The release of 400 million barrels from IEA reserves may buy markets a little time, but with supply deficits still looming, it increasingly looks less like a solution and more like using a garden hose to stop an oil-field fire.

US retail sales rose for a third straight month in April, once again proving that American consumers will keep spending until either confidence, savings, or credit cards physically collapse — whichever comes first. Headline retail sales climbed 0.5%, although nearly half the increase came from higher gasoline prices, meaning Americans mostly spent more just to drive to the store and pay more for groceries. Excluding gas stations, sales rose a far less exciting 0.3%, while vehicle sales slipped as consumers apparently discovered that $80,000 pickup trucks and 7% financing rates are not the bargain of the century.

Adjusted for “CPLie,” headline retail sales actually declined 0.35% MoM — another sign that Americans are increasingly spending more merely to maintain the same routines while ultimately buying less in real terms. Consumers continue driving to keep their jobs and paying more for essentials, but real purchasing power keeps deteriorating beneath the surface. Historically, this type of divergence between nominal spending and real consumption has often marked the early stages of broader stagflationary pressure — a parallel markets may ignore temporarily, but one long-term investors will recognize immediately.

In a nutshell, American consumers are still spending — just increasingly more money for less stuff — as shrinking real purchasing power quietly revives the early anatomy of stagflation.

In what future historians may politely describe as the Empire’s “final harmony tour” through the Middle Kingdom, Donald Coppergfield arrived in Beijing accompanied by America’s Tech Bro aristocracy to exchange ceremonial smiles with Xi Jinping while both sides quietly measured the distance to the next crisis. The Great Mandarin Xi declared relations “stable,” which in diplomatic Confucian usually translates to: “we are not arguing loudly today.” Discussions covered oil flows, trade access, fentanyl, agriculture, semiconductors, and the sacred modern principle that global peace depends entirely on keeping container ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, CEOs from Tesla, Apple, Boeing, and NVIDIA followed closely behind like wealthy disciples seeking enlightenment through supply chains. Xi ultimately invoked the “Thucydides Trap,” reminding that when rising powers and aging hegemons compete , history tends to turn philosophy lectures into wars.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RReTNnMkS3Y

Meanwhile, the official White House scripture described the summit as a glorious triumph of “stability,” “cooperation,” and carefully choreographed optimism:
“Trump had a good meeting with Xi.”
Naturally, the propaganda liturgy concluded that all tensions are under control, trade relations are improving, and geopolitical rivalry can apparently be solved with soybeans, crude oil, and sufficiently enthusiastic press releases.

https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2054859596938785204

And of course, no imperial pilgrimage would be complete without a triumphant post on Truth Social from “Donald Copperfield” himself, graciously inviting Mandarin Xi to the White House while simultaneously hinting at launching Season 2 of the Epic F**k Up before Air Force One had even departed the capital of the Middle Kingdom. Nothing captures modern diplomacy quite like smiling for cameras, praising “historic cooperation,” and threatening the next trade, tech, or geopolitical escalation before the jet engines finish warming up — especially when both empires are quietly competing to dominate the world before the next decade even begins.

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116575104401917058

🤵 The Macro Butler Weekly Digest 🤵

🌐 AI and geopolitics are colliding in The Global War for Chips — because the 21st century belongs to whoever controls the silicon. 🌐

Read more here: https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-global-war-for-chips

Listen to a summary of The Macro Butler weekly newsletter via podcast on Substack; YouTube; Rumble; Spotify & TikTok.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-global-war-for-chips-podcast

The Sovereign debt crisis isn’t coming… it’s already here. 💸📉

While Wall Street keeps selling “soft landings,” the math is quietly collapsing underneath the system.

More debt. Higher rates. Slower growth.
Governments’ favourite magic trick is running out of rabbits. 🐇🔥

Who really pays when the debt bubble bursts?
You; not the people printing the money.

Learn to Earn with The Macro Butler Financial Academy: https://themacrobutler.com/financial-academy/

Big Tech didn’t disrupt the system… it became the system. 🏛💻

While everyone was distracted by AI hype and stock market euphoria, Silicon Valley quietly merged with Washington to build the ultimate plutocracy.

The result?
Corporate power, endless lobbying, surveillance capitalism… and ordinary people funding the whole circus through inflation and debt. 🎪💸

This isn’t capitalism anymore.
It’s the merger of the Empire and the algorithm.

