When things get chaotic — when down is up, white is black and day is night — you need an anchor. A lodestar. Wise, steady counsel. Someone who embodies sagacious dependability. You need, in short, a “very stable genius.”

Fortunately given our apocalyptic circumstances, there’s one in the Oval Office. “Short term oil prices is a very small price to pay for USA, and World, Safety and Peace,” Donald Trump declared, in something vaguely recognizable as English, amid an existential surge in the world’s most financialized commodity. “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!” he added.

There you go. Straight from the horse’s — I’ll be decorous and stay faithful to the idiom, tempting though it is to modify it — mouth.

So, don’t be “FOOL”ed into believing that the figure below’s as terrifying as it absolutely is. Or if you can’t help but panic at the sight of it, don’t think it isn’t worth it.

At the highs early Monday, US oil traded up near $117. It was $65 or so the day before the US and Israel launched “Operation Epic Fury.” Trump, then, succeeded in spiking oil prices by an astonishing 80% in the space of just seven days.

Trump likes to boast about big numbers, even when they reference objectively bad outcomes. (“Think of it: Nobody has more felony counts than me.”) On that score, he’s just secured serious bragging rights. His place in the annals of oil market history is now enshrined and ensured.

The Saudis have started production cuts, joining Iraq, Kuwait and the UAE. With the Strait still blocked, and with Trump’s insurance scheme apparently viewed by tanker operators as wholly insufficient, around 20% of the world’s oil supply is marooned in the Gulf.

This is a worst-case outcome, even as it was, on some accounts, entirely predictable. Whether The White House should’ve (or did) expect it is irrelevant now. The question is what they’re prepared to do about it. Because as discussed here over the weekend, $120 oil implies a lot of upside for TIPS breakevens, and that’s not what you want if you’re a president determined to engineer lower borrowing costs both for voters and the government.

Eventually — which is to say in the still unlikely event that no one blinks and oil sustains a spike above $100 — sharply higher pump prices would beget demand destruction across the rest of the consumer economy, which in turn could have an offsetting effect on inflation. In the same vein, the risk-off knock-on from existential oil spikes will eventually bring out buyers for “cheaper” Treasurys assuming US debt retains any safe haven appeal at all (it does).

For now, we’re grasping at straws, which means praying for deescalation or any indication that Western policymakers are panicking. On that score, Monday offered a smattering of tentatively hopeful headlines.

France called a G-7 meeting to discuss a coordinated strategic reserve release to cap oil prices, for example. The Washington Post said — in the opinion section, albeit — that some senior Israeli officials are beginning to ask whether an open-ended war with no off-ramp is actually a good idea. And there were the usual allusions to Iranian outreach through the Oman mediation channel.

Of course, there was no shortage of “doomer” headlines either. CNBC quoted a former IEA chief as follows: “There’s no precedent for this. [For oil prices], the sky is the limit.”