Spot gold rose 0.6% to $2,816.53 per ounce by 09:38 a.m. ET, after hitting a record of $2,818.58 earlier in the session.
More.
Later in the day gold hit $2,830.49.
Monday, February 3, 2025
Trump announces 25% tariffs on Mexico on Saturday, reverses himself before lunch on Monday lol
Stocks that got hit the most from Trump’s tariffs before the Mexico reprieve
... Shares of companies spanning the auto, industrial, retail and beverage industries with international supply chains were hit particularly hard. ... The president said Monday that he’s pausing the Mexico tariffs for one month after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum agreed to immediately send 10,000 soldiers to her country’s border to prevent drug trafficking.
The country which can't stop the drug cartels from operating unchecked within its own borders is going to stop drug traffic to the USA because it puts its troops closer to our border?
Phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rolla.
Trump will crow that Panama has bowed the knee by agreeing not to renew participation in China's Belt and Road Initiative, but Panama was already dissatisfied with China from 2019
Events quickly shifted, however, following the election of Laurentino Cortizo as Panama’s president in early 2019. After taking office, Cortizo suspended or cancelled multiple Chinese investment projects. A review by the Panama Maritime Authority (PMA), the government agency that oversees the country’s ports, of the PCCP concession found that the Landbridge-led consortium had failed to comply with numerous contractual terms, including investing only roughly one-fifth of the promised amount, failing to provide key project documentation, and employing much less local labor than promised. The review led to the PMA’s decision to revoke the PCCP concession in June 2021.
More here.
Panama pledges to end key canal deal with China, work with US after Rubio visit
... José Raúl Mulino, Panama's president, said his
nation's sovereignty over the 51-mile waterway, which connects the
Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, will remain unchanged. But he said
he would not renew a 2017 memorandum of understanding to join China’s
Belt and Road global development initiative and that Panama would
instead look to work more closely with the U.S. ...
Trump's tariff gambit has little to do with fentanyl but everything to do with increasing revenues on the backs of consumers so that he can pass his temporary tax cut package and not increase deficits
It's complete madness. It's Donald Trump: "Everything will cost more but I'm cutting your taxes!"
Wolfgang Munchau, here:
Economically, his tariff war will act like a tax on US consumers. The increased costs are inevitably borne by the consumers. But, as a form of rebalancing, it will raise a lot of revenue for the US treasury and together with the shrinking of the federal government, may well end up lowering the budget deficit and strengthening the US current account balance. Of course, there will be repercussions that could push in the other direction: the dollar might rise; the world might plunge into recession. But the truth is we have no experience of what happens when the largest economy on earth, with the dominating global reserve currency, imposes massive tariffs on its trading partners.
Munchau thinks Trump will win his tariff war. I do not. Munchau overestimates Trump's political support at home, and underestimates the fickleness of the US electorate. Continued inflation will throw sand into the gears of this gambit and sow discontent.
Control of the US House is everything, and Trump barely has it. He has two years and is already blowing it.
Trump has nothing but little gimmicks up his sleeve, not fundamental lasting transformation
To help pay for Trump tax cuts, new taxes on worker benefits become GOP target
... House Republicans recently floated
a list of potential measures to help compensate for lost revenue from
trillions of dollars in tax cuts championed by President Donald Trump.
Taxing employees for fringe benefits such as employer-provided
transportation, free food and on-site gyms is up for discussion. ...
To be sure, these proposals are still in the early stages and there’s a lot of jockeying by lawmakers to accommodate Trump’s $4 trillion extension of the 2017 tax cuts as well as make good on campaign promises for tax breaks on tips, overtime pay and Social Security benefits — in all, the tax cut promises made on the campaign trail by Trump could take the total to near $10 trillion. The situation is especially tenuous given the hefty $36 trillion federal deficit. ...
Whatever gets passed will happen under reconciliation anyway, and therefore will be . . . temporary, just like Trump.
All of this small thinking is a reflection of the reality of the GOP's narrow majority in the US House, about which Donald Trump seems to care not at all, and will therefore most likely lose in 2026 unless Republicans push back against Trump, do what's right, and maybe save their own skins.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump stop USAID payments authorized by Congress, some of which Marco Rubio used to be for before he became Secretary of Suck-Up and is now against
I expect a federal judge to intervene on this one perty quick like.
The sums involved are paltry, but Elon Musk amusingly makes a mountain out of this molehill and says “This is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have,” he said. “Now or never.”
Seems more like an admission that it will be impossible to slay the federal leviathan.
Elon Musk says he and Trump are shutting down USAID
... Congress annually appropriates money for USAID to spend, primarily for foreign aid and internationally focused charities. Its budget for the 2023 fiscal year was about $40 billion, according to a report last month from the Congressional Research Service. That’s a tiny fraction of the overall federal discretionary spending of $1.7 trillion. ...
A 1974 federal law known as the Impoundment Control Act says that the president generally cannot withhold funds that Congress has approved. Some Trump aides argue that the law is unconstitutional, foreshadowing a potential fight in the courts. ...
Sunday, February 2, 2025
RFK Jr gets a nicotine fix during Senate testimony
Yeah, that's what we want to see in our next Secretary of Health.
Ciga-reetes, and heroin, and wild, wild Olivia Nuzzis, they'll drive you crazy, they'll drive you insane.
Trump's new Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, has given Elon Musk control of the payment systems which control everyone's Social Security and Medicare benefits
Billionaire Elon Musk’s deputies have gained access to a sensitive Treasury Department system responsible for trillions of dollars in U.S. government payments after the administration ousted a top career official at the department, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe government deliberations.
