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Saturday, April 19, 2025
18 things which set new price records on an average basis in 1Q2025: beef, beef, and more beef, ice cream, sugar, coffee, OJ, chicken, American cheese, beer, wine, eggs, electricity
High unemployment, high inflation, and high interest rates 6% or higher all at the same time plagued the country for six years 1975-1982, but we survived
There were six years when all three, the unemployment rate, headline inflation, and 10-year US Treasury yield, were at 6% or higher on an average basis at the same time:
1975: 8.5% 9.14% 7.99%
1977: 7.1% 6.46% 7.42%
1978: 6.1% 7.62% 8.41%
1980: 7.2% 13.5% 11.43%
1981: 7.6% 10.37% 13.92%
1982: 9.7% 6.15% 13.01%.
In March 2025 unemployment was 4.2%, headline inflation was 2.4%, and the 10Y yielded 4.28%.
The current data set is no compelling case for reducing interest rates. If Trump had confidence in his tariff regime, he wouldn't be clamoring for further reductions.
Supremes vote 7-2 to pause deportations of Venezuelans
The Trump administration has been bragging that the Supremes let them deport Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which of course is a half-truth. The April 7 decision 5-4 stipulates that due process be followed, which is why they ordered 9-0 the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia who didn't get it, and the Supremes this morning aren't sure that's the case either with the latest group set to be deported.
U.S. Supreme Court temporarily halts deportations of Venezuelan migrants under wartime law
The U.S. Supreme Court early on Saturday paused President Donald
Trump’s administration from deporting Venezuelan men in immigration
custody after their lawyers said they were at imminent risk of removal
without the judicial review previously mandated by the justices. ...
At issue is whether the Trump administration has met the Supreme
Court’s standard for providing the detainees due process before sending
them to another country - possibly to the notorious prison in El
Salvador where others are jailed. ...
Their deportation would be the first since the Supreme Court’s 5-4
ruling that allowed removals under the 1798 law while specifying that
“the notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a
manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper
venue before such removal occurs.” ...
On March 15, the Trump administration deported more than 130 alleged Tren de Aragua members to El Salvador. Many of the migrants’ lawyers and family members say they were not gang members and had no chance to dispute the government’s assertion that they were.
Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said Friday that Kilmar Abrego Garcia told him that he was moved about nine days ago out of El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison
From the story here:
... He told me, yesterday, that eight days ago—so nine days ago from today—he was moved to another detention center in Santa Ana, where the conditions are better. Despite the better conditions, he still has no access to any news from the outside world and no ability to communicate with anybody outside the prison. His conversation with me was the first communication he’d had with anyone outside a prison since he was abducted. ...
Friday, April 18, 2025
Appointed 41 years ago by Ronald Reagan, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson in an opinion for a panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals shreds Trump's contempt of court
... The administration is “asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” wrote Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson in an opinion for a panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done,” he wrote. “This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.” ...
Wilkinson and the two other judges on the 4th Circuit panel rejected the administration’s appeal of an April 10 order from Xinis directing the administration to “take all available steps” to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. “as soon as possible.”
Wilkinson zeroed in on the Justice Department’s admission that it had “mistakenly” deported Abrego Garcia.
“Why then should it not make what was wrong, right?” Wilkinson wrote. ...
Wilkinson warned of a dangerously slippery slope on the horizon. “If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?” he wrote.
“And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?” ...
More.
Thursday, April 17, 2025
Wanting to capture power is about the least conservative thing about today's right wing
More recently, far-right writers like Curtis Yarvin, who’s influenced Vice President JD Vance, have talked about how to capture power through a culture war. “This war is not fought with bombs and bullets, or even laws and judges,” Yarvin wrote in 2022. “This war is fought with books and films and plays and poems. It is still a savage war!”
Here.
As if power were an object outside oneself, a thing to be grasped, as opposed to something one already possessed in one's very self.
This objectification of power as outside oneself is a confession of weakness, a sign of spiritual decadence.
