PPCC: Pisitófilos Creditófagos. Primavera 2026

[senslev]

KK

[Benzino Napaloni]

Trump es abucheado en su 'patética' aparición en la UFC con asientos vacíos y mientras EE. UU. está en guerra

Trump abucheado en un espectáculo de garrulos .

A menudo esto es significativo, es el detalle de que se corre la voz de que el emperador va desnudo.

[asustadísimos]

LOS MUÑECOS DEL PIM PAM PUM ESPAÑOL.—

En la caseta de feria, aquel muñeco burlón que la recorría de lado a lado esperando recibir el pim pam pum de tu pelota o perdigón.

El disloque de precios inmobiliarios españoles tiene dos nombres:
• Trump
• Ayuso, en sus dos avatares, el ayuso Mar-A-Lago y el ayuso Hala-A-Pagar, ático & chalé.

Ambos tipos de personajes tóxicos están ensuciados en la trama de la estafa del Ladrillo. Unos como archipámpanos. Otras, cendolillas.

La historia tiene leyes objetivas, pero nuestros adversarios lo ignoran aposta. Démosles de lo suyo: dios Trump y el divismo Ayuso & Irene.

El pichabrava Trump —cuyo pene es como Toad de Nintendo según Stormy Daniels— ha puesto en marcha su 'America Great Again' frenando a sus rivales haciéndoles sufrir con la energía y la vivienda. Lo ha hecho a golpe de misiles lejos de casa manchándolos con sangre inocente. El peor, el de destrucción masiva 'Brick Great Again', de la fábrica de armas de tu yo. Resultado: rivales frenados 'ad maiorem dei-dollar gloria', y el Capital & Dinero, hasta los cojones.

El 'duumdivae' Ayuso & Irene ha puesto en marcha sendos proyectitos personales de felicidad pequeñoburguesa, su granito de arena en la legitimación de la cadena de rocamboles, ganchos y primos del Ladrillo. Las dos, amancebadas y ateas.

Cuando se escriban estas historias, qué triste va a ser.

El Ladrillo, en efecto, no es una ESTAFA cualquiera.

El Ladrillo es una ESTAFA DE DESTRUCCIÓN MASIVA.

[Cadavre Exquis]

The end of the American empire
Donald Trump’s war in Iran presages the destruction of US authority, not its renewal

John Gray  · 2026.04.08

Illustration by Cracked Hat

Speaking to Republican lawmakers at his Trump National Doral Miami golf club on 9 March, the tenth day of the war, Donald Trump described American military intervention in Iran as “a little excursion”. Questioned at a news conference at the resort later that day on whether it was an excursion or a war, he replied that it was both: “An excursion that will keep us out of a war.” He went on to declare that the operation was “very far ahead of schedule” and would be over “very soon”.

Trump’s excursion has proved to be a march to disaster. His “major combat operation” has shifted from aiming to block Iran achieving a nuclear capability that was supposedly “obliterated” last June to unblocking the Strait of Hormuz and restoring the situation that existed before the operation began. Whatever the objective may be, the pre-war status quo is irretrievable. Reopening the strait to Western shipping by military force would likely incur high American casualties, and mean the strait would revert to Iranian control as soon as American forces departed. Trump cannot declare victory and walk away without surrendering the vital shipping conduit to Iran. Even if a ceasefire plan that reopened the strait, of the kind that reportedly emerged from Pakistan on 6 April, was agreed and implemented, Tehran would have had (and still has) the upper hand. With its proven capacity to wreak havoc on the world economy, a bombed-out military-theocratic dictatorship has begun the final unravelling of US imperial power.

The Iranian parliament’s national security committee has approved proposals to toll ships transiting the strait, offering safe passage to vessels from friendly and non-aligned countries. In a mocking post on X, the head of parliament’s National Security Commission, Ebrahim Azizi, stated: “Trump has finally achieved his dream of ‘regime change’ – but in the region’s maritime regime! The Strait of Hormuz will certainly reopen, but not for you; it will be open for those who comply with the new laws of Iran. The 47 years of hospitality are over forever.” The Iranian state, monetising what was for nearly half a century an open international waterway, now owns a crucial link in the global supply chain.

Iran has shown itself well prepared for the conflict into which Trump has blundered. On 18 March, an unprecedented missile and drone attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) production hub, inflicted damage the Qataris estimate will take three to five years to repair. Iran’s ability to hit high-value American assets was confirmed by the 27 March attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, in which a critical “eye in the sky” Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft was effectively destroyed. An unsuccessful attack on the UK/US base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, around 2,400 miles from Iran’s coastline, revealed unexpected ballistic missile capabilities. The downing of an American fighter jet on 3 April punctured Trump’s boast that Iran’s air defences have been “100 per cent annihilated”. The ejected crew member – rescued in a dramatic extraction operation after a heavy firefight – brings home the perils of the war.

The hazards of Operation Epic Fury were not unforeseen. Sober military professionals in the US, UK and other countries have war-gamed conflict with Iran dozens of times over many years. Trump was warned and chose not to listen. By 30 March, he was using Truth Social to threaten that unless a deal is “shortly reached” and the Hormuz Strait is “immediately ‘Open for Business’”, “We will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalination plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched’.” A day later, the Wall Street Journal was reporting that he told aides he was considering ending the war even if it meant leaving the strait closed. Hormuz is the channel through which around a fifth of the world’s oil is shipped. Ships do not need to be sunk for the conduit to be unsafe. Iran has weaponised Lloyd’s of London, the insurance marketplace for much of the globe’s shipping. All that is needed is a credible threat which leaves them uninsurable. In a dual blockade – with the Houthis closing the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula – around a quarter of global oil would be choked off. There would be acute shortages to vital ingredients in food supplies, semiconductors and plastics. Economic growth would stall or reverse, and worldwide stagflation would be unavoidable.

The fiasco that is unfolding is not the result of strategic error. In her magisterial study The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (1984), the American historian Barbara Tuchman described how governments persistently pursue policies contrary to their own interests even though better alternatives are available and known to them. Choosing spectacle over prudence, the Trojans brought the Greek wooden horse inside their walls. Overconfidence and extravagant spending by Renaissance popes fuelled the Protestant Reformation. The stubborn pride of George III’s government provoked rebellion and the loss of Britain’s American colonies. A refusal to admit the war was unwinnable produced humiliating defeat in Vietnam. Hubris, self-deception and corruption led inexorably to ruin.

