Blain's Morning Porridge

Blain’s Morning Porridge April 2026 – Artemis II, Space X, Data Centres and Competition.
“Space will end up being one of the places that keeps making Earth better.”
Hype and reality seldom mix. Elon Musk is the exception that proves the rule. The Space X IPO is set to make him the first trillionaire – but what if Competition is already eating his lunch in space-based datacentres before he’s even looked at the menu? In the Tortoise vs the Hare space race – will Jeff Bezos emerge the winner?
Today’s launch of the Artemis II 4-man mission to circle the Moon is the most exciting thing to happen in Space exploration in decades.  Commercially? The financial markets are focused entirely on how superlative the Space-X IPO is set to be in terms of size, price and profit action – or at least they were…
The excitement around the Artemis mission obscured the success of yesterday’s launch of a duo of geo-sync satellites built by Singapore tech firm JieYuren on a prototype Blue Origin New Glenn rocket. The launch wasn’t only a rare example of Asian/American corporate tech co-operation but could be the straw that breaks the Elon Musk Myth. If any of Musk’s legion of fanboys were paying attention, it should have reminded them that the new ex-Earth based economy will literally be a competitive “space”. (Hah!)
The future never stays the same. Not only has Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin achieved multiple orbital insertions of the New Glenn rocket, and delivered a package into high orbit, but the two JieYuren satellites are prototype units for orbital data-centres – a concept Musk thought he’d pretty much patented!
According to Avril Salmon, JieYuren’s spokesperson, yesterday’s joint launch is not a deliberate spoiler for Space-X – but a clear demonstration that there are multiple pathways to monetise space – not just the Musk vision. The Space-X IPO is expected to value Musk’s firm at $1.75-2 trillion on a $75 bln record float as early as June.  

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Blain’s Morning Porridge March 31st, 2026 – Escalating the Iran War into a Water War!
“I hold at your neck the gom jabbar, the high-handed enemy. It’s a needle with a drop of poison…”
Who needs nukes to win an Oil War when Water is the key? The Front-Line Gulf States are highly vulnerable to a Water War on their desalination plants. Yesterday Trump threatened to strike Iran’s water infrastructure – practically inviting Tehran to strike back! But the Strait of Hormuz is not Iran’s only Ace in the current war.
Yesterday Donald Trump’s threatened a major escalation of the Iran War when he threatened to “blow up” Iran’s desalination plants. That would be a war crime – simple as. No ifs. No buts. The Rome statues forbid targeting civilian infrastructure while the Fourth Geneva convention specifically prohibits attacks on drinking water facilities. There are some things that can’t be unsaid.
I’m sure I’m not the only financier wondering what Trump’s latest off-the-cuff, ill-considered jaw-dropper really means. Am I going to have to sell my entire position in US Treasuries and US Stocks? The UK regulator, the FCA, and internal ethical investment parameters, are both quite clear and specific about the ethics of investing in states that promote terror or genocide against civilian populations.  
Al Jazeera carried an interview with a professor of international law this morning: “Trump’s threat reinforces the climate of impunity around collective punishment in warfare” adding: “this is clearly a [threat] of collective punishment, which is prohibited under international humanitarian law. You can’t deliberately harm an entire civilian population to pressure its government.”
But the real issue is not the legality of warfare, but what Trump escalated yesterday. Were Trump to destroy Iran’s decaying desalination plants – which don’t supply Tehran and account for less than 3% of Iran’s water, it would have limited immediate effect on his opponent.
But it would immediately escalate the war - practically a gilt-embossed invite to the Iran regime to counterstrike Gulf States’ water infrastructure and desalination facilities in what could prove a genocidal escalation of the war. Were Iran to successfully strike Gulf water supplies because Trump threatened to strike them – it would be the equivalent of a nuclear strike in terms of effectiveness.
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Blain’s Morning Porridge, March 30th, 2026 – Stage 2 of American Divergence and the Risk of Global Stagflation 
“Events dear boy, events…” 
The global economy is inevitably slowing from the deepening Hormuz oil shock. The Americans intend to press on despite the rising costs. While the global economy burns, President Trump is mulling multiple plans to achieve his version of victory. The rest of the World is waking to the reality this war is damaging their economic interests, and wondering how to mitigate the effects. 
Another interesting week’s play in prospect for the global financial markets…. What will happen next? Who knows….  
The financial markets are never simple. You can’t simply define them in terms of the sentiment differential between optimists and the pessimists, or how deep or shallow real events will go. There are consequences and effects which make markets and consequences kind of multi-dimensional! Hah…  that’s far too sci-fi for a Monday Morning, but I’m sure you get the drift.
However, there is now a new reality emerging.
It’s political realisation – call it Stage 2 of the Trump effect. Stage 1 was the realisation Trump holds the rest of the World in Contempt. Stage 2 is actively countering him.
Around the globe, Nations are now experiencing the negative consequences of Trump’s mis-adventurism on their economic interests. While Trump continues to hurl insults at nations that won’t support his war, there is a growing realisation its America’s actions that have triggered global slowdown and likely stagflation.

