Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

This fight is for everything.

I really should read my own blog.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

This really is a full service blog.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

“woke” is the new caravan.

This blog will pay for itself.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

No one could have predicted…

We still have time to mess this up!

Second rate reporter says what?

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Republicans do not pay their debts.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: Merry Festivus, Wall Street!

Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: Merry Festivus, Wall Street!

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You knew Trump was a serial bankrupt when you threw your panties the keys to the economy at him, bankers!

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50Comments

  1. 1.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    I have to work in the morning (local government employee). I have a feeling my colleagues and I aren’t going to get much done, between checking the headlines and checking our 401(k) balances.

    (I don’t actually do the latter, but I can’t talk some people out of it. I think they enjoy panicking.)

  2. 2.

    oatler.

    In the 2001 crash I remember a Charles Schwab commercial that portrayed a calm, confident broker assuring investors that there was nothing to worry about. Then the news came back on to report that Charles Schwab would be laying off 2 craptillion employees.

  3. 3.

    Ruckus

    @Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
    I won’t say I’m at the panicking level but I work in the aerospace industry for the most part, a good amount of my income is SS and my healthcare is from the VA. So pretty much all my shoes are in the fire. With my feet in them. Oh well, I’ve been here before, in the last ten yrs actually. Who’d of thought that a moron who can turn billions into bankruptcy would be this bad at, well every fucking thing.

  4. 4.

    Schlemazel

    I know of a leveraged fund that moves in the inverse of the DJIA at 3x. If the market goes down 10% the fund goes up 30% (the risk is if the market goes up 10% the fund loses 30%!)

    But if I were 20 years way instead of 2 my 401k would have been in that fund about 2 weeks ago.

  7. 7.

    The Pale Scot

    Frankie Boyle’s review of 2018:
    ‘Let’s forget Brexit and enjoy our last Christmas with running water’

    Jared Kushner, a bloodless, lipless demon, a dependent clause of the Anti-Life Equation who could be thrown into any Edgar Allan Poe adaptation….
    … You have to hand it to the president; it shows a certain ambition to try to undermine the idea of protest in a country that was founded by, well, Protestants. Trump has tried to make this about respect for a flag I very much doubt he could draw from memory,

    A delicious read.

  9. 9.

    poleaxedbyboatwork

    @Brachiator:

    Apart from the Fed, the economy is running on autopilot, with practically no competent oversight by the government.

    This observation, it seems to me, while true, is not so much an observation ex parte, but more a summation in toto.

  10. 10.

    moops

    I’v been wondering what it would take to push the country into full-on recession. A tanking stock market doesn’t do it. It sets the conditions though. The impact of the trade wars takes time to come home to roost. but this. A fed shutdown and the cast of characters looking obviously incompetent and unprepared. That might just do it. I think shutdown, market fluctuation, and the grinding price we will pay for the tariffs. All coming at the same time.

    If the sales figures for xmas are not strong…..

  12. 12.

    Cermet

    The economy is still too strong for any recession to say the least. But certainly the seeds are planted (thanks to his insane trade war) and this orange fart cloud is now adding water to the soil with his stupidity as well (this letter.) The market will take a hit just because of these actions. But the people with the low IQ voted this moron into power and we are all in the same boat starting to take water as this ass wipe continues to drive us towards a waterfalls as he fucks up the engine. So, looks like 2020, at least, might also get us the senate besides the presidency we’d have gotten anyway. The bad part, this won’t be due to a second blue wave so much as economic conditions – ugh.

  13. 13.

    NobodySpecial

    When I was a child, I was told the idea of stocks was to loan a company money, and the note would have quarterly dividends as something resembling interest. Then you could sell it, and maybe see a nice profit. It wasn’t until later that I realized that all financial stuff is rent seeking or gambling, usually with your money on bets you wouldn’t make.

    It’s too bad everyone has to suffer while they trip away unscathed.

  15. 15.

    poleaxedbyboatwork

    @Cermet:

    The economy is still too strong for any recession to say the least …

    Oh? Is it?

    It will surprise no one to hear I ain’t much of an economist, but then, I take both cold comfort in knowing that most economists ain’t real good on the economy either. (Don’t call it the dismal science for nothing.)

    Sure, Krugman seems to know what he’s all about. But you could fill a stadium with agitprop nitwits who are more akin to Randian ideologues than fair-minded surveyors of the scene.

