro was *effectively* a drug trafficker, then I have little choice but to believe it because Meyssan is an old-school truth teller and incredibly well connected:
“It is important to understand that the majority of Latin American governments are involved in drug trafficking. It is the primary source of illicit income. Until now, the United States chose the cartels it worked with and waged a ruthless war against the others. For example, the Colombian Pablo Escobar initially worked with them before allying himself with left-wing revolutionaries and becoming the DEA’s Public Enemy Number One.
In 2000, I was Secretary General of the World Anti-Prohibition League, an organization comprised of, among others, more than 500 parliamentarians and over 20 Nobel laureates. I assessed the scourge that creates narco-states and the ineffectiveness of the wars on drugs. The only way to rebuild healthy societies is to educate populations to control their addictions. President Trump’s efforts will therefore amount to very little, even if he succeeds in improving political relations between Latin America and the Middle East.
Are We Witnessing the Return of Empires?
Most commentators are speculating about a possible return of empires. According to them, Donald Trump has just invaded Venezuela, just as Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, and Xi Jinping is about to do the same to Taiwan. This shows a complete misunderstanding of what is happening: President Trump did not invade Venezuela, but extracted a drug trafficker;”
Was Maduro structurally forced into generating trafficking income because of sanctions? Wouldn’t surprise me at all. Might the CIA get caught in the crossfire of the Maduro trial like Fitz raised the specter of? Wouldn’t surprise me because the crony intelligence Establishment has to go for Phase 2.
Therefore I conclude that Tulsi is correct in implying that Maduro is a functional trafficker.
Next is the regime change question. There has been no regime change and there won’t be – just as I vehemently insisted to Fitz that there wouldn’t be, before all this went down. So Tulsi doesn’t have to dissent from a regime change operation and, thus, publicly break from the administration. Is she privately furious with Trump saying that he runs VZ? I certainly assume that she is steaming.
Note that pretty much the rest of her text is praising the involved military and I tell services for executing such a ‘flawless’ operation. LOL So flawless that it met no resistance, but she’s presumably not privy to the Hand’s conversation with the VZ military elite regarding the global existential necessity of the HTOE. But as who I expect will be the future leader of the US military, her explicit praise to those involved, for following orders within the existing US laws that DO in fact allow for extracting traffickers, is an astute, Machiavellian move on her part.
And none of her own threading of the political needle is mutually exclusive to her theorized outing of Trump with the Epstein files or otherwise going rogue on him at some point for any other number of clown show outrages.
Did I thread the needle or not?
Speaking of the HTOE, I expect that you also noticed in the Meyssan excerpt that he explicitly laid out the now-obvious three-way primary Horsetrade of the HTOE. Obviously it’s not just him as it’s gone viral now. Six Years later. Well, the actual Horsetrade hasn’t gone viral but the co-opted version has. Such is life.
Hey JR it looks like I could have just saved my breath and replied to you with the following link. No threading of the needle needed, unless DIY is your thing, which it is – both of ours But here’s the predictive programming for the masses, because they can’t be trusted to read between the lines of her X post:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/tulsi-gabbard-reportedly-kept-dark-sidelined-venezuela-operation-nations-intelligence
That’s how you keep the Chosen One’s nose clean when she finds herself in the middle of a shitshow
Charles I was beheaded for ‘treason’ in 1649.
However, compared to what Victoria and Albert did during the Trent Affair, Charles’ crime looks like a misdemeanor.
tl, dr, in Dec 1861 two CSA reps were seized in a British ship named Trent, which violated the Rules of Sea dictated by London.
Until then, fearing a potential clash against the Royal Navy, USA could not institute a complete blockade of CSA which is why British ships could sail to CSA to get the two reps.
Opinion simmered in London. There were talks about declaring war against USA, or at least recognize the CSA to give USA a message that it can fool around the Royal Navy.
However, Victoria and Albert sympathized with the blacks of southern USA, and undermined such efforts.
Albert was dying but he spent his last day ‘defusing’ this crisis
https://youtu.be/pRy9E-GK3gc?si=MSjqTWgW9jn68wzl
And after Albert died Victoria used that as an excuse to avoid going to war against USA.
Foolish, foolish and foolish.
After realizing UK won’t fight USA, Lincoln sent David Farragut to New Orleans to seize it, and the CSA was blockade, and all that.
It was the last chance to prevent USA from becoming the global superpower. With that, CSA would have supported UK during the Great War, which would have unfolded completely differently since USA was not hot helping Central Powers, although in this time Woodrow Wilson, born in Virginia, would have become the President of CSA.
Basically Victoria and Albert (who was not British so what he did might not have been treason, an excuse not extending to Victoria) sold out the future of the British Empire for the blacks of Southern USA, who to my memory never expressed any gratitude to the Queen and her husband.
I posted an article entitled, ‘Venezuela’, on Substack. In simple/brief terms it sort of summarizes my sense of the Venezuelan takeover from an oil/relocalization/geopolitical standpoint. It’s really Export Land Model 101, yes?
Here’s the link if anyone’s interested, although being at Gail’s site, it’s probably nothing new:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-183666656
This is a very interesting link titled,
The Privatized Seigniorage Pivot: America’s Quiet Monetary Regime Change
Why the Venezuela intervention reveals the wrong thesis, where the real fiscal innovation is hiding, and what it means for every portfolio on Earth
The thesis is precise: The United States has begun outsourcing dollar hegemony maintenance to private stablecoin issuers while simultaneously abandoning the rules-based international order it created, not as coordinated grand strategy but as emergent behavior of an overstretched empire under fiscal pressure reaching for any mechanism that might work. The stablecoin-Treasury nexus, mandated by the GENIUS Act signed in July 2025, represents the only scalable mechanism for creating captive Treasury demand without Federal Reserve balance sheet expansion or foreign central bank cooperation. Venezuelan oil, by contrast, generates approximately three percent of annual interest payments at maximum theoretical extraction. The intervention is geopolitical theater dressed in fiscal language. The actual fiscal innovation is happening in plain sight, in regulatory filings and attestation reports and Congressional testimony, where private corporations now hold more Treasury bills than most sovereign nations..
The article points out that the level of US interest payments on debt have already become a huge problem:
Historian Niall Ferguson has articulated the threshold with characteristic precision: “A great power that spends more on interest payments than on defense breaches a threshold that historically has preceded decline.” The United States crossed that threshold in 2024. The question that matters is not whether these numbers are sustainable. They are not. The question is what the United States will do about it.
Three mechanisms are now being tested simultaneously, whether by design or improvisation. The first is territorial resource control, exemplified by Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela. The second is digital dollar infrastructure, exemplified by the stablecoin regulatory framework. The third is strategic asset accumulation, exemplified by the Bitcoin reserve executive order. Understanding which mechanism can actually address the scale of the problem, versus which mechanisms are gestures that satisfy political constituencies without mathematical substance, is the alpha.
It explains what seems to work:
The Mechanism Hidden in Plain Sight
While the media dissected Venezuelan oil reserves and debated the legality of extraterritorial regime change, a different kind of intervention was finalizing in Washington. On July 18, 2025, the GENIUS Act became law. The legislation’s full title is the Guiding and Ensuring National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act, a name so anodyne it practically begs to be ignored. Do not ignore it.
The GENIUS Act establishes a comprehensive federal framework for payment stablecoins, those digital tokens pegged to the dollar and backed by reserves. The critical provision is the reserve requirement: stablecoin issuers must maintain one-to-one backing exclusively in United States coins and currency, demand deposits at insured depository institutions, Treasury bills with remaining maturity of 93 days or less, repurchase agreements backed by Treasury bills, and government money market funds. No rehypothecation is permitted. No fractional reserve games. Every dollar of stablecoin in circulation must have a corresponding dollar of specified reserve assets.
Read that list again. Treasury bills with 93 days or less maturity. This is not incidental technical language. It is the entire point.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated the implications explicitly in his July press release on the legislation: “This groundbreaking technology will buttress the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency in the evolving digital asset space and lead to a surge in demand for US Treasuries.” He was not being subtle.
I read “surge in demand for US Treasuries” as partly being helpful, but also having its own tendency to send interest rates up, especially short term Treasury rates. The article says:
Stablecoin issuers are on trajectory to become the single largest holder category of short-dated Treasury debt, holding 25 to 30 percent of the market by the end of the decade.
Also:
Tether earns the yield on $135 billion in Treasuries while the tokens circulate as de facto dollars. The United States gets the captive demand. Tether gets the profit. Everyone gets dollar proliferation without Federal Reserve balance sheet expansion.
This is privatized seigniorage. It is the actual fiscal innovation occurring in the American monetary system.
Later:
Dollar stablecoins have become the de facto currency of the global crypto economy and increasingly of emerging market savings and remittances. Every dollar that enters this ecosystem requires reserve backing under the new regulatory framework. Every reserve dollar must be held in Treasury bills.
Near the end, the article points out one weakness which could prove fatal.
During stress events, when everyone wants liquidity simultaneously, the Treasury market’s depth evaporates.
For this reason, sudden selling of stablecoins could be a problem.
Another issue I would wonder about is the fact that the US payments for interest on debt will continue to rise and rise, partly because of growing debt levels and partly because short term interest rates may rise. Also, these higher interest payments are being paid to Tether and perhaps other organizations.
When I look online, Tether is owned by iFinex. This company seems to own a bunch of other things in the cryptocurrency world.
https://optimumnames.com/blog/ifinex-co-ltd-a-deep-dive-1764801893
iFinex is a Hong Kong based company.
https://unchainedcrypto.com/bitfinex-owner-proposes-150-million-share-buyback-report/
Thus, the US government will be sending a huge amount of interest payments to this organization, over which the US has little control. The benefit of these interest payments will almost certainly go primarily to the already wealthy. They will continue to siphon buying power away from the less wealthy in the US economy, I am afraid.
