How does Drudge get that right on the weekend?

 

I worked for a guy once who everyday wore a blue suit without fail

I remember he officiated at a funeral once, and yep, he wore a blue suit.

Even when I visited him at his home he was wearing a blue suit.

More remarkably, though, on pay day once a month my boss would go to the bank, take out a wad of cash, and then pay his mortgage in cash, walk to the phone company and pay in cash, and walk to the utility company and pay in cash.

He'd also pay me in cash.

Then he'd walk to the hotel bar with his friends for the evening and pay in cash.

He paid for everything in cash, unlike this guy.

Standards have really declined.

Vladimir Putin did not stop

 

Marco Rubio did stop

 

Ding dong Howard Lutnick says we're going to be training all those new factory workers how to spy lol

And Elon Musk wanted this guy to be Treasury Secretary instead of Bessent, which is even funnier.

 

 

This week's US Treasury auctions indicated the opposite of rising interest rates

As usual the alarmists and doomsayers are . . . alarmists and doomsayers.

Demand for US debt is steady and strong this week:

3MO at 4.225% average vs. 4.225% previously

6MO at 4.05 vs. 4.06 previously

2Y at 3.795 vs. 3.984 previously

5Y at 3.995 vs. 4.1 previously

7Y at 4.123 vs. 4.233 previously.

Yields across the curve last night averaged 4.240, down from 4.261 a week ago, below the Daily Fed Funds Rate at 4.33.

 

 

 

The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow model has been in the toilet since the end of February, latest snapshot for 1Q2025 is -2.5%

 The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2025 is -2.5 percent on April 24, down from -2.2 percent on April 17. 

More.

The BEA's first estimate of first quarter real GDP is scheduled for release on April 30th.

A Trump-appointed judge has ordered another Venezuelan wrongly deported to El Salvador returned to the United States

 ... U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher in Baltimore on Wednesday ruled that removing him without a chance to complete his asylum petition or challenge his deportation violated the settlement agreement. Cristian, and any other person who had been removed in violation of the settlement agreement, should be returned, she said. ...

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I don't normally pay any attention to the left's critique of the right as misogynist, but Breitbart's John Nolte changes my mind

 

 

... By politely and factually shoving all that disgrace in their smug faces, Tim Pool diminished and embarrassed the media elite, which is crucial in our noble crusade to someday enjoy the lamentations of their women. ...

More.

The cruelty is indeed the point of MAGA. 

 

 

 

 

This number seems wei tu lo

 

IMF Warns Trump Could Cost the World a Trillion Dollars

The Guardian

 

Is that all?

 

World GDP in 2023 was $106.2 trillion according to the World Bank, whose graph shows that the 2009 Great Recession contraction was $3.34 trillion. The Grauniad is worried that the Trump trade war will cost a third of the 2009 contraction, based on an analysis by the IMF, "the most sober of global institutions" lol.

 

Meanwhile there was a 2015 contraction in global GDP which was much larger, $4.55 trillion. That was much worse than the so-called Great Recession. And much worse than the global impact of COVID in 2020, which was $2.39 trillion according to the World Bank's data.

 

Why isn't this popularly discussed?

 

AI laughably tells me "global GDP did not actually contract in 2015".

 

 

 

 

 

But the World Bank itself traces the 2015 global GDP hit to a massive contraction in trade, at the heart of which was the forced restructuring of the Chinese economy under Xi Jinping, who is a communist reactionary.

 

The sizes of the tariffs of Donald Trump, which far exceed those of the Smoot-Hawley era, especially with trade hegemon China, seem uniquely poised to wreak havoc on a world whose experts today can't draw the obvious parallel to the right year.

Chicoms tell Trump to go pound sand

 China says no ongoing trade talks with the U.S., calls for canceling ‘unilateral’ tariffs

"At present there are absolutely no negotiations on the economy and trade between China and the U.S.,” said Ministry of Commerce Spokesperson He Yadong. ... "If the U.S. really wants to resolve the problem ... it should cancel all the unilateral measures on China,” He said.

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

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.

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. ...

It's not how MAGA Millennials feel, it's how they rook

 

Hegseth orders makeup studio installed at Pentagon

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. ...

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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."

 

Prosecute Bureaucrats for Defrauding Government

Peter Thiel, American Optimist

 

 

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.

It's a good thing she's not president or the nuclear football would be gone, too