Tom Bilyeu

And when the only policeman in the world is you, you're going to be tempted to act even if it needs to be violently to ensure business remains good, the company stays open, and your dollars keep flowing.

That's what this war is actually about.

And once you understand Iran is the madman at the end of the street and you see it through that lens, everything, the bombing of Fordow, the ships in the strait, the desperate scramble for a victory that keeps not arriving, all of it, everything snaps into focus.

Here's how the petrodollar actually works in practice.

the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and the rest of the GCC nations.

They sell their oil exclusively in dollars, which means every country on earth that needs energy has to acquire dollars first.

Every country needs energy, every day.

That structural demand is what keeps the dollar positioned as the world's reserve currency

even as America runs deficits that would have collapsed any other currency on Earth.

And crucially, those dollars do not just sit in vaults in the Middle East.

They get put to work in the economy all over.

The Gulf states take their petrodollar earnings and invest them.

And for decades, the most promising market in the world was the U.S.

market.

And the safest bet, the thing literally known as the risk-free rate of returns, is U.S.

Treasury bonds.

So the GCC countries poured money into US treasuries, creating a near endless demand for US debt.

And when the rate of return went too low, the money flowed into US equity markets.

And recently, that money has been specifically flowing into US artificial intelligence infrastructure.

and it flowed in in massive quantities.