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Remember that just yesterday, Tehran was reportedly floating a completely different condition: cargo paid in yuan. Today, it’s “any country except the U.S. and Israel can pass.” That is not a reopening. It is evidence the rules are being improvised in real time. And two days ago, on March 12, Iran tried to pose as reasonable by saying ships must coordinate with its navy to transit. Reuters also reported other selective assurances for passage, including a vessel changing its signaling to “China-owner” to get through. We’ve seen this before. During the Red Sea crisis in 2024, the Houthis offered similarly selective assurances in Bab el-Mandeb. In practice, it was confusing, chaotic, and did little to restore the normal flow of ships. Reuters reported that many vessels caught up in those attacks had no Israeli connection, and UNCTAD said Suez Canal transits fell 42% from peak levels. Shipping does not normalize because of slogans. It normalizes when passage is clear, verifiable, insurable, and durable. Right now, it is none of those things. So this is not Iran loosening its grip on the Strait of Hormuz. It’s PR spin designed to sound reasonable. Until owners, crews, charterers, and insurers can move without ad hoc political tests or special permission, the Strait remains squeezed.

Thoughts on Warsh He understands that the Fed is no longer the protagonist of the American story. That's tge plot twist that needs to be deeply reakused. The era itself possesses more agency than the characters inhabiting it. Warsh thinks AI provides a temporary bypass, a supply-side accelerator that allows the economy to run hotter for longer without immediate combustion. That's because he believes AI is ultimately productivity boost and is deflationary. So you can run hot prior to the productivity benefit. It is a tactical recognition that if machine intelligence can widen the margin of productivity, the Fed can afford to keep its foot off the brake. He still knows the road still ends in a wall if the physical infrastructure is not widened to match the digital speed. His rejection of Neo-Classical models is a rejection of the ghost in the machine. He views the "equilibrium" the fed models as a fiction, preferring AI-driven models that account for the friction of the real world. The situational agency of 2026 leaves him with no alternative but to back reindustrialization. The structural debt and the "future certainty" of the material defici, the reality is that we need more silver, copper, and titanium than we can currently acces, the agency of this risk dictates the path momentum. Policy is now a hostage to physics. You cannot print the metals required for the energy transition or the chips required for the AI boom. Warsh is trapped by the outcomes of previous dogma. His support for rebuilding the industrial base is the only way to prevent the debt trap from snapping shut. In this narrative, the central banker is less a master of the universe and more an engineer trying to reinforce the tracks before the train arrives. Put another way this new industrialisation era will require a different style of fed chair and new pro industrial policy FOMC Expect a lot of volatility as the world changes around us. It wouldn't be fun if it was easy .