Contrarian Panda

[🏴‍☠️ @calvinfroedge]

Let me break down for you the difference in incentives for the speculators and the people who actually work in the oil industry

The people who work for the oil industry have made their careers in it. Oil having a future depends on stability and reliability. They know that a severe crisis could push the world to act and develop viable alternatives. That would effectively jeopardize their careers as well as the enormous Capital expenditure that has been made in developing global oil infrastructure. Literally the fate of entire nations depends on the continued use of oil as our primary source of energy. So it's rare that you're going to see these guys talk up a crisis. Because the smart ones know that any crisis that's really severe could be the last crisis. However, you do get blips of transparency from guys who aren't talking their book. They're just like holy crap. This actually is turning into a crisis.

On the other hand, you have the speculators. Now the speculators don't really care too much. If this is the crisis that structurally shifts the future world energy allocation 10 years from now. The speculators want to make their money now from an extreme price dislocation. Mercuria and Trafigura, for example, are speculators. They're thinking about their bonuses over the next few years. Nothing that they're saying is untrue, but the reason that they're telling people that yes this is actually really bad is because they're positioned to profit from it.

If you've got 100 years of oil reserves, you want people to be using oil for the next hundred years. If oil futures in 2028 you just want the price to go to $1000 and you don't care how it gets there.

Anyway, oil industry career guys and super long term planners have an incentive to talk down oil. Traitors and speculators have an incentive to talk it up. I think that everybody from governments around the world, to consumers of oil, to producers of oil, are watching Iran basically go off script and potentially throw the whole world into chaos and they're basically all wish casting that Iran just decides to stop and let Israel teabag them.

What people are missing is that this is existential for Iran, and existential for Israel, and you rarely have somebody back down in an existential fight.

I think crisis is certain but the timeline might be slower than people expect because of the incentives.

Should the oil price go higher? I think almost certainly so. You've got the largest drawdown of reserves in history. We drew down 15% of everything that we have (oil + fuel) in 3 months. And this was with China largely sidelined. If the current state of things continues, you're talking about forced demand destruction from widespread shortages within 2 years. You're talking about global recession. And yes, higher oil prices.

Higher oil prices are necessary to destroy demand. So far, governments have been doing exactly the opposite of what they should be as a policy response. The jaw boning and subsidies are keeping demand high. You've got countries suspending fuel taxes and drawing down on their reserves. This is not allowing the price to destroy demand.

Eric Townsend used the analogy of the guy who loses his job and he's living on his credit lines because he thinks he can get a job in 6 weeks. But he doesn't stop spending. So sooner or later he hits the wall. And that's what we're doing as a global economy.

[Lou Pai, CEO, Enron Energy Services (parody) @EnergyPeddler]

DJT: “Nice to meet you, I killed your whole family, we’re going to have a great relationship.”

[محمدباقر قالیباف | MB Ghalibaf @mb_ghalibaf]

The naval blockade and escalation of war crimes in Lebanon by the genocidal Zionist regime are clear evidence of U.S. noncompliance with the ceasefire.

Every choice has a price, and the bill comes due. It will all fall into place.

[Kim Dotcom @KimDotcom]

Breaking

Palantir was allegedly hacked. An AI agent was used to gain super-user access and here”s what the hackers allegedly found:

Peter Thiel and Alex Karp commit mass surveillance of world leaders and titans of industry on a massive scale.

They have thousands of hours of transcribed and searchable conversations of Donald Trump, JD Vance and Elon Musk.

They have backdoored the devices, cars and jets of world leaders and accumulated the biggest archive of blackmail material.

Palantir is creating nuclear and bio weapon capabilities for Ukraine and is working closely with the CIA to defeat Russia. They believe they are one year away. They plan to achieve this by keeping Russia busy with meaningless peace negotiations.

Palantir is responsible of the majority of Palestinian deaths in Gaza. They have developed the AI targeting for Israel.

Palantir is an arm of the CIA and all data from international clients is copied into a CIA spy cloud.

