The United States Postal Service — a federally backed institution that absorbed fuel costs through two World Wars, the 1970s oil embargo, and four decades of fiscal mismanagement — has announced its first-ever fuel surcharge of 8%, effective late April and lasting into 2027. The organisation that survived everything has apparently met its match in Operation Epic F**k-Up. The logic is straightforward: war disrupts energy, energy drives transportation, transportation drives costs, and costs eventually reach the consumer via whatever vehicle remains — including, apparently, a first-class stamp.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/postal-service-implement-first-ever-fuel-surcharge-amid-mounting-fuel-costs-financial-challenges

When the Post Office imposes a fuel surcharge for the first time in its history, the Federal Reserve's inflation narrative has not merely been challenged. It has been delivered, with an 8% markup, to your front door.

The Ministry of War of the Empire just announced, with characteristic subtlety, that the Army has raised its enlistment age from 35 to 42 and quietly dispensed with marijuana conviction waivers — of course, not because it is preparing for a prolonged ground war in Persia, but because it has suddenly recognised changing social attitudes toward cannabis. The timing, coinciding with talk of boots on the ground in a country of 90 million motivated defenders, is entirely coincidental. The Ministry wishes to clarify that this is not a recruitment crisis. It is an inclusivity initiative.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/army-raises-maximum-age-as-trump-plots-putting-boots-on-ground/ar-AA1ZpBRC?ocid=winp2fptaskbar&cvid=69c54d257aaf4a53b8ab69d78fcb44a4&ei=9

The pattern is, of course, unprecedented and entirely unrelated to the last time the Army raised its enlistment age to 42 — which was 2006, when two simultaneous wars were consuming more bodies than voluntary recruitment could supply. Standards were lowered then too, criminal waivers surged, and the Army took what it could get. The Ministry assures the public that this time is different. This time it is about fairness. The roughly 75% of young Americans currently disqualified from service by physical, mental, or legal limitations are being given a second chance — not because the Empire is quietly preparing for something considerably larger than peacetime operations, but out of sheer democratic generosity.

First comes the age waiver. Then the drug waiver. Then the criminal waiver. Then, as history reliably demonstrates, comes the draft. The Ministry reports there are no plans for a draft. There never are, right up until there are.

The Macro Butler is back on Piggo’s Trading Desk — and he didn’t come to spare Washington the truth.

From navigating the greatest oil disruption in modern history to uncovering the last remaining investment opportunities in a world on fire, this is the interview where no question was too dangerous and no answer too polished.

US LNG supply chains, regime change in Washington, and why Making America Great Again apparently forgot to include actual Americans — it’s all on the table.

🎙 Pull up a chair. Pour something strong. Take notes.

👉 Watch now — because while the Empire burns, the smart money is already moving. Will yours?

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-piggos-trading-desk-d79

After 28 years navigating macro chaos — from geopolitical shocks to the Covid era — and more than two years building The Macro Butler independently through inflation, war, and monetary disorder…

It’s time.

Time to bring this community into one room.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-macro-butler-world-economic-summit

The University of Michigan has delivered the first real consumer sentiment reading since Operation Epic F**k-Up commenced, and the results are, shockingly, not a ringing endorsement of holy war as economic policy. The March sentiment index fell to 53.3 — a three-month low — with two-thirds of responses collected after the Iran war began, meaning Americans had sufficient time to notice that gasoline had risen $1 a gallon and that their grocery bill was not only not improving but will soon be much higher. Year-ahead inflation expectations jumped to 3.8%, the biggest monthly increase since April 2025, while 47% of respondents spontaneously volunteered that prices are actively eroding their personal finances — a figure that suggests the Federal Reserve's inflation narrative has not yet achieved broad public acceptance.

Most entertainingly, it is middle- and higher-income consumers — the stock-owning, discretionary-spending backbone of the American economy — who recorded the largest sentiment drops, buffeted simultaneously by surging gasoline prices and volatile financial markets.

The consumer, in other words, is not buying the victory lap. They are, however, buying considerably less of everything else.

🤵 The Macro Butler Weekly Digest 🤵

🌐 Economic warfare is the silent battlefield where empires clash—not with armies, but with currencies, commodities, and control. 🌐

Read more here: https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/economic-warfare-the-invisible-battlefield

If it were not for the bombs, the body bags, the burning cities, and the generations of trauma quietly accumulating behind the headlines, Donald Copperfield's War One Show would be the greatest unintentional cartoon comedy in the history of American television — complete with a magician-in-chief who makes aircraft carriers disappear, pulls victory declarations out of an empty hat, and saws the global economy in half while assuring the audience it will be fine.

The writing is extraordinary, the characters are unforgettable, and the special effects budget is, by any measure, spectacular. Unfortunately, the extras are real people.