Gold's Biggest Fire-Sale In 43 Years: Perception Vs Opportunity

Authored by Matthew Piepenburg via VonGreyerz.gold,

If you are new to gold, or if you are a speculator in gold (or even worse, a levered speculator in gold), you are likely asking yourselves what in the “H. E. double tooth-picks” just happened to gold?

It lost over 9% in the futures market in a single session and saw its worst week of price declines since February 1983.

What gives? Gold loves chaos, and isn’t the current war, whatever you think of it, pure chaos?

And what about gold-loving oil shocks, as we and others have often written and spoken?

And what about gold as an anti-inflation asset?

Shouldn’t gold be ripping north in a world careening under the weight of oil-driven “everything” and “everywhere” inflation?

All fair questions to say the least.

But if, like us, you hold physical gold (that rising, strategic Tier-1 reserve asset) as a superior store of value over any paper currency system, including King Dollar, then the facts below will seem far less like an “apology” for the metal’s longer-term horizon.

Physical Gold: Accumulating, Not Falling

Instead, a little bit of perspective confirms that PHYSICAL gold is not falling, it’s openly accumulating by bigger players enjoying the mother of all “Fire Sale” signals from the paper gold markets.

The insider whales, of course, are exploiting this opportunity while the headlines are shaking out the retail minnows. This is a classic and inevitable pattern, of which I recently warned.

In short, there is an extraordinary and deliberate perception game in play right now, and many misinformed investors might be falling for it as paper gold currently falls in price.

But this fall is strategic and not random.

It reflects a set-up for rising physical gold rather than a confirmation of some typical blow-off top, as there is nothing typical about gold or its future monetary role in a monetary system in open decline, regardless of the DXY’s recent headlines.

To better understand this, one needs to separate paper gold from physical gold. Their divergence is key.

One must also separate gold’s long-term preservation role (and investors) from gold’s short-term speculation game (and traders). They are not the same.

Most importantly, one needs to separate current headlines (and misperception) from longer-term historical cycles.

As said elsewhere, sophisticated gold investors, like hockey players, play the direction of the golden puck, not where it sits at any given moment (high or low).

And gold’s longer direction north is ironically clearer now than before.

But to better see gold’s secular direction north rather than its present position, we need to first understand how it got to this current price fall.

How We Got Here? The Official Narrative

In fact, for once, the official narrative out of Wall Street is at least partly correct.

It essentially argues that the war and oil-driven inflation is now so obvious that the Fed will have no choice but to once again raise rates to fight it. The ECB has already confessed as much for the Euro.

Rising rates, and hence a high-risk premium (and yields) for USTs, mean the dollar (and DXY) will go higher as institutional and retail money flows toward a higher-yielding bond and a rising dollar rather than a yield-less and falling gold.

This is not altogether untrue.

Until war made the headlines, the Fed was not only expected to pause any further rate hikes, but to, in fact, cut rates into 2026, which would have been a tailwind for gold.

According to the headlines, however, the winds of this war have turned gold’s tailwinds into headwinds.

In fact, this is hardly the end of the story. Not even close.

For those whose memory can stretch as far back as 2022 and 2023 when Powell’s “higher-for-longer” rate hikes were allegedly aimed to fight inflation, we discovered that such “anti-inflationary” tactics were actually, and ironically, just inherently inflationary and ultimately a tailwind for gold’s subsequent move higher into 2024 and 2025.

Then as now, rate hikes to fight inflation just make Uncle Sam’s interest expense on his $39T bar tab all the more expensive and unpayable unless he prints trillions in more synthetic (and inflationary) liquidity, a paradox (and debt trap) the fancy lads call Fiscal Dominance. And even the St. Louis Fed has confessed that the USA is indeed “dominated” by it.

Soon both inflation and rates will spike beyond the control of the Fed, and the only trick left up its tattered sleeves to save its bond markets (which is the only real mandate the Fed truly follows), will be mouse-clicked trillions to the moon.

The currency destruction that follows will send gold north as paper currencies, including the USD, get yet another reckoning of epic debasement.

Right now, of course, few see this reckoning. All they see is the paper gold price falling.

But such headlines (and errors) are only part of a larger story, one which far better explains the realities behind the current position of the golden puck.

How We Got Here? The Real Narrative

Gold, like life, markets and history itself, has a fascinating symmetry to it. And as Mark Twain famously remarked, history has a way of rhyming if not otherwise repeating itself.

Reason 1: The OPEC Selloff

As to last week’s paper gold fall, it rhymes a heck of a lot with its similar fall in 1983.

Then, as now, gold was falling due to a massive OPEC sell-off in the metal. But the trigger for the current OPEC sell-off in gold is being pulled for an entirely different reason than in 1983.

In 1983, for example, oil around the world was at a massive surplus. Its price was thus tanking. As a result, the OPEC nations needed immediate liquidity to meet their dollar pegs. So, what did they do?

They sold a lot of gold, and thus gold’s price fell dramatically.

But in the current chaos of yet another war in a key oil region, oil is not falling, it’s ripping north, with major banks predicting oil prices as potentially high as $180 a barrel.

Clearly, in such a setting, OPEC has no need for cash, right?

Wrong.

The Strait of Hormuz, where 1/5 of global oil moves, is literally clogged.

This means all that expensive oil can’t flow. And if it can’t flow, it can’t be sold. And if it can’t be sold, the OPEC players in that region can’t get paid. And if they can’t get paid, they need to sell assets from their piggy banks.

And that asset is gold. (Saudi’s gold piggy bank is around 300 tons. Qatar’s is over 100 tons.)

This makes our particular war uniquely hard on gold—but only for the near-term.

Regardless of the current headlines (and mis-narrative), the desire by central banks (and a de-dollarizing BRICS+ coalition) to replace USTs and paper currencies with physical gold will not change.

Thanks to Trump and Netanyahu, these bigger players just get to accumulate that gold at a literal fire sale rather than rising price.

Needless to say, those playing the longer direction of the golden puck’s price move (including Asia and China) are more than happy to buy this Tier-1 asset at the current discount, and that’s precisely what the big boys (and U.S. banks) will do.

As usual, however, the little boys (i.e., the uninitiated who saw gold as a get-rich-quick paper trade) are doing just the opposite. They are selling paper gold claims as the insiders are buying the physical metal. Retail investors are reacting to headlines rather than history, flows, pending QE spikes or longer-term investment horizons.

Reason 2: Whales Eating Minnows

As anyone who has spent their career in markets of any sector (from tech stocks to hard assets) already knows, most retail investors buy at price highs and get spooked out of bull cycles by the market whales throughout the ride up.

During 2025’s epic gold moves north, retail investors piled into the metal to speculate in the paper markets rather than hold physical gold as a preservation asset.

This seductive gamble came in the form of over $70B of flows into gold ETFs. And not just ordinary gold ETFs, but the kind that are levered 2X to 3X.

When gold is rising, such get-rich-quick speculators look like geniuses.

But when gold is falling, those levered positions (thanks to daily ETF rebalancing to cover levered margin calls) can be extremely humbling.

In short, those who live by the leverage sword almost always die by it.

The recent unwinding of levered ETF paper claims created the misperception that gold was falling in price, but this was just derivative paper pricing, not a true valuation metric to the price of physical gold, whose longer-term direction and valuation (as well as Shanghai premiums) are only in the first chapters of a much longer book.

The massive sell-off in levered ETF paper claims was just another buy-signal for the bigger banks, sovereigns and longer-term players looking to acquire the physical metal at a conveniently engineered paper price fall.

As we already know from the COMEX games played by the big banks, such engineered opportunities are Wall Street’s rules of engagement.

What we are seeing now is just whales buying discounted gold from terrified retail minnows.

That’s history repeating itself (rather than rhyming).

Shakeouts in bull markets are standard operating procedures. As warned just over a month ago, during gold’s massive bull market from 1971 to 1980, the metal got crushed in 1975-76 midway through its otherwise historical rise.

We Only Play the Long Game

In addition to the forces at play above, there are other short-term signals which explain the current paper gold slide.

This includes the endless array of robots rather than humans who do the bulk of the shadow-banking swing trades to justify short-term profit-taking.

When the robo-traders see a support line piercing, they follow the signals without emotion and sell the metals in concert. We saw this with gold in the spring of 2022 and the summer of 2023.

These endless regiments and brigades of robotic traders at hedge-funds A-Z don’t give a hoot about gold’s longer-term or future role as an evolving global strategic reserve asset any more than they understand gold’s historically undeniable role as a wealth preservation asset.

Algos think in terms of seconds, not years or cycles.

But as informed investors who know that precious metals hold their purchasing power infinitely better than paper currencies and IOUs, we respect gold’s past history as well as future cyclical direction.

For this reason, we were never gloating when gold hit its most recent all-time highs; nor were we wringing our hands when gold saw headline price falls.

For us, measuring physical metals in paper currencies or paper markets entirely misses the point, and critical understanding, of physical gold as real rather than melting (paper) money, and as a preservation rather than speculation asset.

Of course, most will say this is just our bias.

Fair enough.

But watch the BIS, the Fed, the TBTF banks and just about every other central bank in the world who have been stacking physical gold at 5X their pre-2022 levels for one simple reason: Rock beats paper.

What we are seeing in the current gold headlines is a buy signal, not a panic signal.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/23/2026 - 08:05

Musk Plans To Appeal After Jury Finds Him Liable To Twitter Shareholders

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal jury on March 20 found tech billionaire Elon Musk liable for misleading Twitter shareholders by driving down the social media platform’s stock price months before acquiring it for $44 billion in 2022.

The decision follows a civil class action lawsuit filed by Twitter investors in October 2022. Musk agreed to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share in April 2022 but later tried to back out of the deal, leading the company to take legal action to enforce it. He ultimately completed the acquisition in October 2022 and rebranded Twitter to X.

The shareholders alleged that Musk made misleading statements after agreeing to buy Twitter in April 2022, leading them to sell their shares. They alleged that he published the statements to drive down Twitter stock prices in a bid to renegotiate the deal.

In a verdict on March 20, jurors found Musk liable for misleading investors through two social media posts. The first post said the deal was “temporarily on hold” pending verification that bots accounted for less than 5 percent of users on the social media platform.

In the second post, Musk suggested the percentage of bots could exceed 20 percent and said the buyout of Twitter could not ​go forward until he received confirmation that it was less ⁠than 5 percent.

However, the jury found that the plaintiffs failed to substantiate claims that Musk had engaged in a scheme to defraud investors.

The plaintiffs’ attorney, Mark Molumphy, called the verdict an “important victory” for both Twitter investors and the public markets.

“I think the jury’s verdict sends a strong message that just because you’re a rich and powerful person, you still have to obey the law, and no man is above the law,” Molumphy told The Associated Press.

Musk’s legal team at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan said in a statement to multiple news outlets that they plan to appeal the verdict.

“We view today’s verdict, where the jury found both for and against the plaintiffs and found no fraud scheme, as a bump in the road. And we look forward to vindication on appeal,” his legal counsel said.

Musk also faces a lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which alleged that he violated federal securities laws by delaying disclosure of his acquisition of Twitter stock in March 2022, before making an offer to buy the company.

The SEC said the delay had allowed Musk to buy more shares at lower prices, allowing him to “underpay by at least $150 million for shares he purchased after his beneficial ownership report was due,” according to the January 2025 filing. Musk has sought dismissal of the suit.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/23/2026 - 07:45

European Court Denies Appeal Of Parents Seeking Custody Over Their Kids In Religious Freedom Case

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

In Sweden, a Christian couple is going through a nightmare that captures the growing bias and targeting of religious families in Europe. Daniel and Bianca Samson have been fighting to regain custody of their daughters since 2022 after the government cited their regular church attendance and faith as warranting their removal.

The parents, with the help of the Alliance Defending Freedom International, were delivered another blow after the European Court of Human Rights refused to accept their appeal as “inadmissible.”

This saga began when their eldest daughter had a fight with her parents over being denied a smartphone and makeup.

