The problem is that nobody wants to pay to collect them. PetroChina sought a supertanker to load Iraqi crude and received offers at tanker rates nearly triple pre-war levels, while Indian Oil IOC issued a force majeure after receiving zero offers whatsoever on its tender — the shipping industry's elegant way of saying the oil is theoretically available but practically stranded. The problem, as a PetroChina official summarised with admirable brevity, is that "there are tankers available, but the problem is it's too expensive and there is no guarantee you can exit the strait" — which is precisely the same problem that existed before the peace deal, now repackaged with a 60-day expiry date and a press conference. Wall Street EYIs have already slashed their oil price forecasts as investment banks celebrated a supply glut that Asian refiners are declining to absorb at current freight rates.

In a nutshell, the Versailles Peace deal opened the Strait on paper — the tanker market is still reading the footnotes.

In a development that will stun precisely nobody who noticed that BlackRock, Blackstone, and Partners Group have all been quietly installing redemption gates like emergency fire exits in a burning building, Fitch Ratings has confirmed that the US private credit default rate held at a record 6% in May — logging 14 default events across 1,500 issuers, with six serial defaulters and half of all defaults consisting of maturity extensions under stress — the financial equivalent of a borrower asking for more time to find the money they already didn't have. Private credit is exposed to the software sector for up to 20% of its loans, which is a delightful concentration given that AI is currently disrupting the very business models backing those loans. The industry's reassurance that "systemic risk appears far less pronounced than subprime in 2008" deserves a special award for the most expensive sentence in financial history.

When your flagship funds are gating redemptions, your default rate is at a record high, and your best defence is "it's not 2008," the light at the end of the tunnel is probably an oncoming train.

🤵 The Macro Butler Weekly Digest 🤵

🌐 Why Gold Outlives Every Empire That Tries to Replace It🌐

Read more here: https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/eternal-bullion

⚡️ YOUR ENERGY BILL ISN'T AN ACCIDENT ⚡️

While politicians debate, households pay.

🛢 Higher oil prices
🔥 Higher gas prices
⚡️ Higher electricity bills

The wars aren't just happening on a map.

They are showing up every month in your utility bill, your grocery bill, and your cost of living.

The biggest tax isn't always voted on.

Sometimes it arrives through energy markets.

💰 Energy is the master commodity.

When energy rises, almost everything else follows.

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

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/eternal-bullion-podcast

The Macro Butler sat down with Nomi to connect the dots between China’s economic , the growing global “War Tax” from the Middle East, and what could be the buying opportunity of a generation in precious metals.

While Wall Street remains distracted by the latest AI fairy tale and media headlines, smart money is quietly accumulating real assets. We discuss why the recent correction in gold and silver may be shaking out the weak hands before the next major leg higher, and why investors should consider exchanging increasingly fragile paper promises for timeless monetary insurance.

📈 China is decoupling.
🌍 Geopolitical risks are rising.
💵 Debt levels are exploding.
🥇 Gold and silver are on sale.

The question is simple: Are you prepared for what comes next?
Watch the full interview and discover why the next chapter of the commodity bull market may already be underway.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-prinsights-global

🚨 THE NEXT WAR WON'T BE FOUGHT ONLY WITH BULLETS... IT'LL BE FOUGHT WITH COMMODITIES. 🚨

Forget the headlines.

The real battlefield is:

🛢 Oil
🥇 Gold
⚡️ Energy
🌾 Food
🔋 Critical minerals

Every major conflict eventually becomes a fight over resources.

While politicians talk about democracy, security, and diplomacy...

Markets are pricing shortages, supply disruptions, and inflation.

The investors who understand geopolitics today may be the ones protecting their wealth tomorrow.

🎯 The question isn't who wins the war.

It's who controls the commodities.

Watch before the crowd figures it out.

As Middle East peace evaporated on schedule, the Malthusian Dancer on high heels from Kyiv decided one active front was insufficient creative expression and issued a Friday night social media ultimatum to Belarusian President — demanding he dismantle his southern border air defence radar within one week or Ukraine "will do it" — a deadline delivered in the format normally reserved for influencer announcements, directed at a country hosting Russian tactical nuclear weapons and constitutionally bound to Moscow in a Union State. The timing is magnificent: a Ukrainian drone had already struck a bus carrying a Belarusian youth football team, killing one woman and wounding four teenagers, an incident Ukraine dismissed as a "provocation" while Russia launched a terrorism probe and Lukashenko warned Ukraine "will pay dearly." Four years of remarkably restrained Ukraine-Belarus non-belligerency now hang on a tweet.

https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/2068027014641045690

When your geopolitical ultimatum is delivered via social media to a country hosting Russian nuclear weapons, peace is already writing its own obituary.

The Macro Butler is back on the airwaves of BFM 89.9 — Malaysia’s premier business radio — to cut through the noise on three themes the consensus is still getting spectacularly wrong.

Why stagflation never left — and why every new war simply adds another chapter to the same story of shortages, disrupted supply chains, and structurally higher oil prices.

