Chris Martenson noticed something nobody else flagged. Long-term interest rates move with the oil price, so every dollar crude climbs makes American debt more expensive to carry, and right now that debt is the whole game.
Then came the CIA director's visit, and Chris points out how loud it was, a heavy transport landing in daylight with transponders on, when a phone call or the local station chief would have done the job quietly.
Hours later a Russian newspaper reported that a peace deal was imminent, oil dropped about four and a half dollars overnight, and yields fell instead of rising.
He calls it wild speculation, and admits he doesn't know what was said, but says the timing was a little too convenient.
The reason it matters is the crowd he calls the bond vigilantes, the giant holders who quietly stop buying when they lose faith.
Their questions are brutally simple, whether inflation eats their returns and whether anyone in Washington has a believable plan for restraint.
Jamie Dimon just said publicly he's cooled on long-dated government paper, which in that world counts as fighting words.
Meanwhile the fixes keep failing in public, with buybacks doubled to four billion a week and rates back where they started inside a day.
And while America defends its bond market, Beijing quietly opened gold exchanges in Hong Kong where anyone holding yuan can swap straight into metal.
No fixed rate, no gold standard, just an offer that says don't trust us, trust the bullion.
@chrismartenson
