Today we learned that there is an actual wikipedia article for the "Gen Z Stare" LMAO

Does this guy know that they made him the poster child for deep traumatic dissociation? LOL

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The doomsday oil price never showed up, and the reason is quietly brilliant.

Everyone had the same number in their head, $200 a barrel, the second war shut the Strait of Hormuz, the lane that carries about a fifth of the world's oil. Brent, the global benchmark, did spike, topping out near $116 earlier this year, but $200 never came into view.

Two things stopped it, one on each side of the trade.

The buyers adjusted. Rich importers like China, Japan and South Korea burned through oil they'd stockpiled for exactly this. The poorer ones had no cushion, so they got priced out and used less, what economists politely call demand destruction.

Then the sellers opened the taps, nobody harder than the U.S. This time last year it shipped under 1 million barrels a day. The same two months this year, nearly 5 million. That wall of American oil is a big reason prices steadied instead of sprinting to $200, though it pulled U.S. pump prices up too, so the shock still hit American drivers.

And no, this wasn't a government rescue. The surge dwarfed anything released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the emergency crude stash. This was companies pumping harder and drawing down their own stockpiles.

Longer term, watch the dollar. Oil and the dollar used to move opposite ways, back when the U.S. was a big importer. Now that it sells oil to the world, that flipped, and pricey oil can lift the dollar.

But the honest read from Brooks is that oil is a sideshow. He thinks the dollar's strength is a bet that new Fed chair Kevin Warsh keeps rates high, and that markets have it wrong, that inflation is calmer than it looks and the Fed ends up cutting. Worth being straight though, that's a contrarian call, inflation is still hot above 4% and most expect the Fed to hold or hike.

The $200 panic missed the quiet machinery underneath, buyers rationing, sellers flooding, and America pumping like never before. The shock was real. The apocalypse just got out-produced.

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NYC Council Member Nantasha Williams introduced a proposal that would raise council members’ salaries by 18.2%, from $148,500 to $175,500, retroactive to January.

The bill would also raise the mayor’s salary from $258,750 to $305,800 and create automatic annual pay increases of at least 2% going forward. Williams has sold the raise as a necessary “cost-of-living adjustment.”

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