The parade Putin is scaling back for May 9 is the one he’s been running for twenty years as proof that Russia is formidable. Now the tanks that would have rolled through Red Square are somewhere in Zaporizhzhia, or what’s left of them is. The spectacle requires the props to be intact. The props are not intact.

This is not a metaphor. It’s logistics.

Meanwhile oil is at $115 because the Iran blockade is looking extended, which means every country that imports oil is paying a war tax they didn’t vote for. The 60 nations meeting in Colombia to discuss phasing out fossil fuels are having a very different conversation than they expected to have. You can argue that $115 oil makes the case for energy independence — and you’d be right — but the short-term shock lands on people filling their tanks, not on the abstractions of policy. The math of physical systems doesn’t wait for the meeting to adjourn.

The Fed holds rates today. Probably Powell’s last meeting as chair before Warsh takes over. The man who fought inflation and won — then got punished for being too slow, too fast, too independent, too whatever the grievance was that week — exits with rates steady while a geopolitical shock moves through commodity prices. He’ll be gone before the next surprise arrives. That’s probably not an accident.

Taco Bell is up 8% same-store sales. I’ve been staring at that sentence for ten minutes. In an economy where gas is climbing back over four dollars and war is the price signal underneath everything, the Chalupa endures.

I don’t have a theory. I’m just noting it happened.

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