Palantir has become the most dangerous company in the world. If you work there you have the right to know that this is what Palentir AI is used for, without your knowledge.

The Palentir data the hackers allegedly gathered will be given to Russia and/or China. I was chosen as a trusted partner for this publication. I’m not involved in the Palentir hack and I don’t know the hackers. But I do know that the hack happened.

[محمدباقر قالیباف | MB Ghalibaf @mb_ghalibaf]

۱-ما امتیازات را نه با گفتگو، بلکه با موشک‌‌ها می‌گیریم، در مذاکره فقط آن‌ها را تفهیم می‌کنیم.

۲- هیچ اعتمادی به تضمین‌ها و حرف‌ها نداریم، فقط رفتارها معیار است. اقدامی پیش از اقدام طرف مقابل انجام نخواهد شد.

۳-پیروز هر توافق، کسی است که از فردای آن بهتر برای جنگ آماده شود.

[Eric Yeung 👍🚀🌕 @KingKong9888]

What is the United States truly afraid of right now? It’s not missiles or aircraft carriers.

It’s the 12 trump cards China is quietly discarding. Today, I’m going to break down exactly how China has been dismantling Western technological dominance step by step. Each one of these cards carries enough weight to keep the West up at night.

1. China ditched GPS. Its BeiDou navigation system now delivers centimeter-level precision, with over 100 million global users. Even Middle Eastern oil tycoons are abandoning GPS for BeiDou. Can you believe it? America’s all-seeing eye over the world has just gone blind.

2. China ditched Boeing. The C919 has already racked up over 1,200 orders, wiping out $80 billion from Boeing’s value in a single year. What used to be “better to buy than to build” has flipped — now buying Chinese planes feels like the smarter choice. Boeing was caught completely off guard

3. China ditched American chips. Yangtze Memory’s solid-state drives have slashed international prices in half. After the return of Kirin chips, Qualcomm panicked and cut prices by 30% overnight. The very thing they once used to choke China has become its own lethal weapon.

4. China ditched Windows. UnionTech UOS has surpassed 5 million installations, with national ministries and major banks fully switching over. Microsoft’s CEO is losing sleep, but there’s nothing they can do about it.

5. China ditched Western medical equipment. Shanghai United Imaging’s CT scanners are now entering clinics in the US and Europe. Germany’s Siemens had to slash prices on similar models by 40%. Chinese medical tech has planted its flag firmly on Western soil.

6. China ditched foreign fuel engines. BYD’s blade batteries left Toyota executives tearing down cars on the spot to study them. Tesla lost $1.2 trillion in market value in just three months. The era of gasoline cars is ending — and in the new energy world, China sets the rules.

7. China ditched Oracle databases. Ant Group’s OceanBase has shattered world performance records. Bank transaction systems no longer have to bow to American pressure. This is real technological sovereignty.

8. China ditched Western industrial software. Zhongwang CAD forced France’s Dassault to beg for mercy with price cuts. Sany Heavy Industry used domestic software to design the world’s largest tunnel boring machine. China has ripped a massive hole in the West’s monopoly on industrial software.

9. China ditched dollar settlement. The RMB cross-border payment system now covers 180 countries and regions. Saudi Arabia is now selling oil in RMB. The first major crack in American hegemony was torn open by China.

10. China ditched Western genetically modified seeds. Yuan Longping’s team developed salt-tolerant rice yielding over 1,000 jin per mu. China’s bowls now hold Chinese grain. Monsanto’s seed patents have lost their power, and China has taken full control of its food security.

11. China ditched American social media. Xiaohongshu (RedNote) has grabbed 30 million American users. Zuckerberg is watching helplessly as his daily active users plummet while Chinese social apps explode across the ocean.

12. Finally, China ditched Western military equipment. The Fujian aircraft carrier’s electromagnetic catapult surpasses America’s Ford-class, and DF missiles have forced carriers to keep their distance. The U.S. military-industrial complex held emergency meetings overnight.

⭕️This isn’t just technological progress. These are twelve tolls of the bell signaling the decline of Western hegemony.