Thanks for your infinite generosity Gail in forever picking up the slack by summarizing the links that people drop. You’re truly service oriented.
I didn’t read the link because I’m tired of first- timers bailing out on conversations so until Pulpibor proves he’s willing to engage I’ll just go off your summary.
Excited to see Pulpibor out on the cutting edge if not, perhaps, the point of the edge, but I think he should reconsider before writing off the VZ deal as “geopolitical theater dressed in fiscal language.” I think he should consider how the VZ oil transfers to the US can become at least part of the Treasury’s collateral base for an MMT-powered, nationalized stablecoins. The mythical ‘debtless’ money Holy Grail can finally be ‘achieved,’ by cannabilization, because Collapse inverts everything. Which would suggest that the evolution of the stablecoin framework isn’t finished yet. But he’s going to have a hard time seeing WHY that must happen if he doesn’t have a sound peak oil based systems theory of Collapse. But, even if only as a thought experiment, he might consider thinking through the above, and the quote below by Energy Secretary Chris Wright from a ZH article this morning:
“Wright went on to describe Venezuela’s oil market in a post-Maduro world: “Now we have a different arrangement. Instead of the oil being blockaded, as it is right now, we’re going to let the oil flow. Sell that oil to U.S. refineries and to markets around the world to improve global oil supplies. But those sales will be conducted by the U.S. government, with the proceeds deposited into accounts controlled by the U.S. government. From there, the funds can flow back into Venezuela to benefit the Venezuelan people.”
Why will we see a stablecoin nationalization that renders his neofeudal “Privatized Seignorage” title ultimately misguided? The financial reason is because Tether and Circle take the profits they get from the T-bill rates and, naturally, subject themselves to financial exposure to things like Bitcoin and gold (yes gold’s value will decline vs the deflating dollar) capable of collapsing them when the global financial collapse arrives. And that’s by design. These exposures are Trojan Horses in service of stablecoins nationalization. And the structural reason is that when globalized privatization fails, nationalization is the only choice left. TINA. So engineering the inevitable ahead of time is Statecraft 101. Nationalizing by force majeure is always an option to but that hurts legitimacy.
“During stress events, when everyone wants liquidity simultaneously, the Treasury market’s depth evaporates.”
This is incorrect. Stablecoins are liquid instruments. That’s one of their primary functions. Stablecoins are digital Lincoln Greenbacks. Digital cash. There will be stablecoin debit cards and stablecoin apps. As I’ve said, 50pc of all VZ transactions under 10K are in Stablecoins. So during stress events (Phase 2 is going to be just one long-running, snowballing stress event) there will be flights to safety and liquidity, and T-bills are the premier global destination for a flight to safety and the dollar the premier liquidity instrument – and stablecoins are both of those things. Presto Magico.
Hopefully Pulpibor responds and sticks around., seems like we may be able to learn from him. Hopefully he’s not so invested in his blog that he’s willing to miss out on living out here on the best creative commons around.
I think you are being too pushy Reante. We need to thank Pulpibor. He has made several comments in the last two days. He posted an interesting article on Substack, which you admit that you haven’t even read. Why don’t you spend some time reading the article? Also, my concerns about why this approach will not work, as noted in my comment. I am impressed by Pulpibor’s work.
I’m impressed too and said as much in my comment. I was working my way down the new comments from top to bottom, as I don’t subscribe to the email feed, and didn’t realize that he had commented below until I saw his reply to me on JHK. I replied to him in apology for my response here and told him I’d read his post.
As you know about 90+ PC of first time posters never reply, and that’s poor character, and I prefaced my comment in those terms.
I am a pushy person, but I do make every effort to apologize when I pattern something wrongly. And I pushed back on some of the points in your summary because ideas are the free marketplace of both competition and cooperation. Besides, some people need pushing so I’d I’d rather err on the side of pushing too much. Hell, i need to push myself sometimes.
Your primary concern is the interest rates rising. Interest rates are going to drop below zero.
“Interest rates are going to drop below zero.”
Maybe. If prices of goods are falling, interest rates could drop below zero, and still not be enough to make up for the deflation. We will see.
The plot thickens here too. To summarize lol:
Gail, as you already know and I just discovered, I had thought that you were summarizing Pulp’s link, and in part because you did not provide a link to your summary. But you were not summarizing Pulp’s link, so FTR all of my constructive criticism of the summary is now directed to the author of the following link. But I’m still confused as to why you also thought that Pulp wrote the stablecoin article. This feels like a who’s on first skit. The link:
https://shanakaanslemperera.substack.com/p/the-privatized-seigniorage-pivot
And now it makes sense why the author is not quite on-point IMO, because he’s not a peak oil guy. He sees the present deep optics but not the future deep optics, because he’s not a peak oil guy, he’s a fiat guy.
I still haven’t read the whole thing yet 😁
Ok, I read it. It’s a great article no doubt. He even spends a paragraph explaining exactly what I was explaining yesterday about the difference between dollarization and stabilization/stable-ization.
His argument about how redemptions threaten t-bill interest rate stability during crisis is myopic imo. Though learning about that dynamic is interesting and valuable. I call it myopic for the same reason I said it was in my original response, which is that he’s not recognizing that stablecoins are not only intended to save the US’s ass by maintaining Treasury demand, but they are equally as much intended as a new parallel public dollar reserve currency. He should be recognizing that imo because it shouldn’t be such a secret to someone like himself that countries like VZ and Turkey are already using them as dollar currency to massive degrees. When that early adoption reaches late adopters, there will be no waves of stablecoins redemptions because digital dollars will be the premier liquid asset of the civilization, just as it is right now.
I can agree with the basic gist of it – Donald is clearly preoccupied with looking for quickly gathering [ collateral ] of any sort to either prolong or perhaps even (bridge) via other-novel tools into the future as per yours further argument details.
Such [collateral] imaginary-promise be it VZ oil potential upgrade, Greenland’s rare earths, 5% of EUR puppets up-spending on “defense”, W. UKR rump-state thorn for the future etc. could be in total worth low trillions in today’s money, hence some investors could still be able-willing-fake to pony up in say next 1-2-3yrs.. window towards it.. so disorderly bankruptcy delayed once more.
I don’t see it delaying the disorderly bankruptcy of the private global financial system. A systemic crisis is going to be disorderly no matter what. But I believe the idea is to keep the consequences of that disorderly bankruptcy from resulting in the total collapse of the civilization.
‘Every dollar that flows into stablecoin ecosystems, whether from retail crypto traders in Des Moines or dollar-seeking savers in Buenos Aires, becomes automatic demand for Treasury bills. The dollar extends through digital rails without Federal Reserve intervention. Treasury demand grows without coordinated foreign central bank recycling. The architecture is self-reinforcing: stablecoin adoption grows, which grows T-bill demand, which lowers short-term borrowing costs, which eases fiscal pressure, which stabilizes the environment in which stablecoins operate, which encourages further adoption.
London Business School economist Hélène Rey has explicitly recognized this dynamic, noting that dollar stablecoins represent “the privatization of seigniorage by global actors.” What she means is precise: traditionally, the ability to create money and capture the difference between production cost and face value belonged to sovereign governments. Stablecoin issuers now perform this function. Tether earns the yield on $135 billion in Treasuries while the tokens circulate as de facto dollars. The United States gets the captive demand. Tether gets the profit. Everyone gets dollar proliferation without Federal Reserve balance sheet expansion.
This is privatized seigniorage. It is the actual fiscal innovation occurring in the American monetary system. . . .
What stablecoins introduce is a parallel channel that bypasses these institutional intermediaries entirely.
Consider the Brazilian warehouse manager who converts real wages to USDT to protect against currency depreciation. Consider the Nigerian merchant who invoices in USDC to avoid naira volatility. Consider the Vietnamese remittance recipient who holds dollars as stablecoins rather than converting to dong. None of these actors appear in official foreign exchange reserve statistics. None of them are central bank reserve managers following allocation models. They are retail participants in a shadow dollar system that has reached $310 billion in market capitalization, more than the currency in circulation of most nations.
Eighty percent of stablecoin transaction volume occurs outside the United States, yet 99 percent of stablecoin market capitalization is denominated in dollars. This asymmetry is the data point that matters. Dollar stablecoins have become the de facto currency of the global crypto economy and increasingly of emerging market savings and remittances. Every dollar that enters this ecosystem requires reserve backing under the new regulatory framework. Every reserve dollar must be held in Treasury bills. . . .
Bank for International Settlements research reveals a dangerous asymmetry in stablecoin-Treasury dynamics. Stablecoin outflows raise Treasury yields two to three times as much as inflows lower them. A $3.5 billion outflow could spike short-term yields six to eight basis points. The asymmetry arises because redemptions force immediate selling into whatever market conditions exist, while inflows allow strategic timing. During market stress, precisely when the government most needs to refinance debt cheaply, synchronized stablecoin redemptions could force fire sales of Treasury holdings into illiquid markets.’?
https://substack.com/home/post/p-183683106
I commented above on this article.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2025/12/31/2026-expect-a-very-uneven-world-economic-downturn/comment-page-3/#comment-498385
I would feel a whole lot better about Stablecoins if I didn’t know that the owner of Tether is domiciled in Hong Kong. The owner owns bitcoin resources besides Tether. I imagine the owner carries debt of its own, but we have no way of knowing.
The system, as far as I can see, allows the US to raise its debt level, while raising demand for Treasuries to allow this higher debt level to take place. This approach transfers more interest payments outside of the USA. I cannot see how this approach keeps the high interest payments on US debt from being a worse problem than they already are, however. It is possible that this system will lead to higher short term interest rates, also.
