Personally, I am getting really tired of my country collectively sticking a fork in the outlet. Under no circumstances should you check your retirement funds.
Fucking disaster.
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Hoodie
But don’t worry, Trump said it was like a patient having an operation. Yeah, it’s more like the surgeon just opened you up and then left to play golf without closing. The tariffs haven’t even started yet, it can get much worse.
Jay
But John, we did get a shitload of tariff memes,…………………
bbleh
Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor this day, I can tell you
@Hoodie: also he forgot the anesthesia.
Jay
@Hoodie:
He did leave to play golf, another $15 million in waste. DOGEshit should get on that.
CHETAN R MURTHY
@Hoodie: given how stupid tariffs are, the analogous operation is trepanation.
pacem appellant
Two days ago we met with our financial advisor and he outright told us we were insane when we asked to pull our money out of the stock market. As it would be “suicidal” (his words, not mine) for the Trump administration to tank the global economy.
We had him move 15% of our money out of the stock market. Should have done more.
Anyway, it seems that the econ majors don’t spend enough time over on the poli-sci side of campus. Fortunately, my poli-sci major wife took a few econ classes as part of her breadth. And she studied authoritarian regimes — even studying abroad in Chile post Pinochet.
Baud
Seems like we still have a cushion of over 40,000 points to play with.
Suzanne
@pacem appellant:
Trump is old, he doesn’t give a fuck. I don’t know why people think he’s rational. WHY WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT POS FOR TEN GODDAMN MINUTES AND CONCLUDE THAT HE’S RATIONAL.
ssdd
Retirement funds? Ha ha John, that’s a real knee-slapper.
mrmoshpotato
Oops.
Go D’Backs!
syphonblue
@pacem appellant: you should get a new financial advisor
Princess
Stock market 4% down is a loss big enough to terrify and distress a lot of investors. But it’s not big enough to really worry Wall Street or to get them to start ringing their own alarm bells. Investment guys (I heard from one today) are still singing the tune they’ve been singing since the election — there will be tariffs, they will in the end be lower than what has been announced, they will be okay, we’ll make the money back in deregulation. So they’re still full steam ahead.
Are they right? They’re banking hard on Bessant saying Trump is open to negotiating. They have a huge incentive in keeping us all in the market, until they don’t. By all singing the same tune, they make it more likely they’re right. They’re less right than they were in early November. If/when they decide they weren’t right, it will be too late for you. I dunno. I’m not leaving the market, personally.
sab
@CHETAN R MURTHY: Good point .
Martin
You think it’s bad now. Wait until the tariffs actually arrive.
Martin
@Baud: What makes you think it can’t go negative?
Belafon
Maybe we need to tell RFKJr that people are sick because they’re not getting enough daily current.
Baud
Obama photo bomb
Hoodie
@pacem appellant: Given his proclivity for hamberders and KFC, who’s to say Trump isn’t suicidal?
Baud
@Martin:
Is that when companies pay you to own their stock?
Hoodie
@Jay: He needed some R&R after calculating all those tariff rates. Hard work.
New Deal democrat
Per Ernie Tedeshi, T—-p’s tariffs are even higher than the canonic Smoot-Hawley tariffs of the Great Depression era:
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bhrklfa3utdi5vvs62uf2zz2
If so, it’s hard to see why a 5% knock on the expectations for corporate profits would be the limit of the damage.
And per Aaron Fitcher:
https://bsky.app/profile/fritschner.bsky.social/post/3llw2fcxlps25
“The tariffs Trump imposed yesterday on nearly every country necessitated a NEW declaration of national emergency, dated April 2. “Republicans’ jiggery-pokery with the calendar [ Republicans disarmed that mechanism in the House by suspending the legislative clock for resolutions targeting Trump’s national emergencies DECLARED ON FEBRUARY 1 (Canada, Mexico, China) ] will NOT apply, a new resolution to terminate THIS emergency now has privilege in both chambers.”
As I understand it, a simple majority in both Houses of Congress can cancel T—-p’s new tariffs, and it would not be subject to a veto.
Do Wall Street and corporate America hate these tariffs enough to force Congressional GOPers to fall in line, promising them a lush sinecure if they get primaried as a result? We’ll see.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Hoodie: or opened you up and took out a few healthy organs
Baud
Seen on Reddit
Martin
@Princess: The thing to understand about Wall Street is that half of them made money today. Sure, normie investors want stability but when I was doing options trading, I wanted fucking chaos. The more the better because that’s where the real money was. In the wake of every natural disaster is a group of people who will make money off of it, and they routinely get on CNBC.
Note, they don’t care if everyone else loses money. It’s an opportunity for them. Slavery lasted as long as it did in this country because it was fucking profitable.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@bbleh: thank you for that. We are still chuckling here.
Phein64
I’ve only made one good move with my TSP (gov’t employee 401K) funds: Out of the market the month before Trump’s second inaugural, and into the G Fund (gov’t bonds).
