The Economic Collapse

What a wild week it has been already. On Sunday night, I watched as the price of oil hit $116 a barrel. It was insane. Financial markets started to panic all over the world because investors know that if the price of oil stays above $100 a barrel for an extended period of time it will absolutely crush the global economy. Our entire way of life depends upon cheap energy, because virtually every type of human activity in the modern world uses energy. I am using energy as I write this article, and you are using energy as you read this article. After the crazy spike in the price of oil that we witnessed on Sunday night, authorities quickly shifted into damage control mode, and for the moment they have successfully pushed the price of oil back below 90 dollars a barrel. But how long will they be able to keep it there? (Read More...)

There is no way to get around it. We are facing a major global economic disruption, and the longer this war goes on the worse it will get. As I have reminded my readers on numerous occasions, our entire way of life is predicated on cheap energy, and the Middle East is the most important energy producing region in the entire world. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has been paralyzed, and energy infrastructure has been under attack by both sides. In fact, this morning Tehran was “covered in thick black clouds of smoke” after a refinery and multiple oil depots were destroyed… (Read More...)

If you have not already done so, I would recommend filling up your vehicle, because it looks like the price of gasoline is going to go much higher. At the very beginning of this war with Iran, the price of oil didn’t rise too much because many investors were anticipating a quick victory over Iran. But now it has become exceedingly clear that there will be no quick victory, and the price of oil is spiking dramatically. Unless something really crazy happens, this is going to be an extended conflict, and that means that the flow of oil out of the Middle East will not return to normal for quite some time. (Read More...)

If the war with Iran persists for an extended period of time, a lot of people could literally starve. Approximately half of all global food production is dependent on the use of fertilizer. Without fertilizer, crop yields would drop precipitously and there wouldn’t be anywhere near enough food for everyone. Even now, hundreds of millions of people are going to bed hungry every night, and there are severe food shortages in quite a few African nations. This is a trend that I have been closely monitoring for quite some time. We are at a very serious tipping point, and approximately one-fourth of all globally traded nitrogen fertilizer normally travels through the Strait of Hormuz. If we can’t get that fertilizer into the hands of those that need it, we are going to have a major crisis on our hands. (Read More...)

There are a lot of people out there that seem to think that the nuts that are currently running Iran are good people that always tell the truth and that we can always trust them to do the right thing. But of course there is no government on the entire planet that always tells the truth and that always does the right thing. The Shiite radicals that have been imposing tyranny on the Iranian people for decades truly believe that their version of Islam will rule the entire world, and they will literally do anything in pursuit of that goal. We have already seen that they are willing to gun down tens of thousands of their own people. So it shouldn’t exactly be a shock that they haven’t been telling us the truth about their pursuit of nuclear weapons. (Read More...)

It appears that both sides are settling in for a long conflict. The Iranians are making it clear that there will be no negotiations and no surrender. By now, the leaders of the regime are almost certainly holed up in very deep bunkers underneath hospitals, schools and other very sensitive targets in highly populated areas. They probably figure that if they can just weather the bombing for a few weeks they can emerge victorious at the end of the conflict and declare victory. The protesters in Iran are no match for the heavily-armed IRGC, and so it is unlikely that regime change will occur unless foreign troops enter the country. Iranian leaders are likely convinced that President Trump will never pull the trigger on such a move, but now Trump has publicly stated that he is refusing to rule out U.S. boots on the ground. (Read More...)

The war with Iran that we have been waiting for is officially here. The U.S. and Israel are absolutely pummeling Iranian military targets, and in return the Iranians are striking targets all over the Middle East. As you will see below, even a British military base in Cyprus has just been hit. I think that the Iranians were hoping that the unexpected nations that they are targeting would be so traumatized that they would beg the United States to stop the conflict, but instead it seems like almost everyone is uniting against Iran. There is a growing consensus that there is no way that the regime in Iran can remain in place after this, and that means that this war could go on for an extended period of time. (Read More...)

Negotiations with Iran have reached a breaking point just as a parade of 6 planets is appearing in the night sky and a major blood moon eclipse is approaching next week. The skeptics will continue to insist that this is “just a coincidence” even as the missiles start flying. The third round of talks between the United States and Iran has ended in Geneva, and they produced nothing. The U.S. wanted Iran to transfer all enriched uranium out of the country, to cease all future uranium enrichment, to destroy all Iranian nuclear facilities and to agree that all restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program will be permanent. It is being reported that Iran flatly rejected all of those proposals… (Read More...)