    What rings my bell is the indices that are used to judge the “health” of the economy are, virtually w/o fail, actually indices that judge how well-off to obscenely wealthy folks are doing.

    The canary is not only unconsulted but dismissed from the coal mine. This, to me, seems like something of a structural flaw.

  16. 16.

    Plato

    @The Pale Scot:

    It is at times like those that we will remember the work of Dominic Raab, who resigned in November, having decided that he could not endorse a deal that he himself had negotiated. Raab didn’t want to be Brexit secretary, but he didn’t have the negotiating skills to decline the job. When Raab took over, I was heartened by the thought that negotiations were being handled by someone with the air of an embattled leisure centre manager, who could be outmanoeuvred by a statue of Stephen Hawking. Surely better withdrawal terms have been negotiated during prison sex.

    Ouch.

  17. 17.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @The Pale Scot: Nobody does deadpan like a Brit. I loved this:

    It is at times like those that we will remember the work of Dominic Raab, who resigned in November, having decided that he could not endorse a deal that he himself had negotiated. Raab didn’t want to be Brexit secretary, but he didn’t have the negotiating skills to decline the job. When Raab took over, I was heartened by the thought that negotiations were being handled by someone with the air of an embattled leisure centre manager, who could be outmanoeuvred by a statue of Stephen Hawking. Surely better withdrawal terms have been negotiated during prison sex. Much of the Brexit discourse has revolved around people who seem inbred telling us that diversity is bad, but there don’t seem to be any easy solutions. In a way, I envy the touching optimism of people who feel that another referendum might clear up all this bad feeling once and for all.

    eta: then I look again at his name, what can be more Irish than “Boyle”? Obviously, he’s spent more than a little time in the UK, and it’s rubbed off on him.

  19. 19.

    ascap_scab

    I wonder how much of this sudden warning has to do with the 1MDB – Goldman Sachs scandal and GS stock plunging in the afterhours?

  21. 21.

    Cermet

    @poleaxedbyboatwork: With such high employment and money flowing through the economy thanks to this, the backbone of our economy is still strong. The stock market isn’t the economy nor is trade a major part, either (compared to our domestic economy.) Certainly you are correct about economist and as we all know – that every single expansion has to end. So, at some point, a crash has to happen and how bad it becomes depends on how well it was prepared for by people who know a good bit about those issues. I just don’t see the obvious signs of a bubble currently here ready to go nor for next year.

    I agree the start of one is likely what we are seeing done by these fools but still, compared to all the rescission’s I’ve gone through, I don’t see any signs of the economy deteriorating to the same extent; hence, my optimism for the coming year. But if you can point to a major bubble or economic wave starting to get serious, do post it. I am far from knowledgeable on this topic nor following details.

    Of course, the orange fart cloud is damaging this economy and the next year we will certainly see the result of these and the latest clown car actions to build steam. Then I will really start to worry about 2020. At least the Fed is adding some powder to its reserves for what will be coming sooner now thanks to the orange fart cloud.

  22. 22.

    Van Buren

    @JPL: We had a friend over on Saturday. She’s 56, has an MBA, and demonstrated that she cannot unlearn what she was taught 30 some years ago: R’s cut government spending, D’s waste precious tax dollars. No amount of intervention by reality can dislodge these “facts”

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Cermet: The thing I worry about is the knock on effects of the tax cut. I have not seen enough to say what kind of bubble producing effects it may have, but it’s timing is certainly comparable to unilateral disarmament (Beware the return of the Fiscal Conservative Unicorn and their war cry, “Deficits must end!”) while our enemies (otherwise known as Reality) eye our expanding economy and say, “This travesty can not continue!” (because all good economies turn bad eventually).

  27. 27.

    poleaxedbyboatwork

    @Cermet: Tx. for repy, Cermet. For my part, I confess I know somewhere betwixt jack and shit on the subject, but I do have a few troubling impressions.

    One is employment. This, to me, seems a highly illusory measure gleaned by whistling past the economic graveyard. One, in my understanding (subject to correx), it discounts the long-term unemployed (who are both legion *and* uncounted, convenient that), and two, it is an aggregate figure that is more a measure of untold desperation than of shiny happy contentment. Lotta peeps work one or more shit jobs, trappt, just to keep their heads above penury w/little or no safety net. That don’t seem like a byproduct of a healthy economy. In the formulation of Charlie Pierce: Peoples got no fuckin’ jobs, Peoples got no fuckin’ money.