This is a guy who was the first president since Hoover to lose jobs over the course of an Administration, and now he’s bucking to be first to cause an actual Depression since Hoover.
bbleh
@syphonblue: concur
Tim in SF
I read that this is the first and only recession directly caused by White House policy.
Martin
@Baud: Well, you can in theory short the market below zero. You can borrow more shares than exist. It should be illegal, but it happens all the time.
Baud
@New Deal democrat:
No, everything is subject to a veto.
Captain C
@Martin: People will pay me to take their stocks?
Martin
@New Deal democrat: Ah yes the ‘president declares a new emergency each morning’ bypass of the constitution.
Not sure why people still think there’s a political solution here.
Jay
@Tim in SF:
We are not there yet. This WILL be the first Global recession/depression ever caused solely by White Supremacy House Policy.
So far, it’s just “jitters”.
Hoodie
@Martin: I remember talking with a neighbor who is a fairly prominent historian of 19th century. Her belief was that, towards the end, slavery really wasn’t that profitable. Perhaps that’s why the Confederacy wanted to be able to expand into other territories, that they believe it would lead to economies of scale. After the end of the slave trade, slaves were expensive and had become more of a status symbol, like the corporate jet. Sharecropping, aided by Jim Crow, was more profitable.
bbleh
@Jay: [Atlanta Fed enters the chat]
SW
@Princess: Deregulation is not a money maker. I just rewards bad actors.
A Ghost to Most
On the plus side, Lumpy just made the greedos mad. Along with everyone else.
lamh47
This admin is true clusterfuq!
RFK Jr. announces HHS reinstating some programs, employees cut by mistake https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rfk-jr-announces-hhs-reinstating-programs-employees-cut/story?id=120463293
Ealbert
Kind of off topic, I discovered that my credit card that I have had for like thirty years didn’t go through when I went to pay my copay at the doctors ( I put payments on the card and then pay it off at the end of the month). When I called the credit card (BMO) this morning, I was told that they had cancelled the card as they are allowed to in the small print, but the lady couldn’t tell me why. When I talked to my daughter who works at the local bank to see about getting a new credit card through her bank, she commented that she had heard about this happening to other people and that she thought BMO might be owned by a Canadian bank, so I looked up online and BMO is the Bank of Montreal in Quebec. So it looks like the are cancelling all the credit cards of their American customers. Lucky me.
sab
@pacem appellant: As an old I have lived through many financial downturns and based on that experience he should be absolutely right. But we are in such different circumstances now. We have had presidents who were well-intenned and wrong (Hoover). We have had presidents who thought they could maneuver around the economic realities.
We have never before had a m domineering chief executive who did not give a fuck about us his citizens, and was just trying to cause as much pain as he can to extort money out of frightened people.
I have no idea what to do with my money. I am leaving it in the market because if the whole economy blows up cash won’t be worth much anyway.
mvr
I hit my full legal retirement age last month though I am still working. Thankfully I sold all the Amazon stock in my inherited IRA last month (My inherited broker did not disagree) and moved things around in my TIAA retirement to put more outside the US and less of it into stocks. Between those two and my spouse’s TIAA we had just about enough in there for me to safely retire. Not quite so sure now – today was not a pretty day even with the adjustments. Especially when Social Security is not looking as secure as it used to.
OTOH with recent changes in Health and Human Services or life expectancies aren’t as long as they were, so maybe we won’t need as much money.
Splitting Image
@Baud:
The Dow Jones Average was about 600 or so in 1959, the last time America was GREAT.
Logically, it makes perfect sense to knock the Dow back down below 1,000. It is the first step to making the country great again.
Hoodie
@New Deal democrat: I don’t see why someone doesn’t launch a lawsuit based on this nonsense. There is no emergency.
prostratedragon
Since we’re all so darn liberated …
New Deal democrat
@Baud: That’s what I thought, and read that yesterday, but the thread this morning indicated that a Joint Resolution under the pre-existing Act would not be subject to a veto, because it is not a new law, just a procedure under an existing one (Supreme Court had ruled that a mere concurrent resolution by one House was not enough, it had to be both).
Not an expert, just relaying what I read.
Lily
(Edited by me, but I “may have made some mistakes” )
* Oh OK. That makes all the wasted time, $ and stress and the manipulation and lies OK then. Also: he only mentions 1 thing to be ‘reinstated’, testing kids’ blood for lead.
Miss Bianca
@Ealbert: Oh, shit. Really? My card is BMO – it was Bank of the West, got bought out by BMO.
If they cancel my card, do I still have to pay the balance?
frosty
I don’t do podcasts – I can read faster than I can listen. But I might make an exception for this one.
Hoodie
@Lily: “DOPES.” Seriously? You couldn’t make this shit up.
