Trump: "You want to see a stock market go down? Let a couple nuclear bombs be dropped on us or frankly any place else, and then you'll see a stock market that goes down. So the stock market has not gone very much at all. It's gone down a little bit. Much less than I thought. And frankly the gas hasn't gone up as much as I thought."

Per https://xcancel.com/atrupar/status/2043337001236144250

It's ok, the Pope is building a Gundam deep inside the Vatican Archives

Wall Street Journal: Officials: Trump is considering launching limited strikes on Iran after the collapse of the Islamabad talks.

What the fuck are «limited strikes» in this context??? Why woulf they be «limited»? Are the Americans really so stupid as to believe that a «limited» strike on anything in Iran after five weeks of war would be met with only a «limited» strike by Iran? These kinds of bluffs don't work anymore. You can't lathe your way into a «limited» war anymore, buddy.

Per https://xcancel.com/AJABreaking/status/2043458174150172929#m

Also, according to CENTCOM they are going to target all ships entering or leaving Iranian ports, but ships transiting the strait not from Iranian ports are fine. So does that mean ships paying the toll to Iran are not being blockaded? They don't make calls at Iranian ports, they just sail close to one for visual inspection. The toll paying is all virtual. This "blockade" seems very poorly thought out, because there are no ships transiting the strait without Iranian approval.

I'm honestly not sure how they're even gonna do this "blockade" at all. With what navy do they expect they can blockade the strait without getting hit by Iranian anti-ship missiles? Are they just gonna hang out in the Indian ocean and try to chase oil tankers headed to the Malacca strait? Are they gonna do bombing runs on tankers and just blow them up at the mouth of the Persian Gulf? Like even in practical terms I cannot see this working, even if the "rules" of what ships are being targeted were clear.

Nah according to CENTCOM they're targeting all ships that make calls at Iranian ports, regardless of the toll. So China is included in this. Will they target Chinese ships? Who knows.

"You don't have the cards. You're gambling with world war three."

Iran is already self sufficent in food and natural resources, and the only stuff they'd wanna import has already been made impossible to import due to American sanction. There's nothing a blockade of Iran is going to do to Iran that hasn't already been happening for decades. The Caspian is only a "lifeline" for anti-air weapons maybe, but as far as "stuff you need to run a country" Iran is alteady fine. It's a nation half the size of all of Europe, it can't be "blockaded" in any meaningful way.

Thankfully, you can read all about the process on the official Israeli government page called "Swords of Iron War: Posthumous Sperm Retrieval, Preservation and Use"

What is the procedure of posthumous sperm retrieval and preservation?

A medical specialist (either a urologist or a fertility specialist) removes parts of the testicular tissue and transfers them to a nearby laboratory in the In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) Unit or in the Sperm Bank. In the laboratory, under a special microscope, the tissue is searched for living sperm cells. The sperm cells found or the testicular tissue are transferred for preservation in liquid nitrogen.

Per https://archive.is/TmnRB#selection-717.0-755.193

"No nuclear weapon, that’s 99% of it. We’ll see how it turns out, we’ll see how it all works out."

I mean if this is Trump's definition of a "good deal," then the ceasefire negotiations are gonna go fine. Iran will 100% commit to no nuclear weapons if the United States drops all sanctions, withdraws from all bases in the region, and pays reparations. All outlined in the demands Iran has been saying since like day one. With this, Trump can frame a strategic US defeat as a "victory," giving the Iranians everything they want and minting a new regional power. I doubt Israel is gonna let that happen, but who knows.

The Iranians don’t seem to realize they have no cards, other than a short term extortion of the World by using International Waterways. The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!

Per https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116381352865496679

"The Iranians don't seem to realize they have no cards, other than the royal flush they happen to have." Same vibe as "the Strait of Hormuz is open so long as the Iranians open it."

Mostly facetious on my part. China's not gonna get out of their deflationary spiral without serious state policy intervention, I agree.

In the Economist Espresso this morning. Add another one to China's "do nothing, win" book.

Meanwhile, the war’s economic fallout could, ironically, help China achieve one of its economic objectives for the year: lifting inflation into positive territory. China’s producer prices (also known as factory-gate prices) have fallen every month since October 2022. Some economists have worried that China could follow Japan, where the expectation of deflation became deeply entrenched and self-reinforcing. The sharp increase in oil and gas prices in March may have been enough to break China’s deflationary trend. Figures released on Friday showed that producer prices rose by half a percentage point last month compared with a year earlier.