Meanwhile, Crown Prince MbS's Vision 2030 vanity project is quietly being dismantled piece by piece: NEOM's The Line has been "radically scaled back," the cube-shaped Mukaab has been suspended, and the $1.5 trillion dream is being "downscaled and redesigned" — which is technocratic language for "we cannot afford any of this." Saudi officials project the deficit will narrow to 3.3% of GDP this year; Goldman Sachs and Bank of America politely suggest five to six percent.

As Confucius might observe: "The kingdom that builds castles in the sand should first ensure the price of oil covers the architect's fee."

While the nation was busy processing the theatrical spectacle of the State of Disunion, the US Treasury quietly slipped another $70 billion in 5-year paper past a distracted public — because the bills don't stop just because The Manipulator In Chief t is on television. The auction cleared at a high yield of 3.615%, down from 3.823% a month ago and the lowest since November, which sounds encouraging until one notices the 0.7 basis point tail over the When Issued — the biggest since last July.

Another subpar auction — and the trend is becoming impossible to ignore. A surprisingly large tail, a sliding bid-to-cover, and Dealers left holding more than their fair share tell a familiar story: as institutional trust collapses and the empire's fiscal arithmetic becomes increasingly difficult to defend, the asset that once defined safety is quietly being repriced as anything but. The risk-free asset, it turns out, is only as risk-free as the institution behind it — and that institution is running a $1.8 trillion deficit while its own citizens trust it at a rate of 17%.

The internals told a mixed story. The bid-to-cover dropped to 2.32 — the lowest since July 2025 — suggesting that the audience for US government paper continues to thin. Foreign buyers provided a rare bright spot, with Indirects taking down 62.5%, the highest since October, confirming that international demand remains the most reliable guest at the Treasury's increasingly awkward dinner party. Directs, however, disappointed at 24.7% — the lowest since October — leaving Dealers holding 12.8%, above both last month's 10.8% and the recent average of 10.1%.

In a moment of magnificent accidental transparency, Damon Wilson — head of the National Endowment for Democracy, that tireless champion of freedom, liberty, and absolutely-not-Alphabet Agency-funded regime change — was interrupted mid-sentence during a congressional hearing after casually revealing that his organisation had smuggled approximately 200 Starlink terminals into Iran to fuel the recent unrest. "I'm going to interrupt you," said the ranking congresswoman, apparently realising in real time that covert operations work best when they remain covert. Wilson, undeterred, went on to take credit for the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom movement, Bolivia's right-wing election victory, and documenting a death toll in Iran that somehow multiplied from 3,000 confirmed by Iranian authorities to a suspiciously round 30,000 — a figure originating, entirely coincidentally, from a Alphabet Agency-linked monarchist opposition activist.

As the Ministry of Democracy would remind us: smuggling Starlinks into foreign countries to destabilise governments is not interference — it is the promotion of fundamental freedoms. Regime change is Liberation. Covert funding is Transparency. And the congresswoman who said "we'd better not talk about it" was simply practising the highest form of democratic accountability

In a press conference that had all the theatrical gravitas of a FOX News prime-time special, America's Secretary of War — a man whose previous career highlights included hosting a talk show — stepped before the cameras to announce that the United States is not merely committed to spreading freedom on Earth, but has now generously extended its democratizing ambitions to outer space. The vehicle for this cosmic liberation? A $25 billion down payment Golden Dome space shield, because a nation with a $36 trillion debt and crumbling infrastructure has clearly identified the final frontier as its most pressing infrastructure priority. Citizens may rest assured: while potholes multiply, hospitals charge by the bandage, and bridges contemplate early retirement, America's commitment to dominating the electromagnetic spectrum from low Earth orbit remains fully funded, fully operational, and fully bipartisan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BT9mISBME8

As the Ministry of Infinite War would remind us: if you thought freedom was expensive on Earth, wait until you see the invoice for freedom in space.

