Monday, May 19, 2025
The rotten apple doesn't fall far from the asshole tree
When you don't really believe the campaign's over and you won:
Sunday, May 18, 2025
Tulsi Gabbard has fired intelligence officials who concluded Venezuela wasn't directing gang activities in the United States
Another disappointing performance by Tulsi Gabbard.
Tulsi, former leftist, keeps proving she can turn with the wind with the best of them.
And I had such high hopes for her. 🤷
The chutzpah: Democrats literally pushed Biden out of office three months before the election and they want him to take the blame for losing to Trump
After covering for the guy from the beginning for his 2020 campaign conducted from a basement.
They have no one to blame but themselves.
Democrats want Biden to take responsibility for loss to Trump
... “He needs to stop talking about what could have happened and what should have happened and how the party betrayed him and start talking about how he ultimately betrayed the party,” said one Democratic strategist. “The reason we find ourselves in this position is because he was too stubborn to step aside.” ...
Eleven foods which made new all-time high average prices in April 2025
Round roast $7.616/lb
All roasts 7.995
Round steak 8.627
All steaks 11.12
Sirloin steak 12.326
Ground chuck 5.996
100% ground beef 5.801
All ground beef 6.142
Coffee 7.536
Sugar 1.021
Beer 1.827/pint
Friday, May 16, 2025
USA loses last AAA rating, from Moody's, perfectly timed for after GOP can't move a budget out of committee lol
Moody’s downgrades U.S. credit rating, citing rise in government debt
... Moody’s had been a holdout in keeping U.S. sovereign debt at the
highest credit rating possible, and brings the 116-year-old agency into
line with its rivals. Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. to AA+
from AAA in August 2011, and Fitch Ratings also cut the U.S. rating to
AA+ from AAA, in August 2023.
“Successive U.S. administrations and Congress have failed to agree on
measures to reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and
growing interest costs,” Moody’s analysts said in a statement. “We do
not believe that material multi-year reductions in mandatory spending
and deficits will result from current fiscal proposals under
consideration.” ...
“... we expect federal deficits to widen, reaching nearly 9% of GDP by 2035, up from 6.4% in 2024, driven mainly by increased interest payments on debt, rising entitlement spending and relatively low revenue generation,” Moody’s said. ″We anticipate that the federal debt burden will rise to about 134% of GDP by 2035, compared to 98% in 2024.″ ...
Moody’s officially rated U.S. bonds in 1993 for the first time, but had assigned a “country ceiling rating” of Aaa on the U.S. since 1949.
It's driving the Reuters writer of this story at CNBC crazy that US Treasury securities aren't selling off lol
... Holdings of U.S. Treasuries surged to $9.05 trillion in March, an
all-time peak and up more than $233 billion from $8.81 trillion in
February. Compared with a year earlier, Treasuries owned by foreigners
rose nearly 12%.
Some analysts said that trend could change in April as the Trump administration introduced a massive trade shock on April 2nd that saw effective tariff rates surge, particularly on Chinese goods.
That fueled a U.S. Treasuries sell-off that, at one point, pushed benchmark 10-year yields more than 70 basis points (bps) higher to nearly 4.6% over the April 3-11 period. The selloff may have included selling from foreign investors, analysts said.
Trump has since paused the imposition of tariffs for 90 days, and the Treasuries market has stabilized somewhat, although foreign investors are likely to have remained leery of U.S. assets. ...
Yeah, I don't think so.
10Y yield averaged 4.28 in April lol, unchanged from March lololol.
In December 2015 FBI Director James Comey assumed a firearm purchased over the internet would be shipped directly to your address instead of to an FFL holder, so yeah he might not know the worst meaning of 86
My dictionary doesn't have the worst meaning either.
Trump is overreacting.
The slavish respect for the consensus estimates for inflation and everything else vs. the actual levels viewed historically is as nutty as anything promoted in partisan politics
Consumer sentiment slides to second-lowest on record as inflation expectations jump after tariffs
... Recent inflation data has not shown a tariff bump, as both the consumer price index and producer price index for April came in below consensus estimates. ...
Who gives a damn about whether the consensus estimates got it right or not? What matters is what the damn rates are!
And the rates are much higher when compared with the immediate pre-pandemic rates.
Would those have come down in recent months without the spectre of a Trump tariff regime looming in the wings?
Well we'll never know, now will we?
It's all so infuriatingly stupid.
Meanwhile consumer sentiment and surveys of same don't hold much water with me.I conclude only one thing from them: that our tolerance for inflation has weakened dramatically. We were a much hardier people in the past, and now we are soft and melt like snowflakes at the slightest hint of bad news.
In November 1974 cpi inflation peaked at 12.2% year over year. The then Michigan survey of consumer sentiment plunged to 57.6 by February 1975.
