Is the Economy About to Explode?

Summary

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Podcast Summary

It Could Happen Here – "Is the Economy About to Explode?"

Host: Mia Wong
Date: March 10, 2026

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Episode Overview

This "emergency" episode of It Could Happen Here pivots from a planned topic on tariffs to address an unfolding global economic and energy crisis triggered by the US’s recent invasion of Iran. As stock markets in Asia plummet, oil prices spike, and critical shipping routes shut down, host Mia Wong offers a raw, detailed analysis of why the world stands on the brink of economic disaster—and how systemic hubris, poor planning, and imperial violence have led to this moment.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Sudden Market Collapse and War in Iran

• Context: The episode opens with Mia describing how quickly events escalated: while preparing to record an episode on tariffs, “a bunch of shit happened like we invaded Iran,” destabilizing global markets overnight ([02:08]).
• Stock Market Circuit Breakers: The Korean KOSPI index triggered its market-halting circuit breaker twice in four sessions, an unprecedented event, indicating a freefall in market confidence in East Asia ([02:08-03:40]).
• Oil Futures Spike: Global markets scrambled after a historic spike in oil futures, directly linked to the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil route, due to active military conflict.

2. The Strait of Hormuz: The World’s Oil Choke Point

• Why It Matters: One-fifth of global crude oil passes through this narrow strait. Its closure means nearly instant turmoil for major importers—South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, and Japan—with China less directly affected due to larger stockpiles and alternate sourcing ([05:55]).
• Military Reality vs. Market Delusions: Early market calm was based on false assumptions that US naval forces could secure tanker transit or that Iran would not retaliate meaningfully ([03:40-05:04]).
• Mia’s Critique: “The narrowest part of [the Strait] is 23 miles wide. Like, what are we doing here?...You can hit these oil tankers with like a fucking trebuchet.” ([04:30])

3. Government and Market Failure

• Trump’s “Calming” and Unhinged Rhetoric: Markets briefly stabilized after President Trump claimed, in a CBS phone interview, that the war was nearly over and that the US was “very far ahead” of schedule. However, his threats of further escalation barely registered with traders ([07:40]).
• Quote – Trump via Mia Wong (07:59):

  “I think the war is very complete, pretty much. They have no navy, no communication, they've got no air force...They've shot everything they have to shoot, and they better not try anything cute or it's going to be the end of that country.”

• Market Ignorance: Mia points out that traders “think and act like herd animals…these people have the capacity for logic and reason and they still act like this” ([09:20]).

4. Why Did Policy Makers Not See This Coming?

• Catastrophic Miscalculation: US and Israeli officials incorrectly assured Gulf states that Iran wouldn’t target oil shipments or infrastructure, “sending Mr. Bean memes in group chats about how weak the Iranian retaliation was going to be” ([13:55]).
• Mia’s Outrage:

  “You killed the fucking Ayatollah. This is an existential war for survival of the regime. Of course they were going to target your oil facilities. Are you fucking kidding me?” ([14:30])

• Hubris and System Failure: The episode repeatedly references how greed, pride, and sheer incompetence led to escalation and blind spots in US/Gulf planning:

  “Monarchy, bad system of government. Electing Donald Trump also apparently bad system of government…these people are so fucking dumb.” ([15:10])

5. The Global Ramifications of an Energy Choke

• Nature of Gulf Oil: The Gulf’s “good” crude oil (unlike Venezuela’s heavier crude) and large share of LNG (liquefied natural gas) make the closure especially severe ([18:55]).
• Climate Irony & Methane Rant:

  “One of the biggest sort of climate hoaxes...there’s been a whole push to be like, oh, we should transition to natural gas because it’s cleaner than oil. And like, kind of a little bit, in the sense that like dunking your head into a swamp is probably cleaner than dunking your head directly into like a shitful toilet.” ([19:45])

• Irreplaceable Supply and Technical Fragility:
  • Storage limitations mean unsold oil can’t just “wait” for crises to resolve.
  • Shutting down wells permanently damages some reserves: “Some of them will never turn back on again” ([25:25]).
  • Pipelines and shipping infrastructure can't compensate for the closed Strait.
• Secondary Crises: Shutdowns hurt everything—from fertilizer distribution (i.e. threatening food production and crop yields) to tech sector cloud computing, given AI’s massive energy needs ([31:55]).

