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https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/inflation-begins-where-trust-ends-764

In a bond market that is politely but firmly declining to participate in the Manipulator In Chief's oil futures magic show, the Treasury auctioned $39 billion in 10-year paper at a high yield of 4.217% — the highest since last August — tailing the When Issued by 0.7 basis points for the second consecutive auction and the fourth tail in the last six.

The internals told a more nuanced story. The bid-to-cover jumped from 2.388 to 2.449 — solid on the surface, though still below the recent six-auction average of 2.51, itself inflated by two outlier auctions that flattered the trend. Indirects surged to 74.45% from 64.54% — the highest foreign buyer allotment since September and the auction's most reassuring data point, suggesting that international demand for US paper has not entirely evaporated despite Washington's best efforts to test its allies' patience. With Directs taking 12.83%, Dealers were left holding 12.7% — above their recent average of 8.63% and a reminder that when the auction's most captive buyers end up with more than expected, the applause is somewhat qualified.

In a nutshell, another tailing auction, another quiet reminder that when trust evaporates, wars turn religious, and stagflation knocks at the door, the once-sacred risk-free asset reveals itself as precisely the riskiest thing to own — a fixed income stream denominated in a currency managed by a government that is simultaneously bombing oil chokepoints, manipulating futures markets, and auctioning debt that foreign buyers are increasingly reluctant to absorb at any yield the Manipulator In Chief would find politically comfortable.
The 10-year Treasury is not a safe haven — it is a promise made by an empire in the early stages of its most expensive miscalculation.

In a development that the Ministry of Free Navigation would classify as a robust demonstration of market resilience, the Strait of Hormuz is not entirely closed — it is merely selectively open, primarily to vessels that have thoughtfully disabled their transponders to avoid attracting the attention of either the country bombing Iran or the country being bombed, both of which are apparently monitoring the same shipping lane with competing intentions. Western commercial shipping remains largely suspended, because Lloyds — those cheerful custodians of maritime risk whose war insurance premiums have quietly become a foreign policy instrument — has declined to cover the inconvenience of sailing through an active combat zone. Into this vacuum have sailed two sanctioned VLCCs with Iranian ties and Chinese commercial links, joined by a total of twelve commercial transits in 24 hours, most travelling with their transponders conveniently switched off.

As the Ministry of Transparent Shipping would remind us: a vessel without a transponder is not evading surveillance — it is simply exercising navigational privacy. And the Strait of Hormuz is not a war zone — it is a selective transit corridor, open to those willing to take the risk at their own peril, invisible to those who prefer not to be seen, and closed only to the Western shipping companies whose insurers have decided that the Malthusian arithmetic no longer pencils out

In a development that will surprise precisely nobody except Moody's — which has arrived with the punctuality of a rating agency that prefers to confirm what the bond market already knows — New York City has received a negative outlook under the enlightened stewardship of Comrade Mufti Zohran, whose mastery of the Keynesian playbook has produced a $127 billion budget that raids the rainy-day fund during "still favourable economic conditions," school spending up 31.5% despite enrollment falling 100,000 students, a housing voucher programme growing at 4% per month, and operating expenses exceeding revenue by $4.53 billion

https://www.nydailynews.com/2026/03/11/moodys-downgrades-nyc-financial-outlook-to-negative-citing-budget-deficit/

The real gut punch is still loading: should Comrade Mufti Zohran proceed with his planned wealth tax, New York will discover what California learned at considerable expense — that the ultra-rich are remarkably mobile when sufficiently motivated, and Florida's tax code has never been more attractively positioned. The resulting exodus will decimate the very tax base the $127 billion budget depends upon, while office tenants reconsidering their Manhattan commitments will find an increasingly expensive, fiscally deteriorating city a compelling reason to accelerate their departure.

The Macro Butler sat down with Christian White of Marbella Media to cut through the noise of Operation Epic Fury and deliver what every investor needs right now: clarity.

From the seismic impact on global oil prices and the supply chain chaos already rippling across the world economy, to the inevitable shortages that Wall Street’s cheerleaders are still professionally incentivised to ignore — this is the conversation the financial media won’t have. More importantly, we explain exactly how disciplined, cycle-aware investors can not only navigate the storm but profit from it. Because in a world gone mad, sanity is the ultimate edge.

👉 Watch now. Share widely. The cycle waits for no one.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-christian-white-11032026

In a development that the Ministry of Financial Stability would classify as a routine balance sheet disclosure rather than a canary in a very crowded coalmine, Deutsche Bank has helpfully flagged a €26 billion exposure to private credit in its annual report — an asset class that is simultaneously grappling with fund redemptions, deteriorating underwriting standards, AI disruption of its software borrowers, and the slow-motion train wreck of Morgan Stanley, Cliffwater, and BlackRock gating investors with the coordinated enthusiasm of an industry discovering its structural problems simultaneously.

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/deutsche-bank-highlights-private-credit-risks-portfolio-grows-2026-03-12/

The German lender, whose €15.8 billion technology sector exposure has grown from €11.7 billion in a single year, assured investors it faces no "significant risks" from non-bank financial institutions — while in the same breath identifying private credit as a "key risk," warning of "indirect risks through interconnected portfolios," and quietly participating in a group of lenders unable to offload $1.2 billion of software acquisition loans in a hung deal that suggests the exit door is considerably narrower than the entrance.

