Wednesday, February 5, 2025
One nutball era ends, another begins, Wednesday edition
He's the Gentrifier in Chief lol, move the poor out, let the wealthy take over:
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Gold hits record high as investors flock to safe-haven amid tariff war
Spot gold gained 1.1% to $2,843.06 per ounce after hitting a record high of $2,845.14 earlier in the session. ... Spot silver rose 1.9% to $32.15 per ounce.
-- CNBC
The revenge of the bond vigilantes
The Fed started cutting the Federal Funds Rate last September (DFF 5.33 then, 4.33 now), and average yields for notes and bonds started climbing and haven't stopped lol.
Monday, February 3, 2025
Banana Republican Donald Trump hastily makes Elon Musk a special government employee AFTER THE FACT of allegations of impropriety since January 20
White House says Elon Musk serving as a ‘special government employee’
There is nothing in this story indicating that Musk or his employees have undergone the standard background checks.
Unvetted individuals are working with the most sensitive personal data of hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors.
Reminds me of nothing so much as Bill and Hillary Clinton possessing the FBI's files on government employees.
More tariff theatre: Trump announces 25% tariffs on Canada on Saturday, reverses himself before dinner on Monday lol
Trump pauses tariffs on Canada imports for 30 days after doing the same for Mexico
... Trudeau said Canada had made new commitments “to appoint a Fentanyl Czar.” 😉😉
“Canada
is implementing our $1.3 billion border plan — reinforcing the border
with new choppers, technology and personnel, enhanced coordination with
our American partners, and increased resources to stop the flow of
fentanyl,” the prime minister wrote. “Nearly 10,000 frontline personnel
are and will be working on protecting the border.” ...
In 2024, more than 21,100 pounds of fentanyl was seized by U.S.
authorities on the border with Mexico, compared to only about 43 pounds
seized at the Canadian border. ...
Clueless Marco Rubio appoints Taiwan surrender monkey Darren J. Beattie to State Department job
As if the nine-dash line doesn't even exist.
Beattie is a total suck-up, just like Rubio.
Gold hits record high as Trump tariffs spur safe-haven buying
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.
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.
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