🇺🇸🇮🇱⚔️🇮🇷 At least 12 U.S. Air Force KC-135/KC-46 tanker aircraft have been deployed to Eilat Airport in southern Israel since the ceasefire began.

Satellite imagery also appears to show two U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft at the airfield, visible as white objects.

🔗 Egypt's Intel Observer (@EGYOSINT)

🇺🇸🇦🇪⚔️🇮🇷 The U.S. is amassing forces at Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE

A total of 12 U.S. Navy F/A-18 fighter jets have been deployed to the base.

Satellite imagery from April 20 also shows 7 U.S. Air Force aerial refueling aircraft, along with a C-17A strategic transport aircraft.

🔗 EGYOSINT

🇺🇸🕊🇮🇷 Trump on Iran Talks: “They Can Call Me. We Have All the Cards.”

President Trump told reporters Saturday he canceled plans to send U.S. envoys to Pakistan for potential Iran talks, hardening his stance as Tehran holds firm on core demands. The Iranian delegation had already left Pakistan before the announcement.

🔹 On canceling the planned visit:
“There’s no reason to wait two days, have people traveling for 16, 17 hours… we’re not doing it that way. We’ll do it when they want. They can call me.”

🔹 On what changed:
Iran sent a proposal he called insufficient. “They gave us a paper that should have been better. And interestingly, immediately when I canceled it, within 10 minutes, we got a new paper that was much better.”

🔹 On Iran’s leadership:
“We knocked out two levels of leaders. They don’t know who’s in charge. They’re probably fighting not to be the leader.” He added: “I’ll deal with whoever runs the show.”

🔹 On Pakistan’s role as mediator:
“Pakistan is terrific. The field marshal is fantastic.” But said U.S. envoys would not be “traveling 15, 16 hours to have a meeting with people that nobody ever heard of.”

🔹 On his core demand:
“Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Very simple. That whole deal is not complicated.”

📝Anon: 3/21: “Iran has 48 hours to make a deal!”
3/23: “Iran has 5 days to make a deal!”
3/26: “Iran has 10 days to make a deal!”
4/7: “Iran has 2 weeks to make a deal!”
4/21: “Iran has until Sunday to make a deal!”
4/25: “…uh they’ll call us at some point”

🔗 Dropsite

💵 🇺🇸 📊 U.S. consumer sentiment at in 75 years, worse than 2008 and 2020 — UMich

📝 Carolina Lion: "You have to go back to World War II and the Great Depression to find comparable numbers."

📎 Amy Nixon

💸 🇨🇳 💱 War and Sanctions Accelerate China’s Currency Push

China’s bid to build a renminbi-based financial system beyond the U.S. dollar’s reach is gaining traction as a way to sidestep sanctions.

The internationalization of its currency, the renminbi, is considered a pillar of China’s national security.

That push has gained momentum from the wars in Ukraine and Iran, as sanctions drive American adversaries toward the renminbi to bypass the Western financial system. In effect, China’s 20-year project to build the international financial ties and technological infrastructure for a globally accepted currency is paying off, even if others are the ones sidestepping the dollar.

China’s financial positioning is “meeting the demand for de-dollarization” from countries seeking to trade with restricted nations like Iran, said Alisha Chhangani, an associate director at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.

Since the end of World War II, when 44 countries agreed to make the dollar the world’s reserve currency, most global trade has run on it. That dominance has given the United States powerful leverage, allowing it to impose sanctions that can all but ensure financial ruin.

Recent conflicts have shown how a Chinese alternative can offer a way around the system. At least two ships have paid Iran in renminbi to secure safe transit through the Strait of Hormuz, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence, a maritime information service.

Payments using China’s network rose nearly 50 percent last month as countries bought Iranian oil, according to data from the Atlantic Council. Russia, cut off from the dollar after invading Ukraine, now settles most of its trade with China in renminbi.

