George Gammon read the week's strangest number as a warning.
Oil spiked, yet core inflation, the basket outside food and energy, came in flat, meaning families are covering the pump by cutting everything else.
That is demand destruction arriving early.
His frame is 2008.
Oil hit $140 that summer, inflation jumped, and two months later rates sat at zero inside a deflationary bust.
The deciding variable both times: whether banks kept lending.
They are risk off now, and by his count 95 percent of recent lending growth is AI buildout spending and borrowed stock bets.
Strip that out and credit falls off a cliff.
The wild part? He cited a report from Korea's melt up: ONE IN 30 South Koreans, the count including toddlers and grandmothers, wiped out in margin calls.
Private credit runs the same leverage stacking, marked at full value inside black boxes nobody can open.
And the war just reached the market that does not do drama.
Long term rates are climbing faster than short ones, plain English for the bond market pricing a longer war and stickier prices while stocks shrug.
His verdict on the AI economics ran four words: "that dog don't hunt."
@GeorgeGammon