6. Compounding Supply Chain Disruptions & Force Majeure

• Not Only Oil: High-tech goods (e.g., semiconductors), basic commodities (aluminum, copper), and countless downstream industries grind to a halt.
• Force Majeure Invoked: Companies are declaring “acts of God” to break supply contracts due to unfulfillable obligations.
• Health & Ecological Catastrophe: Bombed facilities release toxic chemicals, with Mia stating:

  “Turns out, when you fucking blow up an oil facility, it releases a bunch of extremely toxic chemicals into the air that cause fucking cancer and stuff like that.” ([30:25])

• Global Interdependence: The initial shock hits East Asia hardest, but financial contagion and supply chain breakdowns will soon “boomerang back” to the US and elsewhere, as with past crises.

7. Disproportionate Effects & American Imperialism

• Who Suffers Most: While Americans may ultimately feel economic pain, people in Iran and throughout Asia will bear the brunt—via bombings, toxic exposure, lost livelihoods, and food insecurity ([34:19]).
• Mia’s Refrain:

  “A whole bunch of people who never had anything to do with this fucking suffering and dying because of the fucking greed and pride and vanity and hatred of the American ruling class.” ([35:00])

8. The AI (Artificial Intelligence) Bubble and Energy Dependency

• AI Boom’s Fragile Foundations: Korea’s market crash was partly an AI stock bubble—just as pervasive, if “larger and more concentrated,” than the US’s own ([35:23]).
• AI’s Hidden Energy Costs: “AI is enormously, enormously fuel intensive. It just wastes a staggering, unhinged amount of energy…It can only really function as long as those oil prices are very cheap.” ([36:08])
• Strategic Data Centers Targeted: Iran strikes Amazon data centers in Gulf states; a reminder of how digital economy vulnerabilities tie back to fossil fuel supply and physical infrastructure ([36:32]).

9. Looming Global Recession & Historical Analogies

• Echoes of the 1970s Energy Crisis:
  • Economic historians are warning of “increasing inflation and also increasing unemployment that completely reshaped the entire global economy,” birthing neoliberalism, and ending the gold standard ([36:52]).
• Stakes Summarized:

  “To the ruling class, [the question is] whether it is worth destroying the global economy in order for Trump to kill more people in Iran.” ([37:31])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Political and Market Delusion:

  “These people are human beings…they have the same capacity for logic and reason that we do, and they still act like this. But this has calmed the markets down and it’s sent oil prices back down again. We're going to get into why that's kind of nonsense...”
  —Mia Wong ([09:20])

• On the Myopia of Leadership:

  “I expected this. I'm a podcaster. I mean, I know I'm very smart, but like these people and their advisors are running...some of the most important governments in the entire world.”
  —Mia Wong ([15:10])

• On Climate “Solutions”:

  “There's been a whole push to be like, oh, we should transition to natural gas because it's cleaner than oil. And like, kind of a little bit in the sense that like dunking your head into a swamp is probably cleaner than dunking your head directly into like a shitful toilet.”
  —Mia Wong ([19:45])

• Summing Up the Crisis:

  “We're talking about potential crop failures from lack of fertilizer, right? We're talking about economic ruin. We're talking about the destabilization of the world economy or talking about people dying from fucking cancer.”
  —Mia Wong ([34:30])

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Segment Timestamps

• [02:08] – Show pivots to emergency coverage: Markets drop, war in Iran, oil route blockages
• [05:55] – Strait of Hormuz explained; why Asia especially is vulnerable
• [07:40] – Trump’s CBS interview and market aftermath
• [13:55] – How US/Israeli officials misled Gulf allies; catastrophic planning failures
• [18:55] – The quality, importance, and irreplaceability of Gulf oil
• [25:25] – Why shutting down wells may cause irreparable disruption
• [29:58] – Detailed look at compounding supply chain crises, ecological impact
• [31:55] – The “force majeure” legal maneuver and breakdown of contracts worldwide
• [36:08] – Energy use of AI, strikes on data centers, digital economy fragility
• [36:52] – Analogy to the 1970s energy crisis; stakes for the global system

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Summary & Closing

Mia Wong’s episode delivers a passionate, urgent snapshot of a world economy perched on the edge of collapse—linked to reckless policy, imperial hubris, and deep structural interdependence on fossil fuels. While US markets may be momentarily soothed by rhetoric, the material, human, and ecological costs—especially in Asia and the Middle East—are already devastating. The show closes with a warning: history shows energy crises can rapidly reorder global norms, and the crisis may have only just begun.

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This summary excludes all advertisements, non-content, intros/outros, and focuses strictly on the central discussion led by Mia Wong.

Transcript

[Mia Wong]

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This is the biggest night in podcasting.

