The Iran War seems to be generating its share of doomsday predictions of late. Not nuclear doomsday predictions. Financial doomsday predictions, as in how the huge AI debt bubble, funded largely by suspect Private Credit, could pop big-time after colliding with a real-world global energy crisis. There’s this from the Atlantic: “Welcome to a Multidimensional Economic Disaster.”… And then there’s this from the NYT: “I Predicted the 2008 Financial Crisis. What Is Coming May Be Worse.”

What do I know about the latest opaque financial product concocted by Wall Street? Not much. But two things strike me: 1.) The two doomsday predictions above appear in two non-business publications whose politics tilt distinctly toward anti-Trumpism and whose coverage of the war has been rather, well, doomsday-ish of late. 2.) I tend to agree with the WSJ’s Greg Ip, who says we’re not close to 2008-like financial crisis. But the growing size and scope of the lightly regulated Private Credit market makes him more than a little nervous.

Fyi: The Private Credit market has replaced cryptocurrency as my new economic bete noire, i.e. the latest crazy financial product that might one day seriously stress the U.S. financial system.