Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Monday, April 21, 2025
Gold futures surge above $3,400 per ounce
Gold surges to a record above $3,400 as Trump threatens Fed independence
Gold prices broke $3,400 on Monday, hitting a new record as President Donald Trump’s threats against the Federal Reserve’s independence and his tariffs shake investor confidence in the U.S. economy.
Gold futures jumped about 2.69% to $3,418 per ounce by 8:20 a.m. ET on Monday, with investors buying the precious metal as the dollar hit a three-year low.
Gold has jumped about 29% since the start of the year and nearly 8% since Trump unveiled his sweeping tariffs on April 2.
Trump said last Thursday that Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s “termination cannot come fast enough,” after the U.S. central bank chief warned that the president’s tariffs will likely increase inflation in the near term. ...
Sunday, April 20, 2025
Looks like Trump & Co. blinked on Friday night after discovering the Supremes were getting involved in their latest Venezuelan deportation operation
Video from Friday night shows Immigration and Customs Enforcement buses full of Venezuelan migrants headed toward an airport in North Texas before abruptly turning around before the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration must, for now, refrain from deporting Venezuelan men based in the state under the Alien Enemies Act. ...
As the motorcade was headed for the airport, a last-minute federal hearing on the matter was taking place in Washington.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who has been hearing a case related to the flights to El Salvador, scheduled an emergency hearing for Friday evening — just hours after a bus rolled up to Bluebonnet.
Shortly before that hearing kicked off, ACLU attorneys also asked the Supreme Court to step in.
“We hear they are on buses on the way to the airport,” said Lee Gelernt, the lawyer for the ACLU arguing on behalf of detainees on the verge of being deported under the Alien Enemies Act. ...
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
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| sirloin |
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| chuck roast |
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| beef roasts |
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| beef steaks |
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| ground beef |
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| ice cream |
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| sugar |
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| coffee |
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| orange juice |
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| chicken |
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| ground chuck |
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| round steak |
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| round roast |
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| American cheese |
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| beer |
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| wine |
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| electricity |
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| eggs |
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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| click to enlarge |
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
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