Thursday, April 10, 2025

Democrat Pete Aguilar (CA-33) predicted the House Freedom Caucus would cave to the Senate budget proposal, and every last one of them did lol


They have no principles. The national debt is going to soar just like it would have under Harris.

Spartz and Massie, the lone Republican Nay votes, are not members of the House Freedom Caucus.

Democratic leader predicts GOP holdouts will cave and support Senate budget bill

... “It’s pretty clear that House Republicans generally say one thing when they’re in an elevator with us or with you,” Aguilar told reporters in the Capitol. “And then they do something else when they are given an opportunity to vote on the floor.”

Aguilar is predicting those dynamics will also govern the debate over the sweeping budget blueprint passed by the Senate last week, which has drawn howls from a number of House conservatives who fear it will pile trillions of dollars onto the national debt. ...

House conservatives, however, are furious with the budget drafted by Senate Republicans, saying the spending cuts it promotes are insufficient to rein in deficit spending. They’re also up in arms over the Senate’s adoption of a budget gimmick empowering upper chamber Republicans to claim that the tax cut extensions will add $0 to the debt — a far cry from the $4 trillion deficit impact estimated by the Congressional Budget Office.

Aguilar, though, said Democrats anticipate that those holdouts will experience a change of heart when the pressure grows from the White House and they’re being blamed for blocking Trump’s agenda. ...

“Generally, the only one who we can believe is Thomas Massie, who’s principled and if he says he’s a no he’s going to be a no,” he continued, referring to the Republican representative from Kentucky. “Everyone else generally will say one thing until they get a phone call from the president.”

The GOP House caves again, adopts the absurd, Orwellian, milktoast Senate budget plan instead of their own to get to reconciliation

Now they all take two weeks off.

House Republicans on Thursday adopted the Senate’s framework that will be used to enact key parts of President Trump’s legislative agenda, getting the blueprint over the finish line after a last-minute scramble to win over conservatives who had spent days railing against the measure.

The largely party line 216-214 vote marks a big win for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has pushed an aggressive timeline to advance Trump’s domestic policy priorities, and President Trump, who endorsed the legislation and lobbied those on the right flank to get on board.

Only two Republicans — Reps. Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Victoria Spartz (Ind.) — voted against the measure. ...

More.

Some know her as Komrade Karoline, others as . . .

 


Core cpi inflation finally comes down under 3% yoy in Mar 2025, seasonally adjusted or not, to 2.8%, finally lower than Apr 2021 for the first time in four years

 ... Food prices climbed 0.4% on the month. Egg prices rose another 5.9% and were up 60.4% from a year ago. Moreover, shelter prices, among the most stubborn components of inflation, increased just 0.2% in March and were up 4% on a 12-month basis, the smallest gain since November 2021. ...

More.

The expectation was for core at 3%.



Trump administration admits it paused reciprocal tariffs because it was intimidated by the bond market and backed down

James Carville must be laughing his ass off.

 



Canada stopped exports of hydroelectric power to New England on March 6th

On March 6, at the start of the still-simmering trade war between the U.S. and Canada, hydropower generator Hydro‑Québec quietly stopped exporting electricity to New England. ...

Hydro‑Québec’s main transmission line into New England, known as the Phase II line, stopped exporting any meaningful amount of power two days after President Donald Trump’s tariff on Canadian imports went into effect. Last March, by comparison, anywhere from a few hundred megawatts to more than 1,200 MW flowed along the line at any given time, making up between 5% and 10% of the region’s electricity use on average, Turner estimated. ... 

Last year, 5,560 gigawatt-hours of power traveled into the region over the Phase II line, less than half the amount exported in 2022. ...

More.

Wednesday, April 9, 2025

Some have asked, Where did the party of Ronald Reagan go?

 It went to Afghanistan and Iraq and never came back.

You thought tariffs were supposed to be Liberation Day for you when it was really for them

 It's always for them.

He should be in Sing Sing for this utter corruption.

Meanwhile all that bullshit about Liberation will have to wait 90 days.

Trump’s morning ‘buy’ call nets huge returns for those who listened

... Trump Media & Technology shares initially popped after Trump referenced his initials in the post, with some investors appearing to know he was referring to the stock ticker.

The stock fell to $16.69 in the minute of his post to buy shares. It has since soared as high as $20.40, which marks a jump of more than 22%. ...






The bond market vigilantes scared off Donald Trump and his tariffs: Average yield at today's 10-year note auction was 4.435% vs. 4.31% at the previous auction

 


LOL Trump folds like a cheap suit, pauses so-called reciprocal tariffs for 90 days, keeps 10% tariff on most countries


 

President Donald Trump on Wednesday dropped tariffs under his new trade plan to 10% on imports from most countries, as he announced a 90-day pause for stiffer, so-called reciprocal tariffs that took effect this week. ...

More.

Maybe she thought he was her dog?

 Noem Ripped for Pointing Gun At Officer's Head...

 




Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Trump will stop at nothing in his quest for imperial power and will destroy the credibility of US Treasury debt

 

telegraph.co.uk

If you think it’s alarming now, just wait for Trump to wreck the bond market

The White House’s push for for expanded presidential power threatens US economic stability

 

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Donald Trump is systematically purging every US government institution, a pattern familiar to anybody who has studied the caudillo regimes of Latin America, or the playbook of today’s Putin-Orbán-Erdoğan prototypes.

It is a racing certainty that he will soon do the same to the Federal Reserve, forcing the central bank to cut interest rates into the teeth of rising inflation, with epic consequences for the world’s dollarised financial system and for €39 trillion (£33 trillion) of offshore dollar debt contracts and swaps.

Late last week he fired the head of the National Security Agency and its top officials at the behest of Laura Loomer, a fringe conspiracy theorist, who whispered into Trump’s ear that they were disloyal to the Maga movement.

He has already fired the heads of the FBI’s intelligence division, its counterterrorism division and criminal investigations division, as well as the heads of the Washington and New York offices.

He has fired the top brass of the US military, starting with a preemptive strike on the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. An earlier chairman – General Mark Milley – refused to ratify Trump’s attempted coup d’etat on Jan 6 2021.

“We don’t take an oath to a king, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We take an oath to the constitution,” said Milley in his parting shot.

But Trump also fired the three judge advocates general, who are legally independent by Congressional statute and have the authority to decide which military orders should be disobeyed – such as Trump’s order to “just shoot” American protesters, on American soil, during the Black Lives Matter saga.

That obstacle will not recur. Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, said the three judges had been sacked to stop them posing any “roadblocks to orders given by the commander-in-chief”.

You can go through the list, agency by agency, extending to the universities and private law firms, and even to the muzzled editorials of some of America’s once great newspapers: the purge is Bolshevik in ambition.

Does anybody in their right mind think that Trump will spare the Fed’s Jerome Powell as the two men gear up for an almighty clash over US monetary policy? “CUT INTEREST RATES, JEROME, AND STOP PLAYING POLITICS!” bellowed Trump in capital letters on Truth Social on Friday.

The Fed will indeed cut rates this year but not until it is able to see through the confusing blizzard of tariffs and the ricochet retaliation of an angry world.

Powell told Congress that the tariff shock is much bigger than expected and may set off “persistent” inflation rather than just a one-off jump in the price level. He came close to damning Trumponomics as a recipe for low-growth stagflation. That is a red flag to a bull.

The current debate over whether or not Trump has the legal power to fire Powell entirely misunderstands the character of the Maga revolution. America’s rule of law is for guidance only these days.

You could say it was ever thus. Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court after it blocked the New Deal. He failed, and unleashed tax investigations to settle scores, as did Richard Nixon. But Trump is an order of magnitude more outrageous.

Powell will not go without a fight. “I will never, ever, ever leave this job voluntarily until my term ends under any circumstances,” he said during Trump 1.0.

Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, said the administration could sideline Powell by appointing a “shadow” Fed chairman, who could steer the markets by issuing forward guidance. But this does not overcome resistance from the Fed board and the hawkish regional presidents.

A secretive team of Trump loyalists drew up a 10-page report before the election proposing more radical measures. These include forcing the Fed to “align policy with administration goals” or even to make the president an “acting” member of the Fed board.

Trump could purge members of the seven-strong Fed board one by one until they get the message. The law states that the president can terminate the 14-year term of a Fed governor “for cause”, usually meaning malfeasance or neglect.

But Trump has just abused his tariff powers on an heroic scale by invoking fictitious “emergencies”. He could no doubt stretch the meaning of “for cause” to anything he wants. The Supreme Court has the last say, but Trump-appointed justices have already shown a strong leaning towards an imperial presidency.

In any case, there are other methods to bring the Fed to heel.

Maga vigilantes are intimidating American judges by having pizzas delivered to their homes – a mob tactic to say “we know where you live”. So we can assume that recalcitrant members of the Federal Open Market Committee will face this sort of treatment.

The major US banks are raising their inflation forecasts to 4pc or higher this year. This inflation will hit before the last three price shocks – Covid, the Putin commodity spike and Biden’s overspending – have faded from immediate memory. It is exactly how inflation psychology becomes embedded.

A variant happened in the 1970s. Nixon bullied the Fed into expansionary policies, with some choice language on “the myth of the autonomous Fed” that later surfaced in the Oval Office tapes.

Loose money stoked inflation, so Nixon ordered a freeze on prices and wages in 1971, declaring war on “gougers”. It was very popular. Illiterate policies often are.

If Trump succeeds in extracting rate cuts from the Fed and tax cuts from Congress, the same problem is going to arise. So my assumption is that he will blame the symptoms and will resort to price controls.

The elephantine difference is that US federal debt was 34pc of GDP in 1971. Today it is 122pc on the Fed measure, and galloping upwards. The fiscal deficit is over 6pc as far as the eye can see.

The US does not have the domestic savings to fund this debt appetite. The savings rate has collapsed to 0.6pc of national income. It was 12pc in the 1960s.

Foreign investors have been plugging the gap. This soaks up a large part of the world’s savings – the underlying cause of America’s trade deficit.

If you think the stock market gyrations of the last few days are terrifying, just wait until Trump destroys the credibility of the Fed and of US treasury debt, the anchor of the global system.

He could order a captive Fed to relaunch quantitative easing and buy the bonds, but to do that when inflation is running hot would be seen by the whole world as naked fiscal dominance. It would set off a price spiral and a collapse of the currency – the sort of outcome seen over the decades in Latin America, or Erdoğan’s Turkey.

The end destination is a return to US capital controls to stop foreign funds and US investors from taking their money out of America. A man willing to impose 116pc tariffs – including pre-existing ones –  on Chinese goods and shut down the biggest bilateral trade relationship in the world as if it were a TV reality show will stop at nothing.

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/04/08/trump-sell-off-is-bad-wait-until-wreck-us-bond-market/

The S&P 500 is down 18.9% since Feb 19th, $9.77 trillion



The Trump administration lives in the libertarian past of Atlas Shrugged, in John Galt's 1957, when US GDP was 40% of world GDP and everybody needed us more than we needed them

They are as stupid as they are insufferably arrogant.

 


US GDP as a share of world GDP has been in steady decline since 1960 to just 26% in 2023


Tariffs have no power here: US Treasury yields pop higher, 30-year mortgage hits highest in a month 6.85%, S&P 500 gives up 4% relief rally

 Stock market relief rally fizzles out with S&P 500 erasing 4% gain: Live updates


Ceding tariff authority to the executive was the Congress' way of escaping the political consequences of fulfilling their responsibilities under the constitution, but that may be changing

 The phenomenon is mirrored in the states by the enthusiasm for referenda, aka ballot measures, which are promoted as democracy but are in fact simply a reflection of elected representatives' desire to escape the consequences of their votes.