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We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry.

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Thank you to all the other nominees. You gu are awesome.

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Then she says, have you seen a

[Mia Wong]

photo of my son? And I'm like, who is this person?

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Welcome to the Boys and Girls Podcast. Arranged marriage is basically a reality show and you're auditioning for your soulmate. And who's judging? Only your entire family. I sacrificed myself to this ancient tradition, hoping to find love the right way. And instead I found chaos, confident comedy, and a lot of cringe. Listen to boys and Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

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I actually drive better when I'm high. It heightens my senses, calms me down. If anything, I'm more careful. Honestly, it just helps me focus.

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[Mia Wong]

Media. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast where the economy is falling apart in new and exciting ways faster than I can write about it. I am your host, Mia Wong. Welcome to what has turned into a Kind of Emergency Is the Economy Collapsing episode. This episode was originally supposed to be about tariffs, but while I was writing the tariff episodes, a bunch of shit happened like we invaded Iran. And kospi, which is the leading Korean stock market index, had its largest single drop in its entire history, which triggered its circuit breaker. Circuit breakers are a thing that stock markets have now where if the stock market collapses, like, if it loses points too fast in a certain period of time, all trading will automatically stop for a bit. So it hits its circuit breaker. The tie index also hits its circuit breaker. And then in the wee hours of sort of Monday morning American time, I start seeing a bunch of people posting that Kosby hit the circuit breaker. And I'm very confused because that happened on like, Wednesday, right? Like, this already happened. No, no, no, no. Wrong, wrong. Happened again. It's two circuit breakers in like four sessions. So this has turned into an unbelievable crisis. Yeah. So we're going to get the tariff episode at some point, talking about the Supreme Court tariff rulings and stuff like that. That will happen. There's a lot of interesting stuff there. But right now we need to answer the question, is the economy about to collapse? And tentatively, it has been held off at least for a little bit. Now, if this is being recorded early Monday afternoon on March 9th, by the time this goes out on March 10th, who the fuck knows what will have happened? But let's talk about what happens in the run up to all of this because it's very important. So in the lead up to the open of the American markets, we had a massive spike in oil futures. Like one of the largest single day spikes in oil futures ever. It looks like it's going to be the apocalypse for the markets. And the reason it looks like this is because, and this is something that's genuinely astounding. So one fifth of the world's oil moves through the Strait of Hormuz. We're going to talk about this in more detail later. And obviously there is now a war, which means that you can't move oil through it. And people suddenly realized that, oh, my God, this is going to raise oil prices. Now, when I was originally writing this episode in the halcyon days of Friday of last week, part of this episode was about why oil prices were not spiking because they didn't spike immediately upon the start of the war. Right? And I was very confused about this because the explanation at the time was that people were like, oh, it'll be fine. The US Navy can escort oil tankers. The straight Okoro Moose. No, they can't. Like, the narrowest part of it's 23 miles wide. Like, what are we doing here? Like, forget drones, you can hit these oil tankers with like a fucking trebuchet. What are we doing here? What was the administration telling the oil companies? Right? And then a few days later, everyone collectively realized, oh, my God, we can't move oil. And, yeah, no shit, you can't move oil. Jesus Christ. Like, this is unbelievable stuff from the people who are in the oil markets, from the oil executives, from the Gulf monarchies, from all of the people planning this. Why would you think this wouldn't happen? And we're going to get into that actually in a little bit because there is apparently a reason why they thought this is going to happen, which is some combination of just pure lies and willful belief and some of the worst strategic planning I've ever seen in my entire life. But, you know, the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz is the reason why, even if you are like President Donald Trump, the kind of person who doesn't give a shit if you know your army burns Iranian children to death, right? Even if you don't care that you fucking bombed a fucking school, you don't fight this war because it fucks with the money. Now, in anticipation of what looked like it was going to be just a market pounding, Trump gave a phone interview with CBS's senior White House correspondent, Weijia Jiang, who posted this on Twitter. This is her reporting of his statements. This is from Donald Trump, quote, I think the war is very complete, pretty much. They have no navy, no communication, they've got no air force. He added that the US Is, quote, very far ahead of his initial three to four week time frame. You know, he also said that ships are moving through it now, but he's also, quote, thinking about taking it over, which, what, just officially conquering the Strait of Hormuz instead of merely, like, protecting it with American fleet assets. This is completely unhinged. And then he also said, quote, they've shot everything they have to shoot, and they better not try anything cute or it's going to be the end of that country now. Okay, so the part of this, right, that went to the markets is that he thinks the war is over. Now, the part of it where he says if Iran fights back in any way, quote, it's going to be the end of that country, apparently did not hit the markets. The people running the markets are really, really dumb. They think and act like herd animals. This is, I guess, slightly an insult to herd animals because herd animals react that way for a reason. These people are human beings. They have the capacity for logic and reason. They have the same capacity for logic and reason that we do, and they still act like this. But this has calmed the markets down and it's sent oil prices back down again. We're going to get into why that's kind of nonsense in a little bit. But it's also worth noting in terms of Trump saying the war is nearly over, that every single other quote Trump has said about this war has been, he's in this for the long haul. He's thinking about troops on the ground. He is not going to get bored with it. He doesn't care that gas prices are going up. Someone asked his press secretary about whether he had ruled out the draft and she said no, he hadn't. Which is, I mean, like, they're not going to do a draft. But like, that's ridiculous. Why would you say that? It's also worth noting that, so he has a 250 year anniversary commission thing that he set up that he's very, very excited about. That's like it's America's 250 year, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that commission's like one of their big people was ringing the opening bell on Wall street this morning. So, you know, I suspect that there's a lot of sort of motivated reasoning here going on with Trump saying, oh, it's fine, it's going to be fine. The war is nearly over. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Okay. So I quite frankly do not believe the President when he says that the war is nearly over. I mean, I guess maybe there's a scenario where everything we're about causes a crisis that is large enough to, you know, actually set off Trump pulling out of the war under pressure from his allies in the region, which is to say the Arab monarchies. I don't know to what extent that's actually going to happen, but let's talk about what the crisis here is. So the US's war against Iran has triggered what could be the start of a full on energy crisis. The energy crisis has been postponed for one day, I guess as of again, time of recording Monday, March 9th. But this could be the start of a fallout energy crisis. And it's not just me saying this. Here is the subtitle of the Wall Street Journal's big piece on this quote, quote, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has ground to a virtual halt, unleashing the most severe energy crisis since the 1970s and threatening the global economy. So that's not good. Now, I began this episode talking about a collapse on South Korean and Thai markets. And I should also mention, by the way, that like when that collapse happened, all the other Asian markets kind of ate shit. The Chinese markets were sort of more stable for reasons we'll get to in a second. But like Japan, like the Nikkei was down like 4%. Like all of the other Asian markets kind of ate shit, right. Taiwanese market. And the reason for that is, well, again, as I said above, one fifth of the world's oil supply, crude oil, is shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. And this is an issue for a country like South Korea, which imports almost all of its oil, you know, and whose economy, like manufacturing economy in particular, is very, very heavily dependent on oil. This is true of a lot of other countries in that region. And, and South Korea and Thailand and Taiwan and Japan are not countries like China which have bunch of oil stockpiles and have the ability to get oil through other ways. Now, I want to take a second to actually explain what the Strait of Hormuz is. So the Strait of Hormuz is a strait. It's like there's a little bit of water, but it's close to land. I talked to Set earlier that the narrowest part of it is 23 miles. So it's very narrow. And it is a passage between the Persian Gulf and effectively the Indian Ocean river. Right? And once you're out into the Indian Ocean, you can get to the rest of the world that is, you know, east of that, which is all of Asia, most of the rest of the world that's not west of you. Right now, countries bordering the Persian Gulf who are in the area who need to ship their oil out through here include Iran, Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Those are a bunch of oil producing countries. You know, they are now also countries that are embroiled in this war because they are part of the American alliance. And you can ask the very reasonable question, okay, so if you're part of the American alliance, why the fuck would you be like, okay with the United States launching this attack on Iran? On a more vulgar level, you can ask the question, how the fuck was this allowed to happen? This is the money, this is the global economy that you are fucking with right now. One of the things that the Wall Street Journal talks about is that officials in the US and Israel told the Gulf states that there wouldn't be retaliation by Iran. Right? That Iran wouldn't target oil facilities, they would just target American military bases. They had a whole thing about how, oh, well, during the war with Israel, they didn't target American military bases. They didn't like, bomb any of the oil infrastructure. They were sending Mr. Bean memes in their group chats about how weak the Iranian retaliation was going to be. So this is not just a situation of pure, you know, motivated reasoning. We were lying to them, et cetera, et cetera. Like, the Americans appeared to have actually believed some of this, that Iran's retaliation was going to be weak. I've seen reports that they thought that Iran was out of drones. I don't know why you would think this baffling. Their drones are extremely cheap to produce, like they've used them, but why would you think they didn't have more? And I just want to point out, right, so their point of reference here was, oh, Iran showed restraint in the war with Israel. You know, this is a 12 day conflict where Israel and Iran sort of fired missiles at each other and stuff after Israel assassinated a bunch of people for doing nuclear stuff. But okay, let's look at this for a second. My brother in Christ, you killed the fucking Ayatollah. This is an existential war for survival of the regime. Of course they were going to target your oil facilities. Are you fucking kidding me? Your goal here was regime change. You literally assassinated their fucking head of state. You literally killed him. What the fuck did you think was going to happen? Oh my God, these people are so fucking dumb. And like, you know, and it's obviously not clear exactly, like who knew what about this plan. But again, like, it seems like the plan was put into place because they had the opportunity to kill Ayatollah Khomeini. And like, ok, if that's true, and presumably the Gulf states would know that, why the fuck would they not expect retaliation? I expected this. I'm a podcaster. I mean, I know I'm very smart, but like these people and their advisors are running fucking like some of the most important governments in the entire world. I don't know. Monarchy, Bad system of governments electing Donald Trump also apparently bad system of government. You're getting just, oh my God. Holy fuck, these people are stupid. Oh my God. They really, truly, they really, truly believed that Iran was not going to pick up the weapon that it has always had. That has always been the thing for the reason why you don't fight this fucking war. Even if you don't care about Iranian lives and you're willing to spend American lives. Right? They really thought they wouldn't do it. I, I, I just, I just, I can't get over this. I just, oh my God. I don't know. I don't know. Okay, we're, we're, we're gonna go to ads. I'm mad as hell. I'm not gonna take it anymore. Here's the bads.

