Friday, May 16, 2025
USA loses last AAA rating, from Moody's, perfectly timed for after GOP can't move a budget out of committee lol
Moody’s downgrades U.S. credit rating, citing rise in government debt
... Moody’s had been a holdout in keeping U.S. sovereign debt at the
highest credit rating possible, and brings the 116-year-old agency into
line with its rivals. Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. to AA+
from AAA in August 2011, and Fitch Ratings also cut the U.S. rating to
AA+ from AAA, in August 2023.
“Successive U.S. administrations and Congress have failed to agree on
measures to reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and
growing interest costs,” Moody’s analysts said in a statement. “We do
not believe that material multi-year reductions in mandatory spending
and deficits will result from current fiscal proposals under
consideration.” ...
“... we expect federal deficits to widen, reaching nearly 9% of GDP by 2035, up from 6.4% in 2024, driven mainly by increased interest payments on debt, rising entitlement spending and relatively low revenue generation,” Moody’s said. ″We anticipate that the federal debt burden will rise to about 134% of GDP by 2035, compared to 98% in 2024.″ ...
Moody’s officially rated U.S. bonds in 1993 for the first time, but had assigned a “country ceiling rating” of Aaa on the U.S. since 1949.
It's driving the Reuters writer of this story at CNBC crazy that US Treasury securities aren't selling off lol
... Holdings of U.S. Treasuries surged to $9.05 trillion in March, an
all-time peak and up more than $233 billion from $8.81 trillion in
February. Compared with a year earlier, Treasuries owned by foreigners
rose nearly 12%.
Some analysts said that trend could change in April as the Trump administration introduced a massive trade shock on April 2nd that saw effective tariff rates surge, particularly on Chinese goods.
That fueled a U.S. Treasuries sell-off that, at one point, pushed benchmark 10-year yields more than 70 basis points (bps) higher to nearly 4.6% over the April 3-11 period. The selloff may have included selling from foreign investors, analysts said.
Trump has since paused the imposition of tariffs for 90 days, and the Treasuries market has stabilized somewhat, although foreign investors are likely to have remained leery of U.S. assets. ...
Yeah, I don't think so.
10Y yield averaged 4.28 in April lol, unchanged from March lololol.
In December 2015 FBI Director James Comey assumed a firearm purchased over the internet would be shipped directly to your address instead of to an FFL holder, so yeah he might not know the worst meaning of 86
My dictionary doesn't have the worst meaning either.
Trump is overreacting.
The slavish respect for the consensus estimates for inflation and everything else vs. the actual levels viewed historically is as nutty as anything promoted in partisan politics
Consumer sentiment slides to second-lowest on record as inflation expectations jump after tariffs
... Recent inflation data has not shown a tariff bump, as both the consumer price index and producer price index for April came in below consensus estimates. ...
Who gives a damn about whether the consensus estimates got it right or not? What matters is what the damn rates are!
And the rates are much higher when compared with the immediate pre-pandemic rates.
Would those have come down in recent months without the spectre of a Trump tariff regime looming in the wings?
Well we'll never know, now will we?
It's all so infuriatingly stupid.
Meanwhile consumer sentiment and surveys of same don't hold much water with me.I conclude only one thing from them: that our tolerance for inflation has weakened dramatically. We were a much hardier people in the past, and now we are soft and melt like snowflakes at the slightest hint of bad news.
In November 1974 cpi inflation peaked at 12.2% year over year. The then Michigan survey of consumer sentiment plunged to 57.6 by February 1975.
But in April 2025 cpi inflation is only 2.3% year over year, and the Michigan survey has dropped to 50.8 from 52.2 in April.
It's comic.
Howard Gleckman of Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center likes House GOP $4,000 senior citizen deduction better than Trump's elimination of taxes on Social Security benefits
How House GOP bill’s $4,000 senior ‘bonus’ compares to eliminating tax on Social Security benefits
... A median income retiree who brings in up to about $50,000 annually may see their taxes cut by a little less than $500 per year with this change, noted Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
“It’s not nothing, but it’s also not life changing,” Gleckman said.
The $4,000 senior “bonus” deduction would help lower-income people and would not help higher-income individuals who are above the phase outs, Gleckman said.
In contrast, the proposal to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits would have been a “big windfall” for high-income taxpayers, he said.
“If you feel like you need to provide an extra benefit to retirees, this is clearly a better way to do it than the original Social Security proposal that Trump had,” Gleckman said. ...