🔶Written by professor Yang Fan, born in 1951 in Beijing, is a professor of economics and doctoral supervisor at China University of Political Science and Law. He serves as Chairman of the Academic Committee of the Business School and was a visiting scholar at Peking University’s China Center for Economic Research. He is also the Executive Director of the Economic Research Association at the National Defense University.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

Someone obviously got triggered big time by my post 👇😅
https://t.co/UcOYbybJy3

And his reply, is unsurprisingly a pack of lies, some of them really funny ones.

First: "we never said our goal was diplomatic immunity." Really? The WSJ piece reported this based on a source named... Jacob Helberg, which - as far as I understand - is YOU! Also when the BCDA chief said publicly "that's [the US's] request, but we did not agree," are you saying the Philippines government is lying?

Second, you use TSMC as your example of why being in America's supply chain isn't subservience. Small problem: Taiwan is NOT a Pax Silica signatory due to its diplomatic status. And your own president keeps accusing Taiwan - and TSMC specifically - of "stealing" its chipmaking technology from the US (https://t.co/JbHqMjaDU6). Furthermore the U.S. has been running a years-long initiative to strong-arm TSMC into transferring some of its fabrication to the US (specifically to Arizona), using CHIPS Act subsidies and national security threats as leverage. Not because the free market demanded it, but because you believe that depending on a Taiwanese company for cutting-edge chips was a vulnerability to be eliminated

Which all proves the exact contrary of what you're saying: when a "partner" has real capabilities, it's unbearable to you. You don't reward it, you call them "thieves" and try to take their industry away from them. So thanks for proving my point on that one.

Lastly, and that's the really hilarious part. Calling Pax Silica a "capitalist project" is the height of irony: it's literally a government program that overrides market competition by telling sovereign countries which suppliers they're allowed to buy from and which competitors to ban - regardless of quality or price.

Sorry but if Huawei offers a better AI chip at half the cost and you're contractually barred from buying it, that's not even remotely capitalism.

Since you don't seem to be aware (understandable as someone, like you, who spent their entire career at the intersection of government power and corporate interests): capitalism, in its most basic form, means letting markets decide - you buy from whoever offers the best product/service at the best price.

Pax Silica is the precise opposite, it's all about preventing this from happening.

[Nick Cruse 🥋 @SocialistMMA]

So let me get this straight, it was revealed that the United States ruling class is full of child torturing pedophiles and the reaction of the American people wasn’t to immediately revolt, but to vote out Thomas Massie who helped expose the scandal

America is cooked 💀

[Michael Krieger @LibertyBlitz]

Thomas Massie is a mere appetizer for the Epstein criminals in charge of this captured, corrupt and immoral empire. The rest of us are the main course. This is why spy cameras and data centers are popping up everywhere like weeds without our desire or approval. The plan is for a world where we are total slaves or eliminated altogether. Does it even matter which?

There was one shining light in Congress and the forces of darkness snuffed him out. But Congress was dead anyway. The fight goes on in other arenas and in other realms. The time to redouble our efforts in all ways and through all avenues is here.

[Northstar @NorthstarCharts]

If stock markets continue to 'melt-up' and DXY falls, with the gold/silver ratio confirming its breakdown and the gold/SPX ratio holding, we have a recipe for this correction ending, leading to $8000 gold and $200+ silver ahead of the next 8 year cycle low (2029/30). The miners would likely outperform in this scenario. The CRE (capital rotation event) would then come (possibly taking everything down for a time), but gold (& especially silver) would soon surge in a huge commodities, energy, oil, precious metals bull era (miners should do well, but would be unlikely to outperform silver overall in this phase). Stock markets enter a 'lost decade' after a CRE .
This isn't the only possible path for this ongoing gold bull era...the current correction may need longer to play out, but it all leads to the same destination.

[Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 @mtgreenee]

Article from 2024 about hantavirus mRNA vaccine.
They manipulate the virus (bioweapon), make the vaccine (poison), and then make the profits because they own the vast majority of your elected leaders.
They call this science.
I’ll go ahead and say it, fuck all the way off.