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[iHeart Podcast Awards Announcer]

Next Monday, our 2026 iHeart Podcast Awards are happening live at south by Southwest.

[Mia Wong]

This is the biggest night in podcasting

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will honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry.

[Boys and Girls Podcast Host]

And the winner is.

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Creativity, knowledge and passion will all be on full display.

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Thank you so much, iheartradio.

[Mia Wong]

Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome.

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Watch live next Monday at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific [e-mail] or the Veeps app.

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I went and sat on the little ottoman in front of him.

[Mia Wong]

Hi dad.

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And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk. This is badass. Convict me just finished five years. I'm gonna have cookies and milk at Mom.

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On the Cino show podcast, each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience and redemption. On a recent episode, I sit down with actor cultural icon Danny Trejo talk about addiction, transformation and the power of second chances. The entire season two is now available to binge, featuring powerful conversations with guests like Tiffany Haddish, Johnny Knoxville, and more.

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[DJ Hester Prynne]

When you feel uncomfortable, what do you put on?

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Biggie.

[DJ Hester Prynne]

You put on Biggie when you feel uncomfortable.

[Mia Wong]

Because I want to get confident.

[DJ Hester Prynne]

This is DJ Hester Prynne's Music Is Therapy, a new podcast from me, a DJ and licensed therapist that asks one simple question. Who do you want to be? And what's the song that can take you there? Music changes what you feel, and what you feel changes what you do. Right that moment where a song shifts something inside you, that's where transformation starts. This year, I'm talking to experts across every area of life, like personal finance icon Gene Chatsky, New York Times journalist David Gellis, relationship legend Dan Savage, human connection teacher Mark Groves, and the man who shaped my ear more than anyone, Questlove. They'll bring the strategies. I'll pair them with the right records and will teach you how to use the music to make change stick. This isn't just a podcast. It's unconventional therapy for your entire year. Listen to DJ Hester Prynne's Music is Therapy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Mia Wong]

