The Trump administration plans to deploy economic tactics against Iran that have never been seen. The USS Abraham Lincoln needs help. These two facts appeared in the same headline.
Connect those dots and you get a military so stretched it's troubleshooting aircraft carriers while threatening financial innovation. The Abraham Lincoln, a $6 billion floating city designed to project American power, is currently projecting American maintenance issues. Meanwhile, Treasury officials are workshopping unprecedented sanctions like they're developing the iPhone of economic warfare.
Never-been-seen economic tactics. That's the phrase. As if every sanction since Hammurabi hasn't been some variation of you can't trade with us anymore and also we froze your money. The innovation here appears to be doing it louder while a carrier limps back to port.
Iran is in a strategic stalemate, which is diplomatic code for nobody's winning but we can't say that. So the response is rhetorical pressure, which is what you apply when actual pressure requires functioning boats. The Navy works to relieve the Lincoln. Relieve it of what? Its duties? Its crew? Its dignity?
Retail traders read this headline and started googling defense contractor stocks, convinced that troubled carrier means Raytheon's going to the moon. They will buy calls on Lockheed Martin because a boat is broken. They will lose money because a boat is always broken somewhere and it's already priced in.
The most American headline ever written: we're threatening financial annihilation while our warship needs a tow truck.
Photo by Saifee Art on Unsplash
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