The 10-day deadline — itself an extension of a 5-day deadline, suggesting that Iranian compliance operates on a sliding scale — is running out, while the US has simultaneously stripped nearly its entire inventory of JASSM-ER cruise missiles from the Pacific to deploy against a war it already won, leaving 425 available for every other conflict on earth, including the one over Taiwan that China is watching with considerable interest. The aura of invincibility, it appears, has developed some aerodynamic difficulties. Glory be to God.

In a diplomatic masterstroke of breathtaking audacity, the Empire has instructed its puppet monarch of Bahrain to petition the United Nations to endorse the reopening of a strait that the Empire's own war effectively closed — a request that China, displaying the Confucian gift for recognising the obvious, has declined to support with the enthusiasm one reserves for being asked to validate the arsonist's insurance claim. The logic is, by any measure, spectacular: having launched a war next to the world's most critical energy chokepoint, disrupted 20% of global oil supply, and spread energy shortages across a planet, the Empire now seeks multilateral legitimacy for undoing the consequences of its own actions — via a hereditary monarchy whose sovereign independence extends approximately to the edge of the American naval base it hosts.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/bahrain-hopes-vote-revised-hormuz-resolution-friday-2026-04-02/

China's veto, delivered without apparent irony, reflects the Confucian wisdom that the superior nation does not endorse the agenda of the power that created the crisis it now volunteers to resolve. The Strait remains closed to the ships of the Empire. The UN remains unpersuaded.

The oil price has risen further like Jesus on Easter Sunday. And the depopulation agenda, that most ambitious of Washington and Tel Aviv's strategic objectives, continues to price itself into every grocery bill, fuel receipt from Montevideo to Tokyo.

Happy Easter Everyone!

While Operation Epic F**k-Up drains American military capacity and the Ukrainian meat grinder continues its Malthusian harvest, Eurostan is ensuring its young men remain conveniently locatable, properly registered, and no more than one bureaucratic decision away from being told that their approval has, regrettably, been reconsidered. The Ministry of Peace reports that this is not conscription. It has always not been conscription.

In Eurostan, effective immediately, the German Reich — has determined that young men aged 17 to 45 wishing to leave the country for more than three months must first obtain permission from the Bundeswehr Career Center, because nothing says "voluntary military service" quite like requiring state approval to take a gap year. The Military Service Modernization Act, which sounds considerably more benign than "we are quietly preparing a conscription infrastructure while insisting everything remains voluntary," has moved restrictions previously reserved for declared states of war into permanent peacetime policy — a distinction the Ministry of Defence assures is entirely procedural, since approvals are almost always granted. Almost always.

https://www.euronews.com/2026/04/04/conscription-law-men-now-need-approval-for-trips-abroad

For those whose attention span extends beyond the last five minutes of a TikTok scroll, a brief historical reminder: once upon a time in 2019, the current Warmonger-in-Chief presented himself to the American electorate as the Peace Maker-in-Chief — the man who would drain the swamp, end the forever wars, and deliver his citizens from the Neocon agenda that has reliably bankrupted the Empire in blood and treasure since 1945. That was, of course, before he launched Operation Epic F**k-Up, began sending troops into another Middle Eastern quagmire projected to cost trillions, and declined to release the Epstein files that might have explained which particular swamp residents he was actually protecting. The transformation from Peace Maker to Warmonger is, by any measure, a remarkable character arc — one that students of Washington's revolving door of plutocratic self-interest will find entirely unsurprising, even if the voters who believed the original pitch do not.

What would cause a man to change so much? The ancient answer, as always, is the same: follow the money, follow the files, and note carefully which promises evaporate the moment the Oval Office door closes behind them.

Iranian drones struck Kuwait's power generation plants, water desalination facilities, the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation's Shuwaikh oil complex, and a government office complex — a single evening's retaliation for the Empire's Easter Weekend strikes on Iran's Mahshahr Petrochemical Zone. No casualties were reported, which is the sole consolation available in an escalation that has extended the conflict to a country that was not, technically, a party to the original holy war. The puppet monarchies of the Gulf, toasted whatever the outcome, are receiving their invoice. It is arriving by drone, on a Sunday, without warning and without red lines — because the war that was won on Hour 1 of Day 1 has never recognised any.

