The White House wants $87.6 billion for an Iran war and farm aid. Russell Vought sent the request to Mike Johnson. He did not include a receipt.
Farm aid gets bundled with war spending now. Someone in the Office of Management and Budget figured out you can sneak vegetables onto the plate if you hide them under the steak. Except the steak costs eighty billion dollars and the vegetables are subsidies for corn farmers in Iowa who definitely needed help affording their third F-350.
Vought runs OMB. His job is to manage the budget. He manages it the way a golden retriever manages a tennis ball. He finds it, picks it up, and immediately asks for another one.
The Iran war part is vague. No declaration. No timeline. Just billions for a conflict that may or may not be happening depending on which website you refresh. Retail traders will see this headline and panic-buy defense stocks at all-time highs because they think Lockheed Martin is about to go parabolic. It won't. The defense contractors already priced in every war through 2034.
Johnson received the request. He will hold meetings. There will be speeches about fiscal responsibility delivered by people who have never seen a supplemental spending bill they didn't approve. The $87.6 billion will become $94 billion after amendments. Someone will add funding for a bridge in Kentucky. Someone else will add money for a study on migratory bird patterns. The bill will pass at 2 a.m. on a Friday.
None of this moves the market. None of this changes your trade. The S&P does not care about supplemental appropriations. It cares about liquidity and earnings and whether Powell coughs during his next speech.
But sure, go ahead and buy puts on the dollar because you read a headline about farm aid.
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