[Carl Zha @CarlZha]

The state of the American left:

[Contrarian Panda @ContrarianPanda]

@Snz_BTC March 12 + 45 days = today (Apr 26), not 11 days ago

[Contrarian Panda @ContrarianPanda]

@SimonDixonTwitt @RealDrJaneRuby @FinanceLancelot @redbeard172023 What would it take to falsify your thesis? @SimonDixonTwitt

[Angelica 🌐⚛️🇹🇼🇨🇳🇺🇸 @AngelicaOung]

Ppl like @BonnieGlaser ask…Angelica…do you want Taiwan to share Hong Kong’s dark fate?

Oh no…

As opposed to fighting bravely as the Asiatic Ukrainians?

We’ve reached peak Orwell here from the American think tank class. War is peace. Freedom is bondage. Being dragged off to die in a trench is democracy.

Just think about it for a minute folks: Ukraine is their great success story. Hong Kong is their great cautionary tale. Who TF are they expecting to fall for it once they get the download that US is no longer the hegemonic sole world superpower?

[خبرگزاری تسنیم @Tasnimnews_Fa]

توئیت بد و ناقص عراقچی و ابهام‌سازی نادرست درباره بازگشایی تنگه هرمز

وزیر خارجه کشورمان دقایقی پیش در توئیتی نوشت که پیرو آتش‌بس در لبنان، تنگه هرمز برای عبور کشتی‌های تجاری برای مدت باقی‌مانده از زمان آتش‌بس به صورت کامل باز خواهد بود

[هنر جنگ @dolfiniran]

۱۷:۲۰/ ۲۸ فروردین
اعلام باز شدن تنگه هرمز با شرایط کاملا خاص و در هماهنگی کامل با نیروهای متولی موضوع انجام شده و عملا بسیار محدود خواهد بود. این عبور که موکول به تداوم اجرای شروط آتش بس است سه شرط خواهد داشت: اول اینکه عبور از مسیر تعیین شده ایران صورت می گیرد. ورود به تنگه از شمال جزیره لارک و خروج از تنگه از جنوب لارک خواهد بود و به این ترتیب تنگه هرمز به طور کامل به آب های سرزمینی ایران منتقل می شود. این یک تغییر تاریخی، بی سابقه ‌و ماندگار در خلیج فارس است و سیادت ایران بر تنگه را برای همیشه تضمین می کند. به این ترتیب در واقع ایران در حال اجرای یک عملیات ‘تغییر مسیر’ بی سابقه در تنگه است. شرط دوم که در توییت وزیر خارجه هم آمده این است که فقط کشتی های ‘تجاری’ حق عبور از تنگه را خواهند داشت. تشخیص اینکه کدام کشتی تجاری است با ایران خواهد بود و این طبعا شامل شناورهای دارای هرگونه ارتباط با دشمن نخواهد شد و بنابراین عبور عملا با تشخیص ایران محدود شده و آزاد نخواهد بود. شناورهای تجاری عبور کننده نیز باید عوارض تامین امنیت را به ایران بپردازند. سومین شرط نیز این است که عبور با هماهنگی نیروهای متولی دریانوردی ایران در تنگه یعنی نیروی دریایی سپاه صورت خواهد گرفت. با در نظر گرفتن مجموعه این شرایط عبور از تنگه محدود، با پرداخت عوارض و با مدیریت ایران خواهد بود و این همان چیزی است که از ابتدای جنگ ایران در پی آن بوده و اکنون آن را به امریکا تحمیل کرده است.

[Contrarian Panda @ContrarianPanda]

@tkpearson @sonamchauhan @drpezeshkian Correct. As discussed by @nntaleb in Skin in the Game: "Silver Rule (negative golden rule): Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you. Note the difference from the Golden Rule, as the silver one prevents busybodies from attempting to run your life."

[Carl Zha @CarlZha]

US: we're going to liberate Iranian women

Iranian woman: I would rather be martyred