Learn to Earn with The Macro Butler Financial Academy: https://themacrobutler.com/financial-academy/

Freshly returned from his diplomatic excursion to the Middle Kingdom, Donald Copperfield immediately resumed his favourite form of international relations: Truth Social megaphone diplomacy. Barely hours later, he was already warning that the clock is ticking for Season 2 of the war that was never officially called a war and was supposedly “totally won” sometime around hour one of day one. Nothing says lasting peace quite like announcing the sequel before the credits of the first episode have even finished rolling.

As another glorious side effect of the holy wars in the Middle East, the Middle Kingdom’s economy slowed sharply in April, with retail sales barely growing, industrial production missing expectations, and investment quietly slipping back into contraction. Apparently, AI-fuelled exports and semiconductor euphoria are no longer enough to hide the tiny inconvenience of collapsing domestic demand and soaring energy costs. Beijing still insists the economy is “stabilizing and improving” — which in modern central bank dialect roughly translates to: “please stop looking at the actual data.”

The economic activity was weaker than expected in April,” politely admitted economists, in what may be the financial equivalent of saying the Titanic experienced “minor navigation challenges. Exports still surged thanks to the global AI frenzy and improving trade ties with the U.S. following Donald Copperfield’s latest diplomatic tour of the Middle Kingdom, but even booming semiconductor shipments are no longer enough to fully offset collapsing domestic demand. Meanwhile, household loans slumped, consumer confidence remained stuck in a post-Covid coma, and youth unemployment quietly climbed to its highest level in more than two years — proving that even in the age of artificial intelligence, someone still has to buy things.

In a nutshell, China’s economy is slowing faster than Beijing’s propaganda machine can spin it, as collapsing domestic demand and soaring energy costs finally overpower the AI export boom and semiconductor euphoria.

In another reminder that the Empire of Washington increasingly resembles a competing theocracy wrapped in Wall Street branding, officials are now openly calling for leaders and citizens alike to “get on their knees before the Supreme Lord.” Apparently, the difference between modern geopolitics and medieval theology is mostly just better public relations and more expensive military contractors.

As Confucius almost certainly never said, “When the old master leaves the temple, the new monk redecorates aggressively.” Berkshire’s first full quarter under Greg Abel revealed a rare burst of activity, with the conglomerate taking a machete to 14 positions while simultaneously rediscovering its love affair with airlines through a new $2.6 billion stake in Delta — proving that in Omaha, even broken airline vows are apparently cyclical. Berkshire also added to Alphabet and opened a small Macy’s position, while quietly dumping Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, UnitedHealth, and a long list of other holdings.

In the ancient art of portfolio management, this is known as “sweeping the courtyard before the new emperor arrives.”

The Macro Butler was back on Asharq Bloomberg this Sunday to warn that global oil markets are rapidly heading toward a historic supply shock as inventories collapse faster than demand can be destroyed by soaring prices. While markets still debate whether oil should trade at $100 or $120, the real story is that storage levels are draining toward operational stress zones that could push the global energy system dangerously close to breakdown by September if nothing changes.

In this environment, new 52-week highs for oil prices are no longer a possibility — they are becoming a matter of time as the world drifts deeper into The Tremendous Trump Stagflation.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-asharq-bloomberg-tv-cd4

While Wall Street remains busy worshipping NVIDIA, China quietly built its own parallel tech empire. ⚡️

Semiconductors. AI. EVs. Robotics. Payment systems.
The decoupling already happened — most investors are just still trading yesterday’s world. 🌍📉

This isn’t a trade war anymore.
It’s the birth of two separate economic civilizations racing for technological dominance.

Learn to Earn with The Macro Butler Financial Academy: https://themacrobutler.com/financial-academy/

In another heartwarming effort to build the digital gulag “for public safety and efficiency,” Britain’s NHS is reportedly giving Palantir contractors broad access to identifiable patient records through its new data platform. Citizens are once again being reassured that this is only about “improving healthcare” — much like mass surveillance was supposedly only about stopping terrorists before quietly expanding to monitor everyone with a smartphone and a bank account. After all, nothing says freedom quite like intelligence-linked contractors potentially accessing your medical history, prescriptions, psychological records, and personal data inside one giant centralized database. In modern Orwellian governance, privacy is apparently just another inefficient legacy system waiting to be optimized.

https://www.digitalhealth.net/2026/05/palantir-to-be-granted-unlimited-access-to-nhs-patient-data/

What Britain is building is no longer healthcare reform — it is surveillance wrapped in the comforting language of efficiency. Governments throughout history always promised that surrendering privacy was necessary for safety, stability, or the public good, right before quietly expanding control over everything else. From Roman census records to the Stasi’s personal files and Soviet internal passports, every empire eventually discovers the same truth: centralized data is power, and no government voluntarily gives power back once it has tasted it.