All these marks of folly are visible in Trump’s war on Iran. The president and his coterie imagined that decapitating the leadership – “getting rid of some people,” as he put it in his golf club homily – would disable the regime. But Tehran is not Caracas, from which President Nicolás Maduro and his wife were extracted in a special operation on 3 January and Venezuela handed over to the deputy leader, Delcy Rodríguez. Iran’s government is multi-layered and – for all its murderous repression of the millions who yearn for a Western way of life – deeply embedded in society. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) manage a business empire spanning oil, telecommunications, construction and banking. The Basij militias, volunteer paramilitary forces used to crush domestic resistance, receive state benefits and jobs in IRGC-linked companies. Religious foundations and clerical elites control billions of dollars of assets seized from dissidents and minorities. For these groups, losing the war means losing their property, their livelihoods and their lives. They will fight to the death. Some may welcome death in battle as an opportunity for martyrdom – an enduring and still potent element in Shia Islam. The White House screens out these facts, along with Iran’s mastery of low-cost techniques of asymmetric warfare.

Corruption plays a part. Hours before the joint US/Israeli attacks of 28 February in which the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed, clusters of bets were placed on sites such as Polymarket, a crypto-based, partly offshore “prediction market” on which gamblers can wager on outcomes ranging from sporting scores to missile strikes. In March this year, a succession of bets minutes before White House announcements regarding the war made hundreds of millions of dollars for anonymous traders. On 23 March, thousands of oil futures contracts totalling around $1.5bn in notional value changed hands in a couple of minutes – a volume around 16 times higher than the daily average. There is no proof that Trump, his aides, or his family are profiting from these trades, but the inescapable conclusion must be that insiders are using privileged information for personal gain.

Trump’s war is folly in precisely Tuchman’s sense. Politically it can only harm him, raising petrol prices at the pump and worsening his dwindling prospects in November’s midterms. It flouts his campaign promises of no more “forever wars”, and alienates him from the neo-isolationist America First wing of his fracturing Maga base and strengthens the hand of his rival, JD Vance. Internationally, his expedition can only marginalise him. Even the European far right – Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni, Alternative for Germany – are distancing themselves.

In the Middle East, the war has undercut the financial foundations of US hegemony. An assurance of protection was the basis of the petrodollar system set up in the early 1970s, when the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement establishing the dollar as the global reserve currency collapsed under the weight of heavy American spending on the Vietnam war. Needing a prop for the sinking dollar, the Nixon administration tasked Henry Kissinger with negotiating a quid pro quo with Saudi Arabia. The upshot was the petrodollar system, in which the Kingdom agreed to price its oil exports exclusively in dollars that could then be recycled in purchases of federal debt. Without the petrodollar, the spiralling American deficit becomes ever more unsustainable.

Some suggest Trump’s war follows a hidden road map: the goal is to stem the rise of China. Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela disrupted Chinese imports of oil from the South American country, and the US is redirecting flows to American Gulf Coast refiners. When, as seems likely, Cuba falls into the American sphere of influence in the coming months, it will be a further setback for Chinese influence. Beijing has invested heavily in Cuban infrastructure, including cybersecurity and surveillance facilities.

Assuming there is any such strategy, the results are mixed. As a major oil importer, China is under some pressure. Unlike Russia, which is benefiting from higher prices, Beijing needs oil to keep flowing to maintain its export-oriented economy. But as Iran’s largest oil buyer, China is one of the countries allowed through the strait and paying the toll in yuan – a direct challenge to the petrodollar.

In some ways the Gulf States are more fragile than Beirut before its collapse after the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. As missiles continue to penetrate their air defences and their safety premium is lost, Dubai and other cities in the United Arab Emirates are Ballardian landscapes of deserted hotels, drained swimming pools and sand-shrouded abandoned automobiles. All of them depend on vulnerable water salination plants for their survival. (Despite its own water shortages, Iran is less reliant on the plants.) An apocalyptic scenario of mass evacuation, fleeing populations and a vast refugee crisis are not unrealistic.

However the war ends, the result will be the re-emergence of Iran as a major power. Toppling Saddam Hussein and his Baathist secular dictatorship was bound to strengthen Tehran and make it the dominant influence on Shia-majority Iraq. Today, the boost to Iranian power is far greater.

As the arbiter of passage through Hormuz, Iran has become the deciding force in the global oil economy. When transport and industry are factored in, renewables meet only a fraction of humanity’s energy needs. Globalisation in its current form is a by-product of hydrocarbons. Requiring large-scale mining for the minerals that go into batteries and magnets, renewables are themselves fossil-fuel derivatives. China rules over these supply chains, where it often holds a near-monopoly, and appears to be expanding its coal production. Any green transition is a distant prospect. Meanwhile, Iran will be the single most important player in energy markets.

Trump’s jaunt has ended in a cul-de-sac. If he retreats from the Middle East, states that were under US protection will waver between shades of neutrality and forging coalitions against a resurgent Iran. More endangered than they were before the war, Israel and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman will be juggling multiple threats. If he opts to “finish the job” and launches a ground operation, the US will be dragged into a debacle larger than Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

In his 1 April presidential address, Trump threatened to bomb Iran “back into the Stone Ages, where they belong”. The phrase echoes that of General Curtis LeMay, who in his memoir Mission with LeMay (1965) recalled advising that North Vietnam must be “bombed back into the Stone Age”. LeMay’s plan was to target factories, harbours and bridges; Trump threatened on 6 April to attack bridges, power and, possibly, water plants. It too will fail, at the cost of an irrecoverable strategic defeat.

The cardinal consequence of the war will be the death of an idea of American empire. Founded in the imagination as a city on a hill that left the empires of Europe behind, the founders of the United States ostensibly repudiated anything that smacked of imperial power; but by the time of the First World War, it had acquired several territories that functioned as colonies in a traditional European sense – numerous small Caribbean and Pacific islands (1856), Alaska (1867), Hawaii (1898), the Philippines (1898) and the Panama Canal Zone (1903). It is this old-world imperial order to which Trump aims to revert in his revival of the Monroe Doctrine, asserting America’s hemispheric suzerainty. In the 20th century, the idea of empire mutated with Woodrow Wilson’s fervent promotion of “national self-determination” at the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference. The projection of an American model of government became an anti-imperial project, professedly advancing the rights and aspirations of all peoples. Beneath the accidents of their historical identities, an ideal American was latent in every human being.

Some version of this fanciful notion informs the catastrophe that is under way today. Relentless aerial bombardment does not release an imaginary inner American and unify populations against their governments, no matter how repressive they may be. Especially when civilian infrastructure is targeted: it unites them against the invader. When Trump posts he will “reign down hell on them [sic]”, he expresses the same idea as the American commander who said of a Vietnamese city in 1965: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” The sequel will not be dissimilar in Iran.

This is not simply a case of the lessons of history being ignored. Trump’s war looks more like an example of what Sigmund Freud described as repetition compulsion – an unconscious process in which the mind acts out what it cannot properly remember. A creature of the moment as he may be, Trump seems driven by an impulse to reimagine the past and reassert American – and his own – greatness. Even as he is taking a wrecking ball to the historic White House East Wing to construct a monumental ballroom that may never be built, he seems bent on demolishing a global order he has failed to remake in his image. When an infantile fantasy of omnipotence comes up against unyielding realities, the response is inchoate rage. Psychopathology may be more illuminating than geopolitics at this point. In a more profound sense than is commonly recognised, Donald Trump does not know what he is doing.