Why the Fed will be forced to hike rates not out of conviction but out of desperation — because everyone knows the Fed doesn’t control the cycle; the cycle controls the Fed.

And most importantly: why this is precisely the moment to buy gold, not sell it — because the Eternal Bullion doesn’t care about doomsayers, doesn’t need a central banker’s blessing, and has outlasted every empire that tried to replace it.

Zero hopium. Zero soft landings. Just the macro playbook that history keeps validating.

🎧 Listen now — before the next rate hike reminds you why you should have bought gold last week.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-bfm-899-radio-22062026

The Ministry of Fiscal Innovation has identified a magnificent new revenue stream: the SpaceX IPO. The Communist Republic of California, surveying the billions in capital gains about to crystallise among state-based employees of a company whose founder relocated both Tesla and SpaceX headquarters out of the state specifically to escape California's regulatory hostility and tax burden, has concluded that the appropriate response is not to ask why entrepreneurs keep leaving — but to position itself to harvest the exit on the way out. State officials have openly acknowledged that IPO windfall gains could help plug budget holes and support spending programmes increasingly dependent on volatile tax receipts — which is the Sacramento way of describing a fiscal model that gorges during boom cycles, expands permanently, and then expresses theatrical surprise when the cycle turns and revenues collapse.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/18/california-ipo-tax-windfall.html

The encore is even more creative: California is simultaneously debating a one-time 5% billionaire wealth tax estimated to generate roughly $100 billion — a proposal whose primary achievement would be to accelerate the capital flight the state is already experiencing and ensure that the next SpaceX is founded in Texas. The Ministry sees every successful company, every IPO, and every wealthy resident not as an asset to cultivate but as a resource to harvest — and then expresses bewilderment when the harvest keeps moving.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/18/california-billionaire-tax-ballot-tech-opposition

California didn't build Silicon Valley by taxing success — it is dismantling it the same way, one exit at a time.

The Macro Butler returned to Asharq Bloomberg TV to deliver the macro call the consensus is too uncomfortable to make: the latest pullback in gold is not a warning — it’s an invitation.

Forced sellers are in full capitulation, the chart is screaming a textbook double bottom, and the geopolitical powder keg that the market keeps pretending has been defused is about to remind everyone why gold exists in the first place. When Trump Stagflation stops being a forecast and becomes a headline, and when investors finally accept that the Eternal Bullion is the only asset that carries no counterparty risk, no central banker’s blessing, and no redemption gate — the dip will be a distant memory.

Gold is not for peace. Gold is for war. And war, it turns out, is not going anywhere.

📺 Watch now — before the next geopolitical catalyst turns today’s pullback into tomorrow’s missed entry point.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-asharq-bloomberg-tv-1f6

The Macro Butler is delighted to be featured again by Hubbis— Asia’s premier wealth management platform — to make the argument that every serious investor needs to hear: in a world of weaponized currencies, gated private credit funds, reckless governments, and central banks that don’t control the cycle but are controlled by it, gold remains the only truly antifragile asset.
📖 Read now — and ask yourself why your portfolio still treats gold as optional.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/hubbis-eternal-bullion

The Ministry of Stable Governance has a brief administrative announcement: ‘The Keith Starmer’ has resigned as Prime Minister and Labour leader just under two years after capturing the keys to Number 10, succumbing to an internal party mutiny after his parliamentary colleagues concluded he was no longer best placed to lead them into the next general election — a verdict ‘The Keith’ accepted "with good grace," which is British for "I had no choice." Britain now faces its seventh Prime Minister in a decade, a rate of leadership turnover that would embarrass a mid-tier football club, achieved by a nation that still occasionally lectures the world on institutional stability.

The immediate catalyst was Andy Burnham's by-election victory in Makerfield, which handed the "King in the North" a seat in the Commons and effectively checkmated Starmer's already diminishing authority — proof that in modern British politics, the most dangerous man is not the opposition but the ambitious colleague two constituencies away. Starmer, in a final act of theatrical selflessness, framed his departure as patriotism rather than capitulation — because in the Ministry of Truth, every political execution is repackaged as a sacrifice.

https://x.com/BBCBreaking/status/2068978424341836101?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2068978424341836101%7Ctwgr%5Ea35b1a5e7595dcbf5ae3dd70a8a580a7e42c303c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fprime-minister-keir-starmer-resigns-uk-faces-7th-leader-decade

🚨 THE MOST UNDERVALUED ASSET IN THE WORLD? 🚨

While everyone is chasing AI stocks, meme trades, and the latest Wall Street fairy tale...

One asset class is quietly trading at valuations not seen in years.

👀 Nobody wants it.
📉 Sentiment is terrible.
💰 Capital has fled.
⚠️ Supply is tightening.

And that's usually when the biggest opportunities are born.

The greatest investments are rarely popular when they are cheap.

They're popular after they've already doubled.

The question isn't what everyone is buying today.

It's what they'll be desperate to buy tomorrow.

🎯 Watch the full video to discover why the most hated asset today could become one of the biggest winners of the next cycle.