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Chavez died, probably assassinated in 2013, Maduro has since taken his place and was kidnapped by an American unit.
A large part of the population is in exile, no doubt not because they are fleeing the dictatorship, but because Venezuela is a victim of American sanctions which cause inflation and misery at the same time as government accounts have been blocked and stolen in Great Britain and the USA.
Indeed, the kidnapping of Maduro is a sign of extreme American weakness. A ground intervention is impossible; the army is large and well-equipped, and even if a small fraction were to resist, say 10%, that would still represent 200,000 men, enough to create chaos and unrest in a jungle where the security costs of oil companies would make the price of oil unaffordable. Clearly, moreover, that is out of the question for them.
The strike was carried out by air and naval forces, where Venezuelan weakness was glaring.
In fact, power remains in the hands of the Chavistas, for one simple reason: they are the only ones. The “opposition” refused to participate in the elections to avoid a bloody defeat.
The only unknown is who will be dominant in the current power structure. And whether they will agree to step down.
At the same time, stepping down would be a risky option; Maduro, even if politically worn down and certainly unpopular, is now sacrosanct and canonized.
We have reached the limits of US intervention capabilities, at a very low level. With the typical American mentality of decapitating the adversary. We remain in a state of complete uncertainty, and as usual, chaos is likely to be the price of this “success.” Chaos that would mean the costly oil reserves of the Orinoco Belt are no more exploitable than before.
And let’s not kid ourselves. While the Orinoco oil field is colossal, the tap that can be installed on it will have a ridiculously low flow rate.
Meanwhile, a path is open. Medvedev is thinking about the Merz kidnapping. European heads of state should be worried. Being kidnapped by one (Moscow) or the other (Washington) is a realistic possibility.
As for the threatened Colombians and Mexicans, if the same misfortune were to befall them, it is certain that the guerrillas and drug trafficking existing within their borders would only operate under a nationalist guise. A Colombia of 1,100,000 km² with 180,000 police officers and 267,000 soldiers is not capable of controlling its territory and, like Brazil, was not at all keen to go to war in Venezuela.
The US cannot, the others do not want to, and the Chavista army and militia number 2 million men.
Therefore, Trump’s claim that he controls Venezuela is, to say the least, ludicrous. His expansionist ambitions in his immediate foreign country primarily signal the political, economic, and military decline of the United States.
https://lachute.over-blog.com/2026/01/sur-le-venezuela.htm
MADURO PEED HIMSELF SEVERAL TIMES
intelligence reports reveal, where they claim that Maduro had to change his clothes several times
Because in several startled moments he peed himself, once when he was captured, another when he boarded the aircraft carrier, and one more when he saw the Statue of Liberty.
🙂
Does not matter
Emmett Till did not become a martyr because he was an angel
Emmett Till’s dad was executed for r*pe in Italy
Emmett was an only child , so the line of Louis Till died, which is not a bad thing
But for these types it does not matter whether Maduro is a clown or not.
We need to understand that “control” in Venezuela is not very possible.
It seems like we should have learned that lesson back in the day of Viet Nam.
Fraud .
“The US has quietly sold the same natural gas molecules three times.
Once to Europe through binding LNG contracts. Once to AI data centers through power agreements. Once to American households through the implicit promise you won’t freeze.
When winter demand peaks, all three claims come due simultaneously.
The arithmetic doesn’t close. Someone doesn’t get their molecules.
This isn’t speculation. We came within hours of cascading grid failure during Winter Storm Elliott. LNG terminals kept liquefying while TVA and Duke rolled blackouts across millions.
PJM just hit $333/MW-day capacity prices. Still came up 6,625 MW short. Data centers drove 63% of the increase.
The “energy dominance” narrative is about to collide with thermodynamics.
The question isn’t whether this system breaks.
It’s who holds the positions that profit when it does.
https://x.com/shanaka86/status/2008505022997536976
This thought has occurred to me, as well. The system seems likely to break in the near future. A question is how high natural gas prices can go. If they can’t go very high and stay very high, flow of natural gas will be cut off early, and all three could be losers.
While we’re doing Venezuela, here’s a “take” that a lot of our commenter won’t like. It’s from Thierry Meyssan, who writes from a Middle and Near Eastern perspective on international politics. He has the distinction of being the first, or at least one of the first people to challenge the mainstream narrative of the September 11 attacks in print in his book 9/11: The Big Lie (original French title: “L’Effroyable imposture”),which presents a series of conspiracy theories surrounding the events of the big day.
Here’s what he’s written about what he calls “the kidnapping of Nicholas Maduro”:
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moros was abducted by the United States military on January 3, 2026, and transported to New York, where he was charged with narco-terrorism and cocaine importation into the United States.
To analyze this news, we must avoid the usual interpretations prevalent in Latin America. This abduction is not necessarily related to the traditional conflict between the children of indigenous peoples and those of colonizers, nor to Roosevelt’s corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, nor to the struggle for oil.
I will base my remarks on my knowledge of this country. I was a personal friend of President Hugo Chávez Frías (who died in 2013). Contrary to what is said, I don’t think Maduro is a “Chávez supporter,” even if he was in the past.
In 2017, Nicolás Maduro invited me to Caracas for a meeting of intellectuals, one of many he organized. I went, not for the meeting itself, but to give a lecture to the military high command. At the time, the Straussian Elliott Abrams was preparing an invasion of Venezuela. He had been tasked by President Donald Trump, then in his first term, with handling the Venezuelan issue.
I wanted to organize a visit by senior officers from that country to Syria so they could see firsthand the methods used by the Pentagon with the jihadists. Within a few hours, I realized that the intellectuals invited by Nicolás Maduro understood absolutely nothing about the current geopolitical situation. President Maduro’s entourage then prevented me from speaking with the military leadership. I met with numerous diplomats and officers, all of whom struck me as highly competent and dissatisfied with the president. I met him and felt like I was speaking to an actor, not a politician. This visit led nowhere.
WHO IS NICOLÁS MADURO?
Nicolás Maduro is a union leader who fought alongside Hugo Chávez. He became president because Chávez’s Cuban doctors claimed that he had designated him as his successor on his deathbed. At the time, he was vice president, representing a faction within his party. There are no witnesses to this. But the “Chávez supporters” did not dare challenge Cuba, the revolutionaries’ point of reference. They obeyed and elected him. Although not a charismatic figure, he has proven effective in many areas, including law enforcement tactics.
Yet his country has sunk into crisis. He left the oil infrastructure in ruins and did nothing to rebuild it. Prices have continued to climb, with inflation reaching 130,000% in 2018. Feeding oneself has become difficult. Millions of Venezuelans have emigrated, or even fled, their country. Some have returned later, but the majority has remained abroad. He then liberalized the economy and established casinos. This country, where Hugo Chávez had fostered a sense of national identity, had taught literacy even in the most remote villages, had created a genuine healthcare system, and had established a level of equality that existed nowhere else in Latin America, has become, under his presidency, a haven for all kinds of traffickers and has experienced an explosion of social inequality. Many long-time Chávez supporters have gradually distanced themselves from Maduro.
Nicolás Maduro established a police state, issuing identity cards, the “Carnet de la Patria” (Fatherland Cards), and linking the granting of social assistance to political affiliation. The years 2017-2019 were marked by a brutal repression of domestic terrorism. Law enforcement agencies practiced torture, without it being clear whether this was on personal initiative or part of state policy. In 2020, during the first Trump presidency, Nicolás Maduro was indicted in the United States for narco-terrorism; a paradox, given that Chávez’s Venezuela had been declared by the United Nations a “drug-free state.”
https://www.voltairenet.org/article223457.html
He is Energy blind and the drug charges are just bullshit .
Reminds me about the captagon bullshit about Assad when in reality they were the ones and their gulfie buddies who trafficked it for the mercenaries of al Jolani.
If this was about the drugs they should have kidnapped Daniel Noboa of Ecuador.
Lame article , sorry Thierry
By the way Chávez was poisoned just like Arafat .
This article is much better
https://open.substack.com/pub/theuaob/p/the-repo-man-cometh-thermodynamics?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=75emsz
Here’s the mechanism no one is pricing:
PDVSA ships oil to China. Payment goes to a CDB escrow in Beijing. Debt service is deducted automatically. Venezuela gets the residual.
Venezuela never touches the money.
Default is impossible. Courts are irrelevant.
Chinese recovery: ~100%
Western bondholder recovery: 0%
Bonds just rallied to 35 cents on “regime change optimism.”
The optimism is mispriced by about 20 cents.
Read the full deep dive story
https://open.substack.com/pub/shanakaanslemperera/p/the-collateral-checkmate-how-china?r=6p7b5o&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
https://x.com/shanaka86/status/2008519969722822771/photo/1
China just declared war.
Not with missiles. With lawyers.
“Chinese interest in Venezuela will be protected by law.”
Read that again. Beijing didn’t threaten military action. They announced something far more dangerous to American power:
They’re going to make regime change uninsurable.
Here’s what 99% of analysts are missing:
This isn’t about $19 billion in Venezuelan loans.
This is about $1.3 TRILLION in Belt and Road debt across 150 countries.
Every dollar China has lent to Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Pacific—all of it is secured by the same legal fiction: that sovereign leaders can sign contracts that successor governments must honor.
The US just kidnapped a sitting president from his bedroom and flew him to Manhattan.
If that precedent stands, every Belt and Road loan is worthless paper. Every port deal. Every railway. Every power plant. Gone.
China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t issue a protest.
They issued a statement of existential necessity.