"Hey, don't look at me, that's what the people wanted".

 

7 GOP senators sign on to bill to check Trump’s trade authority 

Seven Republican senators, including Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the Senate’s president pro tempore, and Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), the former Senate Republican leader, have signed on to a bipartisan bill that would require Congress to approve President Trump’s steep tariffs on trading partners.

Grassley and McConnell have joined five other Republicans — Sens. Jerry Moran (Kan.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Todd Young (Ind.) and Susan Collins (Maine) — in supporting the Trade Review Act of 2025. ...

It would require that new tariffs sunset after 60 days unless Congress passes a joint resolution approving them.

And it provides a pathway for Congress to cancel tariffs before the 60-day period expires by passing a joint resolution of disapproval.

Trump has already threatened to veto the bill. ...

Trump last week announced reciprocal tariffs on more than 180 countries and territories by invoking his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

 

Yeah, that saying everything is an emergency business has got to go, too

 

 

The people didn't vote for relief later, they've endured horrible inflation since 2021 and expected Trump to fix it, not make it worse

Asking the people to make more sacrifices, to get even poorer through tariff-induced higher prices, all for the sake of The Party und Der Führer is really . . . rich.


There is no negotiating with someone who says 0% is not good enough

 

  • Bessent: Up To 70 Nations Want To Negotiate Over Trump's Tariffs
  • The tyrant has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy: Mad King Ludwig says zero tariffs not good enough

     











    They're all nuts.

     

    DOGE World's Elon Musk tries to escape universal opprobrium, calls Tariff World's Peter Navarro Peter Retarrdo, dumber than a sack of bricks

    Might as well go out with guns a-blazin'.

    Musk is a free-trader who is not down for the tariff struggle.

     




    Loyalty to Trump goooooooooood, loyalty to Biden baaaaaaaaaaad

    Baa, ram, ewe!
     

    Fake job seekers flood companies hiring for fake jobs

     

    Monday, April 7, 2025

    Chairman Donny says you will own nothing and be happy in your work

     


    Kilmar Abrego Garcia will have to wait in an El Salvador prison for the US Supreme Court to decide what to do with him

     

    ... Roberts issued a terse administrative order indefinitely lifting the deadline of 11:59 EDT to return Abrego Garcia set by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis. The Trump administration had said that deadline was “impossible” to meet. ...

    More.

    Trump's biggest tariff, 50%, was on tiny landlocked poverty-stricken Lesotho inside South Africa, over a minuscule trade imbalance of $234.5 MILLION in 2024, which is under a treaty for godsakes


     

    Lesotho's exports to the US in 2024 were valued at $237.3 MILLION lol. Trump now wants 50% of that.

    King George III, who also was nuts, was a benevolent king to America compared to this guy.

     Trump's biggest tariff was on tiny Lesotho. Here's what to know about the African kingdom.

    ... Mr. Trump's so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs included a whopping 50% levy on the small, impoverished nation's imports, and the Lesotho government quickly said it would send a delegation to Washington. ...

    Lesotho's annual gross domestic product of $2 billion is highly reliant on exports, mostly of textiles, including jeans. ...

    The White House claims, by way of [its] formula, that Lesotho imposes 99% tariffs and other barriers on U.S. imports. ...

    With an annual gross domestic product of just over $2 billion, Lesotho is largely dependent on South Africa — it biggest trading partner — from which it imports most of its food, selling water in return.

    The economy has been heavily reliant on textile exports bound for the United States through the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade deal, which provides duty-free access to the U.S. market for some African products. The Trump administration's imposition of tariffs on African nations has raised questions over how likely the White House is to renew the AGOA pact when it expires in September. ...


