Been busy with things, not avoiding you. Just wanted to pop in and say hi and tell you to brace yourself for the bond market going sideways tomorrow.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Come on, man.
In my day, never was longer.
The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris
75% of people clapping liked the show!
The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.
Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?
It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.
Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.
A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.
Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.
Let me file that under fuck it.
Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.
You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?
Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.
Second rate reporter says what?
You cannot love your country only when you win.
GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.
When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.
When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.
I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.
There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.
Republicans in disarray!
The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.
Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.
War for Ukraine Day 1,139: Who Ordered the Chinese Take Out?
NotMax
“So much winning.”
//
tokyokie
@NotMax: Kinda like last year’s Chisox,
TeezySkeezy
There is a solid chance the idiot-in-chief anounces a big deal and the moronic investors come to Jesus over it.
YY_Sima Qian
Haven’t seen New Deal Dem in these comments recently. I would greatly appreciate his take on investor not flying to the safety of Treasury notes even when there is a rout in the equities market, & what that might mean for the future.
YY_Sima Qian
The 104% tariff on imports from the PRC is also to be implemented tomorrow (or has it at midnight EST already?)
Here are a couple of assessments of how the escalating Sino-US trade war will go (gift links to Bloomberg articles below):
YY_Sima Qian
The FT represents global capital, here are the takes from two of its most influential reporters/analysts (gift inks below):
Ksmiami06
Note from WG:
Your comment was removed because it was promoting actual violence against identified people.
YY_Sima Qian
This guy says don’t expect much help from the Fed in the coming economic turmoil (gift link to Bloomberg article below):
cain
Trump isn’t done though – he’s now focus on a war with the constitution too. The man wants to deport citizens to a prison on foreign soil. This is going to further fuck up further – we are following the Nazi playbook.
I don’t know how we are going to get past this even our political class can’t rev themselves up.
ETA this is further going to depress the economy.. if not human rights.
cain
@YY_Sima Qian:
All China has to do is start targeting services. China has way more leverage than the U.S.
Just turn off Alibaba for U.S. shipping addresses. :-)
frosty
@YY_Sima Qian: I haven’t read any of your details but this strikes me as similar to the book I just read: Nuclear War A Scenario. No one can pull back and the result is Apocalypse. Wheeee!
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: Yikes. I am so old that I remember stagflation in the late 1970s.
Jimmy Carter got blamed for what Nixon did (escalate a war with no taxes to pay for it. Play games with the numbers for a while, intimidate your Fed chief into playing along.)
Paul Volker slammed the economy for a couple of years to snap us out of double digit inflation. It was a painful recession but necessary. Huge setback to a bunch of young baby boomers careers, mine included. But then things just chugged ahead.
This time is different. There are no grownups in charge making tough but necessary decisions. Just idiots competing for dominance and attention.
Norm Ornstein scared the hell out of me last weekend on MSNBC. Trump denied Covid was a problem for at least a year and we made bad choices that killed a bunch of people. He went after Fauci as disloyal.
If he denies the economic meltdown he is creating now ( he is) he will go after the Fed ( and Jerome Powell) as the only agency that can counteract his “plans.” If international markets don’t trust the Fed then we cease being the reserve currency and all bets are off.
Kristine
My very first Social Security check arrived in my bank account today.
Taking the good news where I can find it.
sab
@Kristine: My last one also arrived on time. Never had thought that would be a return in my retirement.
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: There is no safety, I think is the simple answer.
Note, if anyone thought the tariffs benefitted the US economy, you’d have a reshuffling of winners and losers in the market, but not a wholesale retreat from it. Given that Trump has flirted with the idea of intentionally defaulting on Treasuries, and given the likely massive decline of tax receipts leading to the uncertainty of raising the debt limit sooner than expected, Treasuries aren’t safe. Corporate bonds aren’t safe. Foreign and domestic securities aren’t safe.
In order to retreat to safety there needs to be an underlying economic theory that one can understand and reposition relative to. