The Pentagon’s Velvet Rope
Posted September 29, 2026
By Sean Ring
Every good nightclub has two things: people with money and a bouncer deciding who gets in. The Pentagon has an enormous amount of the first. Congress has been working on the second. And a handful of mining and manufacturing companies could find themselves inside a very profitable party.
From Athens with Contempt
Posted September 28, 2026
By Sean Ring
America spent decades convincing other countries that its friendship was worth having. Then its ambassador to Greece allegedly explained, over dinner, that their governments were replaceable. Beijing couldn’t have written a better sales pitch. And it didn’t even have to pick up the check.
The Lost Round Trip
Posted September 25, 2026
By Sean Ring
In 1884, a dollar bought roughly what it had bought before the Civil War. Try imagining that today: twenty years after a 75% inflationary surge, the price level had retraced the entire move. America once had inflation that went away.
The Hunt for Red November
Posted September 24, 2026
By Sean Ring
The most dangerous voter in American politics this November may be the Republican who does absolutely nothing. He doesn’t have to switch parties. He doesn’t have to put a Mamdani sign on his lawn, discover a sudden enthusiasm for socialism, or start watching MSNBC. He merely has to stay home. And the first bits of election data suggest quite a few of them may be thinking about doing exactly that.
The Straits Strangle
Posted September 23, 2026
By Sean Ring
Two superpowers guard the gate. The Houthis hold the key.
The Price Behind the Price
Posted September 22, 2026
By Jim Rickards
Oil at $105 is bad enough. The trouble is that $105 is the price everyone can see. If you actually need physical crude delivered to a refinery, the market is telling a nastier story. Cargo premiums are rising, diesel has traded at the equivalent of roughly $180 a barrel, and crack spreads have blown out to extraordinary levels. The Iran war’s economic damage was delayed by reserves, rerouting and extra production. It wasn’t avoided. Now the price behind the price is starting to hit home.
Baptists, Bootleggers, and Bots
Posted September 21, 2026
By Sean Ring
Bruce Yandle’s Baptists wanted to save your soul. His bootleggers wanted to save their margins. Forty years later, Silicon Valley has rebuilt the arrangement for artificial intelligence: the safety crowd supplies the sermon, Big Tech collects the profits, and DC builds the moat.
A Squeeze, Refined
Posted September 18, 2026
By Matt Badiali
America can pump record amounts of oil and still get crushed by gasoline prices. That sounds contradictory until you remember one inconvenient fact: you can’t pour crude oil into a Ford’s gas tank. The real shortage is increasingly happening one step downstream.
The Real Fed Chairman
Posted September 17, 2026
By Sean Ring
I got the Fed call wrong because I was watching the wrong Fed. The Federal Open Market Committee doesn’t meet in Washington 8 times a year. It trades every day. By the time Kevin Warsh raised rates Wednesday, the bond market had already made the decision for him.
The Untied Kingdom
Posted September 16, 2026
By Sean Ring
Breaking up is easy when it’s only about flags, parliaments, and national pride. It gets harder when somebody asks who owns the debt, who funds the deficits, and what currency everyone plans to use on Monday morning.
