ShadowPro

What seems to be breaking a lot of people’s brains when trying to analyze the ongoing chess board is their unwillingness to think abstractly enough to appreciate why you need to inflict pain on your supposed allies to ultimately drive a decoupling. Going into this the Trump admin demonstrated it could tighten sanctions on Russian energy in a way that Biden never could. Ukraine was winning back territory. Now all of a sudden Russia is the biggest beneficiary of a prolonged SoH closure. The US seems amenable to blowing the barn door wide open and letting Putin monetize this event without sanctions at much higher energy prices. More money for Putin = more soldiers and drones and all of a sudden ukraines gains look more tenuous. Meanwhile European industry once again is getting squeezed on two sides. American energy prices are going to diverge and remain muted while China will continue to subsidize via its strategic reserves and Russian inflow. Europe meanwhile is going to be paying through the nose. Making worse it’s already fairly grim loss of industrial share. Now the “global south” specifically Pakistan and India are utterly fucked. If the U.S. decides to prolong the conflict… which it can absolutely do without material cost in the form of boots on the ground… the loss of even five million barrels per day is going to disproportionally screw the lowest bid in an unsanctioned market. All of this is obvious. But the question is why? And why now? And the only rational answer is decoupling. If you wanted to enforce the transshipment clause into the July review there is a benefit to having the world over a barrel. Not only do you dictate where tankers in ME are going you also can escalate at will and get Qatars gas fields blown up if you’re in the mood which in turn means the GCC are going to do whatever you tell them including direct flows where you want them. And ofc you can weaponize American LNG and also ramp VZ if possible (realistically no, but who knows). But there are also second and third order effects. What does this do to dollar liquidity? How much worse do sovereign balance sheets get if this continues? When do citizens in the global south start rioting? What does this do to consumption of discretionary goods and therefore imports from China? And most importantly how effectively can Trump leverage the chaos to get emergency measures in the US that help him into midterms? Deregulate energy? Stimulate consumer? Lower rates? Ramp weapons manufacturing? It’s complex. It’s chaotic. This whole playbook is borderline batshit. But there is a playbook and denying it at this point is ignorance or derangement. Fuck it we ball 🫡

Former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio tells Sean Hannity the “defund the police” movement was a "mistake" and that Democrats “rightfully deserve” criticism on the border. Photo via Reuters

🚨 Ali Larijani said before death 'it was regrettable that no Muslim country stood with the Iranian people during the attacks.'

the world looks like this and we’re expected to sit in a room for 8 hours a day staring at a screen

I had never actually seen My 600 Lb Life before. A random clip or two. I started watching it and my God is it fascinating. One lady was over 600 lbs and the doctor put her on a 1200 calorie a day diet. He had expected her to be down 120 lbs in three months. He weighs her and she gained 12 lbs. Insane show.

I am a 5-6 guy.

President Trump: "I have long said that I wonder whether or not NATO would ever be there for us. So this was a great test, because we don’t need them, but they should have been there."