Thursday, May 15, 2025
March core wholesale prices year over year were revised up in today's release for April, from 3.3% to 4%, and with April we now have eight consecutive months with increases above 3%
The average increase to date has been 3.58% year over year for eight months, 121% higher than the pre-pandemic average of 1.62%.
The funniest thing that's happening to Donald Trump right now is that while he tries to intimidate the Fed to reduce interest rates and they do nothing, yields are soaring all by themselves
The bond market is issuing a vote of no confidence in our elected leadership.
One branch of Republican government thinks this is the 19th century with a robust manufacturing base it needs to protect with crazy wild tariffs, and another branch of Republican government thinks it's just fine to go on spending like drunken sailors and not raise taxes to pay for any of it.
Interest payments alone on the national debt in fiscal year 2024 soared to $1.1 trillion against revenues of $4.9 trillion.
Meanwhile the most powerful military in the world can't stop a bunch of rag-headed heathen bastards from launching missiles at Israel.
These people are crackerdog.
US Treasury yields are now up a net 2.37% across the curve since last Friday.
Long duration is very unhappy:
10Y at 4.53 at the close yesterday,
20Y at 5.00,
30Y at 4.97.
VUSTX ytd total return: -0.53%.
We'll probably never know whether weak Russian invasion of Ukraine headlines like these at CNBC contributed to Trump's thinking that Ukraine started it
Shrinking from calling what Russia did an invasion was a temporary flight from reality for CNBC, probably motivated by keeping people from panicking and selling stocks.
It's all about the money, for Trump no less than for CNBC. And also for Vladimir Putin.
It should be about something else.
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
Nigel Farage's UK Reform Party won new majorities in ten regional councils across England in the May 1 elections, stunning Labour and the Conservatives
... The races were local. But Reform UK’s unprecedented surge has recast political trends nationwide, sparking panic in Britain’s two major parties while drawing comparisons to the rise of populist movements that have come to power in Europe and the United States.
Reform’s breakthrough included wins in two of four mayoral races the party contested, and the poaching of an open parliamentary seat previously held by the Labour Party. The Conservative Party fared far worse, losing control of 15 county councils and, with them, almost 700 councillors. In all, the two long-dominant parties lost about two-thirds of the 1,600 offices on the ballot, most of them to Reform UK.
“Both parties were wiped out in places where it would have been unimaginable before,” said Tony Travers, a professor of government at the London School of Economics. “This could mark a major shift in the electoral dynamic.” ...
More.
The rate of core cpi inflation is still running 55% ahead of the 2010-2020 average and liberal VOX wonders where is the inflation
Meanwhile you start turning on, and turning off, tariffs in February and expect to see massive, economy-turning evidence already in the April data?
Save it for the drive-thru.
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
The devastating truth about the end of US Houthi attacks is that US forces failed after spending more than $1 billion
The thread is here.
The limits of conventional power have been reached.
Putin has been experiencing the same in Ukraine and could have been defeated, too, had Trump not given him a lifeline with his stupid peace talks.
The future of Taiwan is in great peril.
Core cpi inflation, which excludes food and energy, came in at 2.8% year over year in April 2025, and so did food inflation
Core cpi inflation at 2.8% year over year is 55% higher than the average rate of 1.8% which prevailed 2010-2020.
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| core |
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| food |
House Republican Chip Roy (TX-21) says the current policy baseline tax assumption of Republican Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho is a load of crap
Chip Roy is right.
The expiring temporary tax cuts of Donald Trump had a cost in 2017, and if renewed they'll still have a cost, which is obvious to everyone with a brain except Mike Crapo and his supporters.
All the focus for Chip Roy is on reducing the spending side, instead of on increasing the revenue side, as is usual with the GOP budget hawks. They never really reduce spending, however, and the deficits get bigger as a result.
Meanwhile it's amusing to watch how today's Republicans are turning themselves into pretzels just to keep the temporary Trump tax code from expiring and reverting back to the Bush tax cuts, most of which were made permanent by John Boehner and Barack Obama.
Reverting would actually be smarter than what we are going to get, which will be more unaffordable tax cuts and bigger deficits and $50 trillion in debt by 2034.
Even Trump knows this, coming out as he did just a few days ago for . . . the Bush tax cuts.
He specifically recommended adding the old 39.6% additional compromise bracket for the rich agreed to by Boehner and Obama on January 2, 2013.
Trump is a redistributionist, after all. He said so just recently.
He knows he has to pay for what he wants to give away to people. And his idea is to soak the rich to pay for it, just like any good Democrat would do.
I say go ahead. Make my day.
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| The 2014 tax brackets, showing the added 39.6% bracket on high incomes |
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