Barbara Boyd argues that President Trump’s Truth Social post was not aimed at humiliating Keir Starmer but at warning the City of London, claiming Britain stayed out of the Iran conflict because war is bad for City business.
She says headlines about oil spikes and Hormuz chaos are a manufactured panic, driven by Lloyd’s of London pulling war-risk coverage to engineer a price rise and profit from disruption.
Boyd highlights Trump’s counter-moves: a $20B U.S. maritime reinsurance and escort plan to replace Lloyd’s leverage, criticism of the Financial Times and JP Morgan, and lifting Russian sanctions to keep oil flowing and collapse the spike.
She connects this to a broader push targeting London-linked dirty-money networks via hemispheric anti-cartel cooperation and joint development of resources in nations like Argentina and Chile, framing it as a break from the postwar “special relationship.”
Chapters
00:00 The Monday Brief - - March 9, 2026
01:51 There Is No Oil Crisis — There Is a Manipulation
05:58 Three Moves, One Target
08:56 A Real War on Drugs and Crime — Choking Off the City's Other Revenue
Snapshots and Notes
On Saturday (07-March), President Trump posted something on True Social that every financial editor in London read very carefully and that almost nobody in American media explained correctly…
Every headline called that a humiliation of Keir Starmer - but they’re all looking at the shells and not the shell game.
The Post is a message to the city of London, and to understand it, you have to ask the one question nobody is asking.
Britain has dragged us into every war since World War I. Every single time.
Why did they sit this one out?
Here’s Starmer giving Parliament the answer...
“I’m clear in my mind that any UK action must always have a lawful basis.
“It must also always have a viable and thought-through plan.
“And it must be in our national interest.
“The Leader of the Opposition, I think, is saying she would have joined the initial strikes, whether they were lawful or not.”
Illegal - not in Britain’s national interest.
Britain didn’t stay out because Starmer suddenly grew a conscience.
Britain stayed out because this war is bad for the city of London’s business and Trump knew that when he launched it.
Barbra Boyd has tracked the fight between empire and sovereign nations for decades and will be covering three things today...
There Is No Oil Crisis — There Is a Manipulation (01:51)
Let’s start with what you’re being told right now.
Oil prices are spiking.
Tankers can’t get insurance.
The Strait of Hormuz is a war zone and is closed
That is what every anchor, every financial correspondent, every bedline is saying.
They’re trying to create a panic to damage President Trump’s economic agenda ahead of the midterms.
It’s not true.
Here’s Energy Secretary Chris White telling you exactly that…
CBS News: “Gasoline prices up 14% in the past week, according to AAA.
“Reports the national average is $3.45.
“We’ve seen oil prices spike.
“How high do you think oil and gas are going to go?”
Chris Wright: “They shouldn’t go much higher than they are here because the world is very well supplied with oil.
“There’s no energy shortage at all in the Western Hemisphere.
“The United States is a net exporter of oil and a large net exporter of natural gas, but refineries in Asia and Europe are seeing interruptions to normal crude flows.
“But there are massive energy stores worldwide.
“What you’re seeing is emotional reactions and fear that this is a long-term war.
“This is not a long-term war.”
This is not a supply problem.
This is not a transportation problem.
The oil is there.
The ships are there.
What happened is that Lloyds of London, the City of London’s insurance arm, pulled war risk coverage from Persian Gulf shipping within hours of the conflict beginning.
When Lloyd’s won’t insure your tanker, your tanker doesn’t sail.
That’s not the market reacting to war, that’s the City of London engineering a price spike on command.
Now here’s the business model behind that move.
The City of London controls the pricing mechanisms for the world’s most critical raw materials, such as oil, rare earths, lithium, copper, etc.
Not by producing them, by controlling the contracts, the futures markets, the insurance, the shipping lanes.
Whoever controls those choke points collects a toll on everything that moves on the planet.
Lloyd’s canceling tanker coverage isn’t risk management, it’s pulling a lever.
And watch what happens when Trump moves against one of their nodes.
Fathom House, the City of London’s public foreign policy arm, immediately declared the Iran operation illegal…
“There’s no ready legal basis that can be invoked in order to justify the present operation.
“In international law, you can use force only in extraordinary, exceptional circumstances.
“The provision of war is particularly important for the international system, and that’s why the circumstances are narrowly defined.
“Either there has to be a UN mandate, which clearly isn’t the case here, or there has to be a case of self-defense.
“But self-defense does not apply in relation to abstract threats that might materialize in the future.”
They said the exact same thing about Venezuela…
Every time Trump moves against a node in the City of London’s network, Chatham House suddenly discovers international law.
They’re not making a legal argument.
They’re running a protection racket for their interests.
And London’s own real estate trade press published pieces this week, salivating over Gulf sovereign wealth funds fleeing the conflict zone and parking higher capital in London property.
The city didn’t just engineer the oil price hike; it is positioning itself to profit from the disruption it created.
That is the business model.
And you are about to find out exactly how Trump is killing it.
Three Moves, One Target (05:58)
A writer Barbara respects put it perfectly this week.
The pundits panicking around Iran and feeding that panic are making the oldest mistake in the Trump playbook.
They’re watching the shells, not the shell game.
Barbara has something to show you....
On March 6, Treasury Secretary Bessent announced a $20 billion U.S. maritime reinsurance plan, political risk insurance, and naval escorts for commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz.