She contacted police and made a false report of abuse.

However, Sara, quickly retracted the allegation and police found no evidence of abuse.

Nevertheless, the state took both girls — aged 10 and 11 at the time –and refused to allow them to return home.

The government alleged that they found evidence of “religious extremism” and, according to ADF, cited the family’s habit of attending church three times a week.

It also cited strict religious upbringing in the home.

In the United States, the findings would be glaring violations of the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. In Sweden, it is a viable basis for taking away your children.

So these girls want to go home and the parents want to restore their family.

The Swedish government and courts refuse to allow it.

They are still separated after the parents successfully completed state-mandated parenting courses.

They also were denied requests to move the girls into foster homes in Romania, where they live.

The Swedish Supreme Court refused to hear the case last year, but the European Court of Human Rights said that they had failed “to exhaust legal remedies in Sweden.”

Now, according to the ADF International, the government is moving to place the girls up for adoption.

The children have moved from foster home to foster home, including allegedly one placement that resulted in one of the girl’s suffering physical and mental health issues. She ultimately tried to commit suicide, according to the family.

I have only found articles attesting to the removal on the grounds of the family’s religious faith and practices. The implications are chilling if true. This family appears to have done everything demanded of them as their daughters begged to return home.

It is a case worthy of inquiry by the Administration in defense of religious liberty.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/23/2026 - 06:30

NYC Congestion Toll Linked To Rising Subway Ridership

A report from the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee suggests that congestion pricing in New York City is increasing subway use, according to Bloomberg.

The policy charges most drivers a $9 toll to enter parts of Manhattan, encouraging some commuters and leisure travelers to shift from driving to public transit.

Data from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority shows subway ridership reached 1.28 billion rides in 2025, a 7.7% increase from the previous year and more than double the 3.7% growth recorded in 2024. Even with the increase, ridership remains about 75% of what it was before the pandemic.

Most of the growth came from weekend and discretionary trips rather than weekday commuting. Weekend ridership rose by nearly 22 million rides, a 9.4% increase year over year. Morning rush trips into the tolled Manhattan zone rose by about 7%, while weekend entries climbed roughly 7.5%.

Bloomberg writes that traffic has also declined since the toll began. According to MTA data, about 72,600 fewer vehicles entered the congestion zone each day in 2025, an 11% drop.

Higher ridership has helped increase transit revenue. Subway fares generated $2.97 billion in 2025, up from $2.82 billion in 2024. That income helps service roughly $17 billion in long-term debt backed by transit fare revenue.

The policy has drawn criticism from opponents including Phil Murphy and Donald Trump, though a federal judge ruled that efforts to end the program were unlawful.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/23/2026 - 05:45

Half A Million Balsa Trees Illegally Logged In Amazon Rainforest Every Year To Feed Global Wind Turbine Demand

Authored by Chris Morrison via DailySceptic.org,

Over half a million balsa hardwood trees are being illegally logged in the Amazon rainforest every year to feed the massive demand for wind turbines in many parts of the world. Balsa is a lightweight but strong wood that is commonly used in the core of giant turbine blades. It can make up around 7% of the blade and each set of three can use up to 40 trees.

This discovery is a genuine shock and follows an exclusive investigation by the Daily Sceptic. It adds to the huge ecological toll that the ‘green’ wind turbines are taking on the natural environment.

These inefficient, unreliable, unsightly monsters require a large footprint on land and sea, kill millions of bats, decimate raptor populations, sweep the air of quadrillions of insects and alter local ecology on both land and sea. 

Nobody would install one in a free market, so they require vast financial subsidies to produce expensive electricity.

Given what is known about annual balsa production, the scale of illegal logging and the demands of wind turbine manufactures, it is not difficult to arrive at a possible Amazon forest yearly loss of over half a million trees. Most commercial balsa is exported by Ecuador and it has produced approximately 500,000 cubic metres annually in recent years, or about 80,000 metric tonnes. Around 55% of production is thought to end up in wind turbines and each group of three requires about 10.5m3 a set. Each set requires about 40 trees so annual balsa consumption for wind turbines equates to 1,047,619. Balsa is a relatively fast growing tropical wood and until the soaring demand from turbines kicked in, it was harvested in sustainable plantations. But since the turn of the decade, this sustainable harvest cannot keep up with demand. In a damning survey, the Environment Investigation Agency (EIA) found that exports were boosted by up to 50% following illegal logging in virgin rainforest.

Halve the turbine consumption of 1,047,619 trees and the illegal logging amounts to around 523,810 mature specimens. This figure is likely to be controversial so the Daily Sceptic has shown its workings-out in full. But any substantial annual cull is horrific, and far outstrips the one-off loss of 100,000 tropical rainforest trees logged to build a convenient road for delegates attending the recent ‘save the forest’ COP30 meeting in the Brazilian city of Belém.

Blind eyes are of course turned to the illegal logging, and have been for some time.

In 2020, it was reported that 20,000 balsa trees were illegally felled between March and September in the Achuar indigenous territory along Ecuador’s Copataza River. Other reports refer to intense illegal logging, with some estimates noting the removal of 75% of the trees in some areas.

The EIA report that was published in 2024 was damning. Investigators toured many of the illegal logging sites and charged that most, if not all, exporters turned to natural forests as a “convenient and immediate replacement” when plantations were quickly depleted of older trees. The areas under attack were noted to be some of the last intact forest landscapes in the country. They were said to be unique protected areas and emblematic indigenous territories. Traders are said to have told the EIA that the logging of balsa was taking place “from north to south across most of the Amazonian provinces of the country”. It is estimated that at least 50% of production is currently being supplied by these illegal means. Blending of plantation wood with illegal logging is thought to vary between 10% to 70% depending on the exporter.

The EIA report gained little mainstream media or political attention when it was published, although the body is an established NGO, founded in the UK in 1984 with offices in the UK and Europe. For the narrative-driven mainstream, this type of upsetting news is simply too hot to handle.

However there have been attempts by turbine manufactures and supporters to suggest that balsa is being replaced in parts of the turbine core by various synthetic polymer foam substitutes. This is true, but balsa remains in popular use due to its excellent strength-to-weight ratio. Hybrid designs are said to have become more common, with balsa used in high-shear and other critical areas. In these areas it still holds an advantage over foams. But overall production figures suggest wind turbines are still using a great deal of the wood. Ecuadorean production is said to have spiked around 2020 with a previous sustainable total of 33,000 tonnes rising to 75,000, driven by Chinese turbines manufactures. It is a little difficult to get exact production figures but sources such as the EIA and UN Comtrade suggest exports of 80-100,000 tonnes in 2021, 60-80,000 in 2022, and 50-80,000 in 2023 and 2024.

After the spike, production has stabilised but at levels that can only have been possible by massive looting of the rainforest. It is obvious that a great deal of this is supported by huge increases in Chinese wind turbine manufacture. Overall figures for both domestic and export production are not available in one place, but credible estimate suggest monetary total of $8-12 billion in 2021 has risen to nearly $16 billion in 2024 with the projection for 2025 edging towards $18 billion.

The annual loss of balsa trees in virgin rainforests is unnecessary ecological rape traceable back to ideologues driving a hard-Left Net Zero fantasy. The Daily Septic has attempted to put an annual number on the loss using known figures. Our workings-out are supplied so others, if they wish, can contest our assumptions and maths and arrive at different conclusions. But few will be able to cover up the fact that there are very significant and continuing annual illegal logging balsa losses.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/23/2026 - 05:00

Joe Kent Makes Genuine Plea To Trump: "Address The Israeli Issue"

Recently-resigned director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent told antiwar.com editor Scott Horton that a narrow window for de-escalation still exists, but only if Donald Trump is willing to confront what Kent repeatedly described as the core constraint on U.S. strategy: Israel.

“I think he's got to address the Israeli issue first and foremost… and demand and force them to stop going on the offense.”

Kent addressed Trump’s recent public comments urging restraint, specifically that Israel halt strikes on energy infrastructure, but warned that rhetorical pressure alone would prove ineffective. According to Kent, past behavior suggests compliance would be temporary at best.

“If you tell them that they need to stop… they might back off for a week or so, but they're not going to listen to you.”

pic.twitter.com/BEeBTR6zs3

— ZeroHedge Debates (@zerohedgeDebate) March 20, 2026

**Update from today right on cue…

Step 1 in deescalation must be restraining the Israelis, otherwise all efforts to negotiate will follow this pattern:

POTUS publicly announces deescalation.

Israel takes major strikes to destroy the negotiations & in turn weaken our ability to negotiate.

The war accelerates. https://t.co/hbX4VRu3dV pic.twitter.com/zwBTHlgYRZ

— Joe Kent (@joekent16jan19) March 23, 2026

**

“Take Away Their Ability”

Kent outlined what he sees as the only viable leverage: withdrawing U.S. defensive support unless Israel shifts fully to a defensive posture.

“You have to take away their ability to do that… we’re not going to support you while you’re on the offense.”

Tying American support to Israeli operational restraint would be a massive structural change in the U.S.-Israel relationship (if actually carried out in practice) as it is something rarely done by past Presidents on both sides of the aisle.

Kent argued that U.S. and Israeli endgames in Iran are no longer aligned. While Washington may seek limited military objectives, he described Israel’s aims as far more expansive, and far more destabilizing.

“The Israelis want full regime change… and have a very high tolerance for chaos.”

He warned that such an outcome would carry severe downstream consequences from increased terrorism threats in the continental U.S. to yet another immigration crisis for Europe to unsustainable oil prices.

“That would be absolutely catastrophic… for the world energy trade.”

A Narrow Window For A Deal

Despite the escalation, Kent believes President Trump can still make a deal and secure a diplomatic off-ramp, signaling that backchannel negotiations could be underway already.

“We already saw… [Bessent] talking about lifting the sanctions on some of the Iranian oil that's already on the water.”

Kent emphasized that “only Donald Trump can do it,” showing there is still optimism for the President he served just days ago and accused of launching a war of choice on behalf of Israel.

“I think we have a lot of potential right now to get that deal.”

The throughline of Kent’s argument is that absent a shift in U.S. policy, the current trajectory is self-reinforcing.

“To let the Israelis continue to… drive the strategic objectives… that is not doing any service for the American people,” he said, adding that if nothing changes “we’re going to continue to be in this cycle.”

Watch Horton’s full interview below:

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/23/2026 - 04:15

How Much Of The Gulf's Water Comes From Desalination Plants?

Authored by Mohamed A. Hussein,

The United States-Israeli war on Iran has exposed the vulnerability of critical water infrastructure in a region that is among the most water-scarce in the world.

Last week, Iran’s foreign minister accused the US of striking a desalination plant on Qeshm Island off the coast of Iran in the Strait of Hormuz.

The strike reportedly cut off the water supply to 30 villages. Just 24 hours later, Bahrain said an Iranian drone had caused material damage to one of its desalination plants near Muharraq.

The six Gulf states – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – are among the most water-scarce countries in the world and rely heavily on desalination to meet the needs of their combined populations, which exceed 62 million people.

In this visual explainer, Al Jazeera unpacks how dependent the region is on desalination, how much water is produced each year and how various desalination processes work.

The Gulf has no permanent rivers

The Gulf states are deserts with no permanent rivers. While they lack rivers, they do have seasonal waterways called wadis, which carry water during rare rainfall.

These nations rely primarily on groundwater and desalination to supply water to their rapidly growing cities, industrial zones and agricultural areas.

The map below shows the major rivers and waterways in areas surrounding the Gulf.

(Al Jazeera)

7.2 trillion litres from desalination

The Gulf countries produce roughly 40 percent of the world’s desalinated water, operating more than 400 desalination plants along their coasts.

The threshold the United Nations has set for absolute water scarcity is 500 cubic metres (655 cubic yards) per capita per year.

With an average per-capita share of natural freshwater of only 120 cubic metres (155 cubic yards) per year, therefore, Gulf countries rely heavily on desalination to fill the gap between supply and demand.