    Trump's top trade advisor is nuts, 0% tariff offer from Vietnam isn't good enough

     They're making it impossible for the world, which will end up trading with everybody except us. 

    ... A value added tax is a system used by many countries around the world and is in some ways similar to sales taxes in the U.S. The Trump administration’s argument that the tax should count as a trade barrier is not widely accepted.

    “We have tried at the World Trade Organization since the 1970s to get VAT-tax relief, and they’ve told us no every single time,” Navarro said Monday.

    The trade adviser also said Monday that the value added tax would be an issue in any negotiations around tariffs with the European Union.

    Gold hit another new record high on Thursday April 3, 2025 at $3,167.57


     

    ... Gold prices fell to a more-than-three-week low on Monday amid a wider market sell-off, continuing their retreat as investors dumped bullion to cover their losses in other trades on fears of a global recession due to an escalating global trade war. ...
     

    Car manufacturing jobs, so-called good jobs, already don't pay enough to enable these Detroit auto workers to buy their own homes and have families, and they fear layoffs because of the tariffs

     The Wall Street Journal doesn't mention it here.

    This guy's been working for the company for 10 years and he's still renting.

    ... Daniel Campbell, who maneuvers steel auto parts around a Stellantis factory north of Detroit, says he and many of his colleagues are worried about layoffs.

    “I’m scared,” he said from his brick bungalow on the west side of Detroit, which he rents with two roommates. “We’re complaining about gas and eggs now. Who is going to be able to buy these cars that are already $80,000, and then you make it $90,000?”

    The 46-year-old UAW member, who makes about $30 an hour, and one of his roommates have talked about trimming their spending, including eating out less and cutting clothing and electronics purchases. 

    “There’s going to come a time where we’re not going to be able to go and spend,” he said

     At work, the assembly lines have been running faster in recent weeks as Stellantis has tried to stockpile parts ahead of the tariffs, Campbell said. He and his co-workers are running out of room to store the parts. ...

    Sunday, April 6, 2025

    The economy under Biden was a catastrophe now requiring draconian tariffs, just like we're being invaded by Venezuelan gangs everywhere requiring extraordinary measures which violate due process of law

    Everything is either awesome or awful, Republican or Democrat, white or black in our hysterical country.

    The economy went from being enviable by others in the world in October to a catastrophe just like that in January.

    And now it really might become a catastrophe but you'll hear only that it's AWESOME.

    Can wage and price controls be far behind?

     

     



    Remember the kinder, gentler America?

     Yeah, that was for suckers and losers.


     

    President Trump's multipronged tariff strategy is actually a movie

     

    Elon Musk forgets that Peter Navarro built license plates for four months last year lol

     

    ... “A PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing. Results in the ego/brains>>1 problem,” Musk wrote in one post. (Navarro earned a PhD in economics from Harvard in the 1980s.)

    The Department of Government Efficiency head replied to another user’s comment on the video lauding Navarro’s explanation, writing of the economist: “He ain’t built shit.” ...

    More



    this was subsequently deleted by Musk

    Trump says Hang Tough because we have $5 trillion of new investment after $11 trillion in stocks wiped out lol

    What, $5 trillion in crypto? Ukraine?


     

    Normally you institute protectionist policies like tariffs when you already have something to protect, not before

    But our Orwellian Republicans put the cart before the horse.

    You can't return to something which no longer exists. The net trade deficit for 2024 is nearly $1 trillion, instead of flat like during the post-war up until Reagan, who first ran in 1976 against Ford, when tariffs still had something to protect but we listened to the siren song of free-trade instead.

    That is why the Trump administration has had to cast about for at least six different reasons for instituting tariffs at the present time, none of which are at all convincing otherwise there wouldn't be six of them, not to mention that the math used for them is preposterous, or that they are the farthest thing from reciprocal.

    The real reason for them, however, is that the tariffs, like the executive orders which now number over 100, are the immediate strings available to our Puppet Master, which he can pull this way one day and that way another, your ever present reminder of who is in charge around here. Suck up to him and he'll make a deal.

