Me, dumb: We could have shortages soon.
You, smart, after two Econ 101 classes: Prices adjust to equate supply and demand so shortages are impossible.
Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Capacity
I'd still bet on Trump ramping up the violence soon and if he does there will be more long term impacts.
UAE won’t resume full gas production until 2027 after Iranian attacks
The United Arab Emirates’s main gas-processing complex, which was hit in Iranian attacks during the war, will not reach its full production capacity again until next year.
ADNOC Gas said the Habshan site, which is one of the world’s largest gas production facilities and supplies gas across the UAE, is now operating at 60 percent capacity and “the company is currently working towards achieving 80 percent restoration by the end of 2026 with full capacity restored in 2027”.
In a statement sharing its first-quarter results, the company reported $1.1bn in net income, a 15 percent decrease compared with the same quarter last year.
Why Did Sleepy Joe Do This
Impressed by Trump's ability to make messes.
US prices rose in April at their fastest rate since May 2023 as the impact of the war in Iran was increasingly felt by consumers.
A jump in the cost of gasoline and groceries pushed the consumer price index (CPI), the amount prices jumped by in the past 12 months, to 3.8%.
It is the highest level since inflation hit 4% three years ago.
Monday, May 11, 2026
Coming to America
I guess all the ones whose Temporary Protected Status he eliminated will just become citizens and can stay, and many more will arrive!Just got off the phone with @realDonaldTrump ... he told me he is seriously considering a move to make Venezuela the 51st state... pic.twitter.com/cofs12dhUS
— John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) May 11, 2026
Fine with me.
Are you a natuaral born citizen if you were born in Caracas?
Looks Like Marco And Pete Can't Do Anything Right
Mr. Trump, sir, you need to hire better people!
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with the Cuban government’s ability to maintain power despite months of sustained U.S. pressure and has been pressing his advisers about why his administration’s efforts to tip the regime into collapse have not yet succeeded, according to two U.S. officials, a former U.S. official and three people familiar with the discussions.
The Bad News Keeps Coming
And the stocks keep floating!
One possible explanation is the Big Money assumes they (not necessarily you, of course) will always be bailed out if there's a crash, so why worry their pretty little brains about it.
These people won't be bailed out, but their creditors likely will be!
The strain from this increasing debt load is starting to show, with the percentage of after-tax income that households spend paying down debt ticking up since early 2025, according to Federal Reserve data.Banks say they are not seeing signs of serious distress. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan, said late last month that consumer borrowing habits looked “fundamentally healthy.”But across all consumer debts, the share that is delinquent rose to 4.8 percent, the highest tally since 2017. For the first time in more than a decade, the national average credit score dipped last year, according to data from Experian, one of the three major U.S. credit bureaus.
Kneel
The US record on "winning" wars has not been especially awesome in the way we like to define that, which is unconditional surrender by the opposition, but we usually don't lose them quite this hilariously.
Iran’s demands for U.S. war reparations, recognition of its sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and an end to American sanctions were among the conditions that President Trump has deemed “unacceptable,” Iran’s state-owned broadcaster reported on Monday.
Sunday, May 10, 2026
Two Takes
The New York Times has two types of pieces it loves to run about Democrats. The first is:
The second is:
Without even getting into the argument about whether they should or shouldn't, most of them don't! This issue is not front and center at all!
Dems should do this thing that they are already doing.I think Tom Friedman wrote a dozen of those in the Obama years.
The second is:
Dems should stop doing this thing they aren't doing.We have that one today:
Ride The 'D'
I spend some time in LA for family reasons and I usually don't rent a car because (depending) you can actually get around pretty well on public transportation.
Anyway, one more piece.
A few hundred billion buys a lot of 'D's.
Sure, public transit can take longer and be more inconvenient than transit. I don't expect everyone in LA to ditch their cars and follow the lead of Ed Begley, Jr. But driving in LA does suck, in part because parking is a pain in the ass almost everywhere. It's a big streetcar city/region that lost its streetcars, not a big parking lot-paved suburb.
I do find tremendous personal resistance from people who love using transit in fancy European cities but who never consider using it in their own city. For example, I have friends who live a couple of miles from downtown, on regular bus routes, and it never occurs them to take the bus and in fact find it weird that I would take it (from downtown) to their place. Parking in DTLA really really sucks!
My favorite DTLA thing is there are metered parking spots you can use until (I think) 3pm and then they become car lanes for rush hour. Tow trucks come out to make it happen! No I was never towed.