Okay, calming down a little bit. Let's get back to the actual oil of it all. So let's talk about the quality of the oil here. Now, sharp eared listeners may remember that when I talked about Venezuelan oil battering, our executive disorder episode about the previous war, a couple of months, a sentence so unhinged I had to go back, check the date to make sure that I wasn't hallucinating. But no, it was January 3, 2026, when we had our last war with a major oil producer where we in some way incapacitated or killed the head of state. By the way, we're still just like holding Maduro hostage. This is just still a thing that we're doing right now. Incredible stuff, Incredible. Like normal government shit, bad things happening. But in that episode, which would have been the executive disorder that came out on Friday the January 9th, I talked about how Venezuelan crude oil is not very good, right? It's extremely sour, kind of sucks. The chemical composition is bad. The oil in the Gulf is not like that. This is good oil. This is one fifth of the world's crude oil supply, right? And also it is now because of Cotter's like liquefied natural gas production. This is now also a shutdown of a significant portion of the world's liquefied natural gas, which is again, extremely important to the economy. And also, you know, one of the biggest sort of climate hoaxes in all of this, right? And I'm saying climate hoaxes here. There's been a whole push to be like, oh, we should transition to natural gas because it's cleaner than oil. And like kind of a little bit in the sense that like dunking your head into a swamp is probably cleaner than dunking your head directly into like a shitful toilet. And also it's only cleaner, assuming that no methane escapes during the production process. But the thing is, methane fucking escapes during the production process of natural gas all the fucking time. And methane is like, to get a sense. So we're talking about greenhouse, greenhouse gases here, right? And obviously we're familiar with CO2 as like the major pollutant that we, that we produce. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is so fucked that it is better to light it on fire and have it burn and have it emit that CO2 into the air that is better for the environment than letting fucking methane into it. It is that fucked of a greenhouse gas, right? And you know, a lot of this stuff escapes and this is, this is a point that I've been, you know, trying to find a thing to put in this episode, right. One of the big things here is why are we still using oil to this extent? And you know, it has to do with sort of, I mean just, just the, the utter cowardice and evil and short sighted profit motive chasing of the entire world ruling class. It has to do with specific efforts by the oil lobby in order to make sure that politics would happen like this. You know, I mean we could talk about like the role of Pennsylvania and like fracking as like an electoral thing. We can talk about sort of the kind of Andreas Malm fossil capital thesis about the place that you want to produce things being a place that both has stable energy and also a sort of, I don't know, I guess the capitalists would call it disciplined workforce. But like a workforce that's not like organized and that's not militant so you can exploit them. And the places where those things are true, for example, like this century largely has been China where you know, if you try to do independent union organizing, they will arrest you. Sometimes you will get disappeared. And that also coincides with, you know, they have an, they have an energy grid and the energy grid is extremely pollution intensive. It still is even as you know, China's sort of renewable energy push has been happening is still extremely carbon intensive. So okay, obviously like we're in this nightmare because a whole bunch of people really, really, really, really desperately want us to burn the entire world alive so they can keep making money. But returning to the original thing before I got pissed off about people saying that natural gas is cleaner than oil. It's like just fucking use literally any other way to generate energy that's not fucking oil or natural gas or coal or I guess nuclear too. But like we have other ways of generating power. We could do this, but because we haven't done this, this massive decrease in oil supply because again, nothing's fucking going through the Gulf. There's like a couple of ships have gone through this is causing a crisis in the global economy. I'm going to quote the Wall Street Journal. If the strait is still closed this Friday, output in the region could fall by more than 4 million barrels. Conover, who's an analyst, they were quoting earlier estimates. The decline could reach about 9 million by the end of March, representing almost a tenth of global demand. Now it's worth noting here, right, that you know, you look at a tenth of global demand and you go, oh, okay, so it's like a 10% reduction, but it's actually way worse than that because again, people, people have this tendency to look at oil as just liquid money that moves freely around the world. But that reduction in supply is not evenly distributed across the world, right? There are countries who have extraordinary needs of it who get their oil from the Middle East. This is places like, for example, Korea, from Thailand, Myanmar. We're going to get, we're going to get to you in a little bit. Are places who are relying on this oil. And you know, for, for South Korea, it's like 70% of their oil comes from this region, right? So that 10% of global demand is not spread evenly across the world is intensified into acute crises and very, very specific economies. And this is a compounding crisis because as the Wall Street Journal points out, like, it's not just that the strait is closed for the first time ever, right? The strait has never been closed. Like there was a point where the US was like escorting things through during the Iran Iraq war. But like it's never just been closed before. It's not just that like, you know, oil, natural gas and fertilizer isn't coming out of there either, which is a real fucking problem that we'll talk about in a second. This is not just an immediate crisis of we can't move the oil that we have out. There is a secondary crisis, which is that where the fuck do you put the oil, right? If you get one thing out of listening to me talk about oil, it's that again, it's not just liquid money. It's a material substance. And the actual substance of oil and what it is and how it's produced has really wide reaching political effects, right? Because when you take a stuff out of the ground, the system is designed so that it is moved extremely quickly. Now there are countries like Iraq that could in theory still produce oil, right? But there aren't enough containers to store it, so they have to shut production down. Now you could be like, okay, well, but why don't they just ship it out through the Mediterranean? And the answer is that the pipelines and the shipping equipment there just don't have the throughput. Oil distribution is very, very flexible. And this is what makes disrupting it harder than something like coal used to be. But it is designed to a point where to be sort of nodal and flexible and able to sort of deal with supply reduction crises, right? It's not designed to deal with this, which is a full on energy crisis level, like, oh my God, we can't get oil out through the Strait of Hormuz. This is a scale of issue that can't simply be solved by just moving the supply around and distributing it differently. This is not a solution to this. And so these are having these interlocking effects, right? Because also, again, these things are designed to be going constantly and it's not just a thing where you can just turn it off and turn it back on again. It doesn't work like that. These are actual very, very complicated technical processes. If you turn these things off, this is again, very important. If you turn these wells off, some of them will never turn back on again. So we're talking about permanent damage to the supply, right? Even if tomorrow, right, like the war is suddenly over and everything quote unquote goes back to normal, we're talking about still like permanent damage to the. And this is where again, you can be like, well, okay, why don't we just transition from oil? And again, you can also ask like, why should we give a shit about this? There's a few reasons.