On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent approved access to the Treasury’s payments system for a team led by Tom Krause, a Silicon Valley executive working in concert with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” the people said.
David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades and had been the acting secretary before Bessent’s confirmation, had refused to turn over access to Musk’s surrogates, people familiar with the situation told The Washington Post. Trump officials placed Lebryk on administrative leave, and then he announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues.
Spokespeople for Treasury and DOGE declined to comment.
The sensitive systems, run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually. Tens of millions of people across the country rely on the systems. They are responsible for paying Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients, and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.
More.
These guys are up against the debt ceiling and are obviously looking for other ways than the customary "extraordinary measures" to cut spending under the circumstances of a new administration trying to pass new tax and spending legislation. That's why Trump has offered buyouts to government workers so they quit, among other novel spending gambits like freezing program spending for 90-days.
The Treasury stopped paying into certain accounts from January 17th, before Trump and Musk took over, as part of the extraordinary measures undertaken by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to keep from hitting it.
She's been keeping the national debt at $36 trillion to $36.2 trillion ever since Thanksgiving.
It's all very troubling, as elected officials like to say.
Typically, only a small group of career employees control the payment systems, and former officials have said it is extremely unusual for anyone connected to political appointees to access them.
Trump tariffs will increase costs of fruits, vegetables, potatoes, and grains, among a hellish host of things
... The sweeping tariff could make more expensive a host of items that
the U.S. imports from its neighbors. Among the common Mexican imports
that will now get pricier to bring into the country: fruits, vegetables,
beer, liquor and electronics. And from Canada: potatoes, grains, lumber
and steel. ...
Trump is enacting the tariffs under the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act, which allows the president to respond to
“extraordinary threat,” which Trump has identified as a fentanyl and
drug crisis that he alleges China, Mexico, and Canada facilitate. ...
More.
Because some Americans use illegal drugs, Trump is punishing all Americans.
Makes sense, right?
I mean George Floyd's blood fentanyl level was fatal and we lit the nation's cities on fire because of it, so yeah, we deserve it.
Saturday, February 1, 2025
Black Hawk helicopter collision with passenger jet was part of a routine, annual re-training of night flights on a standard corridor for a continuity of government mission
Crashed US Army Black Hawk unit was responsible for doomsday readiness
... The three soldiers killed in the collision were part of the 12th Aviation Battalion at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, whose responsibilities in a national crisis include evacuating Pentagon officials. Another 64 people were killed in the passenger plane. ...
Incompetence from sea to shining sea: Trump releases water needed for summer agricultural irrigation in the San Joaquin Valley to fight fires but that water will simply evaporate in Tulare Lake
... The two reservoirs are used to hold supplies for agricultural
irrigation districts. Nemeth noted that winter is not the irrigation
season for farms, which require more supplies to grow crops in the
summer months, “so there isn’t a demand” for the water in the San
Joaquin Valley at this time. ...
Peter Gleick, a water scientist and senior fellow at the Pacific Institute, said dam managers would typically only release large quantities of water in the winter when major storms create a need to make space for large inflows of runoff. But Southern California has been very dry and the snowpack in the southern Sierra remains far below average, so “there is no indication that that’s why these releases occurred.”
“In addition, when those kinds of releases do occur, they’re always done in consultation with local and state agencies,” Gleick said.
“I don’t know where this water is going, but this is the wrong time of year to be releasing water from these reservoirs. It’s vitally important that we fill our reservoirs in the rainy season so water is available for farms and cities later in the summer,” Gleick said. “I think it’s very strange and it’s disturbing that, after decades of careful local, state and federal coordination, some federal agencies are starting to unilaterally manipulate California’s water supply.”
Vink agreed, saying that given how dry it has been in the region this winter, there was no need to make such a release. In fact, he said, farmers were counting on that water to be available for summer irrigation.
“This is going to hurt farmers,” Vink said. “This takes water out of their summer irrigation portfolio.” ...
It's great to be a Trumpist
Trump Media gifts DJT shares to FBI pick Kash Patel, Linda McMahon and president’s son
Trump Media this week gifted thousands of shares of company stock to President Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, to Trump’s eldest son and to four other board members, new regulatory filings show.
The company awarded 25,946 stock shares each to Patel, Donald Trump Jr., and the president’s pick for Education secretary, Linda McMahon, who all serve as Trump Media directors, the filings Thursday reveal.
Three other directors — former U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer, Eric Swider and Kyle Green — received the same number of DJT shares at no cost, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
The filings said the awards were granted Tuesday. Trump Media that day closed trading at $30.04 per share.
At
that price, the shares have a paper value of more than $779,400. But
most of the stock awarded has restrictions on when it can be sold. ...
Friday, January 31, 2025
Core pce inflation in 2024 at 2.8% remains higher than at any point since 1992, progress down looks stalled since 1Q2024: The Fed's weak tea hasn't worked
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Gold hits new record high of $2,800.99, climbs as high as $2,817.23 before the close
Gold prices scaled an all-time high on Friday, briefly touching the $2,800 mark, as market participants rushed to the safe-haven asset after U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated his tariff threats.
Spot gold steadied at $2,795.52 per ounce, after hitting a record peak of $2,800.99 earlier in the session. Prices rose more than 6% for the month and 1% for the week.
U.S. gold futures were little changed at $2,820.10.
More.
PM Update:
Gold prices surpassed the key $2,800 mark for the first time ever on Friday, fuelled by a rush to safety on U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats, which heightened concerns about global economic growth and inflationary pressures.
Spot gold rose 0.6% to $2,810.55 per ounce, after hitting a record high of $2,817.23 earlier in the session.
U.S. gold futures were little changed at $2,822.90, trading at a premium to spot gold rates.
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