But in April 2025 cpi inflation is only 2.3% year over year, and the Michigan survey has dropped to 50.8 from 52.2 in April.
It's comic.
Howard Gleckman of Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center likes House GOP $4,000 senior citizen deduction better than Trump's elimination of taxes on Social Security benefits
How House GOP bill’s $4,000 senior ‘bonus’ compares to eliminating tax on Social Security benefits
... A median income retiree who brings in up to about $50,000 annually may see their taxes cut by a little less than $500 per year with this change, noted Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
“It’s not nothing, but it’s also not life changing,” Gleckman said.
The $4,000 senior “bonus” deduction would help lower-income people and would not help higher-income individuals who are above the phase outs, Gleckman said.
In contrast, the proposal to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits would have been a “big windfall” for high-income taxpayers, he said.
“If you feel like you need to provide an extra benefit to retirees, this is clearly a better way to do it than the original Social Security proposal that Trump had,” Gleckman said. ...
Thursday, May 15, 2025
March core wholesale prices year over year were revised up in today's release for April, from 3.3% to 4%, and with April we now have eight consecutive months with increases above 3%
The average increase to date has been 3.58% year over year for eight months, 121% higher than the pre-pandemic average of 1.62%.
The funniest thing that's happening to Donald Trump right now is that while he tries to intimidate the Fed to reduce interest rates and they do nothing, yields are soaring all by themselves
The bond market is issuing a vote of no confidence in our elected leadership.
One branch of Republican government thinks this is the 19th century with a robust manufacturing base it needs to protect with crazy wild tariffs, and another branch of Republican government thinks it's just fine to go on spending like drunken sailors and not raise taxes to pay for any of it.
Interest payments alone on the national debt in fiscal year 2024 soared to $1.1 trillion against revenues of $4.9 trillion.
Meanwhile the most powerful military in the world can't stop a bunch of rag-headed heathen bastards from launching missiles at Israel.
These people are crackerdog.
US Treasury yields are now up a net 2.37% across the curve since last Friday.
Long duration is very unhappy:
10Y at 4.53 at the close yesterday,
20Y at 5.00,
30Y at 4.97.
VUSTX ytd total return: -0.53%.
We'll probably never know whether weak Russian invasion of Ukraine headlines like these at CNBC contributed to Trump's thinking that Ukraine started it
Shrinking from calling what Russia did an invasion was a temporary flight from reality for CNBC, probably motivated by keeping people from panicking and selling stocks.
It's all about the money, for Trump no less than for CNBC. And also for Vladimir Putin.
It should be about something else.
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
Nigel Farage's UK Reform Party won new majorities in ten regional councils across England in the May 1 elections, stunning Labour and the Conservatives
... The races were local. But Reform UK’s unprecedented surge has recast political trends nationwide, sparking panic in Britain’s two major parties while drawing comparisons to the rise of populist movements that have come to power in Europe and the United States.
Reform’s breakthrough included wins in two of four mayoral races the party contested, and the poaching of an open parliamentary seat previously held by the Labour Party. The Conservative Party fared far worse, losing control of 15 county councils and, with them, almost 700 councillors. In all, the two long-dominant parties lost about two-thirds of the 1,600 offices on the ballot, most of them to Reform UK.
“Both parties were wiped out in places where it would have been unimaginable before,” said Tony Travers, a professor of government at the London School of Economics. “This could mark a major shift in the electoral dynamic.” ...
More.
The rate of core cpi inflation is still running 55% ahead of the 2010-2020 average and liberal VOX wonders where is the inflation
Meanwhile you start turning on, and turning off, tariffs in February and expect to see massive, economy-turning evidence already in the April data?
Save it for the drive-thru.
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
The devastating truth about the end of US Houthi attacks is that US forces failed after spending more than $1 billion
The thread is here.
The limits of conventional power have been reached.
Putin has been experiencing the same in Ukraine and could have been defeated, too, had Trump not given him a lifeline with his stupid peace talks.
The future of Taiwan is in great peril.
Core cpi inflation, which excludes food and energy, came in at 2.8% year over year in April 2025, and so did food inflation
Core cpi inflation at 2.8% year over year is 55% higher than the average rate of 1.8% which prevailed 2010-2020.
 |
| core |
 |
| food |
House Republican Chip Roy (TX-21) says the current policy baseline tax assumption of Republican Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho is a load of crap
Chip Roy is right.
The expiring temporary tax cuts of Donald Trump had a cost in 2017, and if renewed they'll still have a cost, which is obvious to everyone with a brain except Mike Crapo and his supporters.
All the focus for Chip Roy is on reducing the spending side, instead of on increasing the revenue side, as is usual with the GOP budget hawks. They never really reduce spending, however, and the deficits get bigger as a result.