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Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome.

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I went and sat on the little ottoman in front of him.

[Mia Wong]

Hi, dad.

[Cino Show Guest]

And just when I said that, my mom comes out of the kitchen and she says, I have some cookies and milk. This is badass, convict, right? Just finished five years. I'm gonna have cookies and milk at

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mom

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on the Cino show. Podcast. Each episode invites you into a raw, unfiltered conversations about recovery, resilience and redemption. On a recent episode, I sit down with actor cultural icon Danny Trejl talk about addiction, transformation and the power of second chances. The entire season two is now available to binge, featuring powerful conversations with guests like Tiffany Haddish, Johnny Knoxville, and more.

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Ever feel like you're being chased by the marriage police? Welcome to Boys and Girls, the podcast where dating isn't dating. Arranged marriage is basically a reality show, except the contestants are strangers and your entire family is judging. You're sipping coffee with one, maybe grabbing dinner with another, and praying your karmic Ken or Barbie appears before your shelf life runs out. Trust me, I've been through this ancient and unshakable tradition. I jumped in hoping to find love the right way, and instead I found chaos, cringe and comedy. And now I'm looking for healing. Boys and Girls dives into every twist and turn of the arranged marriage carousel. The meet awkward, the near misses, the heartbreak. And let's not forget our all the jokes. Listen to boys and Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Mia Wong]

