Rah

Crashing out about the Pope. A tried and tested political gambit for the past 2 millennia. Always goes well.

I honestly thought this map was made up Hundreds of supertankers, the kind that carry two million barrels each, are currently racing toward the US Gulf Coast from every direction. Atlantic, Indian Ocean, around Africa, the scenic route, the "we were heading to Saudi Arabia but NVM" route. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and everyone panicked. Oil hit $126 a barrel. Gas hit $4 a gallon. Cable news did the thing where they put a red banner on screen and say "CRISIS" in a font that suggests you should be hoarding toilet paper. And then something happened that nobody in media seems interested in reporting, for obvious reasons. The world just... switched suppliers? Like changing your internet provider except the internet provider is the entire effing global energy economy. American oil exports are approaching record levels. Gulf Coast refineries are running at 95% capacity. Supertankers that were mid-ocean on their way to the Persian Gulf literally turned around and headed to Texas. That's not a metaphor. Ship tracking data shows them doing U-turns in the Indian Ocean. Meanwhile China, which was getting 45% of its oil imports through Hormuz and paying basement prices for sanctioned Iranian crude, is now competing with Japan and Europe for the same expensive American barrels. Chinese manufacturers are already raising prices 20% on goods headed to the US. So to summarize: Iran played its biggest card and the main result is that the United States became the world's emergency gas station and China's cheap energy subsidy evaporated. This is either the most elaborate coincidence in the history of geopolitics... or someone planned the sequence Venezuela -> Iran -> profits! I'll let you figure out which one

NOW - Vance on Iran: "The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement... We go back to the United States having not come to an agreement."

I feel we are on the cusp of something extremely profound

Los Angeles, 1972