They WILL pursue international arbitration. They WILL invoke bilateral investment treaties. They WILL take this to every court from The Hague to Singapore. They WILL make the legal cost of American regime change so catastrophic that the next president thinks twice.
Not for Maduro.
For the entire architecture of Chinese overseas lending.
Trump told Fox: “There won’t be a problem with Xi.”
Xi just answered: There will be 10,000 lawyers.
Watch the next 90 days.
If China successfully enforces a single contract claim against a post-Maduro government—just one—they’ve established that American regime change doesn’t void Chinese debt.
That’s not a victory for Venezuela.
That’s a restructuring of global power.
The 21st century won’t be decided by aircraft carriers.
It will be decided by who writes the contracts.
And who can enforce them after the coup.
https://x.com/shanaka86/status/2008080532417257561
What caliber of “international arbitration” are we talking about in today’s world of anything goes.. ?
The judges have got their personal credit cards, banking accounts, foreign investments inside the (US/EU/CH) system. They could be and will be [ deleted ] if needed..
Yes small instances could happen here and there but with no bearing on the overall situation of larger institutional players, jurisdictions, ..
Actually, as of now several dissenting voices have been just canceled out of the system just like that.
CHN can only answer with full spectrum-scale autarky (for its domain), embargoes etc. and they don’t have the guts (profile) to do that.
Does Israel’s ‘lawless’ mass murder and the US’ similarly-‘lawless’ actions overseas and with VZ kind of make the law moot, though?
IOW, unsure I follow you.
We will have to wait and see what happens. China has a whole lot of Belt and Road debt that it wants to collect on.
I’ve always liked Thierry despite his old ways but, yes, this is a better article. And tell me that Zip’s comment below in the comments section that was crossposted from the climate and economy blog doesn’t read just like the AI Asian Guy’s yootoob video scripts sound.
That’s not me trying to out Zip or anything, I just found it striking.
Lame article or blind, deaf and dumb criticism notwithstanding, please permit me to copy and past a bit more of it for general edification. Why? Because we can all get some useful info and fresh perspectives out of articles even if we disagree with them, indeed, especially if we disagree with them. That’s how we learn stuff, if we ever do learn anything, and avoid becoming so jaded, rigid and fossilized that we belong in a natural history museum.
So here goes:
WHAT IS OPERATION ABSOLUTE RESOLVE?
We don’t know much about the United States’ Operation Absolute Resolve. We only know what they choose to tell us, without any means of verification.
What we do know is that they orchestrated a massive power outage and the bombing of seven military facilities in or near the capital, while an airborne team infiltrated the presidential residence and arrested Nicolás Maduro and his wife, lawyer Cilia Flores, former president of the National Assembly, as they were getting out of bed.
The only reported gunfire was exchanged between the presidential guard and US commandos. This guard was composed entirely of Cubans. Venezuelan forces, for their part, offered no resistance, suggesting that the army was complicit in the US attack.
This was in no way an invasion of Venezuela, nor a regime change.
DID THE UNITED STATES VIOLATE INTERNATIONAL LAW?
Most commentators claim that the United States violated international law. This is a misuse of language. International law is not a legal code. It has no universal rules. It has no police force, no courts, no prisons. It is a series of commitments that are binding only on those who subscribe to them.
However, for the United States—as for the European Union—it was Edmundo González Urrutia, not Nicolás Maduro Moros, who was elected in 2024. This election was highly contested, and not without reason. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that Maduro has a majority in his country [1].
While from a Venezuelan perspective, the United States removed their elected president, from an American perspective, Washington merely removed a drug trafficker who was also a usurper of the presidency.
Therefore, there is no violation of international law, but rather a conflict between two points of view.
WHO IS DELCY RODRÍGUEZ?
Vice President Delcy Rodríguez Gómez is the daughter of revolutionary leader Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, who was tortured to death by Venezuelan police in 1976. Very close to Hugo Chávez, she worked with him in his government, holding positions in the Intelligence Service and the government secretariat. In 2002, President Hugo Chávez sent her to Europe, specifically to meet me. It was at that time that I got to know her and came to appreciate her.
Her brother, Jorge Rodríguez Gómez, was vice president under Chávez and is currently president of the National Assembly.
In the 2020s, Delcy Rodríguez clashed with the Syrian-Venezuelan Vice President Tareck el-Aissami, who had been indicted by the United States at the same time as Nicolás Maduro. El-Aissami was accused of corruption by the United States for providing passports to militants of the Lebanese Hezbollah and to Syrian figures, including President Bashar al-Assad and members of his family. He ultimately resigned in 2023 and was arrested in 2024 by prosecutor Tarek William Saab, brother of the Venezuelan ambassador to Damascus. Venezuelan authorities accused him of organizing a network of officials to embezzle public funds to finance election campaigns. Personal enrichment was never alleged.
Although she greeted me kindly during my 2017 trip, she did not grant me a private audience, likely due to the conflict with Tareck el-Aissami.
During Nicolás Maduro’s kidnapping, Delcy Rodríguez was immediately considered the likely interim president.
During the crisis with Tareck el-Aissami, she clashed with Diosdado Cabello, who was also indicted in the United States in 2020, along with Nicolás Maduro. Cabello is the strongman of Chavismo. He would have succeeded Hugo Chávez had it not been for the testimony of his Cuban doctors.
The Greenland argument has legs, because during World War 2, when the Danish mainland was occupied by the 3rd Reich,
UK stole Iceland from the crown in Copenhagen, which could do nothing.
The proper thing was to abolish the Icelandic government after the war, let the ‘leaders’ spend the rest of their lives as traitors in a Copenhagen prison, and restore the island back to the Danish crown.
But UK did not do so.
Since there is a precedent of stealing Danish island, Trump does not feel it is wrong to steal Greenland, which did not have enough pop to have its own ‘history’.
If EU does not want USA to take Greenland, it should invade Iceland, remove its government and restore it back to Danish rule.
Why stop at Iceland?
As the tallest people in Europe (prior to the arrival of all those Maasai), the Danes are gonna rise again!
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-ca9e44033985d2f3ee1700c36c8ca247-pjlq
Map pinched from here:
https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-largest-territorial-extent-of-the-medieval-Danish-Kingdom
Trump did not demand these territories
Like Ivanislav posted below battery tech is rapidly improving :
This is a massive claim. If Verge Motorcycles is actually delivering solid-state batteries in production vehicles in early 2026, they have effectively beaten the entire global automotive industry to the punch.
https://electrek.co/2026/01/05/verge-unveils-370-mile-electric-motorcycle-with-solid-state-battery/
A couple of weeks ago Scrooge was complaining again about surplus people
But it was this surplus that gives us this innovation. EVs will put a lot out of work so I guess surplus people is more of a problem now. Or maybe not; Even with far fewer people the Roman’s had to deal with surplus barbarians.
In any case It’s going to be a convoluted path to doomsday.
We will see in a few months whether motorcycles with these batteries are really ready to be marketed.
According to Donut Lab, its production-ready all-solid-state battery has an energy density of 400 watt-hours/kilogram and can be fully charged in as little as five minutes for as many as 100,000 cycles, without having to limit charging to 80%. By comparison, some of the top-tier traditional Li-ion batteries available today have an energy density of around 250-300 Wh/kg and can last for up to 5,000 full cycles, while limiting the maximum state of charge to 80%.
What’s more, extreme temperatures have little to no effect on Donut’s solid-state battery, with the startup claiming its product retained over 99% of its capacity at temperatures as low as -22°F (-30°C) and as high as 212°F (100°C).
The ability to work in cold temperatures is important for many parts of the world.
I’ve been meaning to post this for some time now, finally got around to it:
Steve Hanke (senior economist in the Reagan administration) on Dec 20th, pre-Venezuela-attack, discusses how he was tasked with preparing a plan since August to counter dedollarization trends. One of the aspects was to put Venezuela on the dollar. He also touches on stable-coins as a source of demand for Treasurys.
“What would it look like? Replacing junk currencies with the dollar. Prime candidate: Argentina […] My idea would be full dollarization and dollar-based currency boards. Now, get to Venezuela. I am the chief economic advisor to the Unity Democracy group that is the opposition – dollarization is step number one if you get in power. The first thing you’re going to do is get rid of the Bolivar.”
The relevant section is H:MM 1:05-1:10, or 5 minutes starting from the linked timepoint
https://youtu.be/w6fjrwtztfA?t=3941
So if this is the case, it’s not just about the oil, but about dollarization and holding on to reserve currency status.
Hey, alright, like I said, stablecoin as new national currency.
That said, there is no “holding on to reserve currency status.” The dollar is the reserve currency of this civilization and the only thing that will end that is the end of the civilization. All ‘dedollarization’ has merely been in service of creating regional and bilateral financial redundancies ahead of the global collapse of globalization. And, other countries taking on USD stablecoins as their new national currency isn’t “dollarization” because that is a separate (another) dynamic from relying on the petrodollar for international transactions. The dollarization of Bretton Woods 2 is financial neocolonialism. Countries fully going onto stablecoins as their new national currency, for Phase 2, is financial colonialism. Two different things, structurally. With the latter being the Hand engaging in a GENIUS Act of reverse engineering.
The pre-existing VZ utter dependency on stablecoins is imo why the VZ military stood down. If they refused to then the GENIUS Act gave the Treasury the authority to ban all stablecoin usage in VZ and it would suffer total hyperinflationary Collapse. Which makes stablecoins the Trojan horse. Which is why I was so excited to realize what stablecoins meant. It meant the DA was complete insofar as a thumbnail sketch can be called complete. Before that realization there was no technical framework for the financial transition into the national socialisms beyond knowing that it must involve Treasury -based digital Lincoln Greenbacks..
But aren’t stable coins only stable as long as the US dollar is stable?
