“Some cuts may be necessary.”
(H/T Scissorhead Purplehead)

Professor Krugman saw the same thing we did the other day:

“Over the weekend Donald Trump threatened dire vengeance on Iran unless its government opened the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, a deadline that would expire Monday evening in Washington. Specifically, he announced that the U.S. would begin bombing power plants — plants that supply electricity to Iran’s civilian population — unless the Strait was cleared.”

“But at 7:05 AM Monday Trump called the whole thing off — for five days, he said, but many people are assuming that the threatened action, which would have been a massive war crime, is now off the table.”

“The reason for the about-face, he claimed, was that the U.S. was engaged in productive negotiations with Iranian officials — although this seems to have come as news to the Iranians, who denied that any such negotiations are taking place. Sad to say, in this case, as I tried to explain yesterday, the fanatical, brutal Iranian regime is more credible than the president of the United States. Is he lying or living in a fantasy world? Neither possibility is comforting.”

“But in any case, Trump’s sudden climb-down was startling. Who could have seen this coming?”

[TACO…]

“The answer is, the person or people who bought large quantities of stock market futures and sold large quantities of oil futures around 15 minutes before Trump’s announcement.”

The Krug then points us to CNBC:

“At around 6:50 a.m. in New York, S&P 500 e-Mini futures trading on the CME recorded a sharp and isolated jump in volume, breaking from an otherwise subdued premarket backdrop. With thin liquidity typical of early trading hours, the sudden burst stood out as one of the largest volume moments of the session up to that point.”

“A similar pattern was observed in oil markets. West Texas Intermediate May futures also saw a noticeable pickup in trading activity at roughly the same time, with a distinct volume spike interrupting otherwise quiet conditions.”

Krugman notes that there was “no major news items — no major publicly available news items — to drive sudden big market transactions.” In other words, it was someone with insider information.

Then Krugman drops the bomb (back to his Substack):

When officers of a company or people close to them exploit confidential information for personal financial gain, that’s insider trading — which is illegal. But we have another word for situations in which people with access to confidential information regarding national security — such as plans to bomb or not to bomb another country — exploit that information for profit. That word is “treason.”

Now, it’s one thing for me, a Cheeto-stained wretch —lowly and squat— to post things from their mom’s basements, it’s quite another when a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences-winning economist and verily trusted pundit proclaims it.

Anyway, here’s his reasoning:

“Why is profiting from insider information about national security decisions effectively a form of treason? First, it’s hard to think of a more fundamental principle for officials we entrust with important decisions, especially those that involve national security, that they or people they know should not be allowed to exploit their positions for personal gain.”

“Second, financial trading based on what should be closely held secrets reveals information to current or potential foreign adversaries. To exaggerate a bit, but only a bit, who needs to bribe agents within the government, or recruit them with honey traps, when you can infer the same information by keeping track of transactions on futures markets?”

“Finally, there isn’t that big a gap between using knowledge of national secrets to make lucrative financial trades and simply selling those secrets to the highest bidder. Once you’re breached the line that says you shouldn’t profit personally from access to information that is or should be highly classified, the line between trading based on state secrets and selling those secrets directly is a blurry one.”

“In fact, I’d very much like to know exactly who was making those trades yesterday morning. Were they people directly in the know, or billionaires/traders who paid people in the know for tips?”

And I’m sure our AG Ursula, er, Pam Bondi will hop right on it and give Ka$sh Patel an extra Milk Bone if he finds out.

I would start the search directly with Junior Mints, but that’s just me. With the possible exception of the second daughter What’s-Her-Name, there is not a single member of The Orange 🤡 Crime Family that wouldn’t stiff the country for the price of a cheeseburger.

And I wouldn’t be a damn bit surprised if it didn’t start at the top with the Big Cheese, hisself.

Related, but maybe too narrow:

Sens. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and John Curtis (R-UT) introduced a bill to curb sports betting on government-regulated prediction market platforms, such as Kalshi and Polymarket. “Too many young people in Utah are getting exposed to addictive sports betting and casino-style gaming contracts that belong under state control, not under federal regulators,” Curtis said in a statement. It’s the first bipartisan legislation aimed at reining in prediction markets.