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. ...
Monday, April 14, 2025
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.
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