Two audio essays, one smouldering fuse.

This week, Philip Pilkington takes on a financial cascade emerging from the Japanese Bond situation. Ever since its one-day bond market heart attack in March, Japan has been trapped: it can't raise rates, it can't let the yen fall, so it has sold the very US Treasuries that hold the US system together. Knowing how perilous things are, in the background, Scott Besent is trying to send in support. But this Wizard of Oz is himself running out of tricks. And when these fail, much like the 2011 sovereign debt crisis, there will be other marks ready to be hit – starting with Britain.

Meanwhile, the Japanese bond crisis began with the spike in oil prices. Now, Andrew Collingwood asks how the Iran War is about to be extruded through the gravitational field of US domestic politics. To him, what looks like a stalemate is actually profoundly unstable, hinging on a unique paradox: the more success America has in keeping the Strait of Hormuz open, the more likely Iran is to escalate.

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