It got worse. A bid-to-cover of 2.440 — the lowest since May 2024 — confirmed that the world's appetite for American debt is shrinking as fast as its diplomatic credibility. The real horror show, however, was the Direct bidders — traditionally the "smart money" — faceplanting from 42.3% to a catastrophic 16.50%, the lowest since March 2025, leaving the hapless Dealers involuntarily absorbing 24.12% of the auction, their largest share since October 2022. Translation: when nobody else wants America's IOUs, the banks get stuck holding them. A fitting metaphor for the Epic F..ck Up operation itself — when the plan falls apart, someone else gets handed the bill.

In summary, the once-sacred "risk-free asset" — that cornerstone of every portfolio, textbook, and central banking prayer — has completed its transformation into the riskiest instrument in global finance.

The auction was, in the politest possible terms, a disaster — a fitting tombstone for the era of unquestioned American financial dominance. When the world's reserve currency starts tailing its own debt auctions at the worst levels in years, the message from global investors is clear: the empire's IOUs are only as good as its judgment, and the jury on that particular question has very recently returned its verdict.

In a perfectly timed contribution to the Epic F..ck Up symphony, Russia — controlling 47% of global ammonium nitrate production and 37% of exports — has casually announced a month-long export halt just as the Northern Hemisphere prepares to plant the crops that will feed the world. Because apparently bombing Iran's fertilizer infrastructure wasn't quite enough agricultural disruption for one season, the Warmonger-in-Chief's greatest strategic achievement may yet prove to be not a military victory, but a global food crisis — delivered on schedule, just in time for spring planting.

A distinguished guest list of collateral damage: Brazil feeding South America, Canada feeding North America, India feeding a billion and a half people, Peru, and the already war-ravaged Ukraine — all now scrambling for ammonium nitrate from a supplier that just switched off the tap. The Epic Fury coalition, having successfully disrupted Middle Eastern fertilizer production, blocked the Strait of Hormuz, and now triggered Russian export restrictions, has achieved what no singular military operation ever could: a comprehensive, multinational food supply crisis delivered with the efficiency only a Malthusian agenda could admire.

The Epic Fury coalition's masterpiece is revealing its full composition: an energy shock seamlessly metastasizing into a fertilizer crisis, with a food price catastrophe politely scheduled for delivery 6-9 months from now — just in time for maximum political inconvenience. Former central bankers, and Bloomberg strategists are queuing up to confirm what anyone paying attention already knew: bomb the Strait of Hormuz, starve the farms, feed the inflation. Tsar Vladimir, meanwhile, collects energy revenues, halts ammonium nitrate exports, and watches Western agricultural markets implode with the quiet satisfaction of a chess player who never needed to fire a single shot.

The 1970s food shock was actually worse than the oil shock — a historical footnote the Warmonger-in-Chief presumably skipped while planning the most comprehensively self-defeating military operation in modern history.

The reality of this world is that the architects of perpetual war have never had the inconvenience of fighting one. Neocons, Brussels technocrats, Washington Plutocrats and the broader class of Malthusian strategists who treat geopolitical conflict as an intellectual exercise share one defining characteristic: their own children are never on the draft list. Germany is now moving toward conscripting women — framed, with breathtaking audacity, as a progressive equality measure rather than what it plainly is: a manpower calculation by governments preparing for a prolonged war they have no intention of ending. Caesar led from the battlefield; today's political class leads from the green room. The public, predictably, is not consulted — governments are no longer designing policy around consent but around their own war timelines, and Witch Ursula's public statements are, by definition, the sanitised version.

The cynical truth is straightforward: the people who start wars and the people who die in them have never been the same people, and there is no evidence that arrangement is about to change.

As the world holds its breath awaiting the next instalment of Operation Epstein Fury, the Empire quietly passed the hat around for $70 billion in 5-year paper — because nothing funds a holy war quite like the bond market's continued generosity. The auction cleared at a high yield of 3.966%, a brisk jump from February's 3.608% and the highest since May 2025, while tailing the When Issued by 1.4 basis points — the biggest tail since October 2024.

In plain English: investors demanded more yield to absorb America's debt, and even then, not enthusiastically. One might have expected the world's reserve currency issuer to command slightly more reverence from its creditors. One would, apparently, be mistaken.

The demand picture was, to deploy the technical term, underwhelming. The bid-to-cover ratio fell to 2.29 from 2.32 — the lowest since September 2022 — confirming that foreign and domestic enthusiasm for financing America's geopolitical adventures is quietly but measurably eroding. Indirects slipped to 61.9% from 62.5%, Directs fell to 22.48% from 24.70%, their lowest since May 2025, and primary dealers — the buyers of last resort, the ones who have no choice — were left holding 15.6% of the auction, the most since May 2024.

In a nutshell, another ugly auction, marginally less catastrophic than Tuesday's 2-year sale — which is roughly the equivalent of describing a hospital visit as slightly better than a funeral.

At precisely the moment the United States is about to unleash a surge of war-related deficit financing on an already skeptical market, investor demand is quietly but unmistakably retreating.

The asset once enshrined as the global risk-free benchmark — then weaponized as a geopolitical instrument — is being repriced accordingly. The Empire's credit card remains open. The limit is not.

The Macro Butler, ever the dutiful sage, returned to Asharq Bloomberg TV to dispense what the ancient masters would recognize as self-evident wisdom: peace, in the presence of active warfare, remains a decorative concept best admired from a distance. The superior investor, therefore, prepares for the worst, hopes for the best, and quietly accumulates oil exposure as the crude of the Middle East finds itself detained behind what history will record as the world’s most expensive toll booth.

