Quote of the Day
One shouldn’t exaggerate the economic fallout from this war. But it isn’t occurring in isolation: There are many stresses on our economy, and this could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back — a straw that becomes heavier the longer the war goes on. Furthermore, if Trump is this erratic now, what will he do as the midterms get even closer?
Paul Krugman
March 04, 2026
Reality Sets In on Trump’s New War – Paul Krugman
My general rule of thumb is if Krugman makes a prediction, then bet against whatever he said. Let this post be a marker to test my rule of thumb. I’ll add a post to go live in six months to see how his prediction turned out.
With the price of gold skyrocketing as it has in the last 18 months, I have been very concerned about things.
Thank you for posting this, Joe. I feel so much better now.
Krugman is about as accurate as Jim Cramer.
The inverse Cramer index is more profitable than the Pelosi fund.
“The inverse Cramer index is more profitable than the Pelosi fund.”
No, not THAT profitable… but “second only to the Pelosi fund” would be accurate.
I hate to be that guy, but… actually:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/inverse-cramer-wins-again-opposite-003304004.html
Finally winning once when Pelosi was on her way out the door doesn’t change the long history of the Pelosi fund being literally the best “investment” in the entire world year after year for, what, 2 decades or something?
But hey, congrats to Cramer, I guess. He sure knows how to pick’em.
Might not break our economy. But if the straight stays closed. China and Europe are getting squeezed, hard. More Europe than China. As China knows we will sale to them also. Just at a slightly higher rate than they have been getting the black market stuff for.
As China can still up their supply from Russia. Not so for Europe. They get squeezed for both LNG and crude.
E.M.Burlingame has some interesting takes on this being Trump crushing the London-European financial cabal.
And Martian Armstrong says the dollar is not going anywhere, as it’s the only monetary vehicle that can be traded in super large quantities. (If I understood him correctly.)
All that said, I don’t believe were getting anything near the truth about what’s actually going on. (Have we ever?)
Mossad is the world’s spy masters, and they missed Oct.7.
Iran are the world’s terror masters, And they missed the great satan’s Achilles heel infrastructure/just in time supply chain? If they are here, what are they waiting for?
None of this smells right.
And I pray I get to eat crow for some of my previous dire predictions. But something tells me this is far from over. As a European bond market unwind could be very painful for us as well.
And on an unrelated side note.
Happy birthday to Elmer Keith! The saint of big-bore six guns!
A hard-core westerner, And Idahoan.
“Iran are the world’s terror masters, And they missed the great satan’s Achilles heel infrastructure/just in time supply chain? If they are here, what are they waiting for?”
There was a Chuck Norris movie years ago about how to actually hurt America – forget the name, but they got troops into the USA and had them all dress as locals… then perform specific, large-scale *and socially sensitive* crimes. Dress as white policemen, pull up to a hispanic wedding, pull out a machine gun and shoot half of them down, then leave. That kind of thing.
It was incredibly frightening, conceptually… but no one has ever done it. Why not? Certainly not lack of opportunity, *especially* after President Autopen facilitated so many getting in.
Turns out, our enemies understand us even less well than we understand them. Lucky us.
Ok.
But maybe because of the force projection we are demonstrating today is why they haven’t?
Wait till were out of missiles. And much of our navy is in one place next to a hostile country?
Causing foment inside USA can be a big problem for a country without that much defense.
But if we piss-off enough of the world?
We could be in for a real rude awakening.
The trick is to hit us in such away we cannot point at any one country.
Or maybe the whole thing is BS. Who knows.
But as the Zin master said. “We’ll see”.
“Causing foment inside USA can be a big problem for a country without that much defense.”
There’s a famous quote about a “rifle behind every blade of grass”…
And, by the numbers, it’s actually *EVEN MORE TRUE* now than it was then.
Of course, it might also be a bit more geographically predictable, unfortunately, but still…
“But if we piss-off enough of the world?
We could be in for a real rude awakening.”
By that argument, we never do anything but keep our military directly guarding our own shores and land. Ever.
We have 11 air craft carriers, each one in a group that could, on their own, be expected to wipe out the entire navy and most of the entire military of ANY country in the world save China and MAYBE Russia, and what, 2 of them are over there and you’re worried about that?
That doesn’t mean nothing can ever happen, but be realistic in your worries, please, for your own sake.
“The trick is to hit us in such away we cannot point at any one country.”
If they can do that, there’s very little reason to wait until now to do it. As far as Iran is concerned, we’re already **WELL** past the point of “use everything you can beg, borrow, or steal”.
“Wait till were out of missiles.”
That is the real worry. It is, so far, the only serious worry that we have agreed on, and I have agreed with you on it every time you have brought it up. I really wish they would work a bit harder on fixing that…
Yeah, Krigman is right about as after as the enviro-doomsday predications – only 5 years until *strike* the end of the world */strike* we claim 5 more years until the end of the world. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Krugman is the same. His predictions tell you nothing about the future, only the party that is currently in power: good predictions means Democrat, bad predictions means Republican.
A LOT of what’s happening now, especially in the economy is fallout from the Biden era… Tossing in a war with a fanatical muzzie country is just stirring the pot of craziness that already existed.
What prediction do you think he’s making? That quote isn’t specific, it just mentions “fallout.” We already have that with rising oil prices, a falling stock market, and now Blackrock limiting withdrawals from its fund to prevent a run.
What specific prediction will you be measuring against?”
The post makes several predictions worthy of following. Those most likely to be wrong are those which confirm President Trump is bad for the planet:
The last two are somewhat less definite. But since they are bad things attributable to President Trump, he wants to believe them even if they are less likely.