Trump-whisperers such as the Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte believe they can inject a sliver of reason into his deliberations. But Trump’s logic is instinctual not rational. As his lifting of sanctions on Russian oil has demonstrated, he has visceral sympathy for Vladimir Putin’s blend of tyranny and oligarchy. Détente with Russia will create many lucrative business opportunities. While Nato may linger on in name, the transatlantic alliance is operationally defunct. America is returning to its pre-1914 trajectory as a civilisation separate from Europe.

In the UK, the default position is to wait out the storm until sanity returns to Washington. Why Putin or Xi Jinping should exhibit similar patience is not explained. Could there be a better time for them to act? Ramping up hybrid warfare in under-defended Europe will give Putin leverage in any peace deal in Ukraine. With Trump having shifted military assets from the Asia-Pacific to the Middle East and running down munitions, Xi may be able to absorb Taiwan without firing a shot. There has been talk of an Anglo-Gaullism in which the UK relies on itself and European allies for its security. Obviously, this presupposes much higher defence spending, and soon. But renewing Britain’s defence capacity requires reindustrialising the economy, an enterprise that could take decades. Without an actionable plan, British Gaullism is an idle dream.

Trump’s little excursion is a point of no return in America’s retreat as a global power. In what world could such an outlandish figure be president of the US – twice? Well, our world – the one our rulers made and then showed they did not comprehend when they dismissed him as a passing aberration. Trump may wreck everything he touches, but his standing as a world-historical figure is beyond doubt. Might he be leading America towards another regime change, foreshadowed in the toxic trickster, Tucker Carlson, and the smooth left-populist, Zohran Mamdani? They, too, belong in our world.

John Gray is an author and contributing writer to the New Statesman. His latest book is The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism (Allen Lane).

Saludos.

[Derby]

https://www.baha.com/Trump-orders-blockade-of-Hormuz-Strait/news/details/66050447

Trump orders blockade of Hormuz Strait

United States President Donald Trump ordered on Sunday a blockade of the Hormuz Strait and to "interdict" every vessel in international waters that "has paid a toll to Iran." The US leader declared that the talks with Iran went well, but said Tehran was unwilling to unblock the strait and give up its nuclear program.

"We will also begin destroying the mines [that] the Iranians laid in the Straits. Any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL!" he wrote on Truth Social. Furthermore, he added the blockade would "begin shortly," and other nations would participate, without revealing which.

"They want money and, more importantly, they want Nuclear. Additionally and, at an appropriate moment, we are fully “LOCKED AND LOADED,” and our Military will finish up the little that is left of Iran!" he threatened after an apparent failure of the talks in Pakistan.

[Flipback]

Estos días se publicaba que los buques de guerra americanos ya estaban volando minas en el estrecho de Ormuz. En windy.com, poniendo la capa de CO2, se ve claro que algo pasa justo en esa zona.

[tomasjos]

Guerra en Irán, última hora hoy, en directo | Trump asegura que Estados Unidos bloqueará el paso a todos los buques que intenten entrar o salir del Estrecho de Ormuz | Internacional https://share.google/76HoFXQTQPb1PmpAR

[tomasjos]

Estos días se publicaba que los buques de guerra americanos ya estaban volando minas en el estrecho de Ormuz. En windy.com, poniendo la capa de CO2, se ve claro que algo pasa justo en esa zona.

Que ocurre exactamente con el CO2, Flipback?

[muyuu]

Guerra en Irán, última hora hoy, en directo | Trump asegura que Estados Unidos bloqueará el paso a todos los buques que intenten entrar o salir del Estrecho de Ormuz | Internacional https://share.google/76HoFXQTQPb1PmpAR

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-12/trump-blockades-strait-of-hormuz-iran-us-war/106556552

estaba cantado que EEUU no iba a permitir que se pasara pagando peajes a Irán y de forma selectiva, y menos en yuanes

ahora lo bloquearán ellos, y los mercados se van a dar un buen batacazo el lunes

[Cadavre Exquis]

José Luis Cárpatos · 2026.04.11 · Próxima tormenta: crédito privado

José Luis Cárpatos · 2026.04.11 · Próxima tormenta: crédito privado [00:47:29]

Y como seguimos pensando más allá de la guerra, vamos a preocuparnos también por un problema del cual ya hemos hablado muchas veces, pero que no termina de solucionarse y cada vez va a peor. Esto es una auténtica bomba de relojería.

Lo tienen en este artículo de ZeroHedge, titulado “la tormenta perfecta”, y se refiere al crédito privado. Ya hemos hablado mucho de esto. Por cierto, nuestro patrocinador Trade Republic también tiene varios productos de crédito privado, tiene muchos productos de este tipo.

Pero bueno, a lo que iba, aquí hay un problema muy gordo. El artículo es muy largo, pero voy a intentar resumir lo esencial. A mí me ha abierto mucho los ojos. ZeroHedge está muy politizado, pero cuando se pone a escribir tiene una gran capacidad de anticipación.

Dice que, en primer lugar, hay una capa que detona la bomba que es la la inteligencia artificial ―mientras les voy comentando un poco las ideas les pongo algún gráfico ilustrativo―.

José Luis Cárpatos · 2026.04.11 · Próxima tormenta: crédito privado [00:48:40]

Dice que nadie lo vio venir. La mayor parte de los fondos de crédito privado prestaron masivamente dinero a empresas de software, y que hay ahí una cantidad de dinero en crédito privado en las compañias de software de veinte pares de narices.

Que esas empresas de software que ya hemos comentado que están cayendo por la disrupción tecnológica, representan ahora mismo más de una cuarta parte de todas las carteras de crédito privado y casi la mitad de las operaciones de private equity. Ojo, eh.

Y miren como están cayendo ―bueno, ahí lo que ven es las empresas de capital privado que se están dando el batacazo a causa de esa caída que tiene el software que está deteriorando eh gravemente sus sus carteras porque tienen una cantidad de dinero ahí pues tremendo, ¿no?―.

Entonces. La inteligencia artificial está cargándose el modelo de negocio de muchas de ellas. Vamos a dejarnos de tontería, se lo está cargando.

Y el problema, además, comenta en el artículo, es que 130.000 millones de dólares en deuda tecnológica vencen en el 2028. Por lo tanto, las empresas tendrán que refinanciar este año ya en condiciones que muchas no van a poder asumir. Ya estamos hablando de un estrés tremendamente severo.

José Luis Cárpatos · 2026.04.11 · Próxima tormenta: crédito privado [00:50:08]

Ahí tienen las exposiciones tan tremendas del software y demás.

Bueno, el problema ahora empieza en que la gente quiere que le devuelvan el dinero y el límite trimestral de reembolso de este tipo de fondos está ya totalmente sobrepasado. Entonces, por ejemplo, el 41% de los inversores de Blue Owl Technology Income Corporation, pidieron solicitudes de reembolso al 41%.

Todos los demás que hemos visto antes en el gráfico anterior: Apollo, Ares, Carlyle, KKR, todos están siendo aplastados por solicitudes de reembolso masivas. Aquí está todo el mundo, todo el mundo atrapado.

Entonces, Wall Street va a lanzar la semana que viene un índice de credit default swap sobre el crédito privado. En ello están metidos JP Morgan, Bank of America, Barclays, Deutsche Bank.

José Luis Cárpatos · 2026.04.11 · Próxima tormenta: crédito privado [00:51:07]

Vamos, exactamente lo mismo que pasó antes de 2008 con las hipotecas subime, cuando los grandes bancos crearon un instrumento para ponerse corto en algo porque se veían venir lo que iba a pasar. ¿Vale? Pues ahí están creando instrumentos para esto porque ven que la cosa no está muy clara.

Y bueno, y por último, pues la Reserva Federal y el secretario del Tesoro, el Departamento del Tesoro, ya están empezando a mosquearse y atención porque la Reserva Federal ha pedido a los principales bancos detalles sobre su exposición al crédito privado.

El tesoro, además, está interrogando a las aseguradoras sobre lo mismo. Y ojo con esto, ojo con esto. Para las aseguradoras de vida estadounidenses, el crédito privado representa el 35% de todas sus inversiones según el Fondo Monetario Internacional. Ojo con este dato. Es decir, el dinero de las pensiones y los seguros de vida de millones de americanos está invertido en préstamos a empresas de software que quizás no existan en 2 años.

Por si no queda clara la idea, lo voy a volver a repetir: el dinero de las pensiones y los seguros de vida de millones de americanos y de otras partes del mundo, claro, está invertido en préstamos a empresas de software que quizá no existan en 2 años.

¿Qué conclusión llego yo con todo esto? Pues que no estamos ante un problema que esté ahí en un rinconcito ahí que es de poca monta, que esto no tiene ninguna importancia, como se dijo al principio, esto es poca cosa, es poco dinero, eh, no, no, no nos debemos preocupar si esto no es no es muy grave, no pasa nada. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Estamos ante un mercado, siéntense, porque esto hay que escucharlo sentado, de 3 billones de dólares. De 3 billones de dólares. Un mercado opaco, un mercado que no tiene una regulación fuerte como tienen los bancos, por ejemplo, que está financiado con dinero de seguros y pensiones y que está cargado de deuda de unas empresas a las que la inteligencia artificial está destruyendo, y encima, con los grandes bancos inventando un producto para ponerse corto de todo esto y con la Reserva Federal más mosca que un pavo en Navidad.

Según Goldman ―hay otro paper por ahí este fin de semana también― esto no es un riesgo sistémico, no ni poco. No ni poco. ¿Y saben por qué? Porque si no fuera un riesgo sistémico, la Reserva Federal y el Departamento del Tesoro no estarían tan moscas como están y no estarían espabilándose de la manera que lo están haciendo. Por lo tanto, el tema de la guerra está muy bien, pero el tema de la guerra tiene toda la pinta de que como con todas las guerras esto irá pasando ―no sé si el precio del petróleo se puede mantener alto un tiempo, esto habrá que incorporarlo al análisis, pero les recuerdo lo que pasó con la guerra de Ucrania, que al final el mercado ya se llegó a acostumbrar y no hacía mucho caso, todo es cuestión de tiempo, y la guerra sigue ahí―.

De lo que nos tenemos que preocupar es de los agujeros que tenemos por otro sitio. Antes hemos hablado de cosas positivas, pero esas cosas positivas se basan sobre todo en la inteligencia artificial. Parece que ese sector puede volver a tirar. La inteligencia artificial sigue haciendo nuevos descubrimientos, sigue yendo bien, sigue creciendo, pero precisamente su crecimiento por la ley de la vida, por la ley del mercado, está dejando obsoletas a muchas otras empresas.

¿Para qué sirve la empresa X que hace un software legal cuando Claude en su modelo Opus, el más alto que tiene, te puede analizar una sentencia legal? ―¿Quieren que les diga una cosa? Mejor que algún abogado que he tenido, no todos, porque hay gente muy buena, pero alguno que otro que he tenido me hace más cloud en el Opus que lo que me hacía él cuando le hacía consultas―. Eso es una realidad. ¿Para qué quieres ese software legal? Si estos productos con una suscripción de 17 € o de $20 al mes te pueden hacer un análisis que te caes de de cabeza.

Yo hace poco he tenido un pleito con mi vecino defrente, como ya conté, ―que por cierto son rusos― y y a mí me redactó toda la correspondencia. No estábamos en un pleito ―si hubiera tenido un pleito habría llamado un abogado, por supuesto― pero en la fase previa de cruce de correos y de cosas, en lugar de gastarme el dinero en una abogada aquí que son carísimos, pues usé estos modelos, el Opus de Claude y el ChatGPT 5.4 Pro y me preparó unos correos magníficos que de hecho me han ayudado a que se haya llegado a un acuerdo y que esté solucionado. Esto es solo un ejemplo. Hay muchísimos otros software que están en la misma situación. Esto está siendo masacrado. Y había un dineral, un dineral en los créditos a esas empresas, pero no porque fueran unos inconscientes en Wall Street cuando dieron los créditos. Francamente, ¿quién se iba a esperar esto? ¿Quién en el año 2021 cuando estaba financiando estas empresas podía dudar de que fueran bien?, las empresas de software, pero si era lo que mejor pinta tenía en ese momento. ¿Quién iba a pensar que en tan pocos años se iba a desarrollar un producto inteligencia artificial que fuera capaz de hacer todo eso por cuatro perras y muchísimo mejor? ¿Quién iba a pensar eso? El problema es que aunque sea sin culpa, lo tenemos ahí y no es un problema pequeño, es un problema de 3 billones de dólares, así que vamos a intentar mirar un poquito más allá de la guerra y a centrarnos en cosas donde tenemos verdaderamente los problemas y bastante gordos.

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

A Perfect Storm: Wall Street Launches Private Credit CDS Ahead Of The Next Crisis, And Now The Fed And Treasury Are Getting Involved

Tyler Durden · 2026.04.11

There was something strange about the brutal meltdown of the private credit sector.