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Blain’s Morning Porridge, March 27th, 2026 – The Economic Implications of the Iran War
“Armchair generals talk about tactics. Soldiers worry about logistics.”
The cost of Trump’s War on Iran is extraordinary - $1 bln a day plus. War Stocks are being consumed at incredible speed. A request for an additional $200 bln of DOD funding is in the works. The nature of war has changed – it could prove phenomenally destructive, expensive and ruinous to winners and losers alike. Meanwhile the economic outcomes of the war remain in the balance.
When I was a very young man the global bond markets were a single column buried deep in the second section of the Financial Times…. On Monday my boss reckoned the Euromarkets could see a $ 1 bln issuance week. It happened. We were stunned. Such a huge number. Unimaginable.
Now we throw $1 trillion around like its normal.
One writer on financial markets to whom I pay attention to is Torsten Slok of Apollo. Earlier this week he wrote the ballooning $2 trillion US budget deficit, plus the $10 trillion of US debt to be rolled over, plus rising hyper-scaler AI infrastructure issuance, means investment grade supply of over $14 trillion dollars this year. That poses the risk of a bear squeeze on rates and credit spreads as supply overtakes demand at a time when the Fed is thinking about pre-emptive rate hikes against inflation and the Hormuz Energy shock threatens global recession.
If you want to horrify yourself, open the scariest page on the internet – the US Debt Clock. Play around with the time machine function. 125% debt to GDP. Ouch.
120 years ago, the UK was the dominant global power. Today, the OECD sees the UK as the most vulnerable economy to the current energy shock – hence most likely to see a bond crisis, which already threatens to metastasize through the economy. (And before you start blaming Energy Secretary Ed Milliband… the UK’s energy insecurity is a result of long-term folly, not short-term mistakes.)
There could be global trouble ahead.
When bond markets wobble… everything else tends to fall. A global financial crisis would play straight into Iran’s war objectives.
Alongside the energy shock, the inflation risk, and worries about deeper geopolitical conflict, the war in Iran is costing the USA about $1 bln per day in war-stock munitions. According to the WSJ, over $2 bln in expensive equipment, including three F-15s (shot down by an overly keen Kuwaiti pilot), a damaged F-35, K-135 tankers and 2 very expensive radar systems taken out by Iran missiles, has been written-off. That number will rise as the pace of operations continues to run hot and planes and pilots get tired. The exhausted 9-month deployment USS Gerald R Ford has been under repair in Crete for the last few days after an internal fire left much of the crew with nowhere to sleep. (Fascinating story on the carrier’s multiple problems on Bloomberg.)

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Blain’s Morning Porridge March 26th, 2026 – The Truth is Out on Social Media
“Do no evil was the biggest lie ever heard in the valley.”
Social media is deliberately addictive? Who knew? While markets barely reacted to yesterday’s Product-Liability award against Meta and Alphabet in California, the growing pushback against Big Tech will see valuation multiples diminish over the long run as increased regulation becomes inevitable. Perhaps it’s time to look at how Tobacco firms have evolved to understand the future value of Social Media parasites?
Apologies to Morning Porridge readers, listeners and viewers for the last week of silence. I was on the slopes – catching a last Ski-trip of this season to Chamonix. 5 days of fantastic conditions and a wonderful time with great friends. I had intended to write about markets – but waking up to the view of the mountains? Poetry in motion, or bond prices? Go figure.
We only get to live once – in an this increasingly fraxious, insane and unpredictable world…. who knows when or where I will ski next? On the mountains I am still in my twenties, dodgy-ticker and aching joints forgotten, addicted to my SkiTrax app…. Not the grey-haired old man who labours to write the Porridge each morning. (Sadly, I lost my notes when I left my iPad on the plane last night!! Darn!)
As I step back to the desk this morning, there is no shortage of stuff to write about – I am already digging into the latest wobble in private credit, and who knows where Iran goes? (Nowhere good I expect.) A fuller analysis on where the World might be headed will follow tomorrow, but let’s start with yesterday’s Judder Moment for Google and Meta.
The Tide is Changing on Social Media
What would happen to the global economy if we give every kid whose life has been “blighted” (in some form) by Social Media $3 mm in damages plus $30mm in punitive damages? The consequences would be phenomenal – and devastating. Who would bother seeking a job? What would it mean for global inflation? The industrialisation of the court systems with billions of cases to adjudicate?

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