The Ministry of Energy Independence of the venerable Eurostan announces, with its customary confidence, that Europe remains fully committed to eliminating Russian gas dependency by 2027 — a commitment that coexists, without apparent contradiction, with a 22% year-on-year increase in Gazprom pipeline exports to Europe in March 2026, averaging 55 million cubic meters per day through the TurkStream pipeline that sanctions were designed to render irrelevant.

https://www.bruegel.org/dataset/european-natural-gas-imports

Total Russian gas exports to Europe in the first quarter of 2026 rose 11% year-on-year to approximately 5 billion cubic meters, while LNG shipments jumped 17% to 4.8 million tons — driven, the Ministry declines to mention, by the energy crisis created by the war that Brussels enthusiastically supported. Europe has been under more than twenty rounds of sanctions against Russia, has formally agreed to phase out Russian gas by September 2027, and is simultaneously importing more of it than at any point since the sanctions began.

The Ministry wishes to clarify that this is not hypocrisy. It is energy security. The distinction, like the gas itself, continues to flow through TurkStream regardless of what the official communiqués say.

Epstein’s venom lingers—fueling the epic fury of chaos.

And it came to pass on the seventh day, which was a Sunday, that the Warmonger-in-Chief did not rest. Instead, he ascended unto Truth Social to smite the newly anointed Pope Leo XIV, declaring him "weak on crime" and "terrible for foreign policy" — a theological assessment delivered by a man who has spent the holy season of Easter threatening to send civilisations into darkness and hell. The Pontiff, that ancient keeper of the eternal flame, had spoken with prophetic clarity: "a whole civilisation will die," he warned, calling Don Tzu's Iranian threats "truly unacceptable." Heaven, it appears, has issued its verdict. The Oval Office has filed an appeal.

The mystical pattern now reveals itself in its fullness: the Warmonger-in-Chief, having already claimed divine mandate for Operation Epic F**k-Up, absorbed the Armageddon prophecy of his partner in war crimes Satanyahu, and received the blessing of his evangelical priestess Paula White-Cain, now finds himself in open spiritual conflict with the Vicar of Christ himself — suggesting that his true ambition extends beyond the presidency toward a grander ecclesiastical office.

The ancient oracles taught that when a ruler declares war on both Persia and the Pope at the same time, the Mandate of Heaven has not merely been questioned. It has been formally revoked. The oil price, that most honest of prophets, continues its own divine ascent. Selah.

While Armageddon is now promised to every ship attempting the Strait of Hormuz, The Macro Butler was live on Asharq Bloomberg TV delivering the only number that matters right now.

The verdict:

🛢 $125/barrel — the next floor in the coming weeks

💥 $200+ — the Season 2 scenario if boots hit Persian soil

🥩 Diesel. Jet fuel. Food. Plastics. The shortage wave hasn’t peaked, it just started.

📉 Global stagflation is coming your way wherever you are on the planet.

This is not a forecast. This is arithmetic.

🎙 Watch the full interview — because the gap between what the market is pricing and what is actually coming is the trade of the decade.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-asharq-bloomberg-tv-426

Because clearly what this crisis was missing was another shortage, China is now planning to halt sulphuric acid exports from May—tightening an already stressed market for one of mining’s most boring yet absolutely critical chemicals. Who could have guessed that shutting the Strait of Hormuz might ripple beyond oil? Prices, of course, have responded with admirable enthusiasm: sulphur up ~70%, sulphuric acid in Chile up 44% in a month—and that’s on top of a casual 500% surge before the latest geopolitical brilliance. Nothing says “well-managed supply chain” like exponential price charts. Meanwhile, countries like Indonesia—now responsible for over 60% of global nickel production—are discovering that relying on Middle Eastern sulphur imports during a regional conflict may not have been the most resilient strategy. And with China pulling supply just as feedstocks are already scarce, replacing those volumes should be… straightforward.

The result? Higher costs, tighter bottlenecks, and a growing realization that sulphuric acid—yes, that unglamorous chemical nobody talks about—is quietly becoming a strategic choke point. But don’t worry, it’s definitely just transitory according to those siting in their Oval Office in Washington.

While investors remain fixated on the Strait of Hormuz, the Empire quietly signed a “defence cooperation” deal with Indonesia—sold, as always, with soothing phrases like “maritime security” and “capacity building.” Translation: better surveillance, tighter control, and a clearer view of everything moving through Southeast Asia’s chokepoints. In other words, while everyone watches one bottleneck, Washington is busy weaponizing another—Strait of Malacca—where much of China’s energy lifeline still flows. A century after Alfred Thayer Mahan explained that sea power decides everything, the strategy hasn’t changed—only the marketing has.

https://media.defense.gov/2026/Apr/13/2003911810/-1/-1/1/READOUT-OF-SECRETARY-OF-WAR-PETE-HEGSETH-MEETING-WITH-INDONESIA-MINISTER-OF-DEFENSE-SJAFRIE-SJAMSOEDDIN.PDF

