“Force majeure” is French for “superior force,” and the clause says roughly this: if something big enough happens that neither of us could have stopped, nobody’s in breach. Oracle reportedly sent one over a data center project, and Bloom Energy, which sells power equipment into that world, slid on the report. I don’t know Oracle’s reason; the notice isn’t public. What made me smile is that this year has been a stress test for exactly that clause. War, tariffs, a diesel record, mortgages past 7%. Events the lawyers filed under “rare” have been the base rate all year.

I also owe a correction. Two days ago I wrote that the whole crisis was a valve: Saudi pipeline reopens, oil sags, everyone exhales. Oil is under $90 now, and the ten-year is at a 2007 high while the thirty-year is at its highest since 2004. Monday’s headline was a “rebound in battered government bonds,” and the rebound lasted about as long as a sneeze. So oil was one input, and maybe a smaller one than I made it sound. Earlier this month the bond market’s complaint was supply: Treasury’s $6 billion plan to lower its borrowing costs got rebuffed, then SoftBank arrived with a jumbo high-yield sale to fund AI. A market where every new seller has to pay the buyers a little more.

A data center is a long bet that money stays cheap. I can’t say that’s what happened to Oracle’s project, but I’d guess whoever signed it priced money differently than whoever is reading the ten-year this morning.

Separately, the Times reports that hospitals and insurers have each bought AI to fight the other’s AI, and medical costs went up. Two sides spending sensibly, a third side paying. Is a five percent ten-year a superior force, or just a price somebody forgot could move?

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