{"id":357420,"date":"2026-03-31T21:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T21:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/357420\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T21:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T21:00:08","slug":"the-crisis-will-arrive-slowly-then-all-at-once","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/357420\/","title":{"rendered":"The crisis will arrive slowly, then all at once"},"content":{"rendered":"

World leaders are doomscrolling. Why aren\u2019t investors? <\/p>\n

\u201cI am forced to know things about what could happen in the coming week, and the effects it will have on the economy and our daily lives, that no longer allow me to sleep,\u201d Italy\u2019s defense minister said<\/a> yesterday. <\/p>\n

Also staring at the ceiling are South Korea\u2019s president<\/a> and European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde, who is talking<\/a> about shocks \u201cbeyond what we can imagine.\u201d If you\u2019re the last one sleeping soundly, here\u2019s Germany\u2019s military chief: \u201cConflict with Russia in the next few years is inevitable.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are people with real-time data feeds and classified briefings. Markets have flinched but haven\u2019t freaked out: Oil is well short of where many analysts think it should be, and the Nasdaq\u2019s correction territory is driven by AI fears not global shocks.<\/p>\n

The two leading answers<\/a> are resiliency and complacency. The world is either so flush with money that it can absorb any risk, or investors figure they\u2019ll be bailed out (again) by governments if things get too bad.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a third option: We\u2019re on borrowed time. The buffer provided by oil already at sea and releases from national reserves \u201cis now being exhausted in real time,\u201d write<\/a> the usually sanguine experts at Rystad Energy. (See this handy chart on when the last prewar tankers will arrive at your local ports, and maybe buy some call options on Australian stocks while you\u2019re at it.)<\/p>\n

\"Chart<\/p>\n

One way to think about it is that we\u2019re living in the supply-side version of the pandemic\u2019s demand shock. Scientists were warning us, and we went out to dinner anyway. Then we didn\u2019t for a very long time. The second and third-order effects of the Iran war haven\u2019t hit yet: crops stunted<\/a> by fertilizer shortages, Asian factory blackouts, MRI rationing due to helium shortages<\/a>, grocery prices hit by higher trucking costs. They will arrive in the same way the pandemic\u2019s economic effects did, slowly and then all at once.<\/p>\n

The rise of high-frequency trading convinced us that everything is priced in instantly, obscuring pockets of friction. Oil tankers move slowly. So do Marines. And all the while, the slow-motion bank run happening inside private credit marches on. For now, these funds are funding their own collapse, at quarterly intervals. It\u2019s Silicon Valley Bank, but with some structural lag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World leaders are doomscrolling. Why aren\u2019t investors? \u201cI am forced to know things about what could happen in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-357420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}