Oman has no objection to international commercial vessels navigating through the Iranian side of the Strait of Hormuz. However, if geopolitical or security circumstances require vessels to alter course and transit through Oman’s territorial waters, Oman has a sovereign responsibility to ensure that such passage is safe, orderly, and environmentally responsible. This includes preventing harm to Oman’s marine ecosystem, avoiding disruption to local shipping routes, and protecting the livelihoods of fishing communities.
Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, coastal states may regulate passage in their territorial waters for reasons related to safety, environmental protection, and maritime order. They may also impose charges for specific services rendered to passing vessels, provided such charges are applied transparently and without discrimination. In the Strait of Hormuz, these conditions are especially significant because of the volume of traffic, the sensitivity of the marine environment, and the strategic importance of the waterway.
To provide safe passage and related maritime services, Oman would need to invest in port and coastal infrastructure, surveillance systems, navigational support, emergency response capacity, and the recruitment and training of hundreds of personnel. Oman is prepared to support the United States in this regard, particularly within the framework of the U.S.–Oman Free Trade Agreement. Other states may also seek similar arrangements with Oman through bilateral agreements.
The @USTreasury continues our Economic Fury campaign against the Iranian regime.
Their troops are not getting paid, the police are not reporting for work, and Kharg Island is shut down. The Iranian economy and currency are in free fall.
Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA) is a joke, and today Treasury has sanctioned it. We have warned any corporate or state entities against paying tolls or hiding them as aid payments.
Forming a Wall of Steel, the U.S. Naval Blockade has ensured a record low amount of Iranian crude on the water. We will also be shutting down both Iranian airlines’ access to landing spots, refueling, and ticket sales.
Only a satisfactory outcome in negotiations will end the downward spiral.
🚨 | Luca Cordero di Montezemolo on the new Ferrari Luce:
"If I said what I really think, I'd harm Ferrari. We're risking the destruction of a myth, I'm very sorry about that. I hope they at least remove the Prancing Horse from that car"
The 10-year Treasury yield is perhaps the most important financial benchmark in the global fiat system, as it drives valuations and market trends worldwide. It is widely—and erroneously—regarded as the risk-free rate of return.
The 10-year Treasury yield can be thought of as a key barometer of the US dollar-based fiat system—a critical measure akin to its beating heart.
Bond yields move inversely to bond prices. When bond prices fall, bond yields rise.
A rising 10-year Treasury yield signals trouble for the US dollar because it means investors are selling Treasuries, which pushes up the US government’s borrowing costs. That is why the 10-year Treasury yield is a major pain point for the US government.
The 10-year Treasury yield was 3.97% when the war started. Now it is around 4.60%, an increase of roughly 63 basis points.
I expect the 10-year Treasury yield to keep climbing over the coming weeks and months—until it forces the Fed’s hand. At that point, the intervention will be sold as “stability,” but the mechanism will be familiar: suppress yields by debasing the currency.
At today’s debt levels, every 1 basis point increase in the government’s average borrowing cost adds roughly $3.9 billion in annual interest expense. So a 63 bps rise is not trivial—it translates to nearly $250 billion in additional yearly interest costs, materially widening a 2025 budget deficit that was already around $1.8 trillion.
Higher yields mean the US government must pay tens or even hundreds of billions more in interest on its debt. At the same time, the global economy faces even greater added costs because Treasury rates serve as the benchmark for borrowing worldwide.
That is not an insignificant move. However, given all the headwinds I have discussed, I suspect the 10-year Treasury yield is headed much higher because investors will demand higher yields to compensate for rising inflation. Further, if Hormuz remains closed, drastically higher oil prices are all but certain. Higher energy prices mean higher prices across the economy and higher official inflation rates, which means investors will demand still higher yields to compensate.
The problem is that interest on the federal debt is already over $1.2 trillion and is now the second-largest item in the budget. The US government cannot afford yields going much higher because the interest expense would push it toward bankruptcy.
I am not sure how—or even if—the US government can manage this situation. Something has to give, and we will not have to wait long to find out what.
The Iran war may prove to be more than another foreign policy disaster. It could be the trigger that exposes the fragility of the entire dollar-based financial system.
Jeff Bezos on America's spending and taxes:
"We don't have a revenue problem in this country. We already have the most progressive tax system in the world. The Top 1% of taxpayers pay 40% of all taxes. The bottom 50% pay just 3%. We have a spending problem."
I told a guy at a barbecue last weekend that I had been buying busted small-cap software stocks at 4x free cash flow, and he looked at me with the specific facial expression of a man who has just realized he is trapped in a conversation with someone who voluntarily reads 10-Ks on vacation. He asked, with great gentleness, if I had considered Nvidia. I said I had considered Nvidia in the way one considers jumping off a bridge: briefly, theoretically, and with a clear understanding of the outcome.
