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The pressure on Iran is already extraordinary. The rial traded at 2.02 million to the dollar on Sunday, down from 1.53 million in March, a 32 percent depreciation in under six months. Inflation is running near 90 percent by the Iranian government’s own Statistical Center, and the International Monetary Fund expects the economy to contract 5.4 percent this year.

Oil exports have stopped almost entirely: central bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati has conceded that “we are not exporting oil,” tanker trackers have logged no Iranian supertanker crossing the Strait of Hormuz since July and floating storage has drained from 105 million barrels to fewer than 40 million.

The rest of the ledger is no better. Iranians are living with rolling blackouts and water rationing. Hezbollah is degraded, Hamas is gone, Assad has fallen, and the nuclear program is buried.

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second: To sanction Canada for allegedly discriminating against U.S. dairy, auto and alcoholic beverage exports, the Trump administration reached back to the Great Depression. The 1930 tariff legislation is known as the Smoot-Hawley Act after its congressional sponsors. With the U.S. and world economies in collapse, Congress raised tariffs on hundreds of imports in an attempt to protect American farmers and manufacturers. The tariffs are notorious among economists and historians for shutting down world commerce and making the Great Depression worse. (Trump, who proudly calls himself “Tariff Man,’’ has a different view, arguing that the Smoot-Hawley levies simply came too late to rescue the American economy.) [go to link] Trump got it wrong, but won't correct.

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6ixStringJack: "With the U.S. and world economies in collapse"... Grow up, dude. Mr. fucking hyperbole. I bet your fat ass isn't starving.

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