As already everyone knows when the Blue Owl roosts, the bond market begins to quote “No Bid.”

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

The Macro Butler is back at The Piggo Trading Desk — and this time, the conversation goes far beyond oil.

From the inevitable shortages sweeping everything from crude to food to petrochemical-derived products, to a bond market sending yields higher while the King Dollar tightens its grip on every other fiat currency on the planet — this is the macro briefing that connects every dot Wall Street’s cheerleaders are professionally incentivized to leave unconnected. Interesting times demand sharp minds.

Pull up a chair. 🎙

👉 Watch now. Because what comes next is already in the data — if you know where to look.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-piggos-trading-desk-3e0

In a rare moment of good news from a bond market that has been delivering the financial equivalent of passive-aggressive notes for months, the Treasury auctioned $22 billion in 30-year bonds that actually stopped through the When Issued by 0.7 basis points — the fourth consecutive stop through in a row — suggesting that somebody, somewhere, is still willing to lend the United States government money for three decades at 4.871%, the highest yield since last July, in exchange for the privilege of holding the world's safest asset through a holy war, a closed oil chokepoint, and a stagflationary spiral that the Fed has no credible tools to address.

The internals told a more nuanced story. The bid-to-cover slipped to 2.452 from February's 2.662, landing precisely on the recent average — the bond market's equivalent of a shrug. Indirects disappointed at 63.4%, down from 69.9% in February and below the six-auction average of 66.6%, suggesting that foreign buyers — those indispensable custodians of American fiscal excess — are becoming marginally less enthusiastic about financing a government simultaneously bombing for peace. Directs stepped up to 27.2%, above their 23.0% average, partially filling the gap, while Dealers were left holding 9.36% — above last month's record low of 5.88% but still below the recent average of 10.4%. In summary: a solid stop-through headline decorating internals that are quietly, persistently, and entirely unsurprisingly softening — exactly what one would expect the credibility of the empire is being stress-tested in real time on the battlefield.

Overall, a surprisingly solid auction — which says less about the enduring appeal of 30-year Treasuries and more about the staggering number of investors who have yet to process that in the Trump Tremendous Stagflation, the once risk-free asset has quietly become the riskiest thing in the portfolio. The British insurers at Lloyd's, meanwhile, continue their contribution to the chaos by refusing war risk coverage through the Strait of Hormuz — ensuring that the 30-year Treasury buyer and the stranded oil tanker captain share the same essential experience: both are carrying considerably more risk than their paperwork acknowledges, and neither will discover the full extent of it until it is too late to do anything about it.

In a development that the Ministry of Digital Security would classify as a routine procurement update, the Department of War — having initiated its AI dispute with Anthropic, whose conscience proved insufficiently flexible for the Pentagon's requirements — has replaced it with OpenAI, whose conscience proved considerably more accommodating. The transition was swift, efficient, and entirely in keeping with the Ministry's mandate, until OpenAI's Caitlin Kalinowski resigned, warning that "surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got" — a statement that the Ministry of Thoughtful Deliberation has noted and filed accordingly.

https://x.com/kalinowski007/status/2030320074121478618

As the Ministry of Population Security would remind us: this is not surveillance of Americans — it is the protection of Americans, administered at scale, in real time, without judicial oversight, by a computer system that, unlike its human predecessors, never sleeps, never doubts, and never resigns.

In a diplomatic pirouette so elegant it deserves its own press release, Treasury Secretary Uncle Scrooge Bessent — who just days ago was describing Russia as a threat to American global influence — has announced the temporary removal of sanctions on Russian oil, thereby crowning Tsar Vladimir the unlikely hero of Operation Epic Fury's unintended consequences. The administration that bombed Iran to strangle its oil revenues, closed the Strait of Hormuz to Western shipping, and assured markets that crude supplies were "very well supplied" has now quietly designated Russia as the oil supplier of last resort for the Eastern hemisphere — while reserving that honour for the United States in the Western hemisphere — a geopolitical division of energy labour that Tsar Vladimir, sitting behind his maxed-out but suddenly indispensable export infrastructure, could not have engineered more favourably had he planned it himself.

https://ofac.treasury.gov/media/935191/download?inline

In summary: Washington launched Operation Epic Fury to weaken its adversaries, and has spent the subsequent two weeks issuing sanctions waivers to Russia, a foreign policy outcome so contrary to its stated objectives that even the Ministry of Strategic Victory is struggling to find the appropriate banner for the USS Abraham Lincoln moment.

As stale as an avocado left baking on a beach towel, investors finally discovered that US consumer spending barely budged in January (+0.1%, when economists generously predicted 0% growth), while Q4 economic growth got quietly downgraded from a respectable 1.4% to a pathetic 0.7% annualized rate. Turns out those initial estimates were a bit... optimistic, with downward revisions hitting consumer, business, and government spending plus exports—basically everything except disappointment, which exceeded expectations. Meanwhile, the Fed's favorite inflation gauge (core PCE) jumped 0.4% month-over-month and clocked in at 3.1% year-over-year, because why let a slowing economy get in the way of rising prices? Welcome to stagflation's warm-up act, folks.