Can We Call This Anything But Piracy?: TUESDAY CHAOS-MONKEY TRUMPISM
Isn't this piracy? What could make it not piracy, other than a congressional declaration of a war to conquer & annex the Strait of Hormuz to the USA? And isn't piracy not only a bad thing...
Isn’t piracy against the law? When the president claims a royal right to tax global commerce over waterways half the world away from America, the rule of law walks the plank.…
I mean: treaties are supposed to be binding, THE LAW OF THE LAND, generating rights, which are then, under the rule of law, enforceable, the same ways other LAWS OF THE LAND are enforceable:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding…
There is nothing in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary except for unlawful Supreme Court declarations without textual or historical authority that the president is a king in anything touching “foreign policy”.
Executive-branch actions in violation of treaties are not “tak[ing] care that the laws be faithfully executed”. I suppose you could cavil over whether nulling them is the court’s business or the congress’s business through impeachment, but the whole Supreme Court power grab starting with John Marshall strongly suggests that it is the court’s business, doesn’t it?
And this is piracy. Which we have agreed to suppress, worldwide:
John Authers: Misunderstanding & Reflexivity : ‘Henceforward July 14 may also be known for the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz. The US has announced that it will hold up traffic through the crucial waterway starting Tuesday, and levy a 20% charge…. The move amps up uncertainty, and markedly adds to the upward pressure on materials prices. Last month’s Memorandum of Understanding to pause the war between the US and Iran, always ambiguous over exactly who could control the Strait and on what terms, appears now to be a dead letter. The failure has been immediately felt in oil prices, with Brent crude for December delivery now more expensive than when President Donald Trump signed the MOU…
Markets themselves are… not simply responding to… facts… [but] creat[ing] them. Last month, an over-rapid decline in oil prices relieved… pressure… and increased… temptation to misbehave…. Marko Papic…. “The irony of this situation is that oil prices are an independent variable, not a dependent one. Both Iran and the US synchronize their kinetic activity with a particular sensitivity to oil prices themselves. When they are low, kinetic [military] activity ramps up. When oil prices rise, suddenly negotiations are back on the table…” Tina Fordham of Fordham Global Foresight said another period of sustained high oil prices might be needed to persuade the US that Iran can’t be bombed into capitulating, “so in that sense the absence of a major energy shock has provided space for this conflict to re-escalate markedly”…
Brad DeLong here: If the piratical practice of presidents improvising piratical toll‑booth empires in strategic straits half the world away and courts retreating behind self‑execution technicalities is not a betrayal and a constructive repeal of the fundamental design principle of the American constitution that the president is a magistrate to faithfully execute congress-passed laws rather than a king with sovereign powers derived from Divine Right and salus populi suprema lex, it is not clear to me what it could be.
The market reaction is also very interesting. As I understand it, markets have concluded—rightly—that Donald Trump is simply a chaos-monkey, and there is no point in trying to forecast what the hell he will do. In that case, we are more than usually cast into the world Keynes foresaw back in 1936:
John Maynard Keynes (1936): The General Theory of Employment, Interest & Money : ‘Classes of investment are governed by the average expectation of those who deal on the Stock Exchange… rather than by the genuine expectations of the professional…. In practice we have tacitly agreed, as a rule, to fall back on what is, in truth, a convention… that the existing state of affairs will continue indefinitely, except in so far as we have specific reasons to expect a change. This does not mean that we really believe that the existing state of affairs will continue indefinitely. We know from extensive experience that this is most unlikely.… Nor can we rationalise our behaviour by arguing that to a man in a state of ignorance errors in either direction are equally probable… [as] our existing knowledge does not provide a sufficient basis for a calculated mathematical expectation….
[This] convention… will be compatible with… continuity and stability… so long as we can rely on the… convention…. An investor can legitimately encourage himself with the idea that the only risk he runs is that of a genuine change… over the near future… which is unlikely to be very large…. He need not lose his sleep merely because he has not any notion what his investment will be worth ten years hence… if he can fairly rely on there being no breakdown in the convention….
It is not surprising that a convention, in an absolute view of things so arbitrary, should have its weak points…
Thus, in the limit, it becomes hopeless to expect the market to in any sense discipline Trump by signaling that his disastrous policies are in fact causing disasters. The market is not going to signal that, since Trump’s announcements are not in any sense policies. Moreover, since there is a very strong and correct expectation that many of Trump’s announcements are intended to spook the market, so that he and his favored can benefit by insider trading on their reversal tomorrow, you would be a fool if you did react to anything Trump says he is going to do until things start blowing up on a large scale.
Words don’t fail me, clearly. But coherent thought definitely does. However, here are a few thiings to think about:
Facts Only
* The text references an action concerning the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz starting Tuesday.
* The US announced it would hold up traffic through the Strait and levy a 20% charge.
* A Memorandum of Understanding to pause war between the US and Iran appeared ambiguous regarding control over the Strait.
* Oil prices reacted to the situation, with Brent crude for December delivery becoming more expensive than when President Donald Trump signed the MOU.
* Market reactions were noted as being driven by expectations rather than immediate facts.
* John Maynard Keynes (1936) discussed how investment is governed by average expectations and conventions in financial markets.
* The text suggests that the market is unlikely to discipline political actions through signaling, as announcements are not formal policies.
Executive Summary
Full Take
The narrative constructs a framework where the legitimacy of geopolitical maneuvers—specifically concerning strategic waterways like the Strait of Hormuz—is tested against abstract legal principles (rule of law, treaty obligations) and economic realities. The central tension is between sovereign executive power claimed in foreign policy versus established constitutional and international legal constraints. The text employs high-level philosophical arguments about sovereignty (the President as magistrate versus king) to critique executive overreach, while simultaneously grounding the analysis in sophisticated financial theory regarding market expectations versus genuine outcomes.
The pattern suggests a deployment of abstract legal and economic concepts to create an atmosphere of systemic instability where tangible events are perceived as purely chaotic or opportunistic. The juxtaposition of pirate analogies with references to Keynesian conventions points toward an underlying skepticism about stable, rational governance, suggesting that the 'convention' allowing current chaos persists irrespective of proclaimed legal frameworks. The implication for agency is that reliance on predictable legal or market signals during periods of high political volatility is inherently flawed, favoring a posture of waiting and recognizing the self-fulfilling nature of speculative movement.
BRIDGE QUESTIONS: If markets are fundamentally built on convention rather than immutable facts, how can observers distinguish between genuine systemic risk and politically induced uncertainty? What mechanisms exist outside of established legal or market frameworks to enforce accountability when executive actions intentionally blur the line between sovereign authority and contractual obligation? What is the long-term cost to cognitive sovereignty when all observed reality appears constructed by prevailing expectations?
Sentinel — Likely Human
The text functions as a polemical essay that synthesizes legal theory, geopolitical conflict, and economic forecasting into a single, highly opinionated argument.