Lily
@Hoodie: I made that up — that is, edited a letter. They can make mistakes? So can I.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@prostratedragon: nice! Thanks.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Lily: Hey, don’t you know “efficiency” when you see it????
schrodingers_cat
So TPP proposed by Obama was bad and so was NAFTA. And tariffs are also bad. So what do people who drop neoliberal as an epithet and end stage capitalism in every sentence actually want for a trade policy. TPP was opposed by Elizabeth Warren and tariffs during T 1.0 were actually praised by Sherrod Brown.
Yes Trump is a crackpot with crazy economic theories but I would like to point out that there haven’t been many people standing up for international trade treaties for a long time.
Lily
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Efficiency wd be exiling the lot of them out to sea on a rail
Baud
@New Deal democrat:
Everything is subject to a veto. But I’m not sure if the tariff automatically expires if Congress doesn’t approve it.
frosty
@pacem appellant: We met with our financial advisors last week. I had mentioned that his email that “The markets will be happy in 3-5 years” was ridiculous. His reply: “In March 2020 when the pandemic shut everything down did you think the markets would have risen this far?”
We’re doing OK, they cashed some out last fall/winter, put it in bonds and non-US stocks, so they’re doing some of what I wanted.
As far as pulling completely out of stocks into cash – it’s easy to avoid the downturn but you’ll invariably miss the rebound. I know, I did it myself in 2008.
hitchhiker
Our finance person told us a month ago that for us, the right move is to put a bunch into a very safe place (with little to expect in returns), and leave the rest alone.
Her rationale was that we don’t need any of it (yet), and if we do we have the safe pile. The other chunk can sit there until the happy day comes when truth and light are restored — at which point they’ll be scooping up what will be good deals.
I left there feeling kind of sick. For me — a poor kid whose own parents and half my siblings died without leaving so much as an old life insurance policy behind — the idea of even having a finance person is still very strange. And being told that I’m going to benefit in the end from all this carnage is unreal.
And, I think, probably wrong given how this is unfolding.
I mean, maybe there will be such an uproar that the congress takes away his tariff rattle? And then the rest of the world realizes we’re not really going to drive the planet into a brick wall? My confidence in that outcome is near zero.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I think Biden’s approach was well received by thoughtful people, but as usual, he didn’t get enough credit.
Baud
@frosty:
Biden was president within the year. A Dem won’t be president until 2029 at the earliest.
Whereaway
I moved my limited retirement accounts from an investment account to CDs in early February.
Damned glad I did.
Trump is, amongst many other bad things, an agent of chaos. He doesn’t have a clue about what he’s doing, and 90% of what he does is based on spite.
I don’t see any magical transformation of the economy. Between tariffs, mass firings in government, and the deportation craze, the orange shitgibbon will devastate the economy.
Hoodie
@hitchhiker: There may be some great deals on sparrows and curtain rods. The only thing I’d say is there’s always a chance this will go really badly over the next few days and they’ll pull back when even the Baghdad Bobs will realize you can’t get there from here. Honestly, I’d rather see the market tank quickly in the next week or two because that will increase the chance that Trump will simply declare victory and dump most if not all of these tariffs. The markets should rebound quickly if that happens because most companies won’t have done much to try to live with the new regime.
Ealbert
@Miss Bianca:
I am sure you do. If you didn’t have to, they could have sent you a letter ahead of time explaining what was happening. But then people might charge to their limit and not make any payments.
And, yes, even though I understand Canada’s logic, it still bothers me that they didn’t think to let anyone know.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Baud:
“…but we need a majority”
Martin
@schrodingers_cat: Honestly, that you phrase the question that way suggests you wouldn’t understand the answer if we gave it to you.
Martin
@Baud: I mean, a pickup of 5 seats in the house in 2026 and two bullets gets you a Dem president on Jan 3, 2027.
I’m not saying it’s a good solution to the problem. But it is a solution.
sab
@Baud: There is always impeachment as an option( har-har) .
Mr. Bemused Senior
I keep in mind: this is the Trump revenge tour. The worst is yet to come.
lowtechcyclist
@pacem appellant:
Man, that sucks. I’m glad my wife and I have the bulk of our money in the federal TSP, and we can go online and move stuff between funds without asking anyone’s opinion. We had gotten everything out of the C fund (S&P index fund) and into Treasury bills by the end of February. Maybe we missed the tail end of the market’s upswing, but we couldn’t imagine that having a lunatic in charge of the economy was going to work out well.
@Suzanne:
Exactly.
schrodingers_cat
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Yep. He hates us.
MagdaInBlack
@Suzanne: Can I come sit by you? I like you better and better every day.
Baud
Suzanne
@MagdaInBlack: Anytime. As I mentioned in a thread some days ago, I have snacks and wrath, and enough to share.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s only because we’re good people.
MagdaInBlack
@Suzanne: I’ll bring my dark and bitter humor.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Yes. And we are smarter than him.
WV Blondie
Spousal unit and I sold our house on Nov. 1 and realized a significant amount of profit (at least by our standards, having spent more than a decade in the ranks of the working poor). Before I could make a decision about investing, Felon47 got elected. So I’ve done nothing with it. Thinking about buying several CDs of varying length, so we maintain a little liquidity. But, boy, am I glad I didn’t listen to the folks hounding me about putting it in the stock market – we can’t afford to lose the principal!
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
He couldn’t spell the word, doesn’t understand the meaning of the word rational. I’d bet that if we knew from the first president to the dipshit in something other than charge, with currently something like an IQ of around 50-60 we’d find that if they were still alive and were told he was equal to them because he’s president, you could hear the laughter, followed by “What in the ever loving fuck are you talking about.” He doesn’t measure up to the dust on the floor of the WH. Not in any way, shape or form. And I’d bet if all that dust was collected from the entire White House it would measure up to way less than 1/4 of an ounce.
Baud
@Suzanne:
That sounds like a good name for a podcast.
Princess
@Ealbert: BMO USA and BMO Canada are different entities. I very much doubt that BMO US is cancelling the cards of American holders.
Gvg
@Hoodie: the agricultural practices weren’t that profitable. Cotton used up the land. They kept needing to move which meant west. I think Egypt must have managed to keep growing cotton because of the Nile floods refreshing the fertility of the soil. Also agriculture in general had not really solved financing and risk diversification yet. And as I understand it the southern culture liked gambling and conspicuous consumption too much. I forget the rest of it but I have read that long term they were falling behind the north in prosperity. And there were a lot more northerners doing pretty well which added up to more economic power overall. The economic books I read-basic texts, were pretty sure slavery was bad economics that superficially looked like easy money for the slave owner.
Comrade Colette
The hilarious irony of all this for me, personally, is that my long-planned retirement starts two weeks from today. I’ve spent 48 years in continuous employment, diligently saving and investing something from every paycheck even when I was making so little in the early years that I routinely ran out of food money the last couple days of the month. Until a few weeks ago, I was feeling pretty satisfied with the prospect of a comfortable, if not extravagant, retirement with occasional travel and meals with friends and tossing some ice cream money to my son once in a while.
And the part of that long effort that may serve me the best is the practice at going hungry at the end of the month. Fucking hilarious.
TS
@lamh47:
They don’t have a f$%#@ clue what they are doing – not in any department – but as the plan is to cause harm and stress to government employees, they sure are doing that.
Baud
JPL
@Baud: Love that story.
WTFGhost
@Baud: I’m not sure if you understand the argument.
The President can, using emergency powers, make or change tariffs. Congress can, by a vote in both houses, end the tariffs, because they retain ultimate power of the purse. No veto, because it’s not a bill, it’s just a process. Congress lets the President act, but, the President is just borrowing the power, and Congress can decide to end the power sharing with a majority vote in both houses.
Now, Johnson can “veto” by never bringing the measure to the floor, which is what I’ve heard is happening.
(I’m not a lawyer, or a poly sci major, but I’ve heard this spelled out often enough in the past few months.)
JPL
@Martin: Will anyone be here then? Just a glitch in the solution.
frosty
@hitchhiker: That’s pretty much the advice we got. And I know from my history that I’m terrible at this so I’m going to leave it to them.
And what the heck, if my portfolio tanks, they lose money on their 3% or whatever. They have an incentive!!
Lily
there is a video (by her daughter I think) of this hell
frosty
That’s good, but we need a majority! (TY Adlai Stevenson)
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: I should have figured somebody would get here first.
frosty
@Baud: Good point, I wish I’d thought of it. Time for another email.
Harrison Wesley
Suppose he actually tried to respond to tanking the world economy. Does anybody think there’s a government out there that would believe him? The guy’s whole career has been lies and broken deals.
Baud
@WTFGhost:
Congress can’t constitutionally do anything to take back its power without overriding the veto. Unless the law currently provides for automatic expiration of the tariff, Congress is stuck.
Ksmiami
@Martin: ok. I mean I think that’s where we are headed
frog
@sab: A month before the election, I moved my 401-K from stocks to government bonds. My theory is that if money is still worth something, it won’t bleed away in the meantime.
StringOnAStick
@WV Blondie: Put it in CD’s, look up how to make a CD ladder and then do it. They always say not to time the market, but your sales timing was fortuitous. Rates are pretty good right now, and a guaranteed return is very likely going to be better than what this clusterfuck of an administration is going to do with the economy, and the market has been at inflated valuations for years, this could be the downward correction that goes on for a long, long time, with the occasional head fake of going up a little here and there until the next insanity hits.
Your comment that you can’t afford to lose the principle means it should never be in the stock market, ever. Slow and steady with safety may be won’t make as much in the long term, but you’ll be spared loss of principle if you stick to interest bearing financial instruments.
Lily
@Lily:
Omitted are quotes from sheriffs and Rs about “criminals.”
