These days, everyone is watching the US-China tit-for-tat, but the real shockwave actually exploded on Wall Street.

First blast: The world's largest asset manager, BlackRock, directly restricts client redemptions—want to withdraw 9.3%, only allowed 5%, with the rest forcibly withheld. This is called "liquidity management," but essentially it's defaulting. Soon after, Blackstone and Burning Capital also froze redemptions one after another. The three giants all blew up, and the $3 trillion private credit market is beginning to default across the board.
Second blast: Oil prices soared 12% in one day, breaking through $90. The Strait of Hormuz issue caused inflation to rebound immediately, making Fed rate cuts impossible and pushing the stagflation risk to the max.
Third blast: Non-farm employment not only failed to grow but actually declined, with the unemployment rate jumping to 10.4%. Goldman Sachs bluntly stated: The US economy has already stepped into the quagmire of stagflation.
These three shocks seem isolated but are actually part of a causal loop: geopolitical conflicts push oil prices higher → inflation rebounds → employment worsens → private credit collapses → systemic risk ignites.
Even more critical, Iran uses drones costing only a few thousand dollars to consume millions of dollars worth of US interceptors per missile. In one month, Iran produces 100 missiles, while the US can only produce six or seven interceptors. How can this fight be fought?
Military experts lament: Even Iran can't afford to keep up, and they still want to compete with industrial powers for capacity?
Old Trump is now caught in a dilemma: withdrawing equals geopolitical bankruptcy; fighting means no money, no people, no missiles. Domestic credit collapse, runaway inflation, shrinking employment—one wrong step, and it’s all downhill.
History is never new: the Vietnam War dragged down the US economy, and the stagflation curse lasted ten years. Today, the script is being rewritten.
The Federal Reserve only has one way out: print money to rescue the market. Inflation is always better than stagflation. But the bombs have already gone off—will it turn into a series of chain reactions? Will it surpass 2008?