The Treasury Secretary would know, of course, because he has to report income and outlays every month.
One person who witnessed the dispute said:
It was quite a scene. It was loud. And I mean, loud.
The story is here.
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Elon Musk and Scott Bessent got into a shouting match in the White House last Thursday which included Bessent loudly criticizing Musk for overpromising and under-delivering DOGE cuts
Pyrex glass plant in Charleroi PA closes after 132 years because of Chinese imports, Trump powerless to stop it
The casualties of America’s loss of glassware manufacturing to China
... Anchor
Hocking took over the Charleroi plant in March of 2024 and announced
they would close it and move operations to their plant in Lancaster,
Ohio — it too was a company founded at the turn of the century by Isaac
Jacob in Lancaster, Ohio. ...
... the U.S. glass industry lost almost 40,000 manufacturing jobs between 2000 to 2008. At the same time, China’s share of the U.S. market rose from 3% to 31%.
As
U.S. glass and glassware plants closed, Chinese manufacturers expanded.
China now leads glass production globally, exporting 28.7% of the
world’s glass and glassware compared to the United States’ 6.6%.
That is a hard pill to swallow if you are from Charleroi, once known as the “Glass City” where PPG once had one of its major glass factories. ...
More.
Trump's tariffs mean that the skies will be empty, along with the shelves
Boeing hopes to find new buyers for up to 50 planes returned by China
... Two Boeing jets have returned to the US from China,
with another on the way, after the imposition of steep 125% tariffs on
American imports. China imposed the levies in retaliation to the White
House’s 145% rate that threatens to significantly slow down the world
economy. ...
Blank Sailings Rattle Trans-Pacific Trade as China Imports Nosedive
... Container shipping companies have blanked at least 80 sailings this month, compared to 51 in March 2020, when volumes crashed amid early Covid-19 lockdowns, Sea-Intelligence said. ...
The US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent is under fire for market manipulation because he made closed-door comments yesterday morning to big shots gathered for IMF and World Bank meetings
Bloomberg published the story just before noon on Tuesday reporting the closed-door meeting where Bessent said he expected the tariff stand-off with China to de-escalate, and that the current situation, which amounts to a trade embargo, is unsustainable and will de-escalate in the very near future.
Markets opened Tuesday morning strongly higher and by 11:00 AM were up 110 points on the $SPX.
The Secretary of the Treasury shouldn't be having closed door meetings with the very people most likely to profit from what he has to say.
This is quite literally fascist economics.
Spot gold retreats 5.5% from record high $3,500.05
... Spot gold slipped 2.2% at $3,305.79 an ounce by 09:23 a.m. ET (1323 GMT), after hitting a record high of $3,500.05 in the previous session. U.S. gold futures dropped 2.9% to $3,320.40. ...
More.
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
Real Clear Politics puts up a discussion between two billionaires 43% of whose business is government contracts demanding that government bureaucrats be prosecuted for fraud
The chutzpah of these parasites is really something, but Real Clear should be ashamed for promoting it.
The billionaires complain that expenditures far outpace revenues, but taxes must never be raised to pay for them:
"My answer on tax policy, what should tax rates be? Just always a little bit lower. I'm not going to tell you the number, they should always be a little bit lower."
Billionaires for tax cuts!
Meanwhile the $40 billion USAID budget was nothing but a virtue signaling food for the poor scam to these two:
"And so much of this left-wing philanthropy nonprofit world, I think it was just a cover for borderline criminal activity."
Spot gold touches record high of $3,473.03 in early trading, later climbs to $3,500.05
Spot gold was up 1.4% at $3,472.49 an ounce, as of 0247 GMT, after touching a record high of $3,473.03 per ounce earlier in the session.
More.
Monday, April 21, 2025
NY Governor Hochul tells Mad King Ludwig to go pound sand
... The Trump administration sought to kill the program on Feb. 19, with the president declaring himself “king” in a social media post that celebrated the potential end of congestion pricing. ...
Hochul fought back, declaring: “The cameras are staying on.” ...
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
 |
| sirloin |
 |
| chuck roast |
 |
| beef roasts |
 |
| beef steaks |
 |
| ground beef |
 |
| ice cream |
 |
| sugar |
 |
| coffee |
 |
| orange juice |
 |
| chicken |
 |
| ground chuck |
 |
| round steak |
 |
| round roast |
 |
| American cheese |
 |
| beer |
 |
| wine |
 |
| electricity |
 |
| 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.
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