As Confucius might have said ‘The man who controls the gate controls the road’. Iran, it appears, has read the classics.

The interview has been translated into Arabic.

https://themacrobutler.substack.com/p/interview-with-asharq-bloomberg-tv-289

After spreading illusionary hope of peace, the Ministry of Peace announces, with its customary confidence, that the war which was won decisively in the first hour continues to require winning. The Warmonger-in-Chief, having declared total victory over an adversary that is still launching missiles, has taken to Truth Social — that hallowed organ of official reality — to inform the public that Iran is negotiating in bad faith, a conclusion reached after American strikes eliminated the previous delegation Iran had dispatched to Geneva for talks before the start of ‘Epstein Fury’. The Ministry wishes to clarify that bombing a negotiating party does not constitute bad faith. It constitutes winning.

The next phase of the operation, which does not yet officially exist, will involve deploying ground forces to Persia — a development that the Ministry prefers to describe as boots on the ground rather than young Americans sent to die in a country their Commander-in-Chief has already defeated every day since day o the military excursion. The public was once again reminded that the war is going extremely well. It has always been going extremely well. Doubting this is, of course, negotiating in bad faith.

The mystery of gold's precipitous decline since Operation Epic F**k-Up commenced has been partially solved, and the culprit is, appropriately, a country that has spent a decade loudly de-dollarizing only to quietly liquidate $8 billion worth of gold the moment things got uncomfortable. Turkey's central bank sold and swapped approximately 60 tons of bullion in two weeks — more than 10% of its total holdings — to defend a lira that is, despite the best efforts of state-run banks and creative accounting, not enjoying the war. The irony is exquisite: Ankara spent years aggressively accumulating gold to reduce its dependence on the US dollar and has now pledged that same gold as collateral to borrow US dollars. The de-dollarisation strategy, one notes, has been temporarily suspended for dollar-denominated emergencies.

Turkey's predicament is, structurally, a preview of what awaits any energy-importing nation caught between $100 oil, a weakening currency, and 31.5% inflation. Officials have responded with the traditional toolkit — liquidity tightening, currency intervention, and hoping nobody notices — while sitting on an estimated $30 billion of gold reserves at the Bank of England, which JPMorgan has helpfully identified as available for intervention "without logistical constraints." In other words, there is more where that came from. The broader message, which markets are beginning to absorb, is that the war in Iran is not merely an energy shock — it is a balance-of-payments stress test for every country that imports oil and exports optimism.

As peace negotiations performed their customary role of theatrical distraction for the second act of the Persian Gulf excursion, the Empire quietly passed around the hat for another $44 billion — this time in 7-year paper. The auction cleared at a high yield of 4.255%, a brisk leap from February's 3.790% and the highest since January 2025, while tailing the When Issued by 0.8 basis points — the biggest tail since August 2024.

The internals maintained the week's proud tradition of disappointment. The bid-to-cover fell to 2.432 from 2.498 — the lowest since September 2025. Indirects dropped to 62.56%, the lowest since December 2025. Dealers rose to 12.41%, the highest since November, absorbing what foreigners and directs declined to take with their usual absence of enthusiasm. Three auctions this week, three sets of ugly internals, three polite messages from the bond market that the Empire's credit remains acceptable — at an increasingly non-trivial premium. A slow puncture, as always, until it isn't.

Another ugly auction, completing a week of Treasury issuance that will not be remembered fondly by anyone whose job involves selling American debt. Foreign demand was not catastrophic — merely anaemic, which in the current context passes for reassuring.

The trajectory, however, is unambiguous: more and more investors are quietly arriving at the conclusion that financing a holy war with no exit strategy, no peace negotiations, and no functioning fiscal restraint requires compensation that the 4.255% yield on offer only partially provides.

The asset that once enjoyed the theological status of risk-free is being gradually, politely, and quite expensively repriced as precisely the opposite — the riskiest altar at which the Empire is currently sacrificing its creditors.

The Ministry of Victory announces, with its customary confidence, that Operation Epic F**k-Up has now completed its first month of decisive, uninterrupted success. The Iranian military, which was obliterated in the first hour, has responded to its own destruction by rendering thirteen American military bases across the Gulf "all but uninhabitable" — a development the Pentagon neglected to mention for three weeks, satellite imagery firms agreed to not photograph, and the New York Times has only now been permitted to describe as "a war that is much harder to prosecute." The Ministry wishes to clarify that this is not a setback. It is remote work.

https://archive.ph/e7yOL#selection-835.0-849.174

Some 40,000 American troops, dispersed as far as Europe by Iran's supposedly non-existent ballistic missile capability, are now conducting the war from hotels and civilian office complexes — a tactical innovation the IRGC has thoughtfully responded to by inviting local Muslims to report on American "hiding places" and clarifying that hotels sheltering US personnel will henceforth be considered military targets. The troops are reminded that this is not a retreat. It is flexible working arrangements. The Pentagon further notes that while Bagram and Baghdad were occasionally inconvenienced by suicide bombings, neither the Taliban nor Iraqi militias possessed the ballistic missile arsenal that Iran — which has been obliterated — apparently still operates with considerable enthusiasm.

The Ministry reports that everything is going extremely well. It has always been going extremely well. The hotels, meanwhile, are fully booked.