⛏ America’s New Debt Milestone

The Petrodollar Is Coming Apart in Real Time. Trump Calls It a Win.
The Trump administration has spent three months trying to reopen Hormuz and has very little to show for it. The other Gulf OPEC members — Iraq, Kuwait, every state whose economy is bleeding from the shutdown — are watching. None of them has a reason to wait for Washington to fix what Washington broke. The question probably isn’t if another OPEC member follows the UAE out. It’s when. Read on »

America’s New Debt Milestone
The United States has reached a milestone, and unfortunately, it’s not one to celebrate. For the first time outside a genuine crisis, America’s national debt now exceeds the size of its entire economy. There is nothing magical about the 100% line; it’s more of a psychological threshold than a hard cliff. Indeed, debt hawks have sounded alarms for years, and the economy has not yet collapsed. But the absence of collapse is not the same as the absence of consequences. Read on »

The Cost of Mining Copper: A 2024–2025 Update
Copper futures touched an all-time high above $6.58 per pound on May 12, 2026, capping a 40.86% gain over the prior twelve months as supply tightness collided with structural demand from grid build-out, electric vehicles, and AI data centers. In our previous analysis of copper production costs, we tracked how inflation, declining ore grades, and surging input costs pushed unit costs sharply higher across the major producers between 2019 and 2023. This update extends that picture through the now-closed 2024 and 2025 reporting cycles, and the story has shifted. Read on »