When I say this is a compounding crisis, the Wall Street Journal talked about this a little bit, but in every article you read about this, you will see people making the argument that, oh, it's fine, like the US Is more insulated than it was from oil prices in the 70s when it just like caused a major global crisis. And that's kind of true to a certain extent, right? The US Is an oil producer. But also, again, oil is not just something that's used for cars, right? And our domestic economy doesn't just rely on oil. Like, you can't just, you know, you can you make plastics out of oil, right? But even that, you don't just make things wholesale out of oil. Like everything you consume has other things in it and it relies on products like, for example, aluminum and you know, things like copper and everything from basic commodities to sort of like refined goods that rely on there being oil, right? Like again, we're talking about South Korea's economy. South Korea produces. There's a whole bunch of microchip production stuff that goes on there. You know, there's like Samsung, right. Major phone manufacturer. So there's all of this very, very high tech stuff too on, on the sort of on the bottom end, we're talking about like you can't refined aluminum anymore, you know, right. Not that you can't, like, like places are shutting down, they're capacity to do it because they can't get oil or they can't afford this oil. To the extent that we're seeing something called force majorum being deployed by a whole bunch of companies across the world in different sectors. And force majority is this, is this legal concept you can apply that's like, it's like an act of God where for example, like, I don't know if there's like a once in a century earthquake and it like obliterates your factory, you're not legally liable to pay stuff out to people because it's an act of God like you, you can't be legally held liable for it. And people are doing this for their aluminum production to say like, yeah, sorry, we can't meet our contracts, we can't meet our quotas that you bought from us. Like not our fault, nothing we can do about it. It's happening with oil producers because it's also worth noting that it's not just that the strait is closed. Iran is also hitting oil facilities, Israel is also hitting oil facilities in Iran. They hit one in Tehran, like a massive one in Tehran that's releasing all of these fucking toxic chemicals into the air. And that has set off a massive ecological crisis. Because all of these people are enormous numbers of people in Iran are going to die because of this. Not just because of the bombings, but because turns out when you fucking blow up an oil facility releases a bunch of extremely toxic chemicals into the air that cause fucking cancer and stuff like that. And so what you're dealing with, right, is this crisis in which all of these different aspects of the economy that rely on oil are impacted, right? It's basic commodities, it's highly advanced, like parts of like semiconductor manufacturing. It's, you know, all of these things that rely on oil are suddenly constrained and suddenly supply chains are fragmenting. You know, the US gets things from all over the world, but the crisis right now has mostly been hitting East Asia, right? I talked about Korea, we talked about Thailand. But the thing is, right, crises in East Asia do not stay in East Asia. The Asian market collapse heralded a whole bunch of other debt crises. This is the Asian market collapse in the 90s, right? Heralds a bunch of debt crises in places like Mexico, heralds the collapse of the US economy during the dot com bubble. It causes as say it with me, longtime listeners of the show. It's what causes the reverse Plaza Accords try to bail out the entire world economy, which is where the US nuked its own manufacturing economy by reversing Reagan's attempt to force all the rest of the countries in the world to increase the value of their currencies relative to the dollar so the US could compete in manufacturing better. So it affects all these places and that effect will boomerang back here. But as, as is always true with American imperialism, the people suffering from this the most are not Americans. It's people in Iran, right? It's people who are getting fucking blown up. It's people who are breathing in toxic chemicals. It's people whose lives have been destroyed and ruined by American imperialism. And beyond Iran, it's Pakistan, it's India, it's Bangladesh, it's Taiwan, it's Thailand, it's the Philippines, South Korea, it's Myanmar, like, it's Indonesia. I mean, it's a lesser than Indonesia. But, you know, we're talking about potential crop failures from lack of fertilizer, right? We're talking about economic ruin. We're talking about the destabilization of the world economy or talking about people dying from fucking cancer. When we're talking about the global economic effects of this. That's what we're really dealing with here, regardless of what happens on the American stock markets is a whole bunch of people who never had anything to do with this fucking suffering and dying because of the fucking greed and pride and vanity and hatred of the American ruling class. Now, I'm going to close on a slightly lighter note, which is people who follow the economy very closely will be talking about how post B, the Korean index had a massive bubble and that's why it collapsed and that's why you had like two circuit breakers, and that's why it's going down so much. That's kind of true, right? But that bubble is an AI bubble. Now, it is a larger and more concentrated version of the American AI bubble. But, you know, the American economy is an AI bubble. And the thing about AI is that it's propped up by gas prices, right? AI is enormously, enormously fuel intensive. It just wastes a staggering, unhinged amount of energy, right? And it can only really function as long as those oil prices are very cheap and as long as, you know, natural gas prices are cheap. And it's also worth noting that, you know, these AI things are also due to physical infrastructure. And because these people are just like absolute clowns, they've been buying into the Gulf monarchies, attempts to attract a tech sector there. So they've been hit. And Iran has been taking advantage of this by hitting Amazon data centers in the Gulf states. So that's another way where this can potentially just sort of toss a nuke into the global economy is that like the price of running all of these AI things suddenly starts to increase. And the kind of worst case scenario scenario for this, right, the one that we've been looking at in terms of what could happen to the world economy is what's been being discussed more and more, which is a version of the crisis of the 70s, which is an economic crisis of increasing inflation and also increasing unemployment that completely reshaped the entire global economy. It's why we have neoliberalism. You know, it's a complete collapse of the social democratic system that had come before it. It changes the entire global world order, right? The US goes off the gold standard, like things change that had never changed before. And we're going to talk about that. More on the tariff ep. But that to a large extent to the ruling class is what is at stake here, right? It's whether it is worth destroying the global economy in order for Trump to kill more people in Iran. This has been It Could Happen Here. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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Next Monday, our 2026 iHeart Podcast Awards are happening live at south by Southwest.

[Mia Wong]

This is the biggest night in podcasting.

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We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry.

[Boys and Girls Podcast Host]

And the winner is.

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Creativity, knowledge and passion will all be on full display.

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Thank you so much, iheartradio.

[Mia Wong]

Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome.

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Watch live next Monday at 8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific, [e-mail] or the Veeps app.

[Mia Wong]

Then she says, have you seen a photo of my son? And I'm like, who is this person?

[Boys and Girls Podcast Host]

Welcome to the Boys and Girls podcast. Arranged marriage is basically a reality show and your audience auditioning for your soulmate. And who's judging? Only your entire family. I sacrificed myself to this ancient tradition, hoping to find love the right way. And instead, I found chaos, comedy, and a lot of cringe. Listen to boys and Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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