According to a 2023 report from the GCC Statistical Center, the six Gulf states produced 7.2 billion cubic metres, or 1.9 trillion gallons, of freshwater through desalination. This volume translates to about 122 cubic metres per capita per year, or about 334 litres (88 gallons) per day. However, their total installed capacity is much higher, estimated at 26.4 billion cubic metres annually.

One billion cubic metres is equivalent to one trillion litres.

The largest and most populous of the states – with 37 million inhabitants – is Saudi Arabia. It produced 3 billion cubic metres of desalinated water in 2023, followed by the UAE with 1.9 billion cubic metres, Kuwait with 0.8 billion cubic metres, Qatar with 0.7 billion cubic metres, Oman with 0.5 billion cubic metres and Bahrain with 0.3 billion cubic metres.

(Al Jazeera)

Gulf states’ reliance on desalination

Limited rainfall, the absence of permanent rivers and depletion of groundwater reserves have rendered natural freshwater resources insufficient for the rapidly growing populations of the Gulf.

Without desalination, water for drinking and for industrial and agricultural purposes would be impossible to maintain. According to data from the GCC Statistical Centre on water production and consumption, here is the reliance on desalination for total water supply in each country:

(Al Jazeera)

Qatar

At 61 percent, Qatar is the most dependent of the Gulf states on water from desalination. About 22 percent of its combined 1.1 billion cubic metres of annual water supply comes from groundwater and 18 percent from rainwater. However, when it comes to drinking water alone, Qatar relies nearly exclusively on desalination, which constitutes more than 99 percent of its drinking water supply for its 3.2 million people.

Bahrain

Bahrain is the second most dependent on desalinated water with 59 percent of its total 0.5 billion cubic metres of annual national water supply coming from desalination. For drinking water, this figure jumps to more than 90 percent. Additionally, 32 percent comes from groundwater and 11 percent from rainwater, respectively, for its 1.6 million inhabitants.

Kuwait

Kuwait follows with 47 percent of its 1.7 billion cubic metres of water used annually obtained through desalination while 51 percent comes from groundwater with rainfall making up the remainder.

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The UAE

The UAE has a roughly equal mix with 41 percent of its water derived from desalination and 46 percent from groundwater with the remainder coming from rainwater and treated wastewater. This totals 4.8 billion cubic metres annually for its 11.5 million inhabitants.

Oman

Oman produces 23 percent of its total 2.2 billion cubic metres annually from desalination for its 4.7 million inhabitants, followed by groundwater at 69 percent with the remainder coming from rainfall and treated wastewater.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia produces more desalinated water than any other country, but with 18 percent of its total usage coming from desalination, Saudi Arabia is the least dependent of the Gulf states on water from desalination, relying instead on groundwater for 79 percent of its total water needs. Rainfall accounts for the remainder of the 17.3 billion cubic metres the kingdom produces annually for its 37 million inhabitants.

How desalination works

Desalination is the process of removing salt and minerals from seawater to make it suitable for human consumption and irrigation. This is primarily achieved through thermal distillation or reverse osmosis.

(Al Jazeera)

Historically, the only way to desalinate water was to boil it and then collect the steam to obtain freshwater, which is essentially how thermal distillation works.

Seawater is pumped into desalination plants. From there, filters remove sand, algae and particles before the water is heated until it forms steam, leaving salt and minerals behind. The steam is then cooled and condenses into pure distilled water. After this, minerals are added, and the water is disinfected to ensure it is safe for drinking. Finally, the water is pumped into municipal pipelines or bottled for use in homes, businesses and industries.

Reverse osmosis, on the other hand, uses high-pressure pumps to force seawater through a semipermeable membrane that captures salt and minerals while allowing water molecules to pass through.

This method has become the more popular form of desalination because it is significantly cheaper to operate, uses less energy and does not cause thermal pollution through the discharge of hot water into the sea.

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/22/2026 - 23:20

Trump HHS Launches Probe Into 13 States Over Abortion Coverage Mandates

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office for Civil Rights (OCR), is investigating 13 Democrat-run states for allegedly forcing employers' health insurance plans to cover abortions. Officials say these rules trample the Weldon Amendment's federal conscience protections. 

The Weldon amendment blocks states from punishing health insurers, plans, or providers who refuse to pay for, provide, or refer for abortions on moral or religious grounds, and has appeared in every HHS spending bill alongside the Hyde Amendment since 2005.

“OCR launches these investigations to address certain states’ alleged disregard of, or confusion about, compliance with the Weldon Amendment,” Paula M. Stannard, HHS Director of the Office for Civil Rights, said in a statement. “Under the Weldon Amendment, health care entities, such as health insurance issuers and health plans, are protected from state discrimination for not paying for, or providing coverage of, abortion contrary to conscience. Period.”

The states targeted in the investigation are California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, all of which require state-regulated plans to include abortion coverage without any exceptions.

HHS framed the investigation as the Trump administration delivering on a core promise. “Today’s announcement advances an Administration promise, corrects misguided legal interpretations of laws that OCR enforces, and builds on HHS’ recent efforts to enforce conscience rights and protect human life.” The office sent letters this week demanding details from the states. Non-compliance could result in billions of dollars in Medicaid funds being withheld.

This isn’t the Trump administration’s first rodeo either.

During his first term, Trump’s HHS Department hit California with a Notice of Violation over its abortion mandate, threatening to withhold $200 million per quarter in Medicaid funding. In 2021, the Biden administration quietly reversed course, claiming in a letter that the Weldon Amendment’s definition of a “health care entity” was narrower than Trump officials had interpreted, saying churches and religious groups didn’t count—effectively gutting federal conscience protections.

Now, Trump’s HHS has disavowed the Biden-era interpretation.

“We believe that it reflected an unduly narrow reading of the statute. We also disavowed downstream impacts of the legal position taken in 2021, which imposed certain requirements on complainants of protected parties that were not grounded in the state statute,” an HHS official said. “And by publicly repudiating that 2021 letter, we informed states and other entities, including those protected by this by the Weldon amendment, that they should no longer rely on this now repeated legal position.”

Blue-state governors are furious. “This is the latest effort by President Trump and Secretary Kennedy to take away women's reproductive rights,” Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement. “In Massachusetts, we're focused on making sure everyone can access and afford the health care services they need, including abortion care. We're not going to be intimidated by this investigation, and we are going to continue protecting women's access to reproductive health care.” 

New Jersey's Rep. Mikie Sherrill branded it “nothing but a fishing expedition wasting taxpayers’ money.” She insisted, “New Jersey requires health insurance plans to follow all applicable laws, including protecting women’s reproductive freedom.”

 

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/22/2026 - 22:45

Blackstone's Flagship Private Credit Fund, World's Largest, Posts First Monthly Loss Since 2022

It only took a constant barrage of negative news surrounding the private credit space, including a surge in redemptions, investor gating, questions about loan markets as well as outright fraud, not to mention relentless criticism from of some of the biggest luminaries in credit, including Saba's Boaz Weinstein and Diameter's Scott Goodwin, for Blackstone to concede that its private credit book may have been mismarked.

According to Bloomberg, Blackstone's flagship private credit fund - and the world's largest - posted its first monthly loss in more than three years, one of the clearest signs yet of weakening performance in the $1.8 trillion market.

The $83 billion fund, known as BCRED, lost 0.4% in February, the first monthly decline since September 2022. Performance was flat for the first two months of the year after an 8% gain in 2025, the website shows. While we haven't done the math, we wonder what that means in terms of BCRED's Sharpe ratio, and how that compares to, say, Bernie Madoff's while the music was still playing (not when it had already stopped, of course). 

Blackstone told investors its February loss reflected wider spreads across public and private markets, as well as unrealized marks on individual names including Medallia, according to a message to financial advisers seen by Bloomberg.

In the message, Blackstone pointed out that despite the pullback, the fund outperformed the leveraged loan market by around 0.4 percentage points in February and 1 percentage point since the start of the year, which it said underscored the benefits of private credit during volatile markets.

“BCRED continues to deliver strong performance for its investors, with a 9.5% annualized total return since inception for Class I shares,” a spokesperson for the firm said in an emailed statement. The fund was set up in January 2021.

Blackstone disclosed in February that it had marked down the value of its loan to Medallia Inc., a software company owned by Thoma Bravo, to 78 cents on the dollar. The loan has become a weak spot for private credit lenders, exposing sharp differences in valuations across managers.

BCRED is among a number of private credit vehicles that have faced elevated redemptions in recent quarters, amid concerns about valuations and underwriting standards in credit markets, as well as the potential for artificial intelligence to disrupt software businesses.

As reported previously, the alternative asset manager also took the unusual step of using its own cash as well as contributions from senior leaders to meet redemption requests for BCRED that exceeded the fund’s previously set limit of 5% of net assets.

Now that Blackstone's own money is flowing out to investors to avoid gating, it is understandable that Blackstone’s President and COO Jon Gray would make a full-throated defense of the private credit space, declining marks notwithstanding, and he did just that at a recent annual meeting with top financial advisors, saying that since private credit represents mostly "lowly leveraged vehicles that made low, 40% loan-to-value loans to very good quality companies", even 15% default rates and 50% recoveries wouldn't lead to a crisis, especially since BCRED has already remarked itself to 97, when the mathematical worst case scenario using those assumptions is 92.5, or 7.5 points of loss.

At an annual meeting with top financial advisors, $BX's Jon Gray explains why the math doesn’t add up on some of the predictions around private credit. Watch: pic.twitter.com/Kx8Fx4aYrh

— Blackstone (@blackstone) March 20, 2026

Judging by the collapsing prices of private credit names in the space, the market does not exactly agree. 

*  *  * Thank you for your support

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/22/2026 - 22:34

Glitch Shuts Australia's Biggest Maker Of Vital Fertilizer Input For 2 Months At Worst Possible Time

Australia's largest ammonia plant will be shut for two months to repair damage caused by a power outage, amidst a global supply crunch for the vital fertiliser and explosives ingredient.

To say that the shutdown comes at the worst possible time for the global fertilizer market would be an understatement: more than a quarter of the world's traded ammonia flows through the Strait of Hormuz, as do 43% of urea shipments, the fertilizer made from ammonia. As we discussed in recent days, that flow has been cut to a trickle as Iran blockaded the SoH, as have vital gas supplies, causing fertilizer plants in India to shut.

Adding insult to injury, last week Yara's Pilbara plant, which uses gas to produce 850,000 tonnes of ammonia a year, suffered a power outage, damaging equipment, BoilingCold reports.

The Yara Pilbara plant produces 5% of globally traded ammonia

A spokesman for the Norwegian company said workers and the environment were unaffected, and initial assessments indicated repairs could take about two months.

"Yara well understands the importance of its products to customers and will work to bring the operations back online as soon as practical," he said.

An adjacent plant, half-owned by Australia's Orica, uses 140,000 tonnes of the ammonia to make the explosive technical ammonium nitrate (TAN) for WA's mining sector. The remaining ammonia is shipped to Australian and international customers, and much of it is used to make urea fertilizer.

The shutdown could not have come at a worse time for Australia's farmers, who last year imported 1.2 million tonnes of urea in April and May for use before or shortly after seeding. Three-quarters came from the Gulf nations, where shipping is now severely curtailed after the United States and Israel attacked Iran.

Australia's largest export could also be affected. For the next two months, WA's iron ore miners no longer have 330,000 tonnes a year of TAN produced on their doorstep. The explosive is used in vast quantities to blast rock so it can be collected, crushed and shipped to port.

The degree of disruption to production, if any, will depend on the stocks of TAN the miners hold and whether they can source other supplies at short notice.

Wesfarmers subsidiary CSBP runs WA's second-largest ammonia plant in Kwinana near Perth. CSBP uses Kwinana's 255,000 tonnes a year output and additional imported ammonia to make ammonium nitrate for fertilisers and explosives.

CSBP would not say if any of its imported ammonia came from Yara.

"It is standard business practice for us to continually monitor and manage our supply chain to ensure we meet customer demand," a company spokeswoman said.