    And more importantly, “the economy” (or as so many likes to phrase it “this economy”) serves the rentier class. Period. Full stop. imo, ymmv

    E.g. The financial services “industry” adds what value, exactly, to the economy? And yet, it, and a few other behemoths, direct what is and, more importantly, what is not possible in “this economy”. Which is virtually nothing that don’t serve their interests.

    Ain’t trying to pick a fight, Cermet, so hope you don’t take offense, but will only say that smaller straws than Trump’s unconquerable imbecility have toppled “the economy” before, mostly due to vapid, venal unchecked self-interest (“the invisible hand and the free market fairy always arrive at the best of all possible worlds!”).

    I see no check on this. Anywhere. And if history has proven anything, it is that what seemed manageable-to-OK-to-encouraging economic conditions is gotta funny way of spiraling outta control really fucking fast. Seemingly w/o warning.

    (Who, e.g., apart from the folks who shorted housing/CDOs/BigShitpile — a minutely small buncha folks — saw the aught-seven meltdown coming? “I’ll take (virtually) nobody for $2,000, Alex!”

    I take your provisos about Trump’s malign wrecking-ball influence to heart, but it ain’t the whole story. The rot runs deep, and no, I cannot substantiate anything, but our political climate and “this economy”, to me, feels a lot like a powder keg.

    fwiw

  31. 31.

    Procopius

    @Ruckus: About a third of my income is my Social Security pension. It, and the payment system, are supposed to be safe, because it’s a separate tax and administrative system. The other two thirds are an Army length of service pension. It’s supposed to be safe, too. I’m not very worried.

  32. 32.

    Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn

    @The Pale Scot: HO-lee-sh£t. That man is a veritable Bruce Lee with power saws for hands and feet, and can make the reader laugh and recoil in horror simultaneously (such is the fun of our times). Now that I know GB has the brutal likes of him, I no longer feel bad for us stealing John Oliver.

  34. 34.

    Procopius

    @Cermet: You’re right there are no clear signs of a crash in the near future, but Lambert Strether over at Naked Capitalism publishes lots of statistice in his 2:00 PM Water Cooler Mondays thru Fridays. There are lots of little niggles, lots of things that aren’t as strong as they should be, and then they’ll perk up. This weak-ass “recovery” has lasted a very long time, so just based on that we’re due for a recession. It doesn’t look like it’s going to come next year. I really hope it comes at least three months before the election in 2020. Otherwise, people are going to blame the Democrats, and along with their real faults that’s going to hurt them for a long time.

  37. 37.

    Cathie from Canada

    We should take seriously the possibility that we’re looking at an economic team as clueless as their boss — and that they’ll respond to real problems by firing off off-point tweets from various golf courses

    This. If there’s anything that will panic Wall Street AND Main Street, it is this.

  38. 38.

    VOR

    I’m reading the Woodward book and have to take it in small doses because it is so much worse than I thought, and I thought it was bad. Trump was bellowing for tariffs the second he took office. He wanted to withdraw from pretty much all trade agreements, including the WTO, right on Day One. He said we lost every case in the WTO and refused to believe Gary Cohn when he was told we won something like 86% of the time. He really does think the economy consists only of big factories and steel plants. Trump believes he knows better than any of his advisors, on any subject, and simply refuses to listen. I guess I knew all the stuff but it is really something to read example after example in the book.

    One interesting point was that Admiral Ronny Jackson, the former Presidential physician, apparently checked on Trump every day. Hmmm.

  39. 39.

    Plato

    @Procopius:

    Otherwise, people are going to blame the Democrats, and along with their real faults that’s going to hurt them for a long time.

    If people are that stupid (and that racist), they deserve that hurt.

  41. 41.

    H.E.Wolf

    @geg6:
    Re: Frankie Boyle:

    Nobody does deadpan like an Irishman. Not to mention the Irish way with words. And they don’t need to travel to Britain to get that way and never did.

    Google reports that Frankie Boyle was born and raised in Glasgow in Scotland, and earned his BA in English Literature from the University of Sussex in England. His Irish parents had relocated to the British mainland before his birth.

    As the offspring of an immigrant parent, I’ve always been interested in how that parent did (or did not) match the stereotypical characteristics attributed to their country of origin.

    My other parent is the descendant of immigrants several generations further back… some of whom were Irish. I hope that makes me distantly related to President Obama! :)

  42. 42.

    chopper

    mnuchin’s statement reminds me of the monty python bit

    And may I take this opportunity of emphasizing that there is no cannibalism in the British Navy. Absolutely none, and when I say none, I mean there is a certain amount.