Ealbert
@WV Blondie:
If you have enough to have 4 good sized CDs, the old fashioned advise was to put one quarter into a year long CD every 3 months. That way you get a decent rate but you are able to access some of the money pretty quickly if you need to get to it. My husband and I just put $2,500 into an 8 month CD that is paying a little over 4 percent interest. You may also want to look at Money Market accounts. At our bank they need a balance of $2,500 and are also paying over 4% interest. You can write up to 6 checks on this a month (I believe) but if the balance goes below $2,500, you drop down to the usual point two percent rate interest. A good rate of return on stocks is 6 to 8 percent, so earning 4 percent isn’t bad (although these rates may very well drop). When I was young and interest rates weren’t all over the place like they are now, regular savings accounts paid 4% annually, and children were taught that this meant that money kept in the account would double every seven years.
Danielx
@Comrade Colette:
Irony is not only not dead, it rears its ugly head higher every day.
Dave Buchen
I feel sorry for Lesotho.
They’re hit with the highest tariffs.
Jay
@schrodingers_cat:
Trying again, because my laptop ate my homework.
NAFTA was “bad”, because it entwined US, Canadian and Mexican manufacturing with no worker protections. So “good” Union jobs in Canada and the US went to Mexican “malquidoras” with no wage, union or worker protections. There were also no environmental protections and it took a decade of “modifications” to create a somewhat fairer system. Then there were the excluded, and a tariff regime dominated by the “Big Players”, so the US didn’t get cheap softwood, instead another decade of Quebec asbestos. On top of that, small ag got attacked, like sectors of Canada’s ag industry like pork, (Supply Side Economics) or Mexico’s small ag. So Mexico had small farmers go bankrupt, food deserts flooded in, but former small farmers growing 1,000 different kinds of maize got to go bankrupt, watch ConAgra plant Monsanto clones, live in a food desert, got a shit job in a Malquidora and cheap Doritos. That part has never been “fixed”. Multinationals did well though.
TPP was US centric, with 99% of the benefits accruing to the US. Once the US was kicked out, and they were kicked out for obstruction, the other 11 members quickly signed an agreement, the CTPPA, which has added 8 new members since. China will be joining next.
Since Smoot Hawley, tariffs have existed to protect key industries from things like dumping, to protect domestic production, in theory. They should be selectively applies, but as with Softwood lumber, in the US they have been used to shield industries that lobby, from competition.
JMG
Moved a chunk of my portfolio (retirement savings plus an inheritance) into bonds two weeks ago. Lucky. For now.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Martin: And there’s a reason why no one in their right goddamn mind advocates for such a solution.
This is more of that “Viva La Revolution!” bullshit that plays great in comic books, but fails a sniff test when tested in reality.
eclare
@frosty:
Same. Which is why I’m leaving my money alone. I have at least ten years til I can retire, so I should be ok.
Martin
@Ksmiami: Keep in mind the logistical challenges of that. If the bullets are too far apart, it won’t work. They need to be spaced very close together, and I think that’s why authors go with some kind of State of the Union dirty bomb or other hand wavy bullshit to get their copaganda off the ground.
Martin
@Interesting Name Goes Here: Yeah, I wasn’t advocating it as a solution, but it’s a more technically valid solution to the problem than whatever Trump is cooking up to run for a 3rd term, and you know that shit is being worked on.
CaseyL
I’ll be 69 years old this month.
The original plan was for me to retire at 70.
Then at 72.
Until this week, I thought: Maybe 73.
Now… probably working the rest of my life.
eclare
@Baud:
Thanks!
rekoob
@Suzanne: Came in too late to comment on your investment strategy woes. Here’s my take (UChicago MBA, FWIW): the best way to boost your returns is to lower your fees — if you can find an index fund or Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) that replicates/follows your overall asset allocation, prefer them. Fees are lower. I have a dear friend with a great book on personal finance in which she talks about targeted-date funds (which she helped design), and I’m pretty sure she’d agree.
Dollar-cost averaging and compounding are your friends. I’m a big fan of Vanguard.
@Princess: BMO US, as you likely know, is centered around the former Harris Bank in Chicago, which was acquired by Bank of Montreal some time ago. Much like the appeal of TD Bank in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, there was a consensus that Canadian banks, because there were fewer and more closely monitored by their central bank than ours were by the Federal Reserve, would be a better choice even for US investors.
Bill Arnold
LOL. Suspected that the method for computing tariffs was Navarro’s work, because of the references at the end of the document.[1] That may well be the case; at the least he was a part of the “we”. (Perhaps Lutnick, too.)
‘Trying to understand’: CNN anchor struggles to keep straight face as Trump aide rambles (Matthew Chapman, April 3, 2025, Raw Story)
[1] Reciprocal Tariff Calculations (The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR))
Professor Bigfoot
@Martin:
In America, if it’s profitable, by definition it is moral.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
The market did pretty damn well during 2020 itself, which still mystifies me.
Jeffro
I moved 90% of my retirement accounts into annuities about three months ago. I’ll move things back, MAYBE, once we have a Democratic House sworn in.