Ever since the big drawdown following the Liberation Day meltdown, the bad news just kept coming in waves, at first, it was the collapse of First Brands and Tricolor last summer, which sparked a frenzied search for more "cockroaches" (in Jamie Dimon's words) that sparked a painful slide in the stock prices of publicly traded BDCs; then in early 2026, the markets attention shifted to the core composition of loans that make up the bulk of private credit portfolios. It was then that the market made the realization, documented here first, that loans by software companies - now painfully disrupted almost daily by various AI agents - make up the majority of private credit fund holdings, which in turn set off the second, and more powerful, plunge in BDC and interval fund stock prices. The result is that virtually every name in the sector is now trading deep in the red for 2026, and worse, is down since the start of 2025.

To be sure, there were plenty of alert sirens in recent months as the sector crumbled, and we did our best to document them all, starting with holdings of loans from companies in software/SaaS, which according to Barclays represents the single largest sector of exposure across the BDC universe, having increased the most as a percentage of BDC portfolios since 2019...

Source: Barclays

... especially at Blue Owl, which has rapidly emerged as the epicenter of the private credit crisis.

Source: Barclays

Software, of course, is the same sector that has been mauled in the stock market amid a growing panic over AI disruption which in turn has wiped out all prior terminal value assumptions, as demonstrated by the woeful underperformance of the IGV Software ETF (which not coincidentally is now trading virtually on top of the VanEck BDC ETF, when normalized as of a Jan 1, 2025 start date)...

... numerous other negative catalysts emerged, including shocking revisions in private marks (like when Blackrock slashed the value of a private loan from par to 0 in a few months)...

... to aggressive firesales of loans to fund redemption requests (while covering up underperforming loans) and quietly (and potentially illegally) doing so to syndicates which included related parties (who can forget that Blue Owl liquidated $1.4 billion in private loans to a consortium of buyers which included Kuvare, a life insurer owned by Blue Owl), to comping up with creative ways to avoid gating (Blackstone's own employees ended up paying $150 million out of their own pocket to fund the latest redemption shortfall on Blackstone's massive Private Credit Fund, BCRE, the world's largest at $82 billion), to a growing number of outright frauds, to the rise in bad PIKs, to the mis-labeling of SaaS loans, to the embellishment of what portion of the portfolios are true 1L (as Saba Capital's Boaz Weinstein lamented on more than one occasion), and a whole lot more.

As the bad news piled up, so did the warnings.

It started with UBS, which in late February published a note which shook Wall Street to its core after the Swiss bank predicted that private credit default rates could soar as high as 15%...

Source: UBS

... due to "rapid, severe AI disruption" while the "most acute risk is a sector-specific shock triggering cascading defaults" which would eventually propagate all the way to "Life insurers, specifically those linked to PE sponsors, which have increased allocations to private credit and structured products, often relying on internal ratings." But scariest of all is that a private credit crisis would not remain contained to the sector, and would eventually spread to public markets, as "a spike in private defaults could ripple across public markets, widening spreads and impairing liquidity."

Source: UBS

Others joined the chorus of warnings. In mid-February, former Point72 manager David Rosen warned in a must-read letter (available here to pro subs) about interval funds (such as Cliffwater which we profiled recently and is one of the oldest names in the space). This was he said.

The industry realized that the fleeting liquidity offered by BDCs would not sell well to retail investors that may legitimately need nearer term liquidity, so they began aggressively pitching semi-liquid solutions in the form of interval funds. Interval funds, like BDCs, offer quarterly liquidity, but with a key difference: they are required to repurchase at least 5% of outstanding shares. These interval funds have now grown to more than $80bn in net assets, with roughly half coming from Cliffwater – a private credit research firm turned interval fund manager that, from what we understand, is already facing capital constraints.

Rosen concluded his letter by saying that he "would not be surprised if Cliffwater is the canary in the coal mine and will be the first domino in the “bank run” we foresee." A few weeks later, CliffWater was one of the first funds to gate its investors when it was flooded with redemption requests.

By that point, the genie was out of the bottle and the redemption panic had started: funds after funds saw increasingly higher redemption requests as investors scrambled to recover their money before it was locked away indefinitely, culminating with such crazy numbers as 41% of Blue Owl's Technology Income Corp and 22% of Blue Owl Credit Income Corp investors submitting redemption requests. They were not alone, and such otherwise marquee names as Calryle, Ares, Apollo, Oaktree, KKR and many others were crushed by soaring redemption requests in the past few weeks, all of which were well over the statutory quarterly limit of 5%.

This brings us back to the dire letter from David Rosen, who warned that now that the redemption tsunami has emerged, "we don’t think most private wealth investors that have bought shares in private BDCs appreciate how difficult it will be to redeem assets, even in a modest downturn. While public BDCs are permanent capital vehicles, private BDCs require quarterly liquidity for investors, with funds typically able to cap quarterly redemptions at 5% of net assets. Individual investors can redeem 100% of their investment so long as total redemptions are under the 5% cap. If redemption requests are 10% of net assets, investors will be pro-rated by 50%. History shows that as soon as a fund starts to pro-rate, investors should expect severe liquidity restrictions and eventually gates (see Starwood REIT “SREIT”). We expect that as soon as a single bad actor fund pro-rates, redemption queues will get massive across the sector and will lead to severe liquidity issues as funds have no way of selling assets as we explained above."

Two months later, that's precisely what happened... but even that's just the start. As Diameter Capital's Scott Goodwin laid out a month ago, what comes next is worse. This is how he framed the problem:

There are at least 6 problems in no particular order:

• mislabeling or intentionally disguising the amount SaaS exposure in some porfolios
• no concept of portfolio construction for some of the direct lending managers
• mismarking and/or marking inconsistencies across funds
• other uses of leverage away from the basic bank/bond/clo financing of direct lending  - 2nd outs, jv’s, direct clo equity investments to juice returns and mask the real underlying leverage of the portfolio
• 250bln of the direct lending market is in “semi-liquid” products where underlying isn’t liquid at all
• prisoners dilemma for LP’s of that last bucket - if you don’t redeem do you just get left with the turds?

Yet while the gradual validation of all our warnings, which started about a year ago, about the looming private credit crisis is unfortunate it is hardly strange.

Which brings us back to what we said at the top: no, the gradual realization - and admission - that private credit will be the epicenter of the next credit crisis is not what we found strange; what we were more concerned about was the lack of any credible defense by the advocates of what until recently was the most popular sector in the Alternative Investments universe; after all, thousands of ultra high net worth clients and hundreds of funds were scrambling to hand over their money to increasingly unskilled private credit fund managers. But why did these same fund managers refuse to speak up and defend their products?

That was the strange part.

Yet that too was about to change: having watched the private credit sector get routed to levels that brought up painful memories of the subprime collapse of 2008, a few days ago, the FT finally reported on what we thought was the biggest missing link: distressed investors who specialize in scooping up assets at bargain prices, had finally identified a downturn in private credit as their best opportunity since the 2008 financial crisis.

These funds, which typically invest in companies with bad balance sheets but viable underlying businesses, have been largely sidelined for a decade as markets surged but are now betting on making money from strains in private credit.