  43. 43.

    Brachiator

    @Procopius:

    This weak-ass “recovery” has lasted a very long time, so just based on that we’re due for a recession. It doesn’t look like it’s going to come next year. I really hope it comes at least three months before the election in 2020.

    I don’t think that a recession is coming, and certainly not one which will scare people into voting against Trump.

    The economy may continue to sputter along as it has for a while now, with “strong” GDP growth, low unemployment, and stagnant wages.

    The economy will continue to be hobbled by Trump’s pointless strategy of tariffs and trade wars.

    The new tax laws will ensure that the wealthiest Americans will engorge themselves on even more of the country’s wealth.

    And even though stories about the fate of the rest of us have been bopping around for some time, in April Newsweek pointed out once again that Dollar Stores are predicting a permanent underclass in this country.

    Dollar-store chains like Dollar General and Dollar Tree are rapidly expanding by targeting the poor, particularly in predominantly black neighborhoods and rural areas, while planning for a permanent American underclass, according to a new report from the community development nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR).

    Though dollar stores sell no fresh vegetables, fruits or meat (Dollar General is testing produce in fewer than 1 percent of its stores), they are quickly becoming one of the primary ways lower-income Americans eat, with the combined grocery sales of Dollar General and Dollar Tree outstripping Whole Foods by more than $10 billion .

    Meanwhile, the Trump administration is matching some conservative states in advocating tougher requirements to qualify for food stamps, and inevitably the GOP will push to cut Social Security and Medicare to “fix” the deficits that they created with tax cuts for the wealthy.

  44. 44.

    chopper

    hard to say re: recession. this is an economy run a great deal by consumerism, and the current mood is that a recession is coming, which can slow things down. likewise, overseas economies are either shrinking or punching themselves in the dick (brexit) and they have an effect on ours.

    what i do know is that if we have even a mild slowdown it’s likely to make itself worse than it would need to be given that low-ass rates will hobble the fed’s response.

    what we don’t have are any inklings of a financial crisis, so why the fuck the administration decided to do this is beyond me. unless there’s something wall street isn’t telling us.

  45. 45.

    J R in WV

    @Cermet: \
    \
    \
    \

    compared to all the rescission’s I’ve gone through, I don’t see any signs of the economy deteriorating to the same extent;

    Dude, you can’t even spell recession, and we’re supposed to care about your opinions of the probability of a rescission…? Do not think so! Plus plural of recission is not recission’s.

    Geeze, did you learn English at a Polish school, or German, or Russian?

  46. 46.

    Luthe

    As a Millennial, my entire economic philosophy is: “Recession is coming.” What goes up must eventually splatter like a carton of eggs dropped from 40,000 ft.

  47. 47.

    Ruckus

    @Van Buren:
    You said the magic word.
    She has an MBA.
    She’s been taught American Business by Conservatives which is that all monies need to flow to the owners, any monies not going to them are not profits and are bad. Of course she’s not going to believe anything else.

  48. 48.

    Ruckus

    @Procopius:
    It’s that supposed to be safe that gets me. This crowd hates, with the heat of a thousand suns, SS and with the heat of a half a thousand suns, government pensions.
    I still work so I’m still putting money into SS and every year so far that has resulted in an uptick in my payment besides CoL, because my piece of the fund of course has continued to rise. Not this year, I got my notice of CoL and nothing else. Because of work I haven’t been able yet to go to SS and find out what’s what. Is it a normal snafu or is it an individual 1 fuck up? I’m going with the most likely.

  49. 49.

    Ruckus

    @H.E.Wolf:
    Go back farther.
    According to the bible if you go back far enough we are all related to the same two people. Other books vary.
    Of course if you study biology it goes far deeper as to our relatives.

  50. 50.

    Ruckus

    @Luthe:
    Recessions are always coming. An economy is run by people and their actions, some will help an economy and some will destroy it. The goal is to keep the swings from going too far in either direction. And as is obvious in the last ten years, that doesn’t always happen. I like that in the last 100 yrs the largest recession and the depression were both caused by “smart” people ignoring all sense and running head first with their clothes on fire with exactly the wrong responses into the deep end of a drained pool.
    Yes we will always have recessions and overpowered economies if we continue to look a the wrong data and use the wrong responses. Of course if we don’t do that the rich won’t get as rich, so we can’t have that.

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