Power in one's self is expressed as self-mastery and contentment. That kind of power, subjective power, radiates outward and masters its environment naturally. It doesn't need to run for office, or want to.
There is a dearth of such individuals in the country now, which is the actual problem, not that the minority which still exists doesn't rule.
Generally speaking you cannot impose virtue from the outside and make it stick. You have to change yourself.
Conservatives are stuck on a derivative. Culture is downstream from the cult. They need to swim upstream and find it.
Pete Wehner calls Trump America's mad king, lists twenty examples to date fewer than 90 days in
... He is more impulsive, more vindictive, and more anarchic than in his first term. ... Trump is America’s Mad King. ... as the second Trump administration careens from one failure to another, as unhappiness with the president rises, as events and reality refuse to bend to his will, he will become darker and crueler and more unstable. ...
The whole thing is here.
LOL: The value of US Treasury securities held by foreigners soared to $8.8172 trillion in February 2025, up $817.9 billion year over year, or 10.2%
Oh, but the sky is falling, the 10Y's going to the moon, everyone's dumping their bonds, the dollar will stop being the reserve currency, yada yada yada, blah blah blah.
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Gold sets another new record high soaring to $3,357.40
Gold prices eased on Thursday after a sharp rise in the previous session as investors booked profits ahead of a long weekend, although softer dollar and escalating U.S.-China trade tensions kept bullion above the $3,300 per ounce level.
Spot gold slipped 0.5% to $3,326.51 an ounce, after touching a record high of $3,357.40 earlier in the session. Bullion has gained nearly 3% this week. ...
More.
Vice President Vance misleads people when he says immigration courts conduct jury trials, even worse he's defending deporting someone to foreign incarceration without any hearing whatsoever
This guy is shaping up to be much worse than Donald Trump.
Vance must never become president.
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
LOL Trump tariff revenue, about $7 billion a month, is averaging what came in under Joe Biden in 2024, which was $7.2 billion per month
... The agency said in a statement to CNBC, “Since April 5, CBP has collected over $500 million under the new reciprocal tariffs, contributing to more than $21 billion in total tariff revenue from 15 presidential trade actions implemented since Jan 20, 2025.” ...
Trump has repeatedly said the United States is taking in $2 billion per day from tariffs. ...
-- CNBC
Ten foods making new all time high average prices in March 2025 per FRED Economic Data
Round roast $7.557 per pound
Round steak $8.554
Ground chuck $5.854
Ground beef 100% $5.79
Ground beef all $6.137
Beef steaks all $10.98
Eggs $6.227 per dozen
Coffee $7.385 per pound
White sugar $1.014
Beer $1.821 per pint
At around noon on 14 April, 2025, America ceased to have a law-abiding government
On Monday Trump chose to ignore a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling to repatriate an illegally deported man.
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
What matters in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is that he had an immigration judge's order protecting him from deportation and Trump violated that order
As it happens Garcia seems like he was a pretty good father, contrary to what Kremlin Karoline says, but that is irrelevant to justice, which is supposed to be blind to such things.
Trump has trampled over the entire process which allowed Garcia to remain in the United States.
What will he trample next?
Speaking of the dearth of proportional thinking, today is April 15th, when the tax code obscures the fact that the cost of government is about 24%
It shouldn't be this hard, or this costly, to pay taxes.
My TurboTax bill this year came to $278, and my time came to about nine hours collecting the data and preparing the return. It saved me oodles of more time than that, as well as the fear and the frustration, but still, it's a giant pain in the butt, and an annual expense which just seems to get larger every year.
Average American Spends 13 Hours and $290 to File Taxes
Meanwhile the income tax code is not proportional, which is to say it is not fair.
If the tax code were proportional, everyone would pay the same rate.
Instead it is progressive, which means you pay at higher rates the more you make, and some people pay nothing at all.
The rich are not equal to the poor . . . by law. And in between the rich and the poor are all those people who are arguably the least equal of all, because they don't ever get the privilege of paying nothing at all. Something close to one third of filers pay nothing, and they are mostly rich and poor, even though everyone who works does pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, which incidentally almost everyone pays equally because they pay at the same rate.
Shouldn't that be the case with income taxes, too?
Consider that grand total federal outlays in 2022 were $6.27 trillion, which includes the Social Security and Medicare programs in addition to all other federal spending, on defense, interest on the debt, etc.
That year gross national income came to $26.23 trillion.
The implied tax rate for almost everything is therefore 23.9%.
Collect that right off the top when you earn it or receive it and no one would need to go through the hassle of filing a return, and the budget would have balanced too. And individual income tax filers wouldn't have to spend $464 billion or whatever it is, using TurboTax or a CPA or some other tax preparer, or paper, pencil, and untold hours of time.
Instead we collected taxes in 2022 which were $1.37 trillion short of the $6.27 trillion in outlays, which we had to borrow and which got added to the national debt and increased the interest expense which we must cover out of current tax receipts.
Of course I would be upset if I had to pay 24% on all income as I earned it because I don't pay anywhere close to that. But that is the true cost of government, which is one reason why we don't pay that way. It's more prudent to hide the truth, and pit one group against another instead of treating people as we would wish to be treated. The rich are a small minority, which is why they can be bullied to pay more equally than others.
Another reason we don't pay the way I have described is because people would demand we spend a lot less if we did.
And we can't have that, now can we?
In the age of everything that is good is awesome, everything bad must be an emergency
The Zeitgeist is epitomized by a general hysteria, incapable of proportional thinking and hostile to reason, and so it should come as no surprise that our new leadership is exploiting that for its own ends, mostly to distract you while they make money hand over fist.
Everything is awesome. Everyone is great.
But everything is also a disaster, and the worst ever.
COVID was going to kill us all. The vaccines were going to save us all.
Biden was going to cure cancer. RFK Jr is going to solve the mystery of autism by September.
All those people streaming across the border during the Biden administration were seeking asylum. Now under Trump they were an invading enemy army.
The recession of 2008 had to be The Great Recession, or The Great Financial Crisis, as if 10.7% unemployment in 4Q1982 was the golden age of Ronald Reagan, and over 3,000 savings and loans didn't go belly up during that decade and part of the next.
Heat waves and cold waves are unprecedented, unless you talk to an old person. We have 12 years left before global warming kills us all.
Putin is going to launch a thermonuclear WWIII, same as Saddam Hussein.
So of course trade deficits are suddenly an emergency.
Citigroup profits rise 21%, stock trading revenue rises 23%
CNBC:
Citigroup on Tuesday posted first-quarter results that exceeded analysts’ estimates as the firm’s traders generated more revenue than expected. ... “increased market volatility” and higher client activity led to more transactions ... a boom in equities trading revenue as the banks took advantage of volatility in the quarter. ...
Bank of America overall profits up 11%, stock trading revenue up 17%
Bank of America on Tuesday posted first-quarter results that topped analysts’ expectations for profit and revenue on stronger-than-expected net interest income and trading revenue. ...
JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs each exceeded analysts’ estimates on a boom in equities trading revenue as banks took advantage of volatility in the quarter.
More.
Monday, April 14, 2025
Gold to $3,245.42
CNBC:
Spot gold was down 1.1% at $3,200.11 an ounce after hitting an all-time high of $3,245.42. U.S. gold futures fell 0.9% to $3,216.20.
The previous high was $3,245.28, just 14 cents lower than the new all-time high, which makes the new high kinda lame.
Trump lets the president of El Salvador do his defying of the Supreme Court for him, won't return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele says he won’t return Abrego Garcia to U.S.
... [Trump] also said he wants Bukele to accept as many criminals as possible. ...
Trump tariff chaos is literally equity traders' gold
On again, off again, on again tariffs from The Puppet Master have enriched stock traders Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley. They don't care if stocks go up, or down, as long as they keep going up, going down, going up. Trump chaos is literally traders' gold.
Goldman profit is up 15% from the year earlier period.
Goldman Sachs tops estimates on boom in equities trading revenue
... equity trading revenue rose 27%. ... On Friday, rivals JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley each topped expectations for first-quarter results on booming equities trading.