I told him I owned a company that sells dental practice management software to 11,000 orthodontists and that the CEO, a 64-year-old man named Greg who has not updated his LinkedIn since 2017, was, in my professional opinion, the single greatest capital allocator alive in North America today, and that I would, if legally permitted, have Greg’s name tattooed on my forearm.
He asked if Greg knew this. I said Greg did not know I existed, and that this was the foundation of our relationship and the source of its strength. He excused himself to go check on his children, who, I observed, were not present at the barbecue. I stood by the grill alone for the next 40 minutes, eating directly from a bag of buns, thinking about Greg, who at that exact moment was, somewhere in suburban Indianapolis, almost certainly buying back stock at prices that will, in 2031, be regarded as the single greatest gift any small-cap CEO has ever given his shareholders, and the host’s wife came over and asked, with palpable concern, if I needed a ride home, and I said no, I needed nothing, I had Greg, and Greg was enough, and I have not been invited back to that house, and I do not care, because Greg loves me even though Greg does not know I am alive, and the math, as it has always been in every great deep value trade in history, is the only thing in this country that has not lied to me.
الله على تشبيهات الشاعر بشار بن برد وتشبيه رجله بوجه الخيل يوم قال:
أَسِيرُ عَلَى الفَلَاةِ وَمُشْطُ رِجْلِي
شَبِيهٌ بالأغرِّ من الخيولِ
عظيم التشبيه رغم عماه!!❤️
“THAT DATA CRNTER IS WASTING WATER, STOP ALL DATA CENTERS”
I see, let’s talk about that t-shirt you are wearing first or the jeans, the water could support 100s of AI queries or days of computation.
In the grand theater of human consumption, few spectacles rival the quiet hypocrisy of decrying data centers while embracing mountains of disposable clothing. Fast fashion: cheap, trend-driven garments churned out in endless cycles, represents a voracious, often invisible drain on water, energy, and ecosystems.
Meanwhile, data centers, the engines powering AI and digital life, face scrutiny for their cooling needs.
A clear-eyed comparison reveals misplaced priorities: the garment industry’s water use is vast, frequently consumptive or polluting in water-stressed regions, with products destined for landfills after minimal use.
Data center water, by contrast, is largely local, often recyclable or evaporative (returning to the hydrological cycle), and supports immense economic and innovative value. It also is just a fraction of the garment industry.
Water in the Garment Industry: Hidden Rivers and Polluted Legacies
The fashion and textile sector consumes staggering volumes of water annually. Estimates range from 79 to 215 billion cubic meters (roughly 79–215 trillion liters), supplying the drinking needs of millions of people.
This makes it one of the world’s most water-intensive industries, second only to agriculture in some assessments.
Breaking it down garment by garment:
• A single cotton T-shirt requires ~2,500–2,700 liters of water across its lifecycle (growing, processing, dyeing).
• A pair of jeans: 7,500–10,000 liters.
• Leather items push even higher (8,000+ liters for shoes).21
Cotton, which dominates natural fibers, is particularly thirsty. Global averages hover around 8,920 liters per kg of cotton lint (much from rainwater/“green” water, but ~2,344 liters/kg from irrigation/“blue” water in stressed areas like parts of India, Pakistan, and China).
Processing and dyeing add 100–150 liters per kg of fabric, often with toxic chemicals.
The dyeing phase alone accounts for hundreds of billions of liters yearly and contributes to ~20% of global industrial water pollution.
Untreated wastewater laden with dyes, heavy metals, and chemicals flows into rivers, devastating local ecosystems and communities.
Fast fashion amplifies this: Production has doubled in recent decades, with consumers buying 60% more clothes than 15–20 years ago, while usage duration drops.
About 100 billion garments produced yearly; 92 million tonnes of textile waste generated, much ending in landfills (a garbage truck’s worth every second). In the U.S., landfills received 11.3 million tons of textiles in 2018.
Synthetics (polyester ~55–68% of fibers) add microplastics via washing, now a major ocean pollutant. Cheap clothes are worn briefly, discarded, and replaced—embodying “take-make-waste” at planetary scale.
This water is not local and often lost or ruined: Irrigation depletes aquifers in arid regions; polluted effluent renders water unusable downstream.
The full supply chain spans continents—cotton from India/Uzbekistan, dyeing in Bangladesh/China, exporting environmental costs to vulnerable areas.
Data Centers: Local, Cyclical Water Use for Digital Progress
Data centers primarily use water for evaporative cooling (or increasingly air/closed-loop/immersion systems). Global estimates: ~560 billion liters annually now, potentially doubling or more by 2030 with AI growth: still a fraction of fashion’s footprint and far below agriculture (~70% of global freshwater). U.S. data centers consumed ~64 billion liters directly in 2023.
BRAND NEW CLOTHING IS TOSSED IN THE DESERT WITH PRICE TAGS STILL ON IT.
All to make the brand look rare. Can’t have poor folks wearing it.
Meet the infamous fast fashion “clothing graveyard” (also called the “great fashion garbage patch”) in Chile’s Atacama Desert here:
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