Washington's Cuba policy in one sentence: starve the island, attempt a coup, then offer a licensing exemption and call it solidarity.

In one of the final data releases rescued from Washington's forever shutdown circus, January PPI arrived fashionably late and brought thoroughly unwelcome news. Headline PPI surged 0.5% MoM — the largest monthly jump since September and well above the 0.3% expected — lifting the annual reading to 2.9%, comfortably above the 2.6% consensus. The real surprise, however, was core PPI, which exploded 0.8% MoM against expectations of 0.3%, pushing the annual rate to 3.6% — the fastest pace since March 2025 and a full 60 basis points above what economists had confidently predicted. Services, accounting for 68% of the headline index, did most of the damage, while food and energy remained mercifully deflationary — small comfort given that the propagandistic inflation-is-under-control narrative just took another quiet battering. In summary: the data was delayed by Washington's circus, and when it finally arrived, it brought exactly the kind of news those in power was hoping the shutdown would help everyone forget.

For equity investors focused on what truly matters — corporate America's ability to pass higher input costs through to end consumers — the January spread between core CPI and core PPI delivered a third consecutive monthly warning signal. The spread is now at its lowest level since March 2021, a period that preceded the great derating of 2022 by precisely twelve months. The message is unambiguous: input cost inflation is accelerating faster than consumer price inflation, meaning margins are being compressed at the corporate level. In an environment where equity valuations remain elevated, a sustained negative CPI-PPI spread is historically one of the most reliable leading indicators of earnings pressure — and the clock, it appears, is ticking.

In a nutshell, January PPI arrived late, came in hot, and delivered a margin compression warning that equity bulls would very much prefer to ignore.

🤵 The Macro Butler Weekly Digest 🤵

🌐 When the Blue Owl roosts, the bond market begins to quote “No Bid.” 🌐

Read more here: https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/when-the-blue-owl-roosts-before-the

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

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/when-the-blue-owl-roosts-before-the-129

In the latest season of War for Peace, the self-styled Chairman of the Board of Peace dusted off the neocon playbook and, with the confident precision of someone sure he invented it, launched a fresh conflict with Persia on the noble premise that toppling another leader will somehow bring stability to a region renowned for replying to foreign intervention like a hornet nest to a stick.

The neocons — eternal back-seat drivers of liberation who’ve never faced voters or gotten a formal declaration of war since 1941 — apparently talked a candidate elected to end forever wars into starting yet another one.

From Saigon to Baghdad to here, the script stays the same: regime change is the goal, democracy is the gift wrap, and everyone else foots the humanitarian tab.

War is Peace, Bombing is Liberation, and the neocons are just trying to help.

The Ministry of Peace has spoken: the objective is Regime Change — which is, of course, an entirely different thing from war, invasion, or the destruction of a sovereign government, and should not be confused with any of those things. Once Regime Change becomes the stated goal, the rules of war conveniently cease to apply — because you cannot negotiate with a government you are simultaneously trying to eliminate. Air power, as Iraq so memorably demonstrated at the cost of several trillion dollars and several hundred thousand lives, delivers rubble but not regimes; that requires boots on the ground, an occupation, and the kind of nation-building that the neocons who design these adventures have never once successfully delivered.

As the Ministry of Liberation would remind us: this is not a war — it is simply a democratic transition, requiring unlimited duration, unlimited resources, and absolutely no congressional declaration.

🤵 The Macro Butler’s Monthly Meditation 🤵

🌐 From ancient forests compressed by time to the engines of modern industry, coal still transforms buried sunlight into the backbone of global prosperity. 🌐

Read more here: https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-macro-butlers-monthly-meditation-a40

In a development that the Ministry of Regime Change would classify as proceeding according to plan, the Chairman of the Board of Peace appears to have operated under the optimistic assumption that assassinating the Ayatollah would trigger a spontaneous popular uprising — a theory that has, thus far, failed to manifest with the enthusiasm the neocon playbook promised. The security forces remain intact, the IRGC continues to control hard power, missiles, internal security, and economic leverage with characteristic efficiency, and the population — having just witnessed a crackdown that killed 30,000 people weeks ago — is displaying the understandable reluctance of people who remember what happened last time. Meanwhile, Iran's exiled crown prince , a man enormously popular in his own imagination, has urged Iranian security forces to "join the nation" from the comfort of his exile — a rallying cry that is reportedly receiving the reception it deserves.