*  *  * A FEW HOURS LEFT UNTIL CUTOFF

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/22/2026 - 21:35

Pritzker Criticizes AIPAC After Pro-Israel Group Spends Heavily In Illinois Primary

Authored by Jackson Richman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker sharply criticized the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) following the group’s significant spending in the March 17 Illinois primary elections.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker speaks on stage during Vox Media's Pivot Tour at The Chicago Theatre in Chicago on Nov. 12, 2025. Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for Vox Media

In an interview with The Associated Press on March 18, Pritzker said AIPAC has strayed from its original mission as a bipartisan organization focused on strengthening U.S.-Israel relations.

“It became an organization that was supporting [President] Donald Trump and people who follow Donald Trump,” Pritzker said. “AIPAC really is not an organization that I think today I would want any part of.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to AIPAC for comment.

Pritzker, a Jewish Democrat, had been a major donor to AIPAC more than a decade ago.

AIPAC, along with other outside groups, spent roughly $70 million on six open U.S. House and Senate races across Illinois.

In his interview, Pritzker characterized the spending as “interference.”

Many of the races that opened up by retirements became testing grounds for key issues facing Democrats ahead of 2026.

These included U.S. policy toward Israel, as well as emerging topics such as cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence.

Debates over U.S. involvement in the Israel-Hamas conflict—and more recently tensions over Iran—also played a major role in several contests.

In a crowded 10-candidate Democratic primary for Illinois’ 2nd Congressional District, AIPAC backed Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller, who ultimately secured the nomination.

However, its preferred candidate in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, a heavily Jewish district north of Chicago, state Sen. Laura Fine, lost to Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss.

While Pritzker supports Israel, he has been critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership.

He reiterated his support for a two-state solution, emphasizing the need for “havens” for both Israelis and Palestinians.

“I do not know why the United States has walked away from that,” Pritzker said, adding that Trump “doesn’t seem to understand how to create Middle East peace” and has instead pursued military action, including recent moves involving Iran.

“Are we going to now take military adventures across the world to take out leaders who we think are bad for their countries?” Pritzker added.

“If so, we’re going to be involved in a whole lot of wars going forward.”

Pritzker also contributed at least $5 million to support Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton’s Senate campaign.

Stratton won the Democratic nomination over Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), who had led in fundraising, and Robin Kelly (D-Ill.).

Outside groups spent more than $16 million backing Stratton, while another $11 million was spent opposing her.

Despite his financial support, Pritzker said Stratton’s victory was due to her own strengths as a candidate.

“She stood on her own two feet, and people saw that she’s real and she’s going to be a fighter for us in Washington,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/22/2026 - 21:00

AOC Splashes Thousands In Campaign Funds On Psychiatrist Specializing In Ketamine Therapy

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (D- NY) campaign splashed close to $19,000 in campaign funds last year to a Boston-area psychiatrist affiliated with a chain of clinics that specialize in ketamine-based treatments for mental-health conditions, according to the New York Post.

Disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission indicate that Ocasio-Cortez's campaign committee made three payments totaling $18,725 in 2025 to Dr. Brian Boyle, chief psychiatric officer at Stella Mental Health. The expenditures were recorded as "leadership training and consulting": $11,550 in March, $2,800 in May and $4,375 in October.

Dr. Boyle, a Harvard Medical School graduate who previously served as an attending psychiatrist at McLean Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, focuses on interventional psychiatry. Stella Mental Health offers treatments including intravenous ketamine infusions, Spravato nasal spray, transcranial magnetic stimulation and other approaches aimed at conditions such as treatment-resistant depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. The clinics market these services to patients who have not responded to conventional therapies, and ketamine-based options have gained attention in recent years among certain professional and celebrity circles seeking alternative mental-health interventions, the Post reports.

It’s unclear whether the money was actually spent on ketamine therapy as the expenses were mysteriously labeled as "leadership training and consulting,” the Post said.

Ketamine, originally developed as an anesthetic, has shown promise in providing rapid symptom relief for some patients with severe, treatment-resistant depression, according to clinical studies. The only FDA-approved ketamine-derived medication for psychiatric use is esketamine nasal spray, Spravato, first cleared in 2019 as an adjunct to oral antidepressants for treatment-resistant depression. In early 2025, the agency expanded approval to allow its use as a monotherapy for adults who have not responded adequately to at least two prior oral antidepressants.

Administration of Spravato remains tightly regulated under a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy program, requiring supervised use in certified healthcare settings, post-dose monitoring for at least two hours due to potential side effects such as dissociation, sedation and elevated blood pressure, and restrictions on driving.

Off-label intravenous ketamine infusions, such as those offered by clinics like Stella, lack the same level of FDA approval and long-term safety data. While some patients report substantial short-term benefits, medical experts and regulators have raised concerns about overhype, variable evidence for sustained efficacy, risks of dependency in vulnerable populations, and potential for misuse. Critics, including specialists at institutions such as Yale and the Cleveland Clinic, have pointed to limited longitudinal studies and questions about whether the treatments deliver lasting reductions in suicide risk or serve primarily as a temporary bridge.

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/22/2026 - 20:30

Oil & Stocks Mixed To Start Week As War Escalates & Gamma Unclenches

Update (1845ET): After an initial kneejerk higher in oil and lower in stocks, things have settled a little with both hovering around unch...

Brent is sliding a little from Friday's highs...

Equity futs are back around unch...

There's a long way til dawn...

*  *  *

Following a weekend where geopolitical headlines swung from "winding down" (Friday after the close) to threats, deadlines, and "obliteration" tit-for-tat talk suggesting no end in sight, it is perhaps no surprise that oil prices are up (and so equity futures are down) as we open Sunday night.

WTI topped $100 again (but is fading back a little from the opening spike)...

Futs are down around 1-1.5% from the after-hours highs on Friday...

10Y TSY futs are down, implying around a 4-5bps rise in yields...

Gold is flat, holding around $4500 (after its worst week in 43 years).

Bitcoin has been sliding all weekend and is back below $68k now...

Investors are finally beginning to price-in the Iran conflict as a longer energy shock, not a temporary geopolitical scare.

With no end in sight, Goldman Sachs trader, Shreeti Kapa says it feels like market has started to reflect inflation risk from a transient energy shock but not really growth downside from a longer lasting shock.

Markets have mostly priced a rate shock but limited growth risks.

This is much in contrast to the energy shock in 2022, which also led to a much larger negative rate shock as real yields sharply increased from negative levels

This reflects a belief still that the war & resulting energy disruptions will be relatively short-lived.

If that confidence is misplaced and the energy price increases prove more durable, markets will need to price in a more significant hit to global growth and earnings & inevitably more significant drawdown in global equities.

As Bloomberg macro strategist, Michael Ball, highlighted earlier, higher energy costs are inflationary and act as a tax on consumers, margins and confidence.

That helps explain why central banks talked tougher this week, causing markets to price a shift to more restrictive path for global monetary policy. Traders moved quickly, pricing in ECB and Bank of England tightening and taking out all the Fed’s easing this year. At one point, bets even emerged for a Fed rate hike.

Central bankers don’t want to repeat the mistakes of 2021 and 2022 by being late to act and erring in their assessment of the strength and duration of inflation. But rate hikes get harder to deliver as growth weakens and labor markets loosen, especially because financial conditions often tighten well before the first move is actually made.

The rates market is already hinting at that tension. The front-end repricing story overshadows any clean duration selloff as policy-error fears begin to show. Hawkish rhetoric can lift two-year yields fast. It’s much harder to persuade the long end that economies can absorb a full tightening cycle on top of a prolonged energy shock.

So now, the only question that really matters is how long the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed.

Simply put, the answer to everything depends on one binary variable –  duration of the war.

That in turn depends if there will be safe transit of oil vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. Even if the strait is opened, would we be able to restore oil flows to pre-conflict levels? What is the guarantee for safe passage? Can any ceasefire be trusted? For how long would that hold?  

As Goldman's Kapa explains, the core problem with binary risk is that traditional diversification doesn’t help much – you can’t diversify away a single exogenous event that reprices everything simultaneously. So the playbook will need to shift from optimizing the portfolio to structuring it around the outcome tree

Few ways to think about it 

• Barbell – own the tails & reduce the middle. As an example long energy, defense, defensives, high quality, secular themes on the “conflict persists” side. Long the high beta, cyclicals, rate-sensitive, consumer discretionary  themes on the “quick resolution side”. Underweight everything that needs a benign middle path like expensive stuff that needs both low rates AND strong earnings! 

• Reduce gross, not just net – In a binary, your net view matters less than your sizing. Even a high conviction directional call can be wrong if the binary resolves the other way. The smart move is cutting gross exposure so the wrong outcome doesn’t impair capital – thus preserving the ability to reload once the binary resolves 

• Own the resolution not the anticipation – Historically best entry point in geopolitical binaries is just after the resolution – not before. Holding dry powder and waiting for binary to resolve is often better risk-adjusted than guessing direction beforehand 

• Options – use options rather than one-delta positioning to capture left & right tails. Conscious at current VIX levels, this is rather expensive 

The options market has just cleared one of the largest structural events of the quarter, as Friday's OPEX saw nearly $1.4 trillion in delta notional expire for the S&P 500.

But as SpotGamma explains, because significant positions have now rolled off from the March expiration, the market has lost an important stabilizing force just as macro pressures begin to build.

The loss of stabilizing positioning from March OPEX comes at a particularly precarious moment.

SPX has broken below the 6,600 Put Wall, closing Friday at 6,506 and now down over 7% from January highs.

These dynamics may finally put the nail in the coffin on the range-bound environment we observed at the start of 2026.

Even in the best case scenario, this tell us that we're not out of the woods yet. The worst case scenario tells us to hold on tight.

At least through quarter-end, major indices appear increasingly susceptible to larger directional moves.

While this volatility could manifest in terms of dramatic upside as well as downside, heightened put skew indicates that traders are largely hedging against the threat of a continued selloff.

Bear in mind that President Trump's 48hr deadline is set to end tomorrow (Monday) night at ~7pm EST.

Markets have not capitulated yet, but the slow daily derisking may be more troubling as investors increasingly throw in the towel and price a higher chance of stagflation the longer the war drags on.

So, with all that in mind, Goldman's Kapa notes, binary risk environments reward optionality and liquidity over conviction.

Investors that do well in such instances aren't ones that call the bottom correctly, they are the ones who had cash to deploy when uncertainty cleared.

Given near zero equity risk premium and all time high valuations across regions & sectors today, cash is actually a reasonable asymmetric position – you give up almost nothing in expected return and gain significant flexibility !

Professional subscribers can read much more from Goldman's Sales & Trading team here at our new Marketdesk.ai portal

*  *  * PSST

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/22/2026 - 19:48

Iran Issues 10 Million Rial Banknote Amid Soaring Inflation

As the Iran war rages, Tehran has rolled out a new 10 million rial banknote, its highest-ever denomination, as authorities seek to "manage" soaring inflation and meet demand for hard cash... but mostly to "manage" soaring inflation, similar to how Venezuela would add a new 0 to its currency every week in the late days of the Maduro ergime before everyone simply gave up. 

Banks, which have been targeted on at least one occasion by Western strikes, began distributing the new note this week, which is worth about $7, as Iranians waited in long lines at cashpoints to withdraw currency over fears electronic systems could fail. Many quickly ran out.

The new bank note is worth about $7 US dollars.

The new pink banknote features a vignette of the 9th-century Jameh Mosque of Yazd, while the back displays an image of the 2,500-year-old Bam Citadel. It is now the highest denomination in circulation, overtaking the 5mn-rial note introduced in early February, which at this rate will be equal to roughly $1 USD in a few weeks.

Iran’s central bank said that the bill was introduced “to ensure public access to cash”, adding that electronic systems - including debit cards, mobile and internet banking - would continue to serve as the main platforms for financial transactions, at least until the Mossad cripples all domestic electronic payments. 