In March, Qiushi, the Chinese Communist Party’s ideological journal, resurfaced a 2024 speech by Xi Jinping, China’s leader, calling for the renminbi to be “widely used in international trade” and to “attain reserve currency status.”

The dollar is still the top currency of choice in international trade, valued for its liquidity and ease of use. The euro, yen and British pound are distant runners-up. Even transactions that do not involve the United States are often done with dollars, including most of China’s own trade. The renminbi accounts for just 3 percent of global transactions, roughly the same as the Canadian dollar.

In 2015, China launched the Cross-border Interbank Payment System, or CIPS, allowing banks worldwide to settle payments in renminbi. The system offers an alternative to SWIFT, the Belgian-based messaging network that underpins most global transactions. Both Russian and Iranian banks have been kicked off SWIFT under U.S. pressure.

Since Russian banks were removed from SWIFT after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the number of institutions directly participating in CIPS has nearly tripled, rising to nearly 200 from 75, according to Chinese government data.

For the currency to play a larger global role, it must be easier to use outside China, which requires loosening Beijing’s tight capital flow controls. The government has been reluctant to take that step for fear of losing control of its exchange rate. Without that opening, there is not enough renminbi circulating abroad for trading partners to do much beyond buying Chinese goods, Mr. Prasad said.

When countries like Saudi Arabia sell their oil for dollars, they can easily recycle those proceeds into liquid assets such as U.S. Treasury bonds. With renminbi, there is no equivalent yet.

So far, China has taken small but meaningful steps toward strengthening its cross-border payment system. It is still unclear whether China is truly on a “durable path” to becoming a major global payments currency, Mr. Prasad said. But one thing is clear: “There is a desperate desire in the world to escape the clutches of the dollar-denominated system.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/24/business/china-currency-iran.html

📎 The New York Times

💸 🇨🇳🔼CIPS — China's alternative settlement rail — processed $24.47T in 2024, up 42.6% YoY, and that volume doesn't appear in SWIFT's denominator.

Meanwhile at the central banks:

📎 The Macro Ledger

💸 Reimagining Bretton Woods

How International Agreement Could Resolve Economic Imbalances

Connectivity Project by Philip Pilkington

The past few years have been ones in which global conflict has flared up in a manner that is more concerning than at any time since the end of the Second World War. Economists cannot offer solutions to all complex geopolitical problems, but they know that trade imbalances tend to vastly increase tensions between nations and make compromise on these non-economic topics more difficult.

Due to the politics and economic structure of the time, the bancor was shelved in 1944. But due to the changes in the global economic system caused by aggressive globalization, there is a strong case to be made that its time has come. Implementing the bancor solution to world trade could provide a new constructive economic vision for a world economy that currently feels chaotic and unmoored. It could provide the keystone to global governance in the 21st century.

🧵 https://fxtwitter.com/philippilk/status/1857074938558943564

📎 https://hiia.hu/en/reimagining-bretton-woods/

🖥 📊 📈 2026 has been historic:

The Permanent Portfolio is on track to gain +26% in 2026, its best annual return since 1933.

It consists of equal portions of US stocks, 10-year Treasury bonds, commodities, and cash.

The portfolio is also on track for its 3rd higest annual outperformance versus the traditional 60/40 portfolio in over a century, with only 1946 and 1973 producing stronger relative returns.

This comes as the portfolio is up +8% year-to-date, with commodities leading at +28%.

A bull market in commodities is fueling alternative portfolios.

📝 TWC_CAP: "Commodities up 28% while everyone was arguing about altcoins.

The oldest portfolio construction in the room is having its best year since the Great Depression and nobody at the trading desk looks comfortable right now."

📎 KobeissiLetter

🇺🇸⚡️ — BREAKING: President Trump was just rushed off the stage during the White House Correspondents’ Association.

Armed officers are yelling "Stay down!"

🇺🇸⚡️ — The situation at the White House Correspondents' dinner is back to normal.