George Hahn

Former Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld would have called this a known known.

We saw it coming.

We just didn't stop it.

But known knowns don't kill markets.

Unknown unknowns do.

September 11th wasn't on anyone's risk model.

The 2008 subprime mortgage crisis was contained to subprime until Lehman collapsed and nearly took the global financial system with it.

COVID-19 was just a flu until we shut down the world economy for two years.

The pattern is always the same.

We're staring at the obvious threat – oil prices, inflation, recession –

while the real contagion is hiding in plain sight, waiting to metastasize.

So let's talk about the market collapse scenario nobody's pricing in, the one that doesn't show up in Bloomberg terminals or Goldman Sachs reports until it's already eating the global financial system from the inside out.

On the Paramount Plus show Landman, oil fixer Tommy Norris, Billy Bob Thornton, describes the oil market's Goldilocks nature.

You want oil to live above $60 a barrel but below $90.

Gas gets up over $3.50 a gallon, it starts to pinch.

Oil hits $100, every product in America has to readjust its price.

U.S.

gas prices reached $3.70 per gallon this week, prompting fears of 1970s-style stagflation and anxiety among Republicans, as the party in power typically pays a political price in an economic downturn.

Neither of these outcomes is likely to lead to additional economic shocks, as the markets have already priced in these scenarios.

American leadership looks out the window and sees itself and a world that reacts as we'd hope or expect.