Meanwhile it's amusing to watch how today's Republicans are turning themselves into pretzels just to keep the temporary Trump tax code from expiring and reverting back to the Bush tax cuts, most of which were made permanent by John Boehner and Barack Obama.
Reverting would actually be smarter than what we are going to get, which will be more unaffordable tax cuts and bigger deficits and $50 trillion in debt by 2034.
Even Trump knows this, coming out as he did just a few days ago for . . . the Bush tax cuts.
He specifically recommended adding the old 39.6% additional compromise bracket for the rich agreed to by Boehner and Obama on January 2, 2013.
Trump is a redistributionist, after all. He said so just recently.
He knows he has to pay for what he wants to give away to people. And his idea is to soak the rich to pay for it, just like any good Democrat would do.
I say go ahead. Make my day.
 |
| The 2014 tax brackets, showing the added 39.6% bracket on high incomes |
Monday, May 12, 2025
No DOGE savings show up in April US Treasury Statement of Receipts and Outlays of the Federal Government, but higher deficits sure do, $194 billion higher year to date than last year
Fiscal 2025 deficit, October-April: $1.049 trillion
Fiscal 2024 deficit, October-April: $0.855 trillion
Increase in the deficit in 2025 Oct-Apr: $194 billion
Meanwhile CNBC blows smoke up your ass:
Trump's phony Liberation Day for working Americans evaporates into thin air, new 90-day pause brings 145% reciprocal tariffs on China, which tanked markets in early April, down to 30%
Stock futures surge. Crude oil surges. US Treasury yields surge.
... The trade agreement means that “reciprocal” tariffs between both countries will be cut from 125% to 10%. The U.S.′ 20% duties on Chinese imports relating to fentanyl will remain in place, meaning total tariffs on China stand at 30%. ...
Trump had imposed tariffs of up to 145% on Chinese imports, prompting Beijing to respond with retaliatory curbs of its own, including restrictions on some rare earth elements. ...
Sunday, May 11, 2025
Whatever else may be said about Rene Girard, he grasped the big problem even if he miscast it as capitalist, namely Chinamerica
“Everyone now knows that the looming conflict between the US and China, for example, has nothing to do with a ‘clash of civilisations’, despite what some might try to tell us. We always try to see differences where in fact there are none. In fact, the dispute is between two forms of capitalism that are becoming more and more similar,” Girard wrote.
Quoted here.
America became its own enemy long before China did.
Girard defaulted to the priority of religion over economics beginning in 1959.
Saturday, May 10, 2025
Hello Washington Times, hello, how did Biden's increased oil supply from the SPR to buy the 2022 elections lead to increased gasoline price at the very same time?
I'm so confused.
Doesn't price drop on an increase in supply?
"Let's increase supply so prices rise so the voters vote for us and not them" makes absolutely zero sense.
... Mr. Biden sold off hundreds of millions of barrels of oil after Russia invaded Ukraine, causing already rising gas prices to spike even higher. ...
The Biden administration sold off roughly 206 million barrels of oil from the SPR between 2021 and 2023. ...
Democrats fended off an anticipated red wave in the November 2022 midterms, keeping control of the Senate and barely losing House seats, although Mr. Biden’s party remained in the minority in the lower chamber. ...
More.
The Chicago Tribune editorial board laments the closing of all Jo-Ann Fabrics stores, never mentions that becoming a literal sewer of woke was the last straw for many of its long time customers
Sewer has two meanings dontchaknow, seamstress only one.
From the conclusion:
... And lucky Chicago suburbanites have small businesses such as LindaZ’s Sewing Center in Arlington Heights, where knowledgeable staff connect savvy sewers, knitters and quilters with fabric and machinery, and Thimbles in Lockport, which still serves a loyal community of sewers and quilters too. ...
Friday, May 9, 2025
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tells Congress to shift or get off the lot
... “However, after receiving receipts for the recent April tax filing
season, there is a reasonable probability that the federal government’s
cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted in August while
Congress is scheduled to be in recess,” Bessent wrote. “Therefore, I
respectfully urge Congress to increase or suspend the debt limit by
mid-July, before its scheduled break, to protect the full faith and
credit of the United States.” ...
Words have a meaning, and a Biden invitation to come was not an invasion
I don't care how wrong Biden was, and neither should the courts.
The Supremes have already ruled the illegals have habeas rights, and this would be a desperate attempt to get around that.
Are they daring the Supremes to rule against them yet again?
... Miller’s use of the word “invasion” reflects the Trump
administration’s argument that the U.S. faces an “invasion” of
undocumented migrants. ...
The chairman of the House Fweedom Caucus is calling for tax increases on the rich
Not to reduce the deficit, but to pay for all the new Trump goodies.