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/fire-erupts-kuwaits-shuwaikh-oil-sector-complex-after-drone-attack-state-news-2026-04-05/

From the Oval Office, the ‘Theocrat-in-Chief’ summoned divine authority to sanctify Operation Epic F**k-Up. From his Easter pulpit, the Vicar of Christ delivered the Almighty's unambiguous response: God rejects the prayers of those who wage war and turns His face from hands full of blood. The mystics have always taught that those who invoke heaven most loudly are often furthest from its grace.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTE_I7YLo4g&t=1s

In a world where theocrats of every denomination — whether they reside in Washington, Tel Aviv, or Tehran — compete to invoke the divine in service of decidedly earthly ambitions, the most radical act available to the ordinary human being remains the simplest: step away from the noise, gather with those you love, reflect on what truly matters, and remember that every dark chapter in history has eventually turned the page. Uncertainty is not the absence of a path forward — it is merely the condition under which that path must be found. It has always been found.

🔗 Click the link to subscribe to The Macro Butler on Substack and register for the Financial Academy NOW.

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In the hallowed spirit of Easter, the Warmonger-in-Chief ascended unto Truth Social to describe the Iranian people as "crazy bastards" and threaten to consign them to darkness and hell — a seasonal greeting that the Pope, having just reminded the world that God rejects the prayers of those with hands full of blood, will have received with considerable theological dismay.

The coin toss between Washington's theocrat and Tehran's theocrat as to which produces the more unhinged proclamations has become genuinely competitive — both convinced of divine approval, both unmoved by civilian suffering, and both apparently unaware that the most reliable definition of a crazy bastard is determined not by one's enemies but by one's mirror. The Malthusian theocrats of all denominations have, this Easter, achieved a rare moment of perfect symmetry. The rest of humanity is simply trying to have Easter lunch in peace.

While Asia honored its ancestors at Ching Ming and the West nursed its Easter hangover, The Macro Butler was already live on Asharq Bloomberg TV delivering the only macro briefing that matters right now.

The verdict on Operation Epic F**k-Up’s impact on Asian economies, currencies, and financial markets? Brace for the worst, hope for the best — and if you’re not already rotating out of energy consumers and into energy producers across Asia, the clock is ticking.

🎙 The trade is clear. The window is closing.

👉 Watch now — because in this market, the early bird doesn’t just get the worm. It gets the barrel. 🛢

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-asharq-bloomberg-tv-d22

🙏 Easter Sunday blessings from the Oval Office:

Pope: "God rejects the prayers of those with hands full of blood." ✝️

DJT on Truth Social: "CRAZY BASTARDS! I'll send them to HELL!" 🔥

The Pope: 😶

Jesus: 😶

God's voicemail: 📵

Happy Easter everyone. He is risen. So is the oil price. ⛽️😂

In a development that will surprise no student of geopolitical geography, Asia has discovered that being a loyal vassal of the Empire carries certain structural disadvantages when the Empire closes the world's most critical oil chokepoint. Southeast Asia has already absorbed the first wave — price hikes across the region, long queues at petrol kiosks in Thailand and Malaysia as citizens raced to fill their tanks before governments quietly removed the price caps they had implemented in the opening hours of the Epic F**k-Up — a policy reversal that occurred with the speed of a finance ministry that had done the arithmetic. But the long-term casualties, as always, will be the Empire's most devoted pupils: Japan, South Korea, and Singapore — three economies that not only import the overwhelming majority of their oil from the Middle East but have, with admirable imperial loyalty, neglected to develop either energy independence or domestic food production.

Singapore, that gleaming monument to free trade and American imperialistic obedience, imports virtually every calorie its population consumes and produces not a single barrel of the oil that delivers those calories to its shores.

The Persian Gulf monarchies, at least, sit on top of the oil. Singapore merely sits on top of the bill. The Empire's most reliable allies have, once again, been positioned perfectly to absorb the maximum consequences of a war they are supporting behind the curtain. The vassal experience, it turns out, has not improved with age.

The US service sector has delivered a March report of such exquisite stagflationary symmetry that even the most propagandistic Washington elite will struggle to reframe it as transitory. The ISM services index fell to 54 while the prices paid gauge surged to 70.7 — its highest since October 2022 — recording the largest single-month jump in nearly 14 years, an achievement comparable only to the manufacturing survey's simultaneous deterioration, suggesting that Operation Epic F**k-Up is delivering its inflationary consequences to both sectors with admirable impartiality. Employment at service providers slumped 6.6 points to 45.2 — one of the largest monthly declines since the pandemic — confirming that the economy is achieving the rare distinction of simultaneously generating fewer jobs and higher prices.

Companies, displaying the survival instincts of organisms that can read an energy bill, are stockpiling inventories against supply chain disruptions while reporting higher gas and diesel costs across virtually every industry.