Alexander Bolton at The Hill here:
... The vote to proceed to the sprawling budget reconciliation package remained open on the Senate floor for more than three and a half hours, stuck for a long time at 47 yes’s and 50 no’s. ...
Sunday, June 29, 2025
Trump & Co. played up Fordow from the beginning because they knew they couldn't do anything about Isfahan
... The comment by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, which was described by three people who heard his remarks and a fourth who was briefed on them, is the first known explanation given for why the US military did not use the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb against the Isfahan site in central Iran. US officials believe Isfahan’s underground structures house nearly 60% of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, which Iran would need in order to ever produce a nuclear weapon. ... Isfahan was only struck by Tomahawk missiles launched from a US submarine. ...
An early assessment produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency in the day after the US strikes said the attack did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program, including its enriched uranium, and likely only set the program back by months, CNN has reported. It also said Iran may have moved some of the enriched uranium out of the sites before they were attacked. ...
Caine and Hegseth on Thursday said the military operation against Fordow went exactly as planned but did not mention the impacts to Isfahan and Natanz.
The emphasis on Fordow from the beginning was intentional, because they knew they couldn't do anything about Isfahan.
You know, like "Look over there! A deer!"
Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin folds like a house of cards, switches his Nay vote to Yea to advance reconciliation bill to the Senate floor for debate
Trump megabill narrowly advances in Senate despite two GOP defections
Senate Republicans on Saturday narrowly voted to advance a sprawling 1,000-page bill to enact President Trump’s agenda, despite the opposition of two GOP lawmakers.
The vote was 51-49.
Two Republicans voted against advancing the package: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who opposes a provision to raise the debt limit by $5 trillion and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who says the legislation would cost his state $38.9 trillion in federal Medicaid funding.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) changed his “no” vote to “aye,” and holdout Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) also voted yes to advance the bill.
The bill had suffered several significant setbacks in the days and hours before coming to the floor, at times appearing to be on shaky ground.
The vote itself was also full of drama. ...
Flashback to May 25 when Johnson said he had enough votes in the Senate to stop the bill:
GOP senator says resistance to Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' could stop it in the Senate
President Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson are hopeful for minimal modifications in the Senate to the "One Big, Beautiful Bill" passed by the House last week, but one Republican senator said there's enough resistance to halt the bill unless there are significant changes.
"The first goal of our budget reconciliation process should be to reduce the deficit. This actually increases," Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday, urging deeper spending cuts than those in the bill to reset to a "reasonable, pre-pandemic level of spending."
"I think we have enough to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit," Johnson said. ...
Didn't even have him!
Saturday, June 28, 2025
Trump administration fails to intimidate Canada, goes Galt and ends trade talks
... The first payments from Canada’s digital services tax, which was enacted
last year and applies retroactively to 2022, are set to be collected
Monday. The tax would hit both domestic and foreign tech companies,
including U.S. giants such as Amazon, Google and Meta.
Canadian officials said this month that they would not pause the digital services tax, despite ferocious opposition from the United States.
“Obviously, we think it’s patently unfair to do it retroactively,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said later Friday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime.”
Bessent said the Trump administration was hoping that Carney’s government would “put a brake on” the tax “as a sign of goodwill.” ...
Trump's idea of good will is 50% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, 25% tariffs on autos, an overall 10% tariff on most everything else, and a 25% "fentanyl" tariff.
Trump is the Uniparty, floats an Iran policy similar to Obama's
... The potential deal would mark a major reversal in policy for President
Trump, who pulled the U.S. out of the Obama administration’s nuclear
deal with Iran in 2018 arguing in part that the sanctions relief and
unfreezing of Iranian assets had provided a “lifeline of cash” to the Iranian regime to continue its malign activities. ...
Friday, June 27, 2025
The weekend help has arrived early at Drudge lol
Four trillion TRILLION dollars! Now that's a lot of money!
If anyone is stuck, it's Gen Xer Peter Thiel
... I’m always anti-boomer ...
In The New York Times, here.
Thursday, June 26, 2025
The consensus estimate for today's GDP report was indeed for -0.2, instead it surprised at -0.5
First-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) growth was revised lower Thursday in light of reduced consumer spending, surprising economists.
GDP contracted by 0.5 percent on an annualized basis, 0.3 percentage points lower than the last measurement from the Commerce Department.
Economists were expecting the number to stay the same at a 0.2 percent contraction. ...
More.
Average yields at Treasury Note auctions this week have been significantly lower than at the immediately preceding auctions, indicating there has been a flight to safety on souring economic growth expectations.
Trump may get his lower interest rates . . . the hard way, lol.
1Q2025 real GDP revised down 0.3 to -0.5 in third and final estimate on an increase in imports front-loaded into 1Q to avoid Trump's tariffs
Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 0.5 percent in the first quarter of 2025 (January, February, and March), according to the third estimate released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter of 2024, real GDP increased 2.4 percent.
The decrease in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected an increase in imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, and a decrease in government spending. These movements were partly offset by increases in investment and consumer spending.
Real GDP was revised down 0.3 percentage point from the second estimate, primarily reflecting downward revisions to consumer spending and exports that were partly offset by a downward revision to imports. ...
More.
Sounds like Howard Lutnick gobbledygook at the end there. Paragraph two speaks of an increase in imports. Paragraph three of a downward revision to imports.
Which is it lol?
Nominal 1Q2025 GDP clocks in at $29.962 trillion in the third estimate. SPX was at 5612 on Mar 31, yielding a crazy high stock market valuation of 187.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, which said Iran possessed 400kg of highly enriched uranium on June 12, says they'd have to go to the bomb sites to really know the extent of the damage caused by the U.S. attacks
Iran’s nuclear facilities “suffered enormous damage” from the U.S. airstrikes Saturday, but more extensive evaluation is needed, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said Thursday.
“I think ‘annihilated’ is too much, but it has suffered enormous damage,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Rafael Grossi told French broadcaster RFI. “I know there’s a lot of debate about the degree of annihilation, total destruction, and so on, what I can tell you, and I think everyone agrees on this, is that very considerable damage has been done.”
“Obviously, you have to go to the site and that is not easy, there is debris and it is no longer an operational facility,” he added.
More.
Initial claims for unemployment in June 2025 were last higher in June 2023, but yikes continued claims were last higher in Dec 2021
4-week moving averages, initial claims monthly average, continued claims biweekly average:
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Federal Reserve floats proposal to ease bank capital requirements which were increased in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, Fed Governors Kugler and Barr in opposition
... The Fed board put the proposal open for a 60-day public comment window.
In its draft form, the measure would call for reducing the top-tier capital big banks must hold by 1.4%, or some $13 billion, for holding companies. Subsidiaries would see a larger drop, of $210 billion, which would still be held by the parent bank. The standard applies the same rules to so-called globally systemic important banks as well as their subsidiaries.
The rule would lower capital requirements to range of 3.5% to 4.5% from the current 5%, with subsidiaries put in the same range from a previous level of 6%. ...
However, Governors Adriana Kugler and Michael Barr, the former vice chair of supervision, said they would oppose the move.
“Even if some further Treasury market intermediation were to occur in normal times, this proposal is unlikely to help in times of stress,” Barr said in a separate statement. “In short, firms will likely use the proposal to distribute capital to shareholders and engage in the highest return activities available to them, rather than to meaningfully increase Treasury intermediation.” ...
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