Equities trading revenue surged 48% and 45% at the banks, respectively, thanks to volatility in the opening months of Trump’s tenure amid his efforts to reshape global trade agreements.
Sunday, April 13, 2025
They're calling the 10Y at 4.5% the moron premium because everyone hates Trump and his tariffs, but I don't remember it being called the 5% dotard premium under Joe Biden
People need to get a grip.
Blaming hapless Liz Truss' two-months as PM in September and October 2022 for the UK's high interest rates pretends that the Bank of England didn't raise interest rates in response to inflation same as the US Federal Reserve Bank.
This trashy headline belongs in The Daily Star, not the UK Telegraph. No wonder they're trying to sell you a 1-year subscription for only 29 pounds.
Saturday, April 12, 2025
Paper tiger strikes again: Another delay for Liberation Day as Trump exempts China's number one export category to the United States from draconian tariffs
Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from new tariffs
President Donald Trump exempted smartphones, computers, and other tech devices and components from his reciprocal tariffs, new guidance from U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows.
The guidance, issued late Friday evening, comes after Trump earlier this month imposed 145% tariffs on products from China, a move that threatened to take a toll on tech giants like Apple, which makes iPhones and most of its other products in China.
The guidance also includes exclusions for other electronic devices and components, including semiconductors, solar cells, flat panel TV displays, flash drives, and memory cards. ...
Phony, baloney, plastic banana, good time rock 'n rolla.
Week over week US Treasury yields in the aggregate popped 5.8% on net to an average 4.335% after declining for months from 4.5 to 4.0 and everybody's freaking out like this hasn't happened, what, six times now in the current era
Most of the pissing and moaning is from investors who pulled the bond trigger too soon, plowed into fixed income, and got burned badly because interest rates reasserted themselves.
The press this weekend is instead full of apocalyptic language about the Treasury market and the implications for America on a grand scale. It's complete rot and I'm ignoring it. It's all designed to pressure the Fed to lower their rate again.
The last time the Fed embarked on rate cuts is instructive. It was late September 2024. The average of the aggregate of the curve had fallen to just north of 4. Inflation rates seemed to be trending down. So the Fed cut, and voila! Treasury rates hilariously shot upward!
The burn was real.
$TLT investors, who were down 4.76% in 2021, 31.41% in 2022, up 2.96% in 2023, went down again, 7.84% in 2024 as a result. Ouch.
They are back, itching again for a policy reversal like they have a flea infestation, so bad they are bleeding.
As things stand year to date, long term investment grade investors in VWESX, for example, are down 1.43%. It wasn't supposed to be this way, not again.
So everyone hates the bond vigilantes with the heat of 1,000 suns, and urges more imprudence.
Meanwhile in "cash" you go on making 4.3% or so, and in gold you have made a killing, while stocks reel under Trump's stupid tariff shotgun blasts which are wounding everyone in the field, including himself.
If the Fed had done a proper job against inflation by jacking up the Fed Funds Rate to meaningfully combat the core pce inflation rate of its average 5.35% in 2022 instead of going only where it did, which was 1.69% on an average basis, maybe we wouldn't still have this lingering inflation for the bond vigilantes to demand payment against. Core pce inflation hasn't moved materially off 2.8% in a year now, still much too high.
The bond market is "she who must be obeyed". She doesn't tell you everything you need to know, but she does tell you the most important thing.
But what the hell do I know. I'm just some punk keyboard warrior blogging in his underwear in the basement to the money men. So yippee-ki-yay, you earned it. Especially you Donald Trump, you complete ignoramus.
Friday, April 11, 2025
Gold just keeps making new records: $3,245.28
... Spot gold was up nearly 2% at $3,235.89 an ounce, after hitting a record high of $3,245.28 earlier in the session. Bullion is up over 6% this week. ...
“Gold is clearly seen as the favored safe-haven asset in a world
upended by Trump’s trade war. The U.S. dollar has depreciated, and U.S.