Jeffro
@Bill Arnold: Navarro is one of the most obviously mentally ill people in the trumpov administration, and that really is saying something.
In a sane and sensible world, he’d already be in a straightjacket, being fed applesauce with a spoon.
Suzanne
@rekoob: Everything is in target date funds right now. I’m more wondering if any of it is safe. If the market is going to lose all its value, is it better as cash?
lowtechcyclist
@Lily:
Didn’t know about this! I’ll be calling my state senator’s office in the morning.
Jeffro
@Suzanne: The market is not going to lose all of its value (that’s almost not possible). Please keep things in target date funds if you can – that really is your safest bet at this point.
Martin
@Jeffro: He’s not mentally ill. I had to work with him for decades. He’s just an asshole. He was one of the names that everyone knew because he was a problem. Lied all the time then too. Entitled prick.
Suzanne
@Jeffro: Okay.
Mr. Suzanne knows that I can be decisive-to-impetuous, and has also advised me to C H I L L.
I’m not especially chill, y’all.
rekoob
@Suzanne: It is, most likely, safe. Hedge a bit, if you can — buy a Gold ETF (or, if you want more leverage, a Mining ETF), but only a small amount. When I worked for a Swiss private bank, our precious metals suggested allocation was around 5%.
As Gary Brinson and Roger Ibbotson pointed out about 35-odd years ago, an ounce of gold could buy a nice suit of clothes in the Middle Ages and can do so today.
We’ll see whether Bitcoin can be a similar store of value.
As one of my professors said, “I pick stocks, but only for entertainment”. (Chicago’s big on indexing, as you might imagine.)
I like Vanguard’s VTI — the US Total Stock Market Index — largely because it’s built from an index series started at Chicago that traces its origins to the 1920s. One of the most comprehensive indices of US equities around.
More here:
https://www.crsp.org
Ruckus
@Baud:
As a person who worked in industrial metal tool fabrication for a number of decades, with my last project having a tolerance of +/- .00025 (a rather small tolerance – not the smallest of course but still rather small) I’m reasonably up to date on well made metal products. I’ve seen more than one Cybertruck up close and I’m not impressed in any way shape or form. It’s fugly. It’s barely useful, certainly not in any way close to a Ford F150 Lightning.
cain
@Princess:
Deregulation is not going to save them. The cost of raw materials will still be high. The final product is still going to be high.
And now the prices will be high but the product will also be degraded due to deregulation.
They will have to pass laws limiting liability which will be next.
Kelly
@Suzanne: Most target date funds have a designated percentages of stocks and bonds. When the value of stocks drop the fund sells some bonds and buys some stocks with the proceeds. The fund is buying stocks low. This is a good plan. Later on this will be great. If later on is after civilization craters and the plan fails it won’t matter because nothing would have mattered
I’m invested in Vanguard’s Balanced Fund and Total Bond Market. I’m about 50% stocks/ 50% bonds
Jeffro
@Martin: since you worked with him for decades, I’ll defer, but in my book “lies all the time” = “mentally ill”.
same thing with “non-stop magical thinking”, which Navarro seems to exhibit every time I see/hear him. Delusional disorder is supposedly a feature of many mental illnesses, including bipolar disorder.
I’ll quit with the armchair shrink stuff but…
CaseyL
@Ruckus:
I just a perfectly dreadful thought: Tesla as the US version of the Trabant.
Eek.
Martin
@Jay: I don’t see many scenarios where tariffs to protect domestic industries work reliably if you relegate the strengthening of that domestic industry to the free market as they are as likely as not to just cannibalize themselves, use the tariff to profit seek, etc. It seems to me you need to have a much more hands on approach to invest into that industry, to regulate that market to ensure that gains in the industry return to consumers and workers, and so on.
So yes, worker protections, but more than that. If an industry wants a protective tariff they need to give up some freedom on profit margins, on dividends (I’d add stock buybacks but they should nearly always be illegal), etc. But that might also require investment in education to train workers leading into that situation – see the semiconductor situation. I spent two decades trying to build industrial engineering programs which are critical to expanding US manufacturing, and nobody wanted to spend a penny on them. That needs to change. There’s no investment in apprenticeship programs outside of a few states, and most of them aren’t particularly strategic.
There’s a term of art we use ‘necessary but not sufficient’. Tariffs might be necessary to build out an industry, but they’re far from sufficient to succeeding at it. And if you aren’t going to do the whole thing, then the tariff can be counterproductive relative to doing nothing.
But a lot of free trade opportunities have larger shared mutual benefits and in my view the US usually fails to put the necessary asks into those agreements to get the mutual benefit, instead ceding it all to the corporations. For instance, helping raise Mexicos standard of living would be a substantial regional benefit, as well as creating more consumers for US goods, but the US would need to push for that, and we tend not to because Republicans.