Maybe that is not an issue. They seem to be primarily used where great instability is feared.
Yes, but that’s what dollar deflation is for – keeping the dollar stable by catastrophically bringing the broad money supply back in line with reality, by finally letting the dollar-based Everything Bubble pop in as controlled a fashion as possible, and cushioning it as much as possible with stablecoins issuance. Stablecoins emergence is a new way that we can know that we face the deflationary policy choice rather than the hyperinflationary policy choice. Stablecoins can’t be stable in a hyperinflationary scenario because treasuries aren’t a stable store of value during hyperinflation. Even TIPS (Treasury inflation protected securities) holdings wouldn’t be a stable store as TIPS adjustments lag by several months. And their durations are way too long besides, though you would think they’d add t-Bill type TIPS in that scenario, or actually maybe not since the hyperinflation would just be paying off the national debt anyway by printing it away. So we can know that stablecoins must be for deflation. Though of course the confirmed hyperinflationist gold bug would just say that they’re stupid crypto token ponzi bullshit that’s gonna get washed away with everything else, and that would be his prerogative, and if I was him I’d say that too. That’s what I thought about all crypto until I realized what stablecoins are for. I still think all the other crypto coins will get washed away even though I still don’t have the foggiest idea what they even are. Brent Johnson still acts like he’s hot on Bitcoin for some reason.
Who really runs Zerohedge ?
They don’t seem to say.
I looked it up and mentioned them in a comment over there. The comment didn’t make it precisely because mentioning the name is/was forbidden. But it’s easy to find. I should get the name, but am too lazy ATM and again it’s easy to find with a simple search.
My Song-of-The-Year for 2025 (discovered late last year, translated; ‘Gutted’, according to Google Translate) happens to be Russian:
https://youtu.be/akBIfN24VIs?si=U92UXLr0DwahMfNp
The White House press pool currently runs ZH . Before it was the Hand imo. Which is a short term promotion and medium term demotion for ZH lol
Zerohedge hasn’t run any of my articles, recently.
I was just thinking that this morning. Maybe the commentariat staged a walkout saying they were leaving if they had to sit through another one of your demand side peak oil supply articles. Requires too much thinking.
If it isn’t dollarization, maybe we should call it stabilization?
Well a stablecoin national currency — or alternatively, just heavy usage of it as a parallel reserve currency in order to.mitigate catastrophic high local currency inflation — both is and it isn’t dollarization. It’s not dollarization with FRNs/petrodollars, which is the privatized central bank currency that we all love to hate, and as the authors of the excerpt ivan provided misidentified the dollarization as. Dollarization as we know it, in popular parlance, is the forex usage of digital (Federal Reserve Note) dollar credit. Use of USD stablecoins is dollarization of digital tokens almost entirely backed by publicly-issued T-bill purchases nominally demoninated in FRN dollars, meaning that one stablecoin is worth one FRN dollar’s worth of t-bills, making stablecoins a parallel public dollar to the FRN dollar. There’s no technically correct term for that yet because dollarization is not it.
So yeah there needs to be a new term for stablecoin dollarization. At least until it fully replaces the private FRN, anyway, as the finance capitalist system collapses and goes away altogether – which is the whole purpose of stablecoins as a return to the public banking system that the US was under on several occasions in the past and that the true patriots founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson always insisted upon. (again, now would be a good time to watch “The Money Masters” documentary by Bill Still, for anyone that hasn’t already.)
Really “redollarization” technically fits the bill great since, for all I tents and purposes, all increases in dollar usage from here on out will be in stablecoins now that we’re heading into FRN dollar deflation which means FRN dollar scarcity via financial deleveraging. People just won’t generally make the technical distinction between the two parallel currencies because they don’t understand the nature of the parallel currency transition. But it seems the more probable term for people in the know will just be stablecoin dollarization, and that once it becomes clear that stablecoins are replacing the FRN, it will just revert back to plain ol dollarization, and dollarization will come to mean the increasing reliance on USD stablecoins and will no longer mean reliance on FRNs. But among the general public it’ll probably all just be the bastardization of the term dollarization all the way through.
I’m still waiting to see the first description of VZ as a US oil protectorate. Surprised it hasn’t happened yet. Probably has been used somewhere out there. But tonight’s ZH article on VZ having agreed to ship the US 50 million barrels of crude makes it super obvious, so surely it should happen any day now.
But yeah totally Tim – stabilization. And stable-ization looks like a buzzword.
I agree that the link you give is an interesting section of video. It has to do with the US wanting to maintain its status as the world’s reserve currency.
One way is through finding markets for US Treasuries.
It mentions that the largest sources of demand for Treasuries now are:
1. J. P. Morgan
2. China
3. Stablecoins – Because they are required to be backed by US Treasuries.
Another way to keep dollar trade up is by encouraging other countries to substitute the US dollar for their currently unstable currency. Venezuela is a possible new country to transition in this direction. The other person on this video suggests adding Cuba as well. It is the sanctions and current Cuban government that have prevented such a change.
“For the last hundred years, we
20:42
have mined all the high-grade silver
20:43
that was near the surface. We picked the
20:45
low-hanging fruit. Now we’re having to
20:47
dig deeper, process more rock, and use
20:49
more energy just to get the same amount
20:51
of metal. Grade degradation is real. In
20:54
2005, you might get 15 ounces of silver
20:56
per ton of rock. Today, you’re lucky to
20:59
get 4 ounces. This means you have to
21:01
mine three times as much rock to get the
21:03
same ounce of silver. And mining rock
21:05
requires diesel. It requires
21:06
electricity. It requires labor. It So,
21:09
as energy prices rise, the cost to mine
21:12
silver explodes.”
This is the AI guy. I think we need to look at other information, as well. A December 5, 2025 article says:
https://www.bullionbox.com/bank-of-america-predicts-gold-and-silver-to-skyrocket-by-2026/
Bank of America’s Global Research division has released one of the boldest forecasts in today’s precious-metals market: gold reaching $5,000 per ounce and silver climbing to $65 per ounce by 2026. This call, coming from one of the world’s largest financial institutions, signals a major shift in how Wall Street views hard assets, inflation, and global financial stability.
$65 per ounce is nowhere near $309. We need to verify, before we trust this AI stuff.
Isn’t silver at $82 an ounce right now??
Silver does seem to be around $82 now.
We should probably be watching it.
This article says
https://markets.financialcontent.com/stocks/article/thenewswire-2026-1-6-silver-price-forecast-2026-the-oregon-group-and-anthony-milewski-examine-whether-silver-can-reach-150
The Oregon Group, a commodities and critical-minerals research platform, has released a new silver price outlook analyzing whether silver prices could reach $150 per ounce in 2026, amid tightening supply, rising industrial demand, and renewed investor interest in precious metals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8c9AEM5XIo
Venezuela Takeover Changes Everything for California Gas Prices (11:16)
131,813 views Jan 5, 2026
From the transcript:
2:02: “Eight days ago, something happened that got almost no media attention, but will devastate California’s fuel supply. The San Pablo Bay pipeline, which carried 100,000 barrels of crude oil daily from Bakersfield to Northern California refineries for 70 years, shut down permanently. The company operating it was hemorrhaging $2 million every single month with no way to stop the bleeding. Operating costs ran 8 million monthly while revenue topped out at 6 million. 18 straight months of losses totaling $36 million finally broke them. This pipeline was the lifeline connecting California’s oil fields to its refineries. Without it, the remaining Bay Area refineries must find alternative crude sources or dramatically reduce production. Every alternative costs substantially more and takes weeks to arrange. Some refineries have no viable alternatives at all. The infrastructure that kept Northern California’s fuel supply flowing for decades became worthless overnight. Think about the timing. Philip 66 closed its Los Angeles refinery earlier this month. Valero shuts down Venicia in April. Now the pipeline supplying the remaining Northern California refineries has vanished. California is losing 20% of its refining capacity in just 4 months while the infrastructure supplying what’s left collapses simultaneously. This is unprecedented in American energy history.”
There is another (AI) video claiming that Arizona and Nevada oil prices will skyrocket if California prices skyrocket, because those states get the majority of their oil by pipeline from California. I don’t know whether or not this is true, but it certainly looks like it might be true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-MGw6yoOb8
San Pablo Bay Gas Pipeline FORCED To Shut Down Due To Issues! (10:57)
40,968 views Dec 24, 2025
This article doesn’t look like an AI generated video. I would agree with what it says.
This is another AI video. Some things it says may be right, but other things may be wrong. It does say that restrictive California regulations will prevent Venezuelan crude from being used by Northern California refineries, even if it becomes available.
This is the story of Europe pushing itself down through higher prices on imported goods from countries with lower carbon taxes. This indirectly benefits the US, China and most of the rest of the world because European citizens will be able to buy fewer goods and services. Their standards of living will drop, leaving more of the goods and services available for the rest of the world. The story as written does not explain this however.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/EUs-Carbon-Border-Tax-Goes-Live-and-Trade-Partners-Are-Not-Amused.html
On Thursday, January 1st, the EU carbon border adjustment mechanism entered into effect with the goal of improving the competitiveness of European goods manufacturers against non-EU companies operating in laxer emissions reduction frameworks. China was the first to threaten retaliation. It won’t be the last.
The carbon border adjustment mechanism, or CBAM for short, was devised to remedy the unintended effects of the world’s most stringent emission-reduction standards for the industrial sphere, namely, sky-high costs that make the end product uncompetitive. This became especially painful for European makers of things such as steel and cement, where the biggest competitor is China—which does not have anything resembling the emission reduction requirements of the EU, so its steel and cement are very cheap, and buyers prefer them.