Yet despite government assurances of a continuous supply of cash after the war broke out, banks are providing limited currency to clients seeking to withdraw funds.

“I waited my turn for an hour and the clerk said he could only give me 10mn rials. But when I made a fuss, telling them I had no money and needed cash, I got 30mn instead,” Maryam, an 80-year-old resident of Tehran, told the FT this week. “It’s not much but it can sustain me for a few days if the debit cards stop working.”

Iranians waiting at an ATM to withdraw currency; Getty Images

The new bill is the latest indication of how Iran’s economy is collapsing as the war enters its fourth week.

The US and Israel have targeted infrastructure including a major bank, adding to the strain for businesses already impacted by the constant bombardments and indefinite closure of Iran’s airspace. Imported items have become more expensive as trade routes have closed.

A building of Bank Sepah, which serves Iran’s armed forces alongside the wider public, was hit by a missile on March 11, further compounding public worries.

The bank said on Wednesday that access had been restored, allowing clients to use their cards for in-store shopping and at ATMs. Online banking services, it said, would resume soon. 

The economy was already under strain from years of US sanctions, declining oil revenues, persistently high inflation and systemic corruption - factors that have resulted in a steep devaluation of the rial. The currency had lost 40% of its value in the months that followed Israel’s 12-day war in June last year, with the economic malaise fuelling mass protests in January that were crushed in a brutal crackdown that killed tens of thousands 

It weakened further to a record low of 1.66mn rials per US dollar ahead of the start of the latest war on February 28, but had strengthened to about 1.5mn as of Friday. 

Iran's annual inflation was 47.5% in the month ending February 19, according to Iran’s statistical agency, but the true inflation is said to be orders of magnitude higher. 

Food and drink inflation surged to above 105% in the same period, after the government eliminated subsidized foreign currency for essential imports. Instead it started a food voucher program that grants 80mn Iranians monthly credit to purchase staples at designated stores.

Iran food and drink inflation has soared above 100%.

In November, Iran introduced a law to slash four zeros from the rial over a five-year period in an effort to simplify transactions and reduce the cost of printing money. On the new 10 million rial note, the final four zeros appear faintly while 1,000 is also printed in bold. This style, used for all new banknotes printed since 2019, is designed to help the transition.

Banknotes printed in Iran in recent years mainly showcase historical monuments. Some of the older, smaller banknotes depict Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran’s revolution.

Demand for cash is usually already high at this time of year before Nowruz, the Persian new year, when many Iranians gift money to children and family members. 

The recent strengthening of the rial comes as foreign trade has reduced, Iranians have cancelled overseas trips and people in need of cash for urgent expenses exchange their foreign currency.

“Only those who have sold property or a car and don’t want to keep their money in rials are buying foreign currency,” one foreign exchange broker in Tehran said. “On the other hand, supply has also decreased a lot. Only those who urgently need money in these conditions are selling their foreign currency.”

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/22/2026 - 15:30

Iran Threatens To Destroy Region-Wide Infrastructure As Trump's 48-Hour Ultimatum Ticks Down, Mass Casualties In Southern Israel Summary

• Iran vows regional and US infrastructure will be "irreversibly destroyed" in response to Trump's 48-hour timeline to open Hormuz or else Iranian power plants will be obliterated.

• Iran announces imposition a $2 million transit fee on 'non-enemy' ships wishing to transit strait.

• Unprecedented damage and many dozens of casualties in Israel's south after tit-for-tat strikes on areas with nuclear plants.

• Reports of US prepping diplomatic offramp plan but Iran says expanding war has effectively shut the door; Bessent says "50 days" of higher prices for 50 years of no Iran nukes, and "escalate to de-escalate."

*  *  *

Bessent on Meet the Press: 'Escalate to De-Escalate' 

Scott Bessent said US-Israeli strikes are focused on weakening Iran's fortified positions along the Strait of Hormuz as Donald Trump presses a deadline for Tehran to "fully open, without threat" the critical global shipping waterway. He stated the US will "take whatever steps it takes" to eliminate Iran's military capabilities, including its ability to project power abroad; however, it remains to be seen just how degraded Iran's missile program is.

"There has been a campaign… to soften up the Iranian fortifications… that's going to continue until they are completely demolished… Sometimes you have to escalate to de-escalate," he asserted.

As the conflict enters its fourth week, and amid rising oil and gasoline prices which have intensified economic pressure at home, Bessent framed the surge as a temporary cost tied to a longer-term greater objective, stating: "Let’s just pick 50 days of temporary elevated prices… Prices will come off on the other side for 50 years of not having an Iranian regime with a nuclear weapon." But then the usual more open-ended caveats: "I don’t know whether it’s going to be 50 days. I don’t know whether it’s going to be a hundred days." As the US keeps going up the escalation ladder with Iran, will it be able to come down?

U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent on Iran:

Sometimes, you have to escalate to deescalate.pic.twitter.com/3xs0BQzcGH

— Clash Report (@clashreport) March 22, 2026

Threatened War on Power Plants Looms

As a reminder here's what President Trump threatened Saturday - so the clock is ticking - assuming he's ready to make good on the promise: "If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!" Trump wrote.

Iran has responded with its own vow of escalation in response. In a post on X, Iran's parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf warned that critical infrastructure and energy facilities across the Middle East will be "irreversibly destroyed" if Iranian power plants are attacked. He wrote:

"Immediately after the power plants and infrastructure in our country are targeted, the critical infrastructure, energy infrastructure, and oil facilities throughout the region will be considered legitimate targets and will be destroyed in an irreversible manner, and the price of oil will remain high for a long time."

Unprecedented damage in communities in Israel's south from Iranian missiles. $2 Million Hormuz Transit Fee, Except For 'Enemy' Countries

By now it's clear that Iran's approach to the Strait of Hormuz has been to only allow select countries while targeting others' shipping and reportedly mining the waterway. An Iranian official said the strait is open to all vessels except those from "enemy" countries.

Iran state TV has further announced the imposition a $2 million transit fee on ships, with a senior lawmaker stating: "We have established a new regime governing the Strait after 47 years… We have to fund the war."

Iranian state TV brag-reports from the Strait of Hormuz. https://t.co/vmP6M1UTFJ

— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) March 22, 2026

Antonio Guterres stated the UN is prepared to help reopen the strait, along with some Gulf countries - but there's still nothing in the way of any level of a practical military plan in place, given the obvious extreme risks.

The US is still considering plans to seize or blockade Kharg Island, which would be another massive escalation which some analysts have deemed 'suicidal' in terms of warships or any Marines sent that deep into Persian Gulf and strait waters.

Tehran has forced ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz to pay a $2 million fee says Boroujerdi of parliament’s national security committee

“We have established a new regime governing the Strait after 47 years,” he said smirking. “We have to fund the war”

The presenter smirks pic.twitter.com/nL4dsVSZp3

— Fazel Hawramy (@FazelHawramy) March 22, 2026

Heavy Blows Traded: Damage in Israel is Unprecedented

US and Israeli forces continued strikes across Iran, including in Tehran, Karaj, Isfahan, Natanz, and Ramsar - while as we've been reporting, Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said the Natanz nuclear site was targeted in "criminal attacks."

This in turn resulted in Iran targeting Dimona and Arad for the first time of the war, causing roughly 100 injuries. The conflict has just entered week four and already they are trading strikes on nuclear plants. Central Israel has continued getting hit hard, with Iranian cluster munitions spreading bomblets across Tel Aviv and nearby areas. Fifteen people were injured there, one seriously. Additional impacts damaged residential areas in Jaffa and Petah Tikva.

İran’ın İsrail’in başkenti Tel Aviv’e gönderdiği füzeler havada işte böyle görüntülendi.

pic.twitter.com/JkuRZgE7sy

— Haber Filesi (@haberfilesi) March 21, 2026

Local reports say there are 88 injuries in Arad alone, including serious and moderate cases. Hospitals, including Soroka Medical Center and Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, treated dozens of wounded, including children. There are reports of growing anger and frustration inside Israel both at the government's underestimating what Iran's response would be like, and the apparent major failures of the Iron Dome defense system.

Mass casualties after large Iranian missiles on Arad and Dimona:

Benjamin Netanyahu has newly stated, "We’re responding with great force, but not on civilians. We’re going after the regime. We’re going after the IRGC, this criminal gang, and we’re going after them personally, their leaders, their installations, their economic assets. We’re going after them very strongly." As for Iran, a state broadcaster reported over 1,500 deaths from US-Israeli strikes, but the true toll may be significantly higher amid ongoing rescue efforts and the fog of war.

Iraq to Lebanon To Yemen: Regional Spillover & Proxy Activity

Drone and rocket attacks targeted a US diplomatic and logistics center near Baghdad International Airport, with multiple overnight strikes reported. Iran-backed Houthis have increased threats, and they are imminently expected to join the war, with the potential ability to close the Bab al-Mandab Strait (Red Sea). Analysts have repeatedly warned their entry into the conflict would expand it significantly, drawing in Red Sea shipping routes and regional actors.

CNN reports Israel is dropping massive bombs directly on residential buildings in eastern Tehran. The blasts are so powerful they are leveling entire apartment blocks and severely damaging surrounding civilian neighborhoods. Absolute war crimes. pic.twitter.com/a8LayADZul

— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) March 22, 2026

Israel has meanwhile intensified operations in Lebanon, with strikes on southern suburbs of Beirut having killed over 1,000 people and displaced more than a million. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has ordered accelerated demolition of homes in border villages: "Accelerate the demolition of Lebanese houses in the contact villages in order to thwart threats to Israeli communities,” applying tactics used in Gaza areas such as Rafah and Beit Hanoun," he said.

In the Gulf, Saudi Arabia has expeled Iran's military attache and four embassy staff, giving them 24 hours to leave the country, over "repeated Iranian attacks" on the kingdom's territory. Riyadh and the UAE are inching closer to possibly joining the US-Israeli war against Iran, also as Trump and Netanyahu have called on other countries to enter a coalition.

Diplomatic Efforts and Conditions for Talks?

There's been a lot of chatter about setting up conditions for a potential offramp, even as Tehran has appeared to shut the door on any future talks, and while thousands of Marines transported on several warships are en route to the region.

The US is exploring a diplomatic track while continuing military operations, Axios has reported. There's obvious pressure on the US domestic front, where rising gas prices could spell serious trouble for Republicans ahead of next fall's midterm elections. Axios reviews of preparations:

• Any deal to end the war would need to include the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, address Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and also establish a long-term agreement on Iran's nuclear program, ballistic missiles and support for proxies in the region.
• There has been no direct contact between the U.S. and Iran in recent days, though Egypt, Qatar and the U.K. have all passed messages between the two, a U.S. official and two additional sources with knowledge said. Egypt and Qatar have informed the U.S. and Israel that Iran is interested in negotiating, but with very tough terms.
• The Iranian demands include a ceasefire, guarantees that the war will not resume in the future, and compensation.

One big problem is that after a spate of top level assassinations of Iranian leaders, Washington doesn't know who in Tehran it would be negotiating with.

Via UChicago Professor Robert A. Pape

And given that on the US side Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are reportedly shaping potential negotiations, the Iranians are unlikely to want to have anything more to do with them. There are reports of indirect talk efforts via intermediaries including Egypt, Qatar, and the United Kingdom, but the reality is that Iran may have been pushed too far - into existential survival mode - and is ready to essentially 'fight to the death'.

*  *  * THREE DAY FLASH SALE! 

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/22/2026 - 15:00

Don Lemon Claims US Does 'Very Same Things' To Protesters As Iran... Which Slaughtered 1000s

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Don Lemon has hit rock bottom in his radical spiral, openly claiming the United States treats protesters the exact same way as Iran — the regime that massacred thousands of anti-government demonstrators in just three months.

This jaw-dropping comparison arrives as the Trump DOJ pursues prison time against Lemon and the leftist mob he embedded with during their invasion of a Minneapolis church — the very disruption he hailed as protected “journalism.”