$50 trillion in debt in ten years is a lead-pipe cinch.
Thursday, May 8, 2025
Trump is still pressing for tax increases on the rich to pay for all his gimmicks
Trump urged US House Speaker Johnson to raise top tax rate, sources say
U.S. President Donald Trump privately urged House Speaker Mike Johnson during a phone call on Wednesday to raise the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans and close the carried interest loophole for Wall Street investors, two people familiar with the conversation said on Thursday. ... Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters last week that Trump had ruled out the idea. ...
Wednesday, May 7, 2025
Federal Open Market Committee says inflation remains somewhat elevated and the economic outlook is increasingly uncertain, leaves DFF between 4.25 and 4.5, i.e. 4.33
Although swings in net exports have affected the data, recent indicators suggest that economic activity has continued to expand at a solid pace. The unemployment rate has stabilized at a low level in recent months, and labor market conditions remain solid. Inflation remains somewhat elevated.
The Committee seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at the rate of 2 percent over the longer run. Uncertainty about the economic outlook has increased further. The Committee is attentive to the risks to both sides of its dual mandate and judges that the risks of higher unemployment and higher inflation have risen.
In support of its goals, the Committee decided to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 4-1/4 to 4-1/2 percent. ...
More.
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
A week before the 60-day War Powers Act deadline, the Houthis conveniently cry uncle and pledge to halt attacks on US naval forces and Red Sea shipping
Israel wipes out the Houthi airport, fuel supplies, and concrete factory and then they finally cry uncle?
Something doesn't add up here.
Trump announces US will stop bombing Houthis
... Trump, ahead of a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, said the halt would start immediately. The Houthis approached the administration on Monday night indicating “they want to stop the fighting,” he said. ...
Israel escalated strikes against the Houthis on Monday night with 20 fighter jets bombing the rebel-held port city of Hodeidah. Israeli forces were responding to a ballistic missile strike against the Jerusalem airport by the group. The Trump administration also labeled the Houthis a terror group in March, changing a Biden-era policy. ... Houthi strikes against the waterway have declined significantly in recent months, and the group hasn’t targeted a commercial vessel since late December. ...
Israel's military says it has fully disabled Yemen's main airport with strikes...
... “We indirectly informed the Americans that the continued escalation will affect the criminal Trump’s visit to the region, and we have not informed them of anything else,” said Mahdi al-Mashat, head of the Houthi’s supreme political council, in a statement carried by the rebel-controlled SABA news agency early Wednesday. Trump is due to visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates next week. ...
Don't hatchet your AfD before you count, Friedrich
Germany’s Merz fails to be elected chancellor in shock first-round parliamentary vote
... “Friedrich Merz became the first chancellor candidate failing to be elected in the first round of voting in the Bundestag. However, he remains likely to win sufficient support eventually,” Carsten Nickel, deputy director of research at Teneo, said.
Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg, described the situation as a “bad surprise.” He echoed comments suggesting Merz would still become chancellor eventually, but “the unprecedented failure to be elected in the first round would still be a bad start for him.” ...
AfD ‘extremist’ label sets up political high-wire act for Friedrich Merz
... Merz’s party, the Christian Democratic Union, has been torn over how to deal with the AfD. Merz tacitly cooperated with the party earlier this year – despite insisting he would not – to push migration policies through parliament. And on the local level, his party and the AfD have cooperated on issues such as a ruling that the German flag should be hoisted in schools. ...
Populism means speaking fifty words of English: Pete Hegseth joins Marco Rubio in his own more welders, less philosophers moment
Take courage people!
You too can become populists just like Pete and Little Marco. Just get your degrees from Princeton and Harvard and the Universities of Florida and Miami.
Monday, May 5, 2025
Overall US Treasury yields have been falling for a year, but not by very much in the aggregate, and bonds keep asking for a word
Average US Treasury yields in April vs. March were down but up in comparison on Friday May 2nd after Trump meddled again in the Fed's business.
The yield aggregate of eleven securities down: 4.19 in April vs. 4.243 in March, but back up to 4.234 on Friday.
Bills down: 4.205 in April vs. 4.26 in March but up to 4.242 on Friday.
Notes down: 3.966 vs. 4.082 but up to 4.002 on Friday.
Bonds up: 4.725 vs. 4.615 and up some more to 4.80 on Friday. Investors are demanding more return from bonds because they perceive risk to be rising for long duration holdings.
The overall picture since January 2024 though shows yields falling as the rate of inflation has slowly declined. The black line below shows the average of the aggregate peaking in April 2024.
The 10-year Note at 4.33 on Friday matches the Daily Federal Funds Rate exactly, same as the 3-month.
Speaking of which, 10Y-3MO has been screaming "major recession" since October 2022, but to no avail.
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