In other words, in order to boost the competitiveness of European steel and cement manufacturers—and electricity generators, too—the European Union made sure that cheaper imported steel, cement, and electricity are not that cheap anymore. China and India are unhappy about—and there are things they can do that will not help the competitiveness of European businesses.
None of this would have occurred if Europe ignored John Hay’s so-called Open Door Policy to carve China among themselves
At that time UK controlled the area around Canton, France controlled the area bordering Indochina, Germany took Shantung (the Tsingtao beer), and Russia and Japan were vying for northern China. (Italy, Turkey and Austria were not in a shape to compete)
The European powers should have showed a middle finger to USA, telling it that it already had an entire continent (Latin America) as virtual colonies, so it should shut the f up regarding China.
https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2026/01/una-revision-de-los-300000-millones-de.html?m=1
Looks like it will take a long time to ramp up oil production in VZ
I would agree. Innovations are needed to reduce the cost of extraction and processing.
It is not just innovation it is price of oil, infrastructure, political instability, corruption etc
Agreed!
But that is what money printing is for. The collateral has been had.
Fall of a ~legend, Kunstler seems to be getting increasingly off the rocker in his political rants, now claiming Cuba-VZ-CHN paid America’s left-left aka the meager-power-genuine one to some apparent non existent effect of (un)importance within the US polit system.. anyway..
Well, his ME angle coverage in recent yrs provides the answer.
PS the energy angle covered a bit more rationally..
https://www.kunstler.com/p/badass
The allegation that James Kunstler makes is this one:
The capture of Nicolás Maduro is driving the Lefty-left batshit crazy for a very good reason: it portends the extinction of their financial life-support, since Señor Maduro used his country as a money laundry for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and, in turn, cartel drug money, to funnel gazillions through Cuba to America’s Democratic Party and its political satellites. Not even George and Alex Soros can fill that hole.
For a nearly failed state, Cuba has been able to exert undue influence on US political life through the decades. Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles was trained-up in Marxist revolution there in the 1970s and traveled to Cuba many times during her stint in Congress. Reps. Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal dropped into Havana during the last election year. NGOs such as the Center for Democracy in the Americas act as distribution nodes for money that comes through Cuba and supports Lefty-left activists around the USA. Don’t be surprised if a lot of this laundered money ended up in the bank accounts of US congresspersons and senators, too. Remember this when you watch them howl on your screens.
Alas, Communist Cuba is about to expire of strangulation.
I would agree with the “expire of strangulation.” Cuba has gotten its oil from Venezuela for a long time. Without oil, its lights go off. In return, Cuba sends trained medical people to Venezuela.
I don’t know about the allegations in the first two paragraphs I quoted. We know that the World Economic Forum used to provide training for politicians, in the direction of the views widely held in Europe. Basically, quite liberal. Whether Cuba has been funneling money to the Left-left is not something I know about.
JHK seems to have sources that many of us are not privy to. I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Yeah, Kunstler is a phony. He probably always was.
I first learned about peak oil back in the early 2000’s on clusterfxxck with Kunstler as the host. It was a good group. It was an early heads up. Not sure how to explain what is going on now.
I explained what is going on now with JHK but Gail refused to publish it. What’s going on with him now is just what was going on with him then, just magnified.
Run> yes, as I look back at the mid-late 2000s, Kunstler had one of they key commentariats on the PO scene for a while then.. He used to publish like 2/3 on the subject, civilization critique tangents and only ~1/3 articles on politics-social issues.
As the “early-imminent threat” of PO vanished into financial crisis and later new wave of tech investment mania (CBs print fest), he left the topic almost completely, perhaps also due new publishing deals concerning other topics.
PO commentariat completely left the site .. also because silly heavy handed censorship etc.
As of a maybe a year and a half ago on his substack he still had about three peak oil people. JHK wasn’t censoring that I could tell, because he didn’t kick me out even though I was deconstructing his bs. Those three folks were good minds and they seemed happy that someone like them had entered the room. I wondered what the hell they were still doing there in that cesspool. Then I took off.
I took off, too, from Kunstler’s Substack. I stayed for about 3 years if you include his old site that apparently got hacked. Unsure I believe it, but anyway… Since being on there, I always thought the place was a little nuts, but I’m one who thinks humanity is a bit nuts in general, so I kind of took it in stride. But then one day last year, I looked into Kunstler’s article history vis-a-vis Gaza/Israel, in part since he was saying nothing about it, and vis-a-vis the hate mail he, himself, published and it was enough for me to high-tail it out. Before I did, I mentioned an article he wrote in context with his hate mail. Interestingly, immediately after that, he quietly deleted the hate mail page, at least on Substack. (But I found an archived link that I decided to bookmark.) Much of the hate mail was about him being a Zionist.
Thanks Pulp. Nice to see you settling in maybe. I apologize for doubting you upthread under your stablecoins article comment, and not addressing you directly. Which means I’ll also read your article later. Now I gotta go milk the goats.
I have read many of Kunstler’s books and am disappointed in the right wing turn in his politics. I will give him credit that compared to the people he associates with now he seems sane by comparison. I listened to a podcast he did with Dave Collum and Tom Luongo, and he was the only one who didn’t sound like a Qanon conspiracy theorist.
Well we all know what his pedigree is and his dad was a diamond trader and he himself was always an inveterate Zionist. Toxic brew. So he sniffed out the alt- right political winds that the Hand was fanning, and so chased the likeminded Zerohedge audience after Zerohedge shed it’s indie skin and showed its true colors whereupon all the good commenters began to take off.
Zionism is a hell of a drug.
I really liked James Kunstler’s 2005 book, The Long Emergency: Converging Crises of the 21st Century..
I have talked to him in person and corresponded with him, but not recently. He has been “plugged in” with peak oil people for a long time. He interviewed me once or twice, in audio recordings that aired online.
JHK been a POS from the very beginning. And that’s the part of himself he chose to parlay.
Beg your pardon Gail for the premature allegation.
If Phase 2 world GDP drops 80pc, and current VZ capacity is able to be maintained and VZ gets to keep as much of it as it does now, that would still be a huge win for the US. That’s really what this is about imo. Canadian tar sands surface mining equals about the same amount of production as VZ production and surely surface mining will go away pretty quickly because it’s completely reliant on diesel powered heavy equipment.
It just gets funnier as the hours pass. The justice department now admits that the “cartel de los soles” was a Yankee fiction.
They now owe a lot of compensation to the families of those fishermen that were murdered, just to convince the monged out US population that murder was really gods work.
I wonder how many of the monged out will ask the next obvious question, because Maduro has just become the boss of an admitted fiction. I’ll guess zero, as there’s a fair amount of BS excuses for the desperate to cling on to.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/us/trump-venezuela-drug-cartel-de-los-soles.html?searchResultPosition=1
If they keep this up even the white scribe class might notice that everything they believe is in fact fraud and then realise, they are next on the menu. Then again, no historical evidence of that ever happening.
So the claims that this whole operation was about drug dealing was fiction.
We live in a world, with lots of strange narratives cover up what is really happening.
This is a link to an article that is not behind a pay wall that talks a bit about the issue.
https://www.news18.com/world/what-is-nicolas-maduros-cartel-de-los-soles-and-why-labelled-it-a-terrorist-organisation-ws-kl-9810467.html
Of course , they were fisherman boats .
Its the society of the spectacle for the peasants
In fact, with a CIA puppet government, it will be easier to move cocaine, as is currently happening in Ecuador.
What happened to the poppy cultivation in Afghanistan ?
The drug charges are a risky game. What happens if Maduro’s lawyers start introducing evidence of cia involvement.
The story never really gained any public traction after 2-3 decades of trying. Appears to be a burdensome weight that might morph into a bomb.
This is the best I have seen on the legal charges .
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/big-surprise-legal-story-changes?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1351274&post_id=183631649&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=26quge&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Formerly stationed guys in the theater there claim it was in fact NOT directly involvement of the agency – it happened more like “from a close distance” facilitating and nudging around to smooth it.. Not sure, have not looked at it, just recall from decades ago, even flight manifests of agency smaller biz jet fleet were brought to light by various journalists and books..
Again, sys-analytic purist like Reante would perhaps argue that this is in fact confirms higher degree of control aka the agency did exactly that, lol.
Moreover, a political mega-shock needs a planter / care giver, is there today structural and bold opposition to Trump’s presidency or mere intra-elite ankle kicking innuendo ? I guess the latter is more likely the depiction of world we live in now..
In practical terms, it would be like issuing a warning: you Rubio+Donald over stepped here (out of bold risk taking), find asap a better more plausible grounds to jail – convict him..
Similarly, how they now “suddenly” found reverse gear on Greenland, so the theory-tactic of buyback instead of direct mil operation (cracking NATO too soon) is now at play.
Yup that’s a great call Fitz. It’s all a second-order set-up.
There’s a first time for everything. It’s mission creep on the US coup. Think about the literary nature of the Hand: coup breed coup. The road to America First national socialism runs through the neoliberals becoming anti- imperialists. The road through Conservative anti-imperialism has already been adequately traveled. It’s the triangulation dynamic I’ve always talked about.
Nevermind the Kabuki theater Fitz. What did you expect? Spare us the faux humor.
What we’re all dying to know is how you have processed what happened the other night in Caracas as the VZ actions were beyond diametrically opposed to your heroic expectations.
Ah, of course, yes – the first art of war: deception. Appear weak when you are strong!
Well played VZ says Fitz.
Has this Chavez video done the rounds in the west?
https://en.mehrnews.com/news/240496/Ch%C3%A1vez-s-video-goes-viral-predicting-US-abduction-of-Maduro
Nothing new under the sun it would seem.
The Chavista have now been joined in their calls by many opposition supporters(ooops).