Democrats are going to have to learn how to navigate this space where the GOP have radically shifted their positions on some things. I know they’ll reflexively oppose them regardless, but the narrative to voters needs to change quite a bit.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@WV Blondie: you might also consider Muni bonds (they’re tax free). I came into some money 10 years ago when my mother died and we sold her house, and the financial advisor (recommended by my rich relatives) has some in stocks, but most of it is in bonds of various sorts, which provide passive income. Talked to him today and he said bonds are doing well, so far (unlike stocks). He thinks we will get the recession next year. The dividends are what we live on, along with SS.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Gee. I wonder what prompted Gene to do this now.
Martin
@Jeffro: Navarro is a good example of malice, not incompetence. He is extremely entitled. He has a lot of grievances as his colleagues all hated him because he is in no aspect a team player. He’s a good example of a PhD who thought the credential earned him respect, despite the fact he wasn’t a very good economist, and the institution moved very rapidly from middling research university to pretty well regarded university and he looked increasingly like a hiring error as we brought in more accomplished people. I could not name a single individual who wasn’t delighted when he left. A lot of wine was drunk the day he reported to prison.
kalakal
@CaseyL: old joke
“How do you double the value of a Trabant?”
“Empty the ashtray”
Jay
@Martin:
Tariffs are usually employed to protect an existing industry. EG. Softwood tariffs.
The combo of declining wood stocks, lack of modernization, etc, saw US wood producers use their political and lobbying power to put tariffs, ( you can’t spell tariffs with out FFS) on Canadian softwood.
Did it revitalize the US Timber Industry, nope.
It just raised the cost of a new average 1 family home by $50K USD.
In Canada, in contrast, we put tariffs on certain generic meds while requiring changes in the industry. Now we are trying to stop the US illegally siphoning Canadian generics because they are so, so, so, so much cheaper.
At the peak, insulin cost $12 CDN vs $98.70 USD.
Jeffro
@Martin: there are a LOT of people in the trumpov orbit who seem to have crumbled after being passed over, rejected, laughed at, or otherwise dismissed for their personality defects and/or fringe views
“non-resilient dimwits” is generous but let’s just leave it at that
no wonder they’re attracted to him – he is the ultimate loser, the king of grievances
Martin
Layoffs hit five US auto plants that supply factories in Canada and Mexico
Any positive benefits that could develop from this are going to take months to years. Pain can start immediately.
Martin
@Ruckus: I was told Cybertruck would be built to sub-10 micron tolerances. Whoever that guy was must have been lying.
Jay
@Martin:
Wrong glue,
There are entire channels built on cybertruck failure, from wheels falling off, panels falling off, tailgates warping, raccoon attacks to rapid unscheduled fires and frames breaking in half
Some dude named Edolpf made the claims.
Martin
@Jay: We need to arm those raccoons better.
Dirk Reinecke
@Dave Buchen: Lesotho doesn’t even have an International airport and is completely landlocked.
All its imports come from South Africa
The Lodger
@New Deal democrat: Just curious… Any connection between Smoot-Hawley and Josh Hawley?
RevRick
@Hoodie: Edward Bishop, in his book The Half Has Never Been Told, documented how much production and profits soared growing cotton in the forty years between 1820 and 1860. Southern politicians rightly bragged about King Cotton, because it was responsible for 90% of the trade surpluses that the United States enjoyed in the Antebellum period, surpluses that became the foundation of Wall Street. There was even a hefty trade in slave bonds, the value of which being backed by human beings held in bondage.
RevRick
@The Lodger: He is a descendant of a slave owner.
Jay
@Dirk Reinecke:
They export textiles, diamonds, etc.
With a median income of $1200 a year, yeah, they aren’t buying F-150’s, that aren’t even American made.
All their imports go through SDAC, so none of their imports count to GROK and the DODGshitters.
Lily
Best financial decision I made: 3 years ago getting another dog right away. Smiling, laughing at her 25 x a day, frequent walks, better short conversations w strangers who either have a dog, had a dog or want to meet a dog than I could manage standing around w a drink — surely the health effects are saving a lotta $.
Anyway I had such a bad day. Wanted to end it w something positive. Night all.
Jay
@Lily:
Srry you had a bad day.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@schrodingers_cat:
Hi, neoliberal-as-an-epithet person here. I actually love it when you turn your patented passive-aggressive tone on me as I’ve used it as a template here when channeling my inner Steve Gilliard “no debating, just trying to stop” tactics on the hordes of New Dem/New Libralism, very-white ‘progressives’ that unfortunately have come to dominate this space since around 2016.
Anyone who sees the new documentary WTO99 will understand that the pursuit of Free Trade Uber Alles by *both sides* has come back to haunt Democrats electorally since the run up to NAFTA.
It’s clear that Hair Furor has tapped into something that cuts across a lot of party lines in terms of economics that Dems in general have refused to acknowledge, isolated push back from the likes of Warren and Brown, as you pointed out, notwithstanding.