Treasuries are selling off hard, as faith in the U.S. as a reliable
trading partner has diminished,” said Nitesh Shah, commodities
strategist at WisdomTree. ...
More.
Liars all over Elon Musk's X kept saying Trump brought egg prices down, but in March 2025 they were more expensive than ever on an average basis: $6.227 per dozen
Sam's Club, when it has eggs in stock, is charging in the mid to high 4s per dozen.
GOLD soars as high as $3,219.84
... Spot gold jumped over 1.3% to $3,216.27 an ounce after hitting a record high of $3,219.84 earlier in the session. Bullion is up over 5% so far this week. U.S. gold futures climbed 1.7% to $3,230.60. ...
More.
Thursday, April 10, 2025
As predicted, the hubris of Elon Musk's promises of $2 trillion in DOGE savings now crashes on the rocks of reality as he promises only $150 billion in savings in FY 2026
Have there been no savings from the Department of Defense, the costliest department in the federal government? No $1,000 toilet seats to be found? No savings from sex change operation eliminations? How about the $7 billion in military equipment left behind in Afghanistan, stuff like that? Didn't we get booted from Niger last year? Anything left behind there? You get the idea, but we've heard nothing about Department of Defense waste, fraud, and abuse.
I mean, where did Army Surplus come from in the first place?
Oh, by the way, the Pentagon failed its seventh audit in a row in November 2024. It has $4 trillion in assets in every US state and 4,500 locations worldwide, but Elon Musk couldn't find one thing to eliminate?
Yeah, but they're on track to fire 300,000 federal workers.
Meanwhile the $150 billion in claimed savings to come, if they actually do get here, is already gone, swallowed up by the Giant Squid. The deficit year to date is already $242 billion higher than it was last year at this time.
DOGE has been nothing but theatre, and Elon's just taking a bow as his gig comes to an end at the close of May.
Has anything in recent memory failed more spectacularly than this?
Supremes order Trump administration to work to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador to the United States
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday said the Trump administration must work to bring back a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to prison in El Salvador, rejecting the administration’s emergency appeal.
The court acted in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who had an immigration court order preventing his deportation to his native country over fears he would face persecution from local gangs.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis had ordered Abrego Garcia, now being held in a notorious Salvadoran prison, returned to the United States by midnight Monday.
“The order properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,” the court said in an unsigned order with no noted dissents. ...
More.
Crimes in high places: Mad King Ludwig admits he decided to pause tariffs early in the morning on Wednesday when he also posted "This is a great time to buy", which amounts to market manipulation
Trump was asked by a reporter on Wednesday when he decided to put a pause on the tariffs.
“I would say this morning. Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking about it. Fairly early this morning,” he said.
Quoted here in "Fund managers quietly fear Trump doesn't have a tariff plan and that he 'might be insane'".
COVID-19 vaccine and flu vaccine uptake has been pretty low through the end of February
... As of February 2025, 21.2% of adults 18+ in the U.S. have received a 2024–25 COVID-19 vaccine and 42.8% have received a 2024–25 flu vaccine. ...
More.
No DOGE savings show up in March US Treasury Statement of Receipts and Outlays of the Federal Government, but higher deficits sure do, $242 billion higher year to date than last year
The fiscal year to date deficit last year was $1.064691 trillion.
The fiscal year to date deficit this year is $1.307132 trillion, $242.441 billion higher.
The monthly US Treasury statement may be found here.
Longer dated US Treasury securities are selling at higher yields at auction this week compared with recent auctions
US 30-year bond auction: 4.813% vs. 4.623% previously.
This follows the US 10-year note auction yesterday: 4.435% vs. 4.31% previously.
GOLD to $3,171.49
Gold hits record high as U.S.-China trade war intensifies, dollar weakens
Gold prices jumped nearly 3% to an all-time high on Thursday, as a drop in the dollar and an escalating trade war between the U.S. and China drove investors towards the safe-haven allure of the precious metal.
Spot gold climbed 2.5% to $3,158.28 an ounce, after hitting a record high of $3,171.49 earlier in the session. ...
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