On the “This is Gavin Newsom” podcast, Lemon, via his shitty internet connection, responded to discussion of an FBI raid on a Washington Post reporter by insisting America was forfeiting its moral high ground in the conflict with Iran.

“Reporters have privilege. It’s like an attorney. And so you have to be very careful about those things. And we cannot lose those things,” Lemon said. “Otherwise we are going to lose the First Amendment. We’re going to lose the freedom of the press because part of that is having sources and being able to be trusted by those sources that you’re not going to give any information away that they give you.”

He continued, “So we cannot lose those norms and those traditions because otherwise we’re no better than a country that we’re at war with right now. And we are saying that Iran shoots protesters. Well, so do we. And we’re over there because Iran jails reporters or doesn’t have free speech. And that makes us no better than them — if we are acting and doing the very same things that they’re doing, then what sort of moral authority do we have to be able to be there and in a war and quite frankly killing people?”

This is the same Don Lemon arrested by federal agents on January 29 over the January 18 incident at Cities Church in St. Paul, where he filmed himself inside the sanctuary with anti-ICE rioters from the Racial Justice Network who stormed the service, chanting and forcing families with children into freezing weather.

Lemon has repeatedly defended the stunt. “I didn’t even know they were going to this church until we followed them there. We were there chronicling protests… Once the protest started in the church, we did an act of journalism,” he insisted.

He later added, “The whole point of it is to disrupt and make people uncomfortable.” And, “Watch this guy here, look, he’s hugging his kid, and you know, I imagine it is uncomfortable and traumatic for the people here. It’s uncomfortable and traumatic for the people here, but that’s really… that’s what protesting is about.”

The Trump DOJ is charging Lemon and the mob with conspiring to violate civil rights protections for worship. Deputy AG Todd Blanche made clear the consequences: “They’d face a jury. If they’re convicted, they will go to PRISON!”

President Trump weighed in directly: “A small group of elderly ladies were protesting at an abortion clinic and were given 40 years in prison for violating the FACE Act. I would like to see the same kind of sentence for Don Lemon and the people that broke into that church and did that during services.”

As we’ve previously highlighted, Lemon once sounded exhausted by race-baiting, telling an interviewer, “Sometimes, I get so tired of talking about it. I wanna just go, ‘This is over. Can we move on?’”

Those days vanished. He now rails against “white Christian-hating” targets, dismissing concerns over South African farmers as “this South African farmer bullshit, which is the most blatantly obvious racist shit ever,” and slamming public displays of faith as “religious nationalism on full display” and “demanding submission.”

The contrast could not be clearer. Iran ranks near the bottom of global freedom indexes. America, even with tough enforcement of immigration laws and leak investigations, remains a constitutional republic protecting speech and worship. Lemon’s rant exposes the left’s desperation.

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/22/2026 - 15:00

'Punish Iran': Saudi Arabia & UAE Inch Closer To Joining US-Israeli War

Via Middle East Eye

Earlier this month, Elbridge Colby, a senior official in the US Department of War, held a call with Saudi Arabian Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman, who is also the brother and top adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Iran’s attacks on US bases in the Gulf were heating up, and the US needed expanded access and overflight permissions. Saudi Arabia agreed to open King Fahd Air Base in Taif, in Western Saudi Arabia, to the Americans, multiple US and western officials familiar with the matter told Middle East Eye.

The base is important because it is farther from Iranian Shahed drones than Prince Sultan Air Base, which has come under repeated Iranian attacks. Taif is also close to Jeddah, the Red Sea port that has become a critical logistics hub since Iran effectively took control of the Strait of Hormuz. Current and former US officials tell MEE that if the Trump administration is preparing for a longer war on Iran, Jeddah may be critical for sustaining US armed forces. Thousands of US ground troops are en route to the region from East Asia. 

Saudi Arabia’s decision to expand base access, current and former officials say, underscores a shift in how the kingdom and some other Gulf states are responding to the US-Israeli war on Iran. "The attitude in Riyadh has shifted towards supporting the US war as a way to punish Iran for strikes," a western official in the Gulf told MEE.

via AFP

Trump and the Saudi crown prince have been holding regular phone calls for the last three weeks, the US and western officials told MEE. The UAE has also told the US that it is geared up for a long war, putting no pressure on Washington to wrap up the conflict soon.

In a phone call earlier this month, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed told his counterpart, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, that the UAE is prepared for the war to last up to nine months, the US official told MEE. 

Differing Gulf perspectives 

Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar lobbied US President Donald Trump against attacking Iran. While they host US military bases, the states insisted that they not be used as launchpads when the US joined Israel on 28 February to attack Iran. Despite this, the Gulf states have paid the heaviest price for the US’s decision to go to war. 

The UAE alone has intercepted 338 ballistic missiles and 1,740 drones since the start of the war. Qatar suffered the worst attack of any Gulf state despite being a critical mediator that has consistently focused on de-escalation. 

Iran responded to an Israeli attack on its South Pars gas field this week by launching missiles at Qatar’s Ras Laffan refinery. The damage will take three to five years to repair and affects 17 percent of Qatar’s gas production, according to Qatari energy minister Saad al-Kaabi.

Some states, like Oman, have said that Israel hoodwinked the US into launching an unlawful attack on Iran. There is also anger at the US over its value as a security guarantor. 

The US has been unable to replenish the Gulf states' Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defence interceptors. The US bases in the Gulf, meant to protect the Arab monarchies, have been targeted. Meanwhile, oil and gas exports have ground to a halt.

Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi wrote in The Economist this week that this is "not America's war" and that Washington’s allies needed to make clear to the US that it was dragged into a conflict with little to gain.

Busaidi’s remarks contrasted with those of Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan. After Riyadh and the port of Yanbu were attacked by Iran, he delivered a blistering message to the Islamic Republic. One former US intelligence official described it as “fighting words”. Farhan said Iran had committed “heinous attacks” which “are an extension of [Iran’s] behavior that is based on extortion and sponsoring militias, threatening the security and stability of neighbouring countries”.

"Saudi Arabia has repeatedly tried to extend its hand to the Iranian brothers…but the Iranians did not reciprocate,” he said, adding that the kingdom reserved the right to take “military action”.

While no one in the Gulf wanted a war with Iran, the Gulf states are approaching the conflict from varied, evolving perspectives as it drags into its fourth week, experts say. Saudi Arabia is the largest country in the region, and like the UAE, it has ambitions to project hard power abroad. In fact, Saudi Arabia attacked the UAE’s allies in Yemen just before the war on Iran erupted.

Oman has carved out a niche for itself as a mediator. As one of the countries least hit by Iran in the region, the relative security of its capital, Muscat, is also being noticed by expatriates leaving Dubai. “There is a divide emerging in the Gulf,” Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University, who speaks with the Saudi Arabian crown prince, told MEE.

“Saudi Arabia and the UAE were neutral before this war. But as they have been attacked, they have come to the realization that they cannot live with this hardline Iranian regime next door, which can, at a moment’s notice, extort the region by closing the Strait of Hormuz,” he added.

The Saudi capital, Riyadh, and the kingdom’s energy infrastructure have been targeted by Iran. But the conflict is widely seen in the region, and increasingly inside the US, as an Israeli power grab. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said that Israel is guilty of committing genocide in Gaza. The Israeli war on the enclave has killed over 72,000 Palestinians since it started in October 2023. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gloated about the war in a press conference on Thursday. He said that the solution to the Strait of Hormuz’s closure was for Arab Gulf monarchs to build new pipelines through the desert to Israel, which would effectively give Israel veto power over their energy exports.

“What’s happened in the last 24 hours is taking us to a different phase in the war. It has been testing our patience and restraint for the last three weeks," Bader al-Saif, an expert at Kuwait University, told MEE. “With that said, we can’t lose sight of Israel’s role. They want to bring the Gulf into this war,” he added. “And let’s be clear, there is no clear exit strategy from the US.”

Ibrahim Jalal, an expert on the Gulf and Arabian Sea security, told MEE that Gulf monarchs face a torturous balance as they try to draw their red lines against Iranian attacks and respond to US demands while pushing for de-escalation. “The Gulf states do not want to be counted in the history books of siding in a US-Israeli war against a so-called Islamic neighbor,” he said.

Taboos broken

At the same time, Jalal said that Iran’s attacks are a flagrant violation of Gulf sovereignty and put the region into uncharted territory. “The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has broken all taboos now,” he said. “The Gulf needs to act within defensive doctrine,” he said.

Iran has accused some Gulf states of allowing their territories to serve as launchpads for US strikes. That is why even providing additional logistical support to the US is sensitive for Saudi Arabia. However, the kingdom is being pressed by the US to join the war on Iran by launching offensive strikes, US and Arab officials tell MEE.

The New York Times has verified video that shows ballistic missiles being launched from Bahrain in the direction of Iran. It’s not clear who was firing the missiles. The small Gulf state is a close partner of Saudi Arabia’s.

Hesham Alghannam, a Saudi defence analyst, told MEE that Riyadh is working to “thread the needle” between getting sucked into the conflict and establishing deterrence. “Saudi Arabia asserts deterrence by warning Tehran of retaliation as we have seen…[by] reserving military options, while prioritising diplomacy [and] ongoing backchannel contacts with Iran,” he told MEE.

He added that Riyadh is “pushing de-escalation to restore pre-war rapprochement gains without full war entanglement”. Saudi Arabia reestablished diplomatic ties with Iran in March 2023, after years of adversarial relations, in a deal brokered by China.

Saudi Arabia has endured Iranian attacks, but has not suffered on the same scale as the UAE. The Houthis, Iran’s allies in Yemen, have also refrained from attacking the kingdom.

Abdulaziz Alghashian, a Saudi security expert and senior nonresident fellow at the Gulf International Forum, told MEE that the kingdom and other Gulf states faced “a dilemma”. “Ending the war is generally the preferred option,” he said, but even if the conflict stopped tomorrow, Iran’s escalation dominance over the Gulf would linger. “Not only do we really need to create deterrence, we need to create a precedent for post-war,” he said.

The Saudis appear to be allowing US and Israeli fighters and bombers to refuel in their airspace before striking Iran, despite Saudi Arabia repeatedly claiming their airspace is “closed.”pic.twitter.com/jU3Ml0ZgNo

— Stew Peters (@realstewpeters) March 16, 2026

“Iran has proved that it can create a lot of havoc. Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC] states don’t want to be seen to be too restrained, so there needs to be some kind of precedent,” he said. Alghasian said Saudi Arabia is aware that launching offensive operations against Iran could "open up a can of worms".

Despite US claims that Iran's military is severely degraded, the Islamic Republic has been able to conduct pinpoint strikes on US bases. It is far from isolated. Media reports say it is receiving targeting intelligence from Russia. MEE revealed that it has received air defence systems and offensive weapons from China.

Iran's speedy retaliation on Gulf energy assets after Israel's strike on South Pars this week showed its command and control is intact, the former US intelligence official told MEE. 

Gulf monarchs are also aware that their militaries are unable to inflict any more damage on Iran than the US and Israel are currently, and that a "symbolic" action in the name of deterrence would just invite more reprisals, Jalal said. "Action by Gulf states is not going to tip the military balance in favor of the US and its allies at this stage,” he added.

But better access to Saudi Arabian bases is key, Haykel, at Princeton University, told MEE. "It's true that Saudi Arabia's air force and missiles are unlikely to change the equation, but what can change the equation is if the US Air Force flies out of Dhahran instead of an aircraft carrier," he added. The coastal city is just 130 miles from Iran's coast. 

Watching the Strait of Hormuz

For starters, analysts say, the Gulf states can better arrange their defenses together. This is important, as the Gulf questions the value of US security guarantees. The Trump administration has issued a waiver for Gulf states to transfer Patriot interceptors among themselves without the normal US approval.

“What the GCC now needs is to act as one bloc on the defensive line, to mobilize procurement collectively,” Jalal said.

Beyond allowing the US greater access to bases, Saudi Arabia and the UAE could look to play a role in the Strait of Hormuz, experts say. "How do you define offensive and defensive? I think that has been the debate in the last twenty-four hours," al-Saif, at Kuwait University, said. "The Gulf could play the Iranian game and restrict them from moving oil out of Hormuz. But that is not part of our worldview," he said. "We are reliable."

The Trump administration has been rebuffed by Nato and Asian allies to participate in an operation to open the waterway, through which roughly 20 percent of global energy passes. Their involvement would allow Trump to demonstrate regional buy-in as US warplanes and attack helicopters bombard Iran’s coast.

Anwar Gargash, a diplomatic adviser to the Emirati president, told the US Council on Foreign Relations this week that the UAE could join a US operation to wrest control of the waterway back from Iran.

Alghashian, the Saudi analyst, told MEE that taking “lethal defensive measures” could be next. “For me, the precedent could be made in the Strait of Hormuz.”

*  *  * HIT IT LIKE YOU USED TO

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/22/2026 - 14:00

Another Manic Monday Coming

Submtted By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

I expect that we will see a lot of “green dots” on the Bloomberg Terminal Sunday night, as there was almost no asset (other than energy) up on Friday. I do know that my Monday will start bright and early, at 5am on CNBC. Away from that everything is a bit up in the air.

There are headlines that can push us in either direction. Some developments that seem good, some that seem bad, some that seem weird, and some that are just downright confusing and/or contradictory.

Transiting the Strait

There seem to be three possibilities to transiting the Strait:

• Please see Thursday’s SITREP U.S. Expected to Conduct Strait Transit This Month. On Saturday morning Admiral Cooper, in a video on X, said “Iran’s ability to threaten freedom of navigation in and around the Strait of Hormuz is degraded.” The report went on to list other actions being taken to knock out the capability of Iran to target ships in the Strait. This fits Academy’s view that the U.S. is actively taking steps to prepare for safe transit.

• More countries have signed the Joint Statement expressing a “readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait.” A bit “wishy-washy” at best, and went to great pains to reference the United Nations and International Energy Agency, and avoid referencing America. Not sure if this does much, but it is a step in the right direction. If we are going to stick to the “Manic Monday” theme, this reminds me of the line, “blame it on the train, but the boss is already there.”

• Mounting “chatter” that Iran is “selling safe passage” for about $2 million per ship. I did get some secondhand confirmation from a trusted source that these discussions are in fact occurring. Unclear how effective they will be.

All of these things are “encouraging” in terms of shipping. A U.S.-led (or even solely U.S.) effort to encourage ships to transit the Strait is the most promising in terms of being a “real” solution. The Iranian “insurance” plan seems dubious at best, and not great for the world.

Unfortunately, it is being widely reported that Iranian leadership is steadfast on trying to keep the Strait from being transited by global shipping and is unwilling to even negotiate on the topic.

Polymarket has several opportunities to “predict” things:

• Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by the end of April. Only 27% down from 50% as recently as March 12th.

Lots of opportunity for stocks to do very well if that is really reflective of what is being priced into the market. I think it is too small of a market to be particularly useful, but lately it does seem that some “obscure” prediction markets get volume and pricing that indicates someone “knows” something – so worth at least keeping an eye on.

Boots on the Ground, or Mission Accomplished?

Marine expeditionary forces are on the way. There has been a lot of discussion about the potential to “seize” Kharg Island (now that Iran’s military facilities have been hit hard). Or to possibly clear Iranian forces close to the Strait. There is a lot of debate on what taking Kharg Island would mean. One school of thought is that controlling the ports would rapidly force Iran to the table as their primary source of income and leverage would be in U.S. hands. Others see a lot of risks to the plan, from hardening resolve, to still requiring the Strait to be open, to how much money/currency does Iran have and how long could they hold out, even if they were not able to sell another barrel of oil? I’m more in the latter camp, but we can debate this option later this week as the Marines arrive.

Also, why spend much time thinking about boots on the ground, when the President has been posting on Truth Social “We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East with respect to the Terrorist Regime of Iran.”

This statement could be a negotiating tactic. Maybe it is just to lull Iran into a false sense of security (the initial attack on Iran occurred during ongoing negotiations). Maybe it is just a “trial balloon” to see how people (voters) and possibly markets respond?

Literally, both extremes - “boots on the ground” and “we won, time to go home” - are on the table. It really could be a Manic Monday.

Un-Sanctioning, De-Jonesing, and Releasing

In the past week or so, the administration has:

• Taken off sanctions on Russian oil. This certainly helps keep the price of oil lower than it would be otherwise, though I suspect most of the oil still winds up going to China and India, at less of a discount. At the same time, I would be very concerned about what this means for Russia if I’m either Ukraine or the EU. Secretary of War Hegseth has been pointing out how any lack of inventory in the U.S. military is a direct result of giving weapons to Ukraine. If Europe isn’t already thinking about the need to potentially “go it alone” against a wealthier Russia, they should be. It might not get to that point, but that is certainly one message that can be taken from this very “transactional” administration.

• Removed sanctions on Iranian Oil “on the sea.” The Treasury Secretary made this announcement and referenced 140 million barrels that will now be without sanctions. That is a big “release” of oil, but I’m told by oil experts that while the amount at sea is around that, as much of 100 million barrels is already spoken for (largely by China) and is in transit. So, it might be “only” 40 million barrels. If one goal of seizing Kharg Island is to apply maximum economic leverage, this move seems to give Iran more wiggle room. In the aftermath of this, it will be interesting to see how Iran has funded itself? Presumably not in dollars, so in yuan? Bitcoin? Barter?

• A 60-day suspension of the Jones Act. This basically allows any ship to transit goods between two U.S. ports. It is viewed by many, including me, as a potential first step towards export controls. The U.S. is not designed (currently) to use all of the oil, gas, LNG, diesel, etc. that it produces domestically. Pipelines aren’t developed for that. The Jones Act has made it unprofitable to do that. This allows some of that to occur, helping keep oil prices low. There is a limit to how effective it can be without export controls (and I’m not a big fan of export controls, but it is something we should watch).

  • The U.S. price for any energy product, with no export controls, is basically the Global Price minus Freight Costs minus some “Inertia” (where “Inertia” is existing relationships, agreements, etc.). So, as “global” prices rise, U.S. prices will rise, because the drillers, refiners, etc., will make more money selling it overseas if prices don’t rise domestically. It is economics 101, so we will see what else gets implemented to keep domestic prices lower if they continue to rise across the rest of the world.

• Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases. I have not done the work, but it sounds like the U.S. released almost 90 million barrels of oil. Since there is only excess capacity to load about 25 million barrels a month, the release gives us some breathing room, until June or so (3 to 4 months). There is more to be released, though there is some limit, as apparently some amount of oil needs to stay in the reserves to keep the facilities’ structural integrity intact. Europe has supposedly been slower on releasing their supplies, but that is possibly because they are worried it will get bought elsewhere, so they will bleed out their reserves more “judiciously.” Europe’s lack of energy independence is once again being highlighted! The President did admonish the leader of Scotland for buying North Sea oil from Norway, and wind turbines from China, while curtailing their own drilling in the North Sea. How long before Europe gets the ProSec™ message?

• No relief on tariffs. I would have put this in play, at least for some things (energy, fertilizer, etc.) but I was never a huge fan of the broad application of tariffs in any case.

Airbus for Drones

According to Wikipedia, Airbus was created in 1970 as a consortium of European aerospace companies to produce wide-body aircraft to compete with American built airliners. If I was in the EU, I’d be pounding the table for a drone equivalent of Airbus:

• It is quite clear that drones are effective. They have their limitations (both on the hardware and software sides), but they can certainly play a meaningful role in deterrence and defense (as well as provide offensive capabilities).

• They are cheap and relatively easy to make. Making a 5th generation jet is extremely difficult. Ditto for aircraft carriers and capital ships. Even modern missile systems are expensive and require highly specialized machinery. Take a bunch of factories that used to make cars (or other things) and ramp up drone production. A drone factory for the Ukrainian Army was recently opened in the U.K. I see great difficulty (and that is being kind) in the EU developing a fighting force with the equipment they have any time soon (like in the next 5 years). A fleet of drones and unmanned surface vessels that is enough to give Putin some pause seems far more plausible.

• The “consortium” construct is important as it would hopefully remove some of the national interests that already impair Europe’s efforts to rearm themselves quickly and with some degree of compatibility.

Possibly a non sequitur but I want to invest in companies that might fit this sort of model as it seems to be an obvious choice, and eventually, usually after a lot of whining and moaning, and a couple of near-catastrophic failures, Europe does the obvious thing. (The European Debt Crisis from the beginning to “whatever it takes” seems to fit this path well).

The U.S. is Neither an Oasis Nor a Mirage

As brent crude soared higher than WTI (and grades of crude most of us have rarely heard of skyrocketed even more), the U.S. equity markets seemed to treat the U.S. as an “oasis.” We already mentioned that even with energy independence, we will see higher prices along with the rest of the world (unless we go to some form of export control). So, we are not immune. But we do have advantages - hence we are neither an oasis (really good), nor a mirage (all fake).

The links to the U.S. are real and will hurt:

• Somewhere around 40% of the revenue generated by Fortune 500 companies comes from overseas. If Europe and Asia are struggling, it will impact companies here.

• While the products might be American, many are manufactured elsewhere and are subject to supply disruptions, which would further impact profits for U.S. companies.

• Those countries went out of their way not to mention the U.S. in their “letter,” which makes me wonder, again, do U.S. brands still have the same “cache” for non-American consumers?

• Interest rates have spiked across the globe. The cost of everything, everywhere has gone up with this pretty dramatic move in yields. The U.S. 2-year yield went from 3.38% to 3.9% in 3 weeks. U.K. yields are incredibly jealous of that “strong” performance – as they rose 100 bps in the same period!

Ironically, and somewhat par for the course in this “stop-loss” driven market, Private Credit outperformed even as markets probably should have started adding global recession risks to the reasons to be concerned about private credit. But it seems that everyone was so underweight that even a realistic issue didn’t cause much/any new pain.

Urea and Limp Mode

In the long list of “knock-on” effects from the slowdown in goods from the Middle East, we can add another “risk” – DEF. Diesel exhaust fluid is used in diesel engines to reduce harmful emissions. Since 2010 (or so), if a diesel engine doesn’t have enough DEF, the vehicle is restricted to going 5 to 15 mph (limp mode). Supposedly the vehicle can be reprogrammed, but this is yet another thing to highlight regarding the quirkiness and complexity of supply chains and products. Oh, I almost forget, urea is about 33% of DEF. Gulf urea costs have almost doubled since the start of the year.

Not trying to make a big deal about this (unlike helium for semiconductors), but thought it would provide a nice break, and I always enjoy learning something new.

NI CHEM Majeure

I need to find some better hobbies than checking out Bloomberg for stories containing “Force Majeure” but it is getting more worrisome by the day.

If you go to Google Trends it is pretty clear that others are starting to be fascinated with this as well.

Already Too Late?

It is already precarious for Asia (ex-China), the Middle East itself, and Europe. The costs, potential supply chain disruptions, AND higher rates (when many mortgages are floating rate) seem to be a recipe for recession.

A resolution this week, or maybe even next, and maybe we scrape by. Maybe the U.S. is still out of range for a recession, but a recession was barely a gleam in the eye of any “doomer” a month ago, and that risk now has to enter the conversation.

Risks to the global economy are rising. While the U.S. is in much better shape (we were in better shape before the conflict and have more robust protection against the new problems created by the conflict), that doesn’t mean we don’t have risk (we are not a mirage, but we are not an oasis either).

Yields scare me right now.

The moves don’t seem to make sense in the context of higher oil prices. Yes, higher oil prices should impact yields, but by this much?

We saw 2s vs 10s flatten (which makes some sense, if higher prices will slow demand over time), but on Friday, 10s underperformed.

I am not sure the consumer is in a position to do well in this rising rate environment. Again, private credit didn’t seem to care on Thursday and Friday (and I had recommended being long those sectors recently, because too much pessimism was being priced in). I think they should care as the risk of a slowing economy with potential supply chain hiccups is a real risk here.

Bottom Line

I wish it was Sunday, 'cause that’s my fun day.

Okay, it is Sunday, but it is certainly not my fun day. Nor has it been for the past few weekends (though to be honest, deep down, I enjoy these stressful times).

Manic can be good.

By the time this makes it to our website, and you see it distributed, we might have some clarity one way or the other. We are likely to continue to be affected by dueling headlines.

There are still plenty of paths to a really strong week for markets, especially if the “winding down” messaging comes to fruition with a resolution in the Strait.

There are other ways we can see progress that might not give us a “manic” rebound, but a rebound nonetheless.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of paths that lead to more problems and some that could lead to a manic week, and not in a good way.

I do believe that as we move down the road, in a week or two, markets won’t react to positive headlines, as the “fear” that it is already “too late” gets priced into markets.

I’d love to say “buy Treasuries” but we seem to have broken some resistance and it is difficult to justify the size of the move solely on the economics of what is occurring in the Middle East.

I guess my “bottom line” is cautious for now, but be prepared to be very bullish, though any thought of being bullish will diminish as the days go by if we don’t see progress in getting us off the current path. The current path, as it goes on, will make it “too late” for some economies, and even if the U.S. can avoid the worst of it, it won’t be great for earnings (and hence the stock market). Rates seem to be telling such a different story that bonds seem like a “screaming” buy here, but that too seems dangerous.

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/22/2026 - 11:40

What Do Bonds Know That The Stock Market Doesn't?

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Most investors spend their time watching the S&P 500. That’s a mistake, because the credit market is the real “tell.” The bond market has been whispering a warning for weeks now, and credit spreads are now shouting it. As of this writing, the CDX Index, a benchmark measure of credit default swap spreads, has climbed to a nine-month high while the S&P 500 sits within 5% of its all-time peak. Over the past 20 years, every time that combination appeared, a bear market followed. Every single time.

That’s a track record worth taking seriously, and credit spreads are critical to understanding market sentiment and predicting potential stock market downturns. A credit spread refers to the difference in yield between two bonds of similar maturity but different credit quality. This comparison often involves Treasury bonds (considered risk-free) and corporate bonds (which carry default risk). By observing these spreads, investors can gauge risk appetite in financial markets. Such helps investors identify stress points that often precede stock market corrections.

The chart shows the annual rate of change in the S&P 500 market index versus the yield spread between Moody’s Baa corporate bond index (investment grade) and the 10-year US Treasury Bond yield. Rising yield spreads consistently coincide with lower annual returns in the financial markets.

The reason is that credit is the lifeblood of the economy. Businesses borrow to operate, and consumers borrow to spend. As such, when the cost of that borrowing rises, particularly the premium lenders demand to extend credit to riskier borrowers, it signals that the economy is under stress. That “stress” directly affects forward earnings estimates and increases the likelihood of a valuation repricing.

The “Junk to Treasury” spread is the clearest expression of this dynamic. Investors who buy high-yield bonds, the ones with a meaningful chance of default, should demand a premium above the risk-free rate offered by U.S. Treasury bonds. When that premium compresses, it signals that investors are comfortable speculating, willing to reach for yield without demanding adequate compensation for the risk they’re accepting. When the premium expands, the mood has shifted. Lenders are getting nervous. Credit conditions are tightening. And historically, tighter credit conditions have preceded more challenging environments for stocks.

This isn’t a theoretical relationship; it has repeatedly appeared in the data for decades. The bond market (CDX) prices risk continuously across thousands of issuers and maturities. It’s harder to talk up than equities, and it’s not susceptible to the same retail-driven momentum that can keep stock prices elevated long after the fundamental picture has deteriorated.

When credit spreads widen, investors should pay attention.

What The CDX Is Telling Us Now.

The chart from Sentiment Trader below tells the story as clearly as any amount of prose could. The top panel tracks the S&P 500 since 2007. The middle panel shows the CDX Index of credit default swaps. The bottom panel shows where those spreads stand relative to their 189-bar range, essentially a percentile reading of how elevated they are relative to recent history. (Red markers indicate instances where CDX spreads hit 9-month highs while the S&P 500 is within 5% of its high.)

Notice that each red arrow marks a moment when CDX spreads reached a nine-month high while stocks remained near their all-time highs. The 2007 signal preceded the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The 2015 signal preceded a sharp correction and an extended period of volatility. The 2022 signal arrived just before the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate-hiking campaign drove the S&P 500 down 25%. And now, in early 2026, the signal has triggered again.

“This has been one of the more important divergences we’ve been tracking recently. CDS is pushing to a 9-month high even with equities near highs, effectively tightening financial conditions. Historically, this setup has been unstable: about half the time it led to sharp drawdowns, while the rest saw either mild pullbacks or continued gains.” – Sentiment Trader

The range-rank reading in the bottom panel is particularly instructive. It shows that current CDX spread levels are not a minor blip, but are registering near the upper end of their recent historical range. That’s not statistical noise, but a market pricing in genuine credit stress. The table below summarizes the four instances over the past two decades where CDX spreads hit nine-month highs while the S&P 500 traded within 5% of its peak. The subsequent market outcomes speak for themselves.

Does this mean the current situation will devolve into a bear market? Not necessarily, but history suggests the risk is elevated enough to warrant investors’ attention. It is also worth noting that the magnitude of the subsequent declines varied considerably, from the catastrophic 2008 to 2009 bear market to the more contained 2015 correction. That is due to the severity of the credit impact on the underlying economy. However, they all shared a period of elevated credit spreads that the equity market initially chose to ignore.

So far, this “time is not different.”

The Counterargument Is Not Convincing

The bulls will argue that CDX spreads are widening from historically tight levels and that the absolute level of stress remains modest by historical standards. That’s technically accurate, as shown, Treasury-to-Junk Bond spreads in early 2026 are not at the panic levels seen in 2008 or 2020. So why worry?

It isn’t the absolute level of the CDX that matters, but the direction of travel and the rate of change. If investors wait for the “spike,” it will likely be too late to act. Sentiment Trader’s nine-month high threshold isn’t about measuring the peak of a crisis; it is a warning of a potential turn. Credit stress doesn’t arrive fully formed. It builds. Each of the prior signals triggered before the real damage was done, precisely because spreads were starting to move, not because they had already maxed out.

There’s also the macro backdrop to consider. The S&P 500 enters this period with valuations near the upper end of its historical range, forward earnings estimates elevated, and sentiment still bullish. As investors, we monitor the high-yield spread closely because it is often one of the earliest signals of a fundamental shift in corporate and economic conditions. In other words, watching spreads provides insights into the health of the corporate sector, which is a major driver of equity performance. When CDX spreads widen, they often lead to lower corporate earnings, economic contraction, and stock market downturns. The reason is that a significant widening of the CDX spreads signal:

• Liquidity Drain: As investors become more risk-averse, they shift capital from corporate bonds to safer assets, such as Treasuries. The flight to safety reduces liquidity in the corporate bond market. Lower liquidity can lead to tighter credit conditions, affecting businesses’ ability to invest and grow and weighing on stock prices.

• Corporate Financial Health: Credit spreads reflect investor views on corporate solvency. A rising spread suggests a growing concern over companies’ ability to service their debt. Particularly if the economy slows or interest rates rise.

• Risk Sentiment Shift: Credit markets are more sensitive to economic shocks than equity markets. When CDX spreads widen, it typically indicates that the fixed-income market is pricing in higher risks. This is often a leading indicator of equity market stress.

• Corporate earnings may decline: Companies with lower credit ratings may struggle to refinance debt at favorable rates, thereby reducing profitability.

• Economic growth is slowing: A widening CDX spread often reflects concerns that the economy is heading for a slowdown, which can lead to reduced consumer spending, lower business investment, and weaker job growth.

• Stock market volatility may rise: As credit conditions tighten, investor risk appetite tends to decline, leading to higher volatility in equity markets.

Listening to credit spreads, particularly the high-yield spread versus Treasuries, is a critical indicator of stock market downturns. Historically, they have been a reliable early warning signal of recessions and bear markets.

Key Catalysts Next Week

The calendar downshifts after two consecutive weeks of high-impact data. No marquee releases are scheduled, but don’t mistake a thin calendar for a quiet tape. The dominant forces will be the market’s ongoing digestion of the March 18 FOMC decision, the updated dot plot, and Powell’s characterization of the stagflation dilemma—all compounded by quarter-end institutional flows that historically amplify moves in both directions.

By Monday, traders will have had a full weekend to digest whether the dots shifted to zero cuts (risk-off repricing in housing, small caps, and high-duration tech) or held at one with dovish language acknowledging labor deterioration (relief bid). A parade of Fed speakers throughout the week will provide color, walking back or reinforcing whatever Powell signaled. Those headlines will move markets more than any scheduled data.

Tuesday’s Q4 Productivity final revision matters more than usual. The prior quarter showed output rising 5.4% while hours worked grew just 0.5%. The unit labor cost component is the inflation signal: falling costs give the Fed room, rising costs tighten the stagflation case. Richmond Fed Manufacturing rounds out the regional factory picture alongside the Empire State and Philly Fed surveys.

Friday’s final UMich Consumer Sentiment is the week’s marquee event. The preliminary reading dropped to 55.5—near post-pandemic lows. The one-year and five-year inflation expectations are what the Fed watches most closely; a spike above 3% would validate the hawkish hold and kill remaining hopes for near-term easing.

Underneath the data, the real story is mechanical: Q1 ends March 31. Pension funds and institutional allocators begin quarter-end rebalancing and window dressing. After the sharp rotation out of tech and into value that defined the first quarter, the question is whether those flows reverse or accelerate. In a thin-catalyst week, flow-driven moves can be outsized.

Don’t mistake repositioning for conviction.

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/22/2026 - 10:30

Migrant Criminal Beats Deportation Order With Chicken Nugget Defense

In something you might see from the Babylon Bee, an Albanian migrant has secured the right to remain in the United Kingdom by claiming that his children hate "foreign" chicken nuggets, according to the Daily Mail.

Klevis Disha, 39, snuck into the U.K. illegally back in 2001 as a supposed unaccompanied minor. Disha used a fake name and a bogus backstory about being born in the old Yugoslavia. His asylum bid flopped but somehow dragged on, until he snagged indefinite leave to remain in the UK in 2005, the Daily Mail reported.

Fast-forward, Disha hooked up with a girlfriend and popped out a daughter and a son, and then he got nailed in 2017 with £250,000 in dirty money he couldn't explain. The migrant was given a two-year prison sentence and a deportation order - after which Britain's Home Office tried to boot Disha, stripping his citizenship. 

Not So Fast

Disha lawyered up and cried human rights by claiming it would be unduly harsh on his 11-year-old British son, nicknamed C in court documents, if Dad got shipped to Albania. The boy supposedly won't touch the chicken nuggets over there because of textures and a super-picky diet. Ultimately, the judge bought the picky-eater sob story.

Britain's Home Office appealed and a tribunal overturned the ruling. However, after endless hearings dragging into 2026, First-tier Tribunal Judge Linda Veloso ruled in Disha's favor under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, the Daily Mail said.

The ruling drew scorn from British conservative figures, including Reform UK’s Shadow Home Secretary Zia Yusuf.

"A criminal migrant who entered Britain illegally under a false name and lied in a failed asylum claim has successfully fought his deportation by arguing his son disliked foreign chicken nuggets. This is the country the Tories and Labour have created,” Yusuf wrote on X.

A criminal migrant who entered Britain illegally under a false name and lied in a failed asylum claim has successfully fought his deportation by arguing his son disliked foreign chicken nuggets.

This is the country the Tories and Labour have created. pic.twitter.com/oVTzUytQyq

— Zia Yusuf (@ZiaYusufUK) March 19, 2026

If this ruling doesn't prove Britain has become a total clown country, nothing will.

*  *  * GRAB A SHIRT 

Tyler Durden Sun, 03/22/2026 - 08:45