Of course, China didn’t wait for chokepoints to become fashionable—it’s been quietly building detours for decades. The Central Asia–China gas pipeline, stretching roughly 1,800 km from Turkmenistan to Xinjiang, has already delivered over 500 bcm since 2009—conveniently supplying more than half of Turkmenistan’s exports while reducing reliance on maritime routes everyone suddenly cares about. With three operational خطوط totalling 55 bcm/year and a fourth (Line D) promising another 30 bcm—eventually, once contracts and pricing stop being “work in progress”—the message is simple: while others debate chokepoints, Beijing has been busy drawing alternative maps.

https://multimedia.scmp.com/news/china/article/One-Belt-One-Road/gasPipeline.html

China also quietly built the China–Myanmar Economic Corridor to go around it. The twin oil and gas pipelines—running roughly 800 km from Kyaukpyu to Yunnan—have been operational for years, moving up to 22 million tons of crude and 12 bcm of gas annually straight from the Indian Ocean into China.

https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/analysis/militarized-pipelines-how-chinas-security-priorities-harm-local-communities.html

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has delivered March PPI data with the reassuring headline that wholesale prices rose a modest 0.5% — a figure that requires one to look past gasoline jumping 15.7%, diesel and jet fuel surging, energy PPI leaping 8.5%, and transportation and warehousing costs climbing 1.3%, all courtesy of a war won comprehensively on Hour 1 of Day 1. The Ministry of Propaganda will be particularly pleased that core PPI — that ingeniously curated measure that excludes the things actually getting more expensive — rose a mere 0.1%, pulling the year-on-year core reading down from 3.9% to 3.8%, which the same analysts who missed the inflation surge of 2021 are already describing as "good news." It is not good news.

The pipeline for inflation is accelerating with the enthusiasm of a 15.7% gasoline price increase working its way through every supply chain, logistics network, and production cost in the American economy — a transmission mechanism that the core PPI measure has been specifically designed not to capture until it is too late to ignore.

Those who haven’t outsourced their thinking to Wall Street’s EYIs know that what actually matters for equities isn’t the latest narrative—it’s the spread between core CPI and core PPI, i.e., whether companies can pass on rising input costs and protect margins. In March, that spread turned negative for the fifth consecutive month—apparently a minor detail, unless you remember 2021–2022, when the same dynamic helped knock the shine off equity markets. But sure, higher energy costs squeezing margins is probably bullish this time—especially if you’re still riding the AI FOMO train.

In a nutshell, headline PPI politely whispers “all is well,” while surging energy costs and a fifth straight negative CPI–PPI spread quietly scream that inflation—and margin compression—are just getting started.

In a plot twist no one saw coming (except everyone), Donald Copperfield’s chosen successor to Jerome Too Late, Kevin ‘Wash-Lauder’, heads to chair the FED armed with at least $192 million in disclosed wealth—give or take a few “confidential” hundreds of millions. Married to Jane Lauder of Estée Lauder Companies fame, and freshly enriched by generous consulting gigs (including a casual $10 million+ from Stanley Druckenmiller’s family office), ‘Wash-Lauder’ is set to become one of the wealthiest central bankers in history. His disclosures read less like a public service résumé and more like a diversified hedge fund brochure—complete with AI startups, crypto bets, and mystery assets he promises to “totally divest.” Naturally, he’ll now be tasked with regulating the very financial universe he’s been comfortably orbiting—because nothing says independence like a few hundred million in prior entanglements.

https://prod-i.a.dj.com/public/resources/documents/kevin-warsh-federal-reserve-financial-discloure-2026.pdf

So, after a war supposedly “won on Day 1, Hour 1” and with the Empire’s navy marketed as the world’s unbeatable armada, the USS George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group is… taking the scenic route around Africa to avoid the Red Sea. Rather than a textbook transit through familiar chokepoints, the fleet is carefully steering clear of areas where drones and missiles have made things a bit less “invincible.” Meanwhile, a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is being rolled out with all the legal disclaimers and operational caveats of a “major undertaking,” quietly acknowledging that controlling global chokepoints is slightly more complicated than the brochure suggested.

https://news.usni.org/2026/04/13/carrier-uss-george-h-w-bush-operating-off-southern-africa-as-iranian-blockade-begins

In a moment worthy of a Confucian proverb, Master Xi gently informed Don Pedro, Premier of the crumbled empire of Hispania, that the “international order” had not so much evolved as politely unraveled into moral and strategic chaos—apparently what happens when empires confuse strategy with improvisation. While discussing olive oil, Rioja, and the small matter of global stability, Master Xi called for cooperation to avoid a return to the “law of the jungle,” subtly noting that recent geopolitical adventures have been less “rules-based order” and more “choose your own chaos.” Meanwhile, with trade routes strained and tensions rising, Spain now finds itself cast as a diplomatic bridge—because when the system wobbles, even middle powers get promoted.

https://www.afr.com/world/asia/world-order-crumbling-into-disarray-says-xi-20260414-p5znw3

The Macro Butler is back—this time with Christian White from Marbella Media 🔥

We cut through the noise (and there’s a lot of it) to break down what “Epic Fury” really means for the global economy:

📉 Stagflation isn’t a risk—it’s the new playbook

🧠 Why surviving this cycle requires actual skills (not headlines)

💸 How governments “default”… without ever saying the word

If you still think this is business as usual, this one might hurt a little.

🎧 Watch now—and decide if you’re reacting… or actually understanding.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-christian-white-13032026