“Biggest opportunity since 2008,” said Victor Khosla, founder of Strategic Value Partners, which manages $22bn in assets.

Andrew Milgram, founder of Greenwich-based Marblegate Asset Management, said: “This is not about a few bad loans . . . We’re out in the market right now raising a new fund because this is the greatest opportunity I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. I couldn’t imagine God would smile on me like this." God may be smiling, just make sure he isn't pissing on you.

“These outflows have reached a tipping point, whereby everybody on a rational basis has to ask for their money back,” said John Aylward, the founder of Sona Asset Management. “You have a large amount of distress, and you have forced selling, and it’s going to provide great opportunities that we’re already seeing.”

Marblegate's Milgram, the FT reported, said he and his team go on “regional swings” — short trips to cities such as Cincinnati and Charlotte to get a sense of the mood there. He takes local bankers out to steak dinners to learn what keeps them up at night. For the past several months, the picture has grown increasingly grim. Milgram said the head of restructuring at a large regional bank recently told him private equity firms were abandoning deals and handing over portfolio companies at an “alarming rate”.

SVP specializes in hard assets such as Texas toll roads and Europe’s largest car park business. But recently Khosla directed a small team to study software. “We can’t for the life of us figure out who the losers and winners will be yet,” he said. “It’s too early.” Since the start of 2025, the firm has invested $3.8bn but sold assets worth more than double that amount, far more than usual, suggesting it wants to have cash reserves as distressed opportunities emerge.

To be sure not everyone is jumping in to buy just yet: “Our view is that the [distressed] situations will overwhelm the amount of dry powder that’s out there,” said David Walch, partner and co-portfolio manager at asset manager King Street, referring to available capital.

Even the biggest players in private credit are preparing for the worst. Apollo’s chief executive, Marc Rowan, told investors in December that he needed to position the firm to make money “when something bad happens”.

But what matters more than whether this is the trough in private credit pricing and sentiment, is the very fact that institutions are now willing to step in and buy... in size. Which means gradually the flood of selling is finding willing buyers.

It also means that instead of buying stocks or bonds, this new batch of private credit bulls would likely be willing to participate in products that require far less initial capital. Like credit default swaps.

And sure enough, today the WSJ reported that large banks - including JPMorgan - are preparing to offer a new way for investors to bet against managers of private-credit funds.

The banks are working with S&P Global to launch an index of credit-default swaps that would protect buyers against defaults by companies included in the index, called CDX Financials. Private-credit funds managed by Apollo Global Management, Ares Management and Blackstone will make up 12% of the index, which also includes insurers, regional banks and credit-card companies.

Like with any traditional credit default swap which trades based on initial and variation margin, and tracks a reference credit, the index would rise when the market sentiment on those firms turned negative, and vice versa.

And, if and when it gains traction - and it will since it allows investors to express a bullish or bearish bet on the controversial sector with much more leverage than buying securities outright, the so-called FINDX would give debt investors and traders a fast way to hedge or short what is now a more than $3 trillion industry.

“Private credit has grown fast and there’s a lot of financial exposure arising in different ways so there is a real demand for this product,” said Dominique Toublan, head of credit strategy at Barclays. And he is right: similar to RMBS just before the Global Financial Crisis, private credit increasingly touches banks, insurance companies and other parts of the financial system. And more than simply shorting, those investors who find themselves long the various publicly traded assets, will be desperate to hedge their exposure, which is where the FINDX would come in. Indeed, as the WSJ notes, "Banks want the index both as a product to trade and as a tool to protect against potential losses from their own loans to private-credit fund managers."

Among the most likely users of the product will be hedge funds who are keen for a way to easily make bets on a downturn in private credit. Stress has been building, as a spate of defaults and losses, combined with fears about the fate of loans to software companies, caused a stampede of individual investors asking for their money back. As we reported a few weeks ago, some hedge funds began trying to short individual stocks and bonds issued by firms that invest in private credit, but the process was cumbersome and costly, one hedge-fund manager said.

Understandably, prominent credit investors who made a name in the industry by trading CDS such as Boaz Weinstein’s Saba Capital, are among the investors advocating for the creation of the new product. Weinstein has had numerous big wins trading similar indexes in the past (not least by taking on JPMorgan's notorious "London Whale" over a decade ago, and "winning billions"). He is also stalking private credit in other ways, including his offer in February to buy out shareholders in a fund managed by Blue Owl Capital at discounted prices

To his, and others' delight, firms including Bank of America, Barclays, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs will start selling the derivatives next week with more banks possibly to come.

The new tool could also help the banks solve a sticky problem: They count both hedge-fund clients who want to short private credit and private-credit fund managers as clients. Bank of America proposed a bearish trading strategy that singled out private-credit fund managers in recent weeks, then backtracked and renounced the idea, afraid it would alienate those managers who were also clients. The new index wouldn’t single out private-credit managers, but would represent a bet on the broader sector, much like a credit ETF.

Credit-default swaps - which inexplicably fell out of favor for their role in the 2008 financial crisis - have been experiencing a renaissance - not surprisingly at a time when Wall Street icons warn that the comparisons between the present and 2008 have never been greater (see Hartnett: "Wall Street Is Ominously Trading The 2008 Analog"). Most of the activity is in indexes, rather than contracts insuring against default by a single company. Index trading hit a record $38 trillion in 2025, according to S&P.

Two of the most actively traded indexes bundle up credit-default swaps of companies with investment-grade and junk credit ratings, respectively. And now there will be a specific CDS targeting just private credit names.

According to WSJ sources, S&P and investment banks started discussing an index for a range of financial companies when Silicon Valley Bank and other regional lenders failed in 2023, causing debt markets to spasm. Talks picked up again in the fourth quarter of 2025 when turmoil hit business development companies, private-credit funds that investment firms sell to individual investors.

Bankers hope that by launching a broader index, there will be a bigger push to create a market for credit-default swaps for each individual company that is a part of it and, reflexively, create even more tradable liquidity within the private credit space. The index will also include banks like Jefferies and Truist Financial, insurers like MetLife and Radian Group and credit-card lenders like American Express and Capital One.

“This will be the first credit-default swap product linked to private credit,” said Nicholas Godec, head of fixed-income tradeables & commodities at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “Now feels like an opportune time.”

And we think we know why.

While banks may trot out their conventional arguments that all they are doing is generating more liquidity and providing more targeted ways to "hedge" the sector, the reality is that that the banks are merely responding to client demand.

But why are hedge fund clients suddenly pushing hard for a levered way (with much less capital at stake) to take on private credit?

Well, it turns out that for all its woes, the problems in the private credit world are about to get a whole lot worse. That's because the abovementioned SaaSpocalypse problem roiling private markets - with AI disruption threatening to wipe out the value of software loans making up over a quarter of private credit assets - is about to face a big new test due to a wall of looming debt maturities.

