S15 EP160: Hour 3 - Hormuz Blockade Squeezes Tehran

Erick walks through the Wall Street Journal report that Iran's oil dollars are drying up, with no Iranian crude crossing the US Navy blockade since mid-July and offshore stockpiles feeding China down from 90 million barrels to 29 million. His tell that the regime itself is cracking: the Ayatollah has had two London houses foreclosed on for missed mortgage payments, and the Iranian army is going unpaid and hungry. He also unpacks the new OECD PISA study showing a worldwide learning recession, and keeps taking apart the JD Vance stay-at-home parent child care subsidy.

• Wall Street Journal on the Strait of Hormuz blockade, Kpler tanker tracking, the collapsing Iranian rial, and the Ayatollah's two foreclosed London houses
• Victoria Coates on Fox, Scott Bessent on Operation Economic Outcast, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright on nine million barrels a day still transiting the Strait
• Why the IRGC and the regular Iranian army are different animals, and why hungry, armed, unpaid soldiers are how the Shah fell to Khomeini
• The OECD PISA study: reading down 28 points, math down 22 points since 2015, kids using AI to cheat rather than learn, and a Dark Ages comparison from Rome to the monasteries to the Renaissance
• More on the JD Vance child care plan turning stay-at-home moms into welfare queens while punishing married moms who work, plus callers on property tax exemptions for modest homes and whether Vance or Marco Rubio gets 2028
• China's deflation, mortgage and real estate crisis, the sanctioned Turkish bank, and Canada helping on Iran even in the middle of a trade war