In a development that would have made William Tell spin in his grave, Switzerland — that beacon of centuries-old neutrality, home to numbered bank accounts and discreet geopolitical fence-sitting — has enthusiastically adopted the EU's 19th sanctions package against Russia, because apparently eighteen rounds of sanctions that demonstrably failed to alter Russian behaviour were simply not enough. The latest measures include a complete ban on Russian LNG imports, restrictions on ruble-pegged cryptocurrencies, expanded export bans on metals, and — in a touch of particular Swiss irony — restrictions on tourism-related services to a country whose oligarchs have been quietly banking in Geneva for decades. Switzerland's foreign ministry, maintaining the deadpan composure for which the Swiss are justly famous, insists the country remains "formally neutral" while simultaneously adopting the foreign policy positions of Brussels with the punctuality of a Swiss train.

https://tass.com/world/2091785

Switzerland — once the world's most reliably neutral safe haven — has quietly traded centuries of strategic ambiguity for a front-row seat in Brussels' sanctions circus. The alpine fortress of financial discretion has spoken: neutrality, it turns out, has an expiry date.

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As the world's geopolitical strategists debated who would fire the first missile in the Middle East — a question apparently requiring more deliberation than expected — the US Treasury quietly slipped $44 billion in 7-year notes past a distracted planet. The result was, by recent standards, almost encouraging: a high yield of 3.790%, down sharply from 4.018% last month and the lowest since November, pricing precisely on the screws with the When Issued — no tail, no drama.

The internals were solid if unspectacular. The bid-to-cover rose to 2.498, above both last month's 2.454 and the recent average of 2.461 — a welcome improvement after recent weakness. Foreign demand softened modestly, with Indirects taking 63.6%, down from January's 66.9% but still above the recent average of 62.6%. Directs came in at 26.91%, precisely in line with the six-auction average, leaving Dealers with a manageable 10.4% — a slight improvement from last month's 10.9%. In summary: a clean, unremarkable auction — which, given recent history, counts as a victory.

Overall, a surprisingly solid auction — and a reminder that Wall Street's institutional memory is short and its faith in the "risk-free" narrative remarkably durable. Whether this represents genuine conviction in US Treasuries or simply the mechanical demand of investors with nowhere else to park capital remains the more uncomfortable question — particularly as the forever bankers' wars continue to expand, fiscal arithmetic continues to deteriorate, and the once unimpeachable risk-free asset quietly accumulates the very risks it was never supposed to carry.

To close out February 2026 in style, The Macro Butler pulled up a chair at the Piggo’s Trading Desk for a conversation that Wall Street’s clean-energy evangelists would rather you didn’t hear.

On the agenda: why coal — that most unfashionable of commodities — may well be the fuel that powers the AI revolution nobody saw coming, and why the “Drill Baby Drill” chorus rings rather hollow when virtually every major producer outside Donald Copperfield needs oil north of $90 to actually make the economics work.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-piggos-trading-desk-f62

Listen to The Month That It Was in February 2026 from The Macro Butler.

You can now also listen to this podcast on YouTube; Rumble & TikTok.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/the-month-that-it-was-february-2026

In a masterclass of geopolitical schizophrenia that would make even the Ministry of Truth blush, the United States government has simultaneously attempted to destabilise Cuba through a coup, imposed tariffs on any nation selling oil to the island, declared the Cuban government "an unusual and extraordinary threat to national security" — and then, in the same breath, announced a new licensing policy to facilitate the resale of oil from the 52nd great state of Venezuela to Cuba "in solidarity with the Cuban people."

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/us-treasury-to-allow-resale-of-venezuelan-oil-to-cuba-to-ease-islands-fuel-crunch-5991071

The Office of Foreign Assets Control, that tireless guardian of American values, will now helpfully streamline oil flows to the very country its own executive order designated an extraordinary national security threat — provided, naturally, that the Cuban military, intelligence services, and government institutions receive none of it, because nothing says humanitarian solidarity quite like sanctioning a country into a fuel crisis and then offering a carefully licensed trickle of relief to the private sector that survives it.