More than $200 billion of high yield and leveraged loan technology debt is coming due for repayment through 2028, with a sizable chunk of it tied to firms owned by private markets. And as companies look to refinance in the coming months, they face numerous headwinds, from fears about AI devaluing or replacing their products to the risk of higher borrowing costs spurred by the war in the Middle East.

Some private credit funds, Bloomberg reports, are turning away software borrowers outright as they seek to shrink their exposure to the sector. And a number of software company sales planned by private equity have already stalled.

“Software borrowers from private-credit funds are more highly leveraged and more dependent on future growth expectations than borrowers in other industries, making them more sensitive to adverse shocks,” according to researchers at MSCI Inc.

As noted above, software makes up a "quarter of private credit loans", but it accounts for "nearly half" of "private equity" deals in recent years.

Private market managers allocated hundreds of billions of dollars to software over the last 15 years, betting that software-as-a-service (SaaS) business models would generate high growth and reliable cashflows. That focus became increasingly concentrated during the period, with software and technology services accounting for about half of all private equity deals in recent years, far surpassing any other industry.

For almost two decades that concentration risk was justified by market-beating returns for funds that marketed themselves as investing in technology among other industries. In recent years, however, the premium has been shrinking as more and more funds piled into the industry.

Private markets accelerated their focus on software during the period of extremely low interest rates that followed the pandemic. Valuations soared, culminating in a record amount of M&A in the industry by PE and venture firms in 2021. A few years later, it is those deals that are now dragging down performance after a failure to hedge sent borrowing costs soaring and called marks into question.

But the real threat is that the rapid leap forward by AI tools over the last 18 months has made concentration on one industry look somewhat foolhardy.

And while many private market managers still reckon that those businesses will prove resilient, investors, however, are showing their concern: Many have been rushing for the exits from direct lending funds, leading to the abovementioned gating spree as most private credit funds have limited redemptions. Compounding the private credit bank run, valuations and debt pricing have been falling for companies that are heavily focused on software. In the leveraged loan market, the premium traditionally seen in technology loans has completely broken down this year.

And here's the punchline: that rising stress comes at just the wrong time for credit investors. Overall, more than $130 billion of technology company debt is maturing in 2028, which companies will start trying to refinance from the second half of this year, and will find it next to impossible to do so at terms that don't assure a bankruptcy.

The bulk of the maturity wall relates to loans originated during the pandemic era of cheap money, according to Citigroup’s Michael Anderson and Steph Choe. “The credit dates for a third of these loans are still 2021, meaning the issuer has not demonstrated capital market access in many years,” they wrote. “The average price of the 2021 vintage/2028 maturity is $83.40, signaling significant stress.”

As we discussed recently, the falling pricing for leveraged loans tied to software are a leading indicator for private credit, where marks can considerably lag public markets. Typically, when loan prices fall, a rising number of private credit borrowers subsequently face stress in the form of not earning enough to cover their interest costs. Eventually, assets have to be repriced lower, but beyond a certain point, regulatory limits kick in - especially when it comes to capping leverage at 2x debt/equity - and the whole BDC structure is eventually unwound. If and when the industry hits that threshold, and according to Barclays the the median decline in asset values across the BDC universe required to breach the asset coverage test is only 21%, the result would be a historic crisis.

For BDCs, which lend to small and mid-size firms, the first big test will also come through the 2028-maturity wave. About $20.6 billion of their software-linked debt, or 18% of the total, matures that year with a further $21.4 billion in the following 12 months, data compiled by PitchBook LCD show.

As the cost of credit increases, “higher interest expenses will hurt” weaker firms, meaning they will require additional equity from sponsors, said Ron Kahn, co-head of global valuations and opinions at adviser Lincoln International.

Some PE managers will examine selling portfolio firms in the hope that they can achieve a price that repays the debt, he said, while in other cases “private credit and private equity will kick the can down the road. The lender will get higher pricing and the company has time to rightsize itself.”

There's more: as Boaz Weinstein above suggested, one fear among investors is that private credit firms have been ramping up their use of payment-in-kind (or PIK) debt to mask weakness in their portfolios. PIK allows borrowers to push back interest payments until the debt itself has to be repaid, instead making interest payments in the form of even more debt.

‘Bad PIK’ - added during the life of the loan to relieve cash flow pressures - is used by Lincoln as a proxy for the default rate in private credit. The firm estimates that about 6.4% of borrowers from direct lenders had bad PIK in the fourth quarter, compared with 2.5% at the end of 2021. These borrowers also have soaring loan-to-value ratios, another sign of stress, Lincoln said.

“For years there was a symbiotic relationship” between direct lenders and private equity, said Lincoln’s Kahn, but now sponsors are saying they won’t continue backing companies if they don’t see further value in them.

“People are looking after their own interests”, Kahn said.

* * *

Which brings us to the final, and perhaps most ominous part, of this story.

Now that the industry is tearing itself up from the inside as outside funds to keep the private credit ponzi funded have not only dried out, but are aggressively being withdrawn forcing fund managers to gate tens of billions in capital ahead of what will be a maturity cliff for the ages, the infamous "lender of last resort" is beginning to stir.

As Bloomberg reported late on Friday, the Federal Reserve is asking major US banks for details about their exposure to private credit following a surge in redemptions from the funds and a rise in troubled loans in the industry.

The queries by Fed examiners are intended to assess the level of stress in the private credit industry and the potential for it to spill over to the wider financial system, suggesting that Goldman's analysis from late March that private credit is not a systemic risk was - as we speculated - one big joke.

Among the queries the Fed has been incorporating into its routine oversight process, the central bank has been seeking detail on the debt private credit funds have taken on from banks. In good times, that debt can juice returns and make private credit funds more enticing. In bad times, it risks exposing banks to losses.

And in case it still isn't clear... it's not good times.

It's not just the Fed, the Treasury Department is also questioning the insurance industry about exposures to private credit, said people with knowledge of those separate discussions.
The questions, which the Fed typically asks only after red lines have been crossed and it is already too late to make a tangible difference, the strongest signal yet that US regulators are working to get a handle on the scale of the brutal strains in private credit.

While private credit, which relies on investor money - rather than bank deposits - to make loans, had been on examiners’ radar for years, the stepped up focus comes at a time when retail credit funds have came under tremendous pressure as investors rushed to pull cash.

And while the Fed may not want to call it a bank run by investors, that's precisely what it is.

The Fed's curiosity also comes as a growing chorus of international regulators have been warning about the risks of private credit. Financial Stability Board Chair Andrew Bailey said this week that private credit may be facing more stress after the shock to markets from the Iran war. The Financial Stability Oversight Council said at the end of March that it had discussed recent developments in the private credit sector.

