Paul Krugman has the gentle and precise cadence you might expect from a guy who has won a Nobel Prize in economics.

But every once in a while, his careful tone gives way to a sick burn.

All the way back in 2016, he called Donald Trump's economic policies completely incoherent, for instance.

In the last week, he's used a different descriptor for Trump world shenanigans.

Economic treason.

I wanted Paul to talk about this allegation. But before we get into it,

let me just explain what he's talking about here. Last week, you might remember that the president did this funny two-step on Iran. He began by threatening to obliterate Iranian power plants unless the straight of Hormuz was

opened back up again. He gave a 48-hour deadline. Then Trump pulled back on his threat. But a few minutes

before he did, the oil markets saw a massive spike in activity, a spike so huge that it seems

clear, somebody knew something.

Yeah, so there were two places where there were sudden, you know, we had, we don't know who,

but we know that somebody did big trades because we do have volume measures in financial markets.

This is Paul. There's the oil futures market, which is where people buy and sell contracts

on a barrel of oil in the future, usually just the not very distant future. As somebody sold,

the Financial Times went and estimated it, sold about $580 million worth of oil futures, just at

649 a.m. And the announcement on Truth Social came at 705. So, you know, right there.

Is that a time when trades are usually happening like that? Yeah, but not much. I mean,

the futures market is open, but it's very sleepy. That's why we know that this was not a, you know,

a normal thing. You look at the at the minute-by-minute transactions and sort of a little bit of

self- bouncing along. And then there's a big spike. And at that minute, somebody made a big trade.

So it's obvious that it's one person?

Or a cabal of people, you know, a group of people, but it's essentially one actor somehow

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