Anyway, one more piece.
This week, Metro is set to unveil the first part of a nine-mile subway under Wilshire, one of the most dynamic and traffic-clogged stretches of Los Angeles. Public transit experts say the $9.7-billion D Line extension, which will connect Koreatown to the Westside, is a landmark achievement in L.A. public transit history.$10 billion sounds like a lot of money, and it probably shouldn't cost that much, but my take on such things is it's actually the useful spending that gets scrutiny and derision, not dumb spending. We're gonna blow a few hundred billion, easy, because of Iran.
A few hundred billion buys a lot of 'D's.
At Least The War Is Over
How long can THE MARKETS soar on these fumes?
Traffic in the Strait of Hormuz remained throttled on Saturday, after naval skirmishes between U.S. and Iranian forces in recent days heightened tensions in the vital shipping route.
For weeks, the narrow passage between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea has been choked by two competing blockades enforced by each side in the conflict. About 1,600 ships are bottled up in the Persian Gulf.
Saturday, May 09, 2026
We Hide In The Dunes By The Seaside
It's all very confusing.
Russia is shipping drone components to Iran via the Caspian Sea, U.S. officials say, helping Iran rebuild its offensive abilities after losing roughly 60 percent of its drone arsenal during recent fighting. The officials spoke anonymously to divulge private military assessments.
The Starmer Project
I don't know how true the stories were about UK Labour advising the Harris campaign (and how much they listened) were true. People like to boast about such things. But it was a bit worrying at the time, because it was quite obvious that Americans generally had no idea what was going on with UK Labour and their already plummeting popularity.
Yes they managed to win the election with a large number of seats, but with a tiny share of the popular vote. That such things are possible in the UK electoral system does not mean they signal anything good about the victorious party.
Right after winning they decided the smart and sensible thing to do was prove how tough they were by announcing some benefit cuts, coinciding with a scandal about all the free gifts they were getting. The Labour party was announcing benefit cuts after 14 years of Tory rule.
Anyway, the UK Labour party was hijacked by the worst people in Labour. Perhaps the worst people in Britain. I am not exaggerating. Continuity Rishi Sunak would have been better, at least.
They've been destroyed in local elections (councillors and mayors in some places) and in the governments of Wales (especially) and Scotland.
I don't know if Starmer will cling to power, but the Starmerites undoubtedly will.
Yes they managed to win the election with a large number of seats, but with a tiny share of the popular vote. That such things are possible in the UK electoral system does not mean they signal anything good about the victorious party.
Right after winning they decided the smart and sensible thing to do was prove how tough they were by announcing some benefit cuts, coinciding with a scandal about all the free gifts they were getting. The Labour party was announcing benefit cuts after 14 years of Tory rule.
Anyway, the UK Labour party was hijacked by the worst people in Labour. Perhaps the worst people in Britain. I am not exaggerating. Continuity Rishi Sunak would have been better, at least.
They've been destroyed in local elections (councillors and mayors in some places) and in the governments of Wales (especially) and Scotland.
I don't know if Starmer will cling to power, but the Starmerites undoubtedly will.
Capital
Occasionally I think about the hugely expensive automated baggage handling system which was built for the then new Denver airport. They invited reporters for a big debut demonstration and it was a disaster. It subsequently never really worked and was eventually removed.
Basically it was a promise that magic expensive technology would let them skimp on hiring airport workers.
Automation is nothing new, of course, and often it works quite well, but you don't have to be a supergenius to understand why it would be extremely difficult to implement such a system with non-uniform bags.
Workers aren't that expensive, either.
Basically it was a promise that magic expensive technology would let them skimp on hiring airport workers.
Automation is nothing new, of course, and often it works quite well, but you don't have to be a supergenius to understand why it would be extremely difficult to implement such a system with non-uniform bags.
Workers aren't that expensive, either.
And On And On
I think we can put "Iran deal" in the box with "Trump health care plan" and "infrastructure week."
President Donald Trump told CNN on Friday that his administration was expecting to hear back from Iran later that evening about a US proposal aimed at ending the conflict.Trump has to "win" a war we obviously lost. And with each passing day he cares less and just doesn't want to hear about it.
Asked by CNN’s Kristen Holmes whether he had received a response from Iran, Trump said, “We’ll hear from them supposedly tonight.”
Pressed on whether he believed the Iranians were slow-rolling negotiations, Trump replied that he did not know. “We’ll find out soon enough,” he said.
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