Ironically, the Fed’s questioning comes as President Trump’s top financial watchdogs seek to loosen rules for Wall Street lending giants. Part of that deregulation effort is meant to both bolster banks’ ability to lend to private-credit outfits and to have traditional lenders better compete with nonbank firms in areas such as mortgage and small-business loans. The move also shows that officials such as Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman want to balance relaxed rules with more strategic queries from the industry about what they perceive as potential areas of risk.

But behind all the rhetoric, the true reason for the Fed's involvement is simple: the central bank is panicking about how bad it could get... which is also why there is a sudden surge in demand for private credit CDS, for those who have yet to connect the dots.

It's also why banks have sought to distance themselves from their less regulated nonbank rivals: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon warned that the private credit industry has a lack of transparency and poor valuation standards, but that he didn’t think private credit was a systemic risk, according to his latest CEO letter (if that was the truly case, the Fed wouldn't be sniffing around).

Yet disintermediating from their private credit peers will prove next to impossible. Wall Street and their private credit peers are deeply intertwined. Credit funds rely on banks to safeguard and custody assets. They also need banks for lines of credit. If private credit portfolios sour, this puts the collateral bank are lending against at risk. And, as UBS explained, left unchecked, a private credit crisis would lead to almost immediate contagion into public credit markets, sparking another global financial crisis in the worst case, or another massive episode of Quantitative Easing by the Fed, in the best.

The Fed questioning, which comes just as speculation grows that the private credit crisis is spilling over into the world of publicly traded CLOs, comes on top of another initiative at the Treasury Department to question insurers about their exposure. The regulator has put together a team to handle this. The Treasury is planning to meet with state regulators, which directly oversee insurers in the US, to discuss emerging risks and outlooks for the sector, the agency said in an April statement. The Treasury also expects to discuss it with international regulators, it said.

Why insurance companies? Because as we explained one month ago, for insurers in general, and life insurers in particular, private credit represents a stunning 35% of their total US investments (according to the IMF).

In the last decade, insurance companies have fueled the rise of nonbank lenders, handing them more influence over vast pools of cash. Private credit players have used that money to make loans to businesses and parked them in various questionable investment structures. And since the insurers' money was used by private credit firms to invest mostly in software companies which may not exist in a few months - let alone years - at the rate of today's AI disruption, the threat of historic losses - and a catastrophic credit crisis once the private credit maturity wall is hit in 2 years - for America's aging population is suddenly all too real.

Much more in the full notes from Citi, Barclays, UBS, as well as the full must read letter by Rubric Capital, (all available to pro subscribers).

Saludos.

[Flipback]

Estos días se publicaba que los buques de guerra americanos ya estaban volando minas en el estrecho de Ormuz. En windy.com, poniendo la capa de CO2, se ve claro que algo pasa justo en esa zona.

Que ocurre exactamente con el CO2, Flipback?

Se ve una mancha negra intensa que destaca, indicando los niveles de CO2 más altos de toda la zona. No puedo poner link a pantallazo ahora pero se puede ver en windy.com. El CO2 no debería ser tan alto si no están transitando barcos por el estrecho. Ayer los niveles eran aun mayores que los de hoy

[asustadísimos]

[El diabólico artículo de Zero Hedge traído por Cadavre Exquis...
https://www.transicionestructural.net/index.php?topic=2646.msg257939#msg257939
... se resume en que:

• el 'crédito privado' en EE. UU. es una bomba de relojería, especialmente por su altísima exposición a empresas de software; proliferan las peticiones de rescate de participaciones por fondistas asustadísimos; y se observan prorrateos y bloqueos de reembolsos;

• como ocurriera en la crisis subprime (2008), se emiten CDS ('credit default swaps') en masa, tanto para especular como por cobertura;

• la situación se cierra con las autoridades monetarias entrando a investigar cómo puede afectar este riesgo de insolvencia a la banca de depósitos y las aseguradoras, lo que significa tomar responsabilidad sobre asunto, aunque estarían llegando tarde;

• finalmente, en 2026-2028 vencen más de 200 mil millones de dólares en deuda, siendo 2008 el peor año de vencimientos, año que Zero Hedge, por tanto, señala implícitamente como el de la próxima crisis financiera, crisis que, según ellos, se administrará con una nueva ronda histórica de expansión cuantitativa, no para salvar al sistema financiero canónico, sino al 'crédito privado'.

Añado dos cosas:

• me jode que citen a dos bancos europeos (Barclays y Deutsche), cuando el problema es exclusivamente estadounidense o, dicho de otra forma, del dólar, por mucho que los bancos europeos citados sean muy activos en los mercados de derivados;

• como Zero Hedge (línea austriaca/libertaria dura) son unos 'impuestitos e impresoritas', y en su cabeza no cabe el concepto de activo ficticio (pérdidas activadas por haber comprado carísimo), lo que te está diciendo es que tú haces requetebién estando asustadísimo y, como el «dinero es basura» —y más que va a ser por la nueva expansión cuantitativa—, «compra ladrillo, oro y bitcoin, que se acaban». El 'problema' es que estas compras hay que hacerlas con 'el poderoso caballero', con lo que conecto con lo que digo a continuación.

A mí lo que me interesa es que esta deposición sectaria es un ¡¡¡VENDE YA, PERO YA, YA, YA!!! y, por tanto, un ¡¡¡BENDITA LIQUIDEZ!!!

Les recuerdo que nosotros, que somos juguetones —para darles en los morros a los ganchos—, estamos diciendo que el 3 de mayo, Día de la Cruz, será la noche de los cuchillos largos, 6 meses justos antes de las fatídicas elecciones 'midterm' de EE. UU., porque los mercados suelen actuar con esos meses de anticipación.

Para el Día de la Cruz faltan los días del pollito: 21.

Atentos a las reacciones a:
• el resultado de las elecciones en Hungría,
• la declaración de guerra por el control del estrecho de Ormuz;
ambas cosas clave en la asquerosa política estadounidense de frenazo al no-dólar.]

[Fomento Cemento]

TV en DIRECTO | Sánchez: "En los últimos 15 años los precios de la vivienda han subido un 60% en compra. En ciudades como Lisboa, Budapest o Madrid, muchas familias destinan más del 70% de sus ingresos a la vivienda. Esto es inaceptable y es un problema europeo"


https://x.com/el_pais/status/2042615472068157764?s=20


En relación con el problema Europeo... El precio de la vivienda ha crecido desde 2018 un 8% respecto de los salarios; en España un 24%.

En Italia un 3%, en Francia un 0%, en Alemania ha bajado un 2%, en Suecia ha bajado un 7%. Tan solo Portugal (+50%) y Países Bajos (+27%) tienen un problema más gordo que nosotros.


https://x.com/Jongonzlz/status/2042931747818541568?s=20

[sudden and sharp]

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https://www.artstation.com/artwork/OG3P8