Lloyds pulled coverage.
Trump replaced Lloyd’s.
That stranglehold physically is gone.
It’s been solved.
Secretary Bessent explains to Larry Kudlow...
Bessent: “There’s some very inaccurate reporting and a terrible report from JP Morgan, which was completely irresponsible.
“And I have to say, they are just low grade, I mean, if I were still wearing my professor hat, I would have given the analyst an F.
“BECAUSE WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN HERE, LARRY, IS NOW APPROXIMATELY 100, BEFORE THE CONFLICT, APPROXIMATELY 100 SHIPS A DAY CAME OUT OF THE STRAITS OF HER MOVE, AND WE CAN PROVIDE COVER FOR THOSE SHIPS.
“BUT THE REAL THING IS WE DON’T HAVE TO PROVIDE THE DFC COVER ONCE THEY ARE OUT OF THE STRAITS AND OUT OF THE GULF REGION BECAUSE THEN THEY CAN GO BACK TO THEIR REGULAR INSURANCE.”
Kudlow: “Right.”
Bessent: “So it’s just a completely flawed assumption, front page of the FT, they should, JPMorgan and the FT should both be ashamed.”
Bessent went after The Financial Times, the City of London’s house newspaper, and JPMorgan Chase, the city’s longest-running American fund.
Last November, Jamie Dimon hosted King Charles’ birthday party at JPMorgan’s New York headquarters.
That’s not a banking relationship.
That’s a vassal paying tribute to his sovereign.
And basically, all that Dimon did was talk about the special relationship and lavish praise on the monarchy.
But when Besseat singles them out, he knows exactly what he’s pointing to.
The engineered oil spike had a second kill shot.
The Treasury Secretary has lifted Russian sanctions to allow India to fill its refineries
Ambassador Tom Kudlow, the administration will do a lot more of this if necessary.
Russian oil flooding back onto world markets?
Well, then the engineered price spike collapses.
The city has blocked Ukraine peace for months because the war, sanctions, and terrorism are profit centers.
Ending Russian sanctions to kill City of London’s oil gambit is pure Trump justice.
That’s exactly why we’re now hearing intelligence leaks claiming Russia gave Iran targeting data on us.
No corroboration, perfect timing to poison the sanctions deal.
Trump dismissed it flatly, and the Washington Post had a conniption fit.
A Real War on Drugs and Crime — Choking Off the City’s Other Revenue (08:56)
Now here’s what the City of London doesn’t want you to know about its business model.
It’s not just oil.
The Guardian reported that nearly 40% of all dirty money globally is laundered through London and its crown dependencies, including the Cayman Islands, Jersey, and the British Virgin Islands.
Four out of $10 of criminal money on earth flows through that square mile and its satellites.
That’s not a side business, that’s a core revenue stream.
The drug trade, the arms trade, criminal finance of every kind.
And Trump is going after all of that, simultaneously.
On Saturday (07 March), Trump hosted the Shield of the Americas Summit at Doral, bringing together 12 Latin American nations.
Two days earlier, Secretary Hegseth convened the first America’s counter cartel conference.
Here’s what he said...
“More than one million Americans were killed by fentanyl, cocaine and other drugs.
“Numbers greater than any casualties we’ve sustained in war.
“We want unfettered access to key terrain and trade so that our nations can industrialize.”
Read that carefully.
Unfettered access to key terrain and trade so that our nations can industrialize.
That is not drug war language; that is American system economics.
These 12 nations have committed to joint military and intelligence operations to destroy the cartels and the financial institutions that launder their money.
The City of London’s offshore haven network is directly in the crosshairs.
But here’s the move the press completely missed...
Two coalition members, Argentina and Chile, hold some of the world’s largest lithium and rare earth deposits.
Trump is talking about developing those resources jointly, just as he is doing with Venezuela’s oil.
The Gulf investment that was supposed to flood into the City of London after the conflict?
The Telegraph reports Trump was already far ahead in the queue.
And after America defended the Gulf while Britain sat on its hands, that money is coming our way instead.
The City of London makes its money by controlling the trade in raw materials and collecting tolls, never developing the nations in strips.
Trump’s model of joint development destroys the business at the root.
It’s the same thing with the Board of Peace in the Middle East.
Connect Venezuela, connect Iran, connect Argentina, and Chile.
These are not separate foreign policy initiatives.
They are moves on the same board against the same enemy.
And that opponent is losing on every front simultaneously.
Let’s go back to the two social posts, because you need to read them the way the City of London reads them…
The United Kingdom, our once great ally, may be the greatest of them all.
We don’t need them any longer, but we will remember.
Everyone read that as Trump humiliating Starmer, and yes, Starmer’s performance was a masterclass in cowardice.
Blocked US-based access, reversing course, then posing as the calm spaceman.
But Trump is not talking to Keir Starmer; Starmer is the public face.
Trump is talking to the people behind Starmer.
He is talking to the City of London.
The real special relationship has always meant something very specific.
The City of London sets the global financial architecture.
Wall Street executes it domestically.
The United States military enforces it around the world.
That is what the rules-based international order actually means every time you hear it from Chatham House, the Council on Foreign Relations, or their captive politicians right here in the United States.
250 years ago, this nation declared its independence from the very same imperial system.
This week, for the first time in a very long time, that declaration is being enforced.
It’s not going to be easy.
We’re dealing with more than 40 years of them building their empire.
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