As in Iraq, the neocons have proclaimed the adversary weak, victory imminent, and the mission already accomplished — while the IRGC consolidates control and the 48-72 hour window for spontaneous liberation quietly closes. This is not a blip — and with Iranian sleeper cells potentially activated across the globe, the Ministry of Peace may have just transformed a regional conflict into a holy war, something considerably more difficult to rebrand as a victory even for ‘The Manipulator in Chief’.

Dear Investors,

Please find below the performance of The Macro Butler IG Portfolio as of end of February 2026.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-macro-butler-ig-portfolio-february-93a

Dear Investors,

Please find below the performance of The Macro Butler Strategic Portfolio as of end of February 2026.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-macro-butler-strategic-portfolio-98b

Dear Investors,

Please find below the performance of The Macro Butler Long/Short Portfolio as of end of February 2026.


https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-macro-butler-longshort-portfolio-2fb

In a stirring display of Eurostan solidarity, the Malthusian warmongers of Brussels — ably assisted by the legionaries of Le Petit Napoleon — have seized a Russian shadow fleet tanker in the North Sea, because nothing demonstrates Europe's commitment to energy security quite like intercepting the very oil shipments that keep European industry from going dark. NATO, that tireless guardian of freedom of navigation — except when the navigation involves Russian oil — has enthusiastically endorsed the operation, apparently unconcerned that Europe, which will suffer most from the Persian chokepoint blockade already unfolding in the Middle East, has chosen this precise moment to add North Sea piracy to its energy strategy.

https://x.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/2028035399054942433

Macro-Leon, ever the dutiful student of Donald Copperfield's tariff and seizure playbook, has ensured that bureaucracy and state piracy can indeed be practiced in perfect harmony — simultaneously sanctioning Russian energy, blocking Persian energy, and wondering why the lights are flickering. As the Ministry of Energy Security would remind us: seizing the tanker is not piracy — it is the enforcement of rules-based order. And freezing in the dark is not an energy crisis — it is a principled stand.

When geopolitical chaos spreads faster than a Monday morning flu, BFM 89.9 knows exactly who to call. The Macro Butler returned to the airwaves to deliver his trademark blend of macro wisdom and inconvenient truths — helping investors navigate the investment implications of the new holy war, that entirely predictable consequence of the time-honoured American tradition of bombing for peace. Because when the world is on fire, someone has to tell you where to put your money.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-bfm-899-malaysia-02032026

Donald Copperfield — that great populist champion of the forgotten American and Manipulator In Chief — has proven, in matters of the Deep State, to be no more effective than the long parade of presidential puppets who preceded him, each arriving with a mandate to drain the swamp before discovering that the swamp had already installed spyware on their phones. His MAGA revolution, that stirring call to Make America Great Again, has followed the well-worn path of all such revolutions before it — arriving at its destination with remarkable predictability: another Middle Eastern war, another blank cheque to Tel Aviv, and another president who campaigned on ending forever bankers' wars and promptly started a new one. MAGA, it turns out, is simply MIGA (Make Israel Great Always) with better branding.

In a delightful preview of what "Making America Manufacturing Again" actually looks like in practice, US manufacturing expanded in February — but input prices surged at their fastest pace since 2022, jumping 11.5 points to 70.5 on the ISM prices paid index, the highest since inflation peaked four years ago. The culprit cocktail is familiar: tariffs driving domestic steel and aluminum to their highest prices in the world, supply chain disruptions, and now — entirely coincidentally — a war with Iran which will crumble supply chain even more. Manufacturers, never ones to mince words in anonymous surveys, noted that Section 232 tariffs are "raising prices while lowering demand and profitability" — which is, one might observe, the precise opposite of their stated intention. Others reported receiving "price increase notifications from suppliers based on unsupported tariff claims," expanding staff to manage the chaos, and watching raw material costs climb relentlessly.

In a nutshell, American manufacturing is expanding, input prices are exploding, and Washington just bombed the world's most important oil chokepoint — what could possibly go wrong?

In Eurostan, meanwhile, the green zealots who have spent the last decade assuring the continent that wind turbines and solar panels would render fossil fuels obsolete have achieved a remarkable milestone: European oil inventories are now at their lowest level in five years. The Educated Yet Idiots who govern the region — having enthusiastically dismantled energy infrastructure, rejected nuclear, sanctioned Russian gas, and replaced coherent energy policy with an impressive collection of net-zero targets and subsidy programmes — now find themselves presiding over an energy system that is, by any objective measure, less secure, more expensive, and more vulnerable to geopolitical disruption than when they started.