Sure, the UAW has been making a lot of “yeah baby!” noises which the people on our side of the aisle that really don’t like organized labor use as yet another excuse to highlight the alleged perfidy of organized labor when in fact, it could be interpreted as a reminder that such support (and the UAW was a big Biden, then Harris supporter) shouldn’t be taken for granted as it has for the last 30 years. Not unlike how black folks view the party post-election.
So again, you tout your economic bona fides every now and again, provide some actual concrete analysis of how the US should operate in a global trading framework that differs from the last 30+ years and simply isn’t a retreat into Trump’s simplistic mercantilism view of things. And not simply retreat into a uber technical (and still debatable) beating on the overuse of the term ‘neoliberal’ because, as BCrack alluded to yesterday, it’s simply another hobby horse of yours.
Ruckus
@mvr:
I’m an old. I retired a bit ago in the middle of 72 yrs old. If social security goes away and I live as old as my mom, I’ll run out of money a while before I get there. Now here’s the other side, I started working at a young age and paid into SS for more than a few decades. I EARNED what I get by paying into SS for all those decades. And what I get is sufficient currently, not overly sufficient but not bad.
And here’s the kicker. I am far from alone in the above concept. Very far. I live in a federal program senior’s apartment complex, and in order to rent here one has to be over 55. I was a somewhat large tad over that when I moved in here. My point of all of the above is that I am not alone in being an old fart and collecting SS. Money that I paid into for, as stated above, quite a few decades. It’s not shitforbrains money, it’s not fucking elon’s money, it’s not your money. It’s my money. That was the law and the concept of Social Security in the first damn place. Create a monetary system for people that live long enough to collect it to live. Not everyone is a union member that also collects for your retirement pension. Most are likely not. That’s why Social Security was invented, how it’s designed to work, and what it is for. And rich fucks want to tear it down. I say FUCK THEM. It’s my money. If you did/do what I did, it’s your money. Not shitforbrains money, not fucking elon’s money. It is a part of the concept of this country, that we don’t just throw you under the bus when you get old. We are supposed to get at least a modicum of respect for paying into Social Security for decades. Because that money we paid in went in part to pay those that went ahead of us. Our parents for example. My parents were born in this country. Not all of my grand parents were. Hell, my father was born in Kansas and brought to CA from there as a one year old, in a horse drawn wagon. I have a picture of my grandfather in a trade school for Packard mechanics. (Those of you that are olds might recognize that brand, ran from 1899 to 1958) We have a wide and varied history but as far as I can tell, shitforbrains and elon are, if not the worst people to ever have anything to do with the upper end of OUR government, they can’t be farther than second place.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
WHYHOW WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT POS FOR TEN GODDAMN MINUTES AND CONCLUDE THAT HE’S RATIONAL?Ruckus
@Whereaway:
Well he is a first class fuckup.
I’ve never, ever, in any possible way, direction or vision had any concept of him being in any way worth doodly squat. Money that he was given? Or took from his siblings? (Not sure that happened but I wouldn’t doubt it) Sure he had that going for him, but what has he ever done for ANYONE ELSE WHATSOEVER? Not one damn thing.
Ruckus
@Baud:
Yes it is. I was once getting my car serviced and next door was a tesla dealer. I looked over the wank panzer and was rather amazed at the rather poor build quality that I could see plain as day. Now I worked as a machinist/mold maker for decades and built tools for others to use to make plastic products. Most of you have used products that could have been made in the molds I built or helped to build, because of the range of tools that we made. The quality of the wank panzers that I’ve seen up close were pretty much crap, especially in that the quality that can rather easily be produced today. I’ve known people that have owned teslas and have seen them up close and the cars were not near as bad as the wank panzers.
Ruckus
@CaseyL:
DAMN. That’s harsh. Not saying you are wrong mind you…..
Ruckus
@Martin:
Have had a lot of apprentices in the business my dad started and that I owned and ran longer than he did. (He actually worked for me as he got near retirement) For some jobs an education is a main issue, for some jobs an apprenticeship is very much a necessity, primarily because the books never get you all the way through the different bits of building tools to make products. In the business we were in math is vital as is experience from the beginning and continuing on. Especially as much of what we did was relatively new in my lifetime, so learning was/is an ongoing process.
Ruckus
@Martin:
Or absolutely full of shit.
It would cost a hell of a lot more for that level of tolerances. And the ones I’ve seen around LA are absolutely NOT. Not even close.
2liberal
I’m down 0.39% for the day and my income is unaffected. My portfolio is ~20% treasuries, the rest is almost all investment grade corporate bonds with a few junkers and some dividend ETFs and stocks mixed in for variety. I have a really bad record with investing in stocks so I went to bonds and missed the big run up but also wasn’t affected by Thursday’s crash.
Sloegin
@Martin: He didn’t go to prison for the crimes he should have which would be for all the people he killed with his Covid shenanigans.
Though it pales with what Musk has already done and RFK will do before this Admin is over.
lowtechcyclist
@lowtechcyclist:
Dead thread, but I called my state senator today. Thanks again, Lily, for letting me know!