Today the interim president meets representatives from China, Russia and Iran in the presidential palace and just a couple of hours before, heavy gunfire was reported in the area. I wonder who caused that, as the narrative appears to be falling apart. There are videos of injured soldiers who claim to have fought off an attempted beach landing, so expect lots of “military suicides” or “operational accidents” to trickle through in the US over the next few months.
Anyway, who’s next up for a kidnapping and…. Well not much else it would appear.
Columbia seems obvious as Petro is openly calling out the obese pedophile, then there’s Nicaragua and I see Brazil is the favourite for some.
I’ll go for Mexico, as I’ve seen that plan and just to push the US they did this
“According to a new constitutional reform from April 2025, Mexico will no longer permit foreign intelligence gathering without explicit authorization. This measure targets U.S. agencies—DEA, CIA, and the like—which have operated with a sizable footprint in Mexico for years”
https://themindness.substack.com/p/the-plan-for-us-drone-strikes-in?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Hold up though, the US is now trying to start up talks with Iran again and Benzion Mileikowsky junior has asked Putin to inform the Iranians that he really really really doesn’t want any trouble, so 100% Iran next(like debt, you always need a bigger show to hide the embarrassment of your last failure).
This all reminds me of something
“So imagine the future as it will actually arrive, & not as the think-tanks assure:
Dawn over the Gulf, where Iranian radars go silent for an hour, then erupt in fire.
A massacre of materiel & men without precedent in U.S. military historyWhat follows is Black Sunday…”
“As CENTCOM reels, the Caribbean ignites:
Venezuela, having prepared in Silence, unleashes its own blow:”
“At the same Time:
Beijing, smiling, then proceeds to close the trap:”
Hmmmm, sounds fun, but a bit hollywood, which isn’t the Chinese way.
They seem wise enough to dig channels, rather than attempting to build useless walls.
https://youtu.be/ZXLJDX9ZdsQ?si=QwB7t_ISE2cm-Rw7
An empire dissipated into an ocean of meaningless slop, eating itself.
Beats holywood hands down.
Yeah, yeah, I read the same thing about Syria before Assad fell, that Russia could respond to attacks on its refineries with indirect attacks in Syria on US interests, and look what happened.
That could have happened if Russia had done its job and taken Kiev in 2022, but it screwed up and is now stuck in a never-ending war of attrition.
This Ecuadorian guy has good information and predicted that Putin was going to abandon Maduro weeks before it happened.
Apparently, Trumpstein threatened tactical nuclear strikes if they didn’t release him, and the generals were bribed …
>> Putin was going to abandon Maduro weeks before it happened.
I don’t like his take. How is Putin in Russia supposed to protect Maduro from Russia? The entire Venezuelan military stood down. 5000 MANPADS and none were used? This is on Venezuela. And what is Maduro doing with a Columbian security detail? That just speaks to how fractured Venezuela is. Venezuelan officials and military were bought off or coerced – they had more than enough anti-aircraft systems to make it a bloody affair.
I dont know if YouTube can generate english subtitles for spanish speaking videos for you to understand
Of course they were bribed , but Putin gave maduro the thumbs down weeks before the attack and the people protecting him were not columbians , they were cubans .
The principal judas is Diosdado cabello
Yeah, typo about Cubans/Colombians, I did know. Doesn’t affect my point though.
Never ending attrition – lets define it ?
These massive concrete defensive lines (interlocked into chain of pre- existing cities) made larger perimeter across UKR and were build chiefly post ~2014. During “limbo time” when RU had fallen into that ~DE/EU negotiation (~Merkel’s intentional fake) promise of eventually granting real compromise in the ethnic blended regions.
Meanwhile, EU/US must now post 2022 print +100B for direct UKR budget y/y to keep even slow-mo surrender alive – so the end of [conventional phase] is approaching.. Plus issuing further additional material aid packages. Also, EU member states are now revoking aid paid to (pendler – tourist aid seeking) refugees – further stress in the overall $ituation.
The human losses on the ongoing fronts are way asymmetric like 1:15-30x even per western analytics.. Forced conscription hunters are openly attacked by public now.. Most entry points for material import from west have been nixed, bridges, rail, in the north or southern route to UKR.. likely even token access to the sea will be denied.
It’s a new gen of conflict actually, UKR forces mostly stay put, in first engagement partially destroyed by inbound glide bombs, then residual force killed by drones. And only after that RU ground forces deployed into largely undefended territory..
What comes after this end of [ conventional phase ] is anyone’s guess; it could be anything on the scale of total surrender to border-line guerilla low intensity war for decades..
Obviously, anything can happen on the escalation route, like someone providing long range missile to provoke targeting EU-proper / US- xyz in retaliation and off to the races..
We don’t have enough cheap energy to keep fighting battles across oceans. Also, we need to manufacture, whatever we manufacture, closer to home. The self-organizing system is telling Putin what action to take.
Yes we do… have cheap energy how do you think we can ship half a million people around the country just gor football games
To relate Syria to Venezuela is a bit of a leap and one I would avoid, as it’s a much bigger leap than you seem to think and you could end up landing in a stinking pile of BS(you might even end up President of the United States of America and you wouldn’t want that to happen).
“Apparently, Trumpstein threatened tactical nuclear strikes if they didn’t release him, and the generals were bribed …”
You believe that?
A nuke on Caracas, which is exactly how far from the nearest US based(Trinidad I guess), or how that affects the most important thing, the whole reason for the US’s very existence, corporate profits and control.
Here’s something you can actually verify.
Less than a month before the pedo sent his ships, China announced a 4bn US dollar bond offering, but it came with lower yields than US bonds.
When orders were received, they amounted to 118bn. We need to ask why a lower yield was so popular(doesn’t the US treasury have to buy it’s own because they are so popular?).
“The Chinese bond issuance in Hong Kong represents something far more significant than a successful fundraising exercise. According to analysis from JP Morgan and the World Gold Council, this wasn’t about raising capital at all; China has over $3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves.[^3] This was a proof of concept, a demonstration to the world that an alternative to the dollar system isn’t just possible, it’s already here and functioning.
Consider the mechanics: China raises dollars through bond sales, then uses those dollars to finance Belt and Road Initiative projects across developing nations. But here’s the twist, they’re structuring repayments in renminbi (RMB), not dollars. It’s financial judo, using the opponent’s strength against them. Take Argentina as an example. Since 2023, Argentina has been repaying portions of its International Monetary Fund debts using RMB obtained through currency swap agreements with China.[^4] The dollar goes in one door and exits through another, while the RMB quietly expands its footprint.”
https://substack.com/@dilligafido/note/c-195040251?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=7c6fx
We also need to remember that on the morning of the terrorist kidnapping a Chinese delegation landed in Venezuela and feel free to investigate the hundreds of similar situations that have been going on inbetween.
There’s a whole lot still unrevealed and many more moves to make(how’s the price of aluminium looking in the US today?) before we can even begin to understand just the Venezuela part(the two most important short term things haven’t happened yet).
Russia is an irrelevance concerning this situation. You might as well ask what Burkina Faso think they are doing. Anyone that thinks Putin gave a thumbs down(how theatrical) and that meant anything is not thinking, rather being willingly led.
This whole thing is being dressed up as something it is not and would have been considered an embarrassment not that long ago.
https://substack.com/@ahnafibnqais/note/c-195782940?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=7c6fx
All I’ve witnessed so far, is glaring desperation, as the many cuts take their toll, whilst constantly being told by westerners that each cut is irrelevant(no movie ending, no understand). I surely can’t be the only that sees the cumulative effect of all these cuts, these small channels so quietly and skillfully dug.
I’m not unaware of the shift in discourse. The little steps. That first step from domination we can see in the 3 way split story now gaining traction with those who not long ago were screaming domination. Bad news, that’s not going to happen, but the good thing about the first step, is that it offers the possibility of another and who knows where that could lead.
It’s normally flat on the face, but they tried at least.
Almost forgot, “the Ecuadorian guy”, is he in Ecuador?
Brutal government, that would snatch and torture anyone with a voice going off topic. Unsurprisingly President Noboa is a good friend of the pedo in chief as well.
Did you see Maduro’s “we will win” signal to the Chavista(or was that a fake)?
LOL. You justify your political bargaining with structural Collapse by hewing to anti-imperial, dedollarization fantasy. You get your political ideas from what you think is the cutting edge of substack – and you have links to prove it!
Yet the reality is structural.
“It’s financial judo, using the opponent’s strength against them.”
You have got to be shitting me Fitz. That is pretzel logic lipstick on a pig desperation. That’s desperate! If China could actually dedollarize they wouldn’t need to run their financial shell game through dollar bonds in the first place.
Maybe try not to get all of your ideas from people who know nothing of structural Collapse huh? Because that makes for a fiat old ways worldview.
At least a ‘Hollywood’ systems analysis is a .. systems analysis.
“If China could actually dedollarize they wouldn’t need to run their financial shell game through dollar bonds in the first place”
That’s it, all you can come up with, there could be no other reason?
Why so heavily over subscribed, which isn’t a problem that the US seems to suffer from and at a lower yield to boot?
You don’t appear to want to consider any other possibilities and raising other possibilities appears to anger you, a lot.
A hollywood analysis, as the name suggests and time proves, is a movable fiction, no more.
This ride is in its early days, no point getting too excited.
That can have horrible repercussions.
https://youtu.be/dFb9c7vvu9s?si=dqoeZ1V7CWz5S_GX
I wasn’t angry, Fitz. Your longer reply to me from a couple days ago to which I didn’t respond (which is rare for me) was quintessential prevarication. And now you want to hide behind saying I’m angry and then offering more prevarication (though a less opaque form than the previous prevarication) that runs completely contrary to first principles. And all while celebrating Chinese hustling in the name of Chinese neocolonialism. Jesus.
The reason that my reply “was all that I could come up with” Fitz is because this supposedly brilliant, anti-imperial dedollarization financial judo is just a yuan carry trade, and that’s it. What more can I say than to remind you that the structural fundamentals of the dynamic aren’t what you are making it out to be? Look it up and understand it.
If we can’t have honest back and forth as part of a true relationship then I’m just gonna start saying my piece once and then you can just go ahead and do your Fitz thing in response and we can call it good. Which I’m assuming is what you’re hoping for.
Yeah, yeah, I read the same thing about Syria before Assad fell, that Russia could respond to attacks on its refineries with indirect attacks in Syria on US interests, and look what happened.
That could have happened if Russia had done its job and taken Kiev in 2022, but it screwed up and is now stuck in a never-ending war of attrition.
This Ecuadorian guy has good information and predicted that Putin was going to abandon Maduro weeks before it happened.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z51IGqD9Yr4&t=1
Apparently, Trumpstein threatened tactical nuclear strikes and the generals were bribed …
The second video is a parable about a wise man who sat near a river. When it unexpectedly rose, nearby residents tried to build a wall to contain it, but the wise man kept asking, “Where will the water go?” Later the wise man suggested building a narrow channel to a low field, where the water would do little damage. That approach worked. We need to work with nature, in the beliefs of Tao.
In the US, we have built a lot of hydroelectric dams. These work for a while, but then, if a dam breaks, widespread flooding tends to take place. We have distorted our understanding of which parts will stay dry from flooding, in a storm.
Great man, Hugo.
True presence of a leader and a genuine smile for any and all(unless you hurt his people). Turned the most unequal nation on the continent into the most equal, achieved huge strides in all necessities and would personally die for you or your children.
If his videos aren’t on Venezuelan tv regularly, I’d oust Rodríguez, but so far she gets a bye and her latest statement backs that view. Take note of the agricultural situation, as you have mentioned it before. Impressive numbers, everything considered. Venezuela was doing very well in certain sectors(no matter how much the western media claim the opposite).
https://www.telesurenglish.net/venezuelas-acting-president-denounces-kidnapping-and-reaffirms-national-sovereignty/
I see the potential for another “prosperity guardian” just over the horizon and then on to Iran, who are now openly talking in the same language as Petro. It’s starting to look almost like everyone is seeing weakness and so fancying their chances of grabbing some glory.
I bring it up and you guys poo-poo it. It’s coming either way. There will be bumps in the road, but civilization isn’t going to collapse globally any time soon, barring MAD or some other idiocy:
https://x.com/AssaadRazzouk/status/2008189927411060981
“The “Range Anxiety” era is ending: CATL just confirmed Sodium-ion batteries are hitting the mass market in 2026
>500km (311 mi) range
>175 Wh/kg density
>Works in freezing cold (-40°C)
Lithium isn’t replaced; it’s getting a cheaper, tougher partner”
It is clear now that we live in the intellectual 3rd world. Yes, here we do hypersonics, icebreakers, and the closed loop nuclear system, which is pretty good. But China rules STEM. The CO2 system to use waste heat is also impressive although at first glance the Carnot efficiency is very low. The thorium cycle, which is now going to happen. Replacing the western automobile and airplane industries will be an afterthought, although the latter necessarily requires 50/50 Russian help. Russia will build new cities in Siberia to use the coal fields there, and this is the way it is going to be (China rules STEM) for at least 20 years.
Duno if you saw this post to you on the last page about 50/50 off-books work, but I’d be curious about your take because it has implications for Russia’s future development and innovation across the economy:
>> drb, I would imagine that works at smaller scales / for local businesses, but it hinders the development of large enterprises; if one tries to use the same tactics at large companies, you will be discovered and then either be extorted by authorities or have your business taken by them. Agree?
Largely I agree, and it is why I will keep the lamb business small no matter the success. But things are changing and there are opportunities. Example, if we were to make a larger lamb business in collaboration with the Saudis, for export, many of the regulations could be skirted. Selling abroad, you do not have to pass russian requirements, and also having only central asian employees on temporary visas will cost less in taxes. I think it is likely that they will review the law and change things once the war is over.
Also, there are generous grants and loans for small business (a lot less now, but when I arrived and for the first year yes). You can’t navigate the system without experts, but it is not as bad as you think it is.
Wonderful! I thought lithium was great when it came along. The charge lasts weeks or sometimes even months. And soon with new added ingredients! Supercalifragilistic! Progress never stops! (Until it does, but not for a while yet).
“Lithium” went through a lot of iterations since the ~mass consumer adoption 1/4 century ago; different versions of the chemistries tried along. If cared for properly ~20-30yrs longevity is not a problem even for the oldest stuff as we can witness around.
In terms of automotive and possibly grid scale / local power bank application obviously the more recent variants come forward, it ~almost achieved parity in some very narrow-specific apps with the grid or oil..
Next? We don’t know much about the real details on sodium-ion, meaning real cycle life, say in car application 150-250-500k km per 20-30yrs or less / more? And at what price (is it possible to easily retool the existing factories?), any rare-earth albeit minuscule% in the mix somehow etc?
Would China restrict export-licensing deals now.. ?
And obviously even in the most optimistic variant it still won’t (can’t) be 1:1 replacement for all the grid or all diesel/(nat)gas out there.. because the scale-up would be tied to other e-tech availability – resource acquisition chain.
>> And obviously even in the most optimistic variant it still won’t (can’t) be 1:1 replacement […] because the scale-up would be tied to other e-tech availability – resource acquisition chain.
Sounds like a lot of hand-wavy “China can’t or won’t scale technology and manufacturing” argument despite them doing just that across all industries.
Huh?
The quotation clearly relates to near/ever likely hood of e-transport replacing the sheer extent of today’s oil global infrastructure in full (aka the whole spectrum of tonnage and climate zones etc.) Gail and others mentioned that logical concern numerous times as well.
This is PO/resource depletion aka over-all information skeptic – first principles – forum..
–
Besides we have been discussing that [ sodium-ion ] novelty numerous times already.
And if I recall it correctly even re-posted or commented on Q3-Q4 CHN msm/biz PR – as they issued then some details like assembly line rewamp not likely to be huge issue, pricing more or less staying same (keeping same profit margins as per legacy lithium production).. etc.
We are simply not there yet even for the introductory phase of production – to make definitive calls, that’s all..
While the battery direct response is under moderation..
Yes, CHN strategically opted for using less oil per produced output in factories & pop expenditures, hence gigantic rail network, subways in regional cities, EVs, ..
Yet, the amount of diesel, gasoline, natgas, coal, uranium needed by the economy (incl. exports) could perhaps slowly grow or even stagnate, but NOT realistically to be replaced by [ sodium-ion] short term, midterm, quite likely not even substantially longterm..
If EVs can get the price down, the range up, and the electricity supply high enough that people can keep the insides of their cars warm in cold weather without depleting the batteries quickly, they might work. But we still have a problem with providing enough electricity for EVs, except in parts of the world with either good coal or natural gas supplies.
The problem is going to be Cu.
Dennis L.
I expect drivers will also be a lot happier knowing that their battery can’t explode and deep fry them at any moment.
“The topology is circular at every node. Nvidia’s investment creates GPU demand. GPU purchases create cloud capacity. Cloud capacity commitments validate CoreWeave’s debt financing. Debt financing enables more GPU purchases. As Fortune documented in December 2025 examining the arrangement’s mechanics, “All money Nvidia invested in CoreWeave came back as revenue.” The circularity is not hidden. It is disclosed in SEC filings and credit agreements. But the financial analysis treating Nvidia’s revenue growth as reflecting organic datacenter demand does not adjust for the self-referential component. The measurement framework cannot distinguish manufactured demand from commercial adoption. . . .
Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy published research in 2025 documenting that “GPU hardware is being essentially given away” in certain hosting arrangements, with providers prioritizing utilization over pricing to maintain competitive positioning and avoid stranded capacity charges. The research identified multiple cloud providers offering H100 capacity at rates below their own cost of capital, accepting losses to maintain utilization metrics and market position. The behavior is consistent with hardware whose economic value is declining faster than accounting useful lives recognize… “?
https://substack.com/home/post/p-183558351
Meaning this is a bubble by any conceivable metric right?
Agreed!
The President of Columbia is daring President Trump to get him like he did Maduro.
Petro. “Come get me, coward, I’m waiting for you here.”
https://x.com/dom_lucre/status/2008223522519208443
“Never let a day go by”.
It looks increasingly like, on one level, the Hand is making use of reverse psychology by having the Trump admin be so explicit about VZ oil. Everyone is so accustomed now to not believing the government and, thus, opting for the one layer deep controlled opposition narrative, that many alt- people are say that this is not about the oil but about defending the dollar. As I’ve said many times, the dollar needs no defending now that we’re on the doorstep of dollar deflation. Even some people here think that this is as much about defending the dollar as it is the oil, given that we have our doubts as to how much VZ production can be raised. It’s functional reverse psychology manifested by the self-organizing feedback loop of distrust in government. And it helps further mask peak oil even though peak oil is well masked already by the fact that US production has supposedly hit new highs right before Collapse.
Yes, for quite some time Donald’s every sentence about oil incl. proviso ala
“..btw.. did you know.. we /US have the most oil on the planet.. ”
“.. plenty of beautiful oil there..”
..
.
That’s even for an elementary school peak-oiler red flashing alert right there.., he is evidently briefed in some ~limited capacity about the issue (perhaps only about the global blending-sourcing problem); also often times pauses himself and immediately jumps from oil to the (rear earth) minerals domain too..