    Trump's White House laughably brags about these things.

    New taxes, which is what these tariffs are, are liberating don't you see!

    Our mad King Ludwig needs this constant adulation. The tyrant has desires which he can never fulfill, Plato warned us.

    But of course all this can be undone by the next president, which is no way to run a country. It makes for deep institutional instability and distrust throughout the global economy, for which few can reasonably plan.

    The message remains the same: Expect Kaos. 


     







    Saturday, April 5, 2025

    Federal judge orders US authorities to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador by April 7

     A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Friday to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States after he was accidentally sent to a notorious megajail in El Salvador.

    U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, Judge Paula Xinis ruled that the government must return Garcia by April 7 at 11:59 pm.

    Garcia, a protected legal resident who has been living in Maryland since 2011 and is originally from El Salvador, was sent back to El Salvador on March 15 because of what the Trump administration called an “administrative error” in court filings Monday. ...

    More.

    Friday, April 4, 2025

    Trump nukes $6.6 trillion from the stock market in the last two days with tariff announcement, the biggest 2-day wipeout in history, $11.1 trillion since the inauguration


     

    Reported here:

    Roughly $11.1 trillion has been wiped away from the U.S. stock market since Jan. 17, the Friday before President Donald Trump took the oath of office and began his second term, according to data from Dow Jones Market Data.

    Some $6.6 trillion of that figure was lost on Thursday and Friday alone — the largest two-day wipeout of shareholder value on record, Dow Jones data showed. ...

    Investors sell gold to cover stock losses, but price remains above moving average of $3,023

     

     Reported here:

    ... Spot gold was down 2.9% at $3,024.2 an ounce, after hitting a session low of $3,015.29 earlier in the session.

    It hit a record high of $3,167.57 on Thursday. For the week, gold was down 1.9%.

    U.S. gold futures settled 2.8% lower at $3,035.40.

    On the technical front, spot gold price managed to hold above its 21-day moving average of $3,023. ...

    Just 49.08% had a full time job in 1Q2025

     


    Donald Trump's dumb ass unemployment rate was 37.6% in 1Q2025

     


    More people than ever were eating but not working in Donald Trump's America in 1Q2025, 102.657 million

     


    Mad King Ludwig says his tariffs will bring in $1T in the next year lol

     President Trump has argued that some of the tariffs he's imposing this week could help the government raise over $1 trillion in the next year or so

     S&P 500 loses $2.4 trillion in market value, biggest one-day loss since 2020

    Thursday, April 3, 2025

    Go boom is more like it

     Trump: Tariff Rollout "Going Very Well," "Our Country Is Going To Boom"



    Stocks tank to inaugurate Trump's golden age of tariffs

     


    The actual WTO China tariffs are 7.3%, not 67% as maintained by Trump

     


    Trump tariff math is about trade imbalances and is not about a reciprocal response to a rate, requiring a trading partner to buy more from the United States rather than just eliminating its tariff rate

    In other words Trump's calculations of foreign countries' tariffs on the United States result in fictional rates.

    From the story here:

    ... For instance, the U.S. claims that China charges a tariff of 67%. The U.S. ran a deficit of $295.4 billion with China in 2024, while imported goods were worth $438.9 billion, according to official data. When you divide $295.4 billion by $438.9 billion, the result is 67%! The same math checks out for Vietnam.

    “The formula is about trade imbalances with the U.S. rather than reciprocal tariffs in the sense of tariff level or non-tariff level distortions. This makes it very difficult for Asian, particularly the poorer Asian countries, to meet US demand to reduce tariffs in the short-term as the benchmark is buying more American goods than they export to the U.S., ” according to Trinh Nguyen, senior economist of emerging Asia at Natixis.

    The U.S. also appeared to have applied a 10% levy for regions where it is running a trade surplus. ...       

    Futures at 7:00 AM EST: