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Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

We might want to listen to what the farmers are telling us, because if they don’t grow our food we do not eat. Coming into this year, we were already facing the worst farming crisis in America in at least 50 years. Farmers all over the nation are drowning in debt, and farm bankruptcies have been soaring. In all my years, I have never seen America’s farmers so angry, and now the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz has made things much worse. Spring planting season is here and there is a global scramble for whatever supplies of nitrogen fertilizer that happen to be available. As a result, prices have skyrocketed and farmers all over the planet are facing some incredibly tough choices.

That is even true here in the United States.

According to a brand new survey that was just conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation, 70 percent of U.S. farmers say that they will not be able to purchase all of the fertilizer that they need in 2026 because it has become so expensive…

Conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation April 3-11, the survey shows 70% of respondents say fertilizer is so expensive that they will not be able to buy all the fertilizer they need.

More than 5,700 farmers, both Farm Bureau members and non-members, from every state and Puerto Rico took the survey. Farm Bureau economists analyzed the results in the latest Market Intel.

The analysis reveals that almost 8 in 10 farmers in the southern U.S. say they can’t afford all needed supplies this year, followed by the Northeast and West at 69% and 66%, respectively, compared to 48% of the farmers in the Midwest.

Fertilizer prices were already at frighteningly high levels even before the war with Iran started, and since that time they have surged dramatically…

Nitrogen fertilizer prices have gone up more than 30 percent since the start of the conflict on Feb. 28, according to Market Intel. Combined fuel and fertilizer costs have also risen between 20 and 40 percent, with urea prices jumping 47 percent since late February.

Many people out there don’t seem to understand this yet, but this is going to affect all of us.

If 70 percent of U.S. farmers use less fertilizer this year, those farmers will grow less food.

If there is less food available, prices will go up.

Needless to say, food prices are already at ridiculous levels, but they are going to go even higher.

In impoverished countries, conditions will be even worse.

Due to a historic lack of nitrogen fertilizer, hundreds of millions of families that are currently barely existing “may soon find they are only able to afford little or no food”…

In many parts of the world, vulnerable families who today are currently managing to put some food on the table may soon find they are only able to afford little or no food.

“If this conflict continues, it will send shockwaves across the globe, and families who already cannot afford their next meal will be hit the hardest,” said WFP Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer Carl Skau.

I wish that I could get people to understand how serious this is.

Goldman Sachs is publicly admitting that the global fertilizer crisis is spreading a lot faster than they were originally projecting.

We desperately need the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened immediately, but that simply isn’t going to happen.

The Iranians continue to strangle commercial traffic through the Strait, and the U.S. has now “completely” cut off traffic to Iranian ports…

The U.S. blockade of Iranian ports is now fully into effect, “completely” cutting off Tehran’s international sea trade that powers about 90% of its economy, the U.S. Central Command said late Tuesday stateside.

The announcement comes at a time when the White House has been signaling a diplomatic solution to the conflict in the Middle East, as discussions around continuing negotiations with Iran are underway.

“A blockade of Iranian ports has been fully implemented as U.S. forces maintain maritime superiority in the Middle East,” said Brad Cooper, Centcom commander, highlighting that it was achieved under 36 hours of President Donald Trump’s order.

The Trump administration is convinced that this blockade will force the Iranians to give in.

According to U.S. Central Command, the first 48 hours of the blockade have been a resounding success…

But the Iranians are showing no signs of backing down.

On Wednesday, an official with the IRGC warned of severe consequences if the U.S. does not end the blockade…

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced Wednesday that Tehran would not allow the import or export of goods through the Persian Gulf, the nearby Gulf of Oman and the Red Sea unless the United States lifts the blockade it imposed earlier this week around the Strait of Hormuz.

Ali Abdollahi, commander of Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya emergency headquarters, said the measures would be “firm and decisive” steps to protect Iran’s national interests and sovereignty.

According to Abdollahi, if the U.S. continues the blockade Iran has decided that it “will not allow any exports or imports to continue in the Persian Gulf, the Sea of Oman, and the Red Sea”…

In his statement broadcast by Iranian state television, Abdollahi said Iran would move to disrupt shipping routes in the Red Sea and elsewhere if the U.S. continued its blockade, initiated by President Donald Trump.

“The powerful armed forces of the Islamic Republic will not allow any exports or imports to continue in the Persian Gulf, the Sea of Oman, and the Red Sea,” the commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said.

If Iran is able to successfully stop commercial traffic from traveling through all of those waterways, it will greatly intensify the economic problems that we are starting to witness all over the globe.

In California, the average price of a gallon of gasoline has already almost reached 6 dollars…

Gas prices are soaring across the country, but especially in California. The Golden State average is now nearly $6 per gallon — 40 percent above the national figure. That gap is likely to widen: UC Davis economists estimate that Californians could soon be paying more than $2.50 a gallon above the national average.

In the United Kingdom, officials are bracing for widespread fuel shortages in “two or three weeks”…

Sources told ITV News that the UK is ‘two or three weeks away’ from shortages of diesel and jet fuel, although petrol supplies are healthier.

The Government is said to be facing ‘difficult decisions’ over how to allot fuel supplies, including how to keep ‘ancillary power’ going for NHS hospitals.

If the war with Iran is not resolved quickly, this will only be the tip of the iceberg.

The Iranians are holding the global economy hostage, and they fully realize that this gives them a tremendous amount of leverage.

But there is no way that the U.S. and Israel will ever agree to their demands.

So for now we seem to have an unsolvable problem on our hands, and meanwhile the damage that is being done to the global economy is getting worse with each passing day.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

Confirming long-standing rumors of Tim Cook's replacement, after hours Apple announced that Tim Cook will step down as CEO and become executive chairman of Apple’s board of directorsm while John Ternus, senior vice president of Hardware Engineering whose name has been speculated as the next boss of Apple, will become Apple’s next chief executive officer effective on September 1, 2026. The transition was approved unanimously by the Board of Directors.

Cook will continue in his role as CEO through the summer as he works closely with Ternus on a smooth transition. As executive chairman, Cook will assist with certain aspects of the company, including engaging with policymakers around the world.

“It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be the CEO of Apple and to have been trusted to lead such an extraordinary company. I love Apple with all of my being, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with a team of such ingenious, innovative, creative, and deeply caring people who have been unwavering in their dedication to enriching the lives of our customers and creating the best products and services in the world,” said Cook.

Tim Cook joined Apple in 1998 and became CEO in 2011, overseeing the introduction of numerous products and services, including new categories like Apple Watch, AirPods, and Apple Vision Pro, and services ranging from iCloud and Apple Pay to Apple TV and Apple Music.

Under Cook, Apple's market cap grew from $350 billion to $4 trillion, more than 1,000% increase; meanwhile revenue quadrupled, from $108 billion in 2011 to $416 billion in 2025. That's a more than 2x Price/Sales expansion under Cook, who showed that you don't need original ideas, you just need cash for buybacks, to be successful as a CEO.

“John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor. He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count, and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future. I could not be more confident in his abilities and his character, and I look forward to working closely with him on this transition and in my new role as executive chairman.”

“I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry Apple’s mission forward,” said Ternus. “Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor. It has been a privilege to help shape the products and experiences that have changed so much of how we interact with the world and with one another. I am filled with optimism about what we can achieve in the years to come, and I am so happy to know that the most talented people on earth are here at Apple, determined to be part of something bigger than any one of us. I am humbled to step into this role, and I promise to lead with the values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century.”

Additionally, Arthur Levinson, who has been Apple’s non-executive chairman for the past 15 years, will become its lead independent director on September 1, 2026. Ternus will join the board of directors, also effective September 1, 2026.

“Tim’s unprecedented and outstanding leadership has transformed Apple into the world’s best company. He’s introduced groundbreaking products and services time and again, and his integrity and values are infused into everything Apple does,” said Levinson. “On behalf of the entire board of directors, we are incredibly grateful for his countless contributions to Apple and the world, and we are thrilled he will now be executive chairman. We believe John is the best possible leader to succeed Tim and as he transitions to CEO we know his love of Apple, his leadership, deep technical knowledge, and relentless focus on creating great products will help lead Apple to an extraordinary future.”

“I want to thank Art for the incredible work he has done leading the board of directors for the past 15 years,” said Cook. “I have always found his advice to be invaluable and I appreciate his thoughtfulness and his unwavering dedication to the company. I am grateful he will serve as our lead independent director, and I look forward to working with him in my new role.”

Some more from the press release: 

Ternus joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 and became a vice president of Hardware Engineering in 2013. He joined the executive team in 2021 as senior vice president of Hardware Engineering. Throughout his tenure at Apple, Ternus has overseen hardware engineering work on a variety of groundbreaking products across every category. He was instrumental in the introduction of multiple new product lines, including iPad® and AirPods, as well as many generations of products across iPhone®, Mac®, and Apple Watch.

Ternus’s work on Mac has helped the category become more powerful and more popular globally than at any time in its 40-year history. That includes the recent introduction of MacBook Neo™, an all-new laptop that makes the Mac experience even more accessible to more people around the world. This past fall, his team’s efforts were on full display with the introduction of a redefined iPhone lineup, including the incredibly powerful iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, the radically thin and durable iPhone Air™, and the iPhone 17, which has been an incredible upgrade for users. Under his leadership, his team also drove advancements in AirPods to make them the world’s best in-ear headphones, with unprecedented active noise cancellation, as well as the capability to become an all-in-one hearing health system that can serve as over-the-counter hearing aids.

Ternus led much of the company’s focus in areas like reliability and durability, introducing new techniques that have made Apple products remarkably resilient. He has also driven much of Apple’s innovation in materials and hardware design that have reduced the carbon footprint of its products, including the creation of a new, recycled aluminum compound that has been introduced across multiple product lines, the use of 3-D printed titanium in Apple Watch Ultra® 3, and innovations in repairability that have increased the lifespans of several Apple products. 

Prior to Apple, Ternus worked as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

Apple stock dumped on the (widely telegraphed) news, then recovered much of the initial drop.

Authored by Jesse Coghlan via CoinTelegraph.com,

Traditional finance giants Charles Schwab and Citadel Securities are both considering entering prediction markets, with each separately weighing up how they wish to get involved in the fast-growing sector.

“I think at some point we likely will have prediction markets,” Rick Wurster, the CEO of the banking and investing titan Schwab, told investors during a call on Thursday.

He added that prediction markets weren’t “of tremendous interest” when he recently asked a group of Schwab clients about them, but it was an area the company would “take a hard look at, and it would be quite straightforward for us to offer.”

Charles Schwab CEO Rick Wurster speaking to CNBC after the company launched Bitcoin and Ether trading on Thursday. Source: CNBC

Prediction markets such as the popular Kalshi and Polymarket have exploded in use over the past few months, with both platforms seeing a record combined total monthly trading volume of $23.6 billion in March, according to Token Terminal.

However, Kalshi, Polymarket and other prediction market platforms have also caught the ire of some US state regulators, who have accused them in court of offering unlicensed sports betting.

Some federal lawmakers have also vowed to crack down on prediction markets, claiming the platforms weren’t doing enough to stamp out insider trading.

Wurster said Schwab’s potential offering would steer away from allowing bets on areas such as sports, politics and pop culture as it looks to position itself as a partner for building long-term wealth.

“Prediction markets that are not aligned to that are not something that we want to pursue,” he said.

“If you look at the stats on the success of gamblers, they're not strong, and people generally lose money.”

Citadel “keeping an eye” on prediction markets

Meanwhile, Citadel Securities president Jim Esposito said at a Semafor conference in Washington, DC, on Thursday that the company is “absolutely keeping an eye on developments” in prediction markets. 

Citadel Securities president Jim Esposito speaking at the Semafor World Economy conference on Thursday. Source: YouTube

“We're not there yet, there's not that much liquidity,” he added, but said that the market is likely to “ramp and scale,” and it was “certainly possible” that the market-making firm would potentially look to get involved.

Esposito said Citadel was “not looking at sports at the moment at all, I don't see us entering that market,” but did signal an interest in some event contracts.

He added that Citadel could see its retail and institutional clients use some event contracts as a hedge for risks to their investments, such as contracts for elections, which have been known to move markets.

“That's going to be some of the biggest risks to investors' portfolios that they're going to have to grapple with,” Esposito said. “Having a clean and distinct way to hedge certain risks, I think there's a good use case and industrial logic to it.”

Local Mexican outlet Milenio reports an "armed attack" at the Teotihuacan archaeological site, located in central Mexico about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of Mexico City, in the State of Mexico.

Details are scant, but preliminary reports say the attacker climbed the Pyramid of the Moon and fired at tourists.

"Confirmed that the fatality from the armed attack at the Teotihuacan Archaeological Zone is of Canadian nationality," Milenio wrote on X around 1513 local time.

?? #ÚLTIMAHORA | Confirman que víctima mortal por ataque armado en Zona Arqueológica de Teotihuacan es de nacionalidad canadiense

?? La información con @taniadiazs pic.twitter.com/g1FXmGdpvG

— Milenio (@Milenio) April 20, 2026

Live feed from the outlet:

Ahora | #MILENIONoticias con @taniadiazs

https://t.co/dVNwbKoBYj

— Milenio (@Milenio) April 20, 2026

Preliminary reports provided no further information on whether the attack was linked to drug cartels.

If you're traveling to Mexico, it's probably smart to get K&R insurance.

*Developing... 

Confirming the Schrodinger nature of the notorious waterway, the Strait of Hormuz is now just closed even more than before Iran and the US said the vital oil channel had been reopened.

Traffic through the strait on Sunday and Monday was reduced to a trickle following a Saturday surge, after Tehran rejected a continuing US naval blockade and moved to seal the waterway again. The reduced movement underscores just how quickly hopes unraveled that cargoes could once again resume.

On Friday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the strait was “completely open” for commercial shipping, while US President Donald Trump said Iran was removing sea mines from the waterway. That prompted oil prices to plunge and dozens of tankers to race toward the strait at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. But Iran quickly declared that the passage was closed again as it emerged that the US operation in place since April 13 would not be lifted.

And rejected: the two tankers taking the neutral route, Minerva Evropi and Nissos Keros, have turned around; the Sanmar Herald which appears to be taking the Iran-sanctioned Larak island route is proceeding. https://t.co/aceBI7ki0B pic.twitter.com/gmkM37iA1U

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 18, 2026

The Hormuz crisis flared again over the weekend after the US Navy seized an Iranian vessel, during a turbulent period marked by Iranian forces firing at ships and reimposing controls across the strait. The developments pushed oil and natural gas prices higher after Friday’s big declines, reflecting fears of prolonged supply constraints.

The chaotic, start-stop nature of ship traffic through the strait underscores just how difficult it will be to fully restore oil and gas flows that are vital to the global economy, where energy producers need to have visibility months in advance before restarting production.

According to Bloomberg, just two liquefied petroleum gas carriers and two oil product tankers moved through the strait in both directions on Monday. The previous day, two LPG vessels and a cruise liner sailed out of the gulf, while no inbound transits were seen.

The Gas Harmony, an LPG carrier, went dark inside the gulf on Saturday morning but reappeared off the coast of Oman on Monday, indicating that the vessel transited the strait in the interim. The Liberia-flagged ship is owned and managed by Athens-based Gas Harmony Shipping Ltd., according to maritime database Equasis.

Greek and Iranian LPG ships departed the gulf on Sunday along with the European passenger liner, not listed in the charts. Subsequent observations until Monday afternoon, London time, identified further outbound movement by an Iranian product tanker and a second LPG ship.

At least three Mediterranean Shipping Co. containerships and a MSC cruise liner, along with a handful of other passenger vessels, appeared to have exited the gulf on Saturday, hugging the Omani coastline. That was a deviation from the corridor approved by Iran during the short-lived opening of the waterway. Another MSC containership remains off-grid after it stopped signaling inside the gulf. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Six cruise ships clear Strait of Hormuz during brief reopening

A flotilla of cruise ships stranded in Gulf ports since late February has now cleared the Strait of Hormuz, taking advantage of a brief reopening of the waterway before tighter controls returned.

According to… pic.twitter.com/nvnhG4JrkW

— MarineTraffic (@MarineTraffic) April 20, 2026

Diplomatic momentum has wavered after Tehran signaled hesitation regarding a second round of talks in Pakistan, amid the ongoing American blockade of Iranian traffic and the vessel seizure.

The commercial vessels entering Hormuz with active AIS signals during the past day were confined to a narrow northern lane near the Iranian islands of Larak and Qeshm, the route approved by Tehran.

The inbound transits on Monday included an Iranian LPG ship and a fuel tanker.

Pain at the pump might not ease up for American consumers until 2027, according to Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who said on April 19 that the price of a regular gallon of gas could stay above $3 for the rest of the year.

Wright said a price of $3 per gallon of gas “could happen later this ?year, [but] that might not happen until next year” in an interview that aired on CNN’s ”State of the Union” ?program Sunday.

“But prices have ?likely peaked, and they'll start going down certainly with a resolution of this conflict [in Iran],” Wright predicted while speaking about how the war has impacted energy prices.

As of April 19, the average price for a gallon of regular gas in the U.S. was $4.04, according to data from the American Automobile Association (AAA).

States on the West Coast and the Northeast have the highest prices, according to AAA.

Before the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury against the Iranian regime on Feb. 28, the price for a regular gallon of gas in the U.S. was $2.98.

The Energy Information Administration’s short-term energy outlook, published on April 7, predicted the average retail price for a gallon of gasoline would be $4.30 per gallon in April.

The Energy Information Administration - designed as a nonpartisan agency within Wright’s Department of Energy - estimated the retail price for an average gallon of gasoline will be $3.46 in 2027, above the $3 level he predicted on CNN.

As the chart above shows, for pump prices to fall back to $3 a gallon, we would need to see crude oil prices back around $60 a barrel - a long way down given the disruptions from the Iran War are likely to ripple through the supply chain for months.

Finally, The Hill's White House correspondent, Julia Manchester, reports that President Trump just told her over the phone that he disagrees with Energy Secretary Wright's assessment that gas prices may not drop until next year. 

"No, I think he's wrong on that. Totally wrong," Trump said, adding that gas prices will drop "as soon as this ends."

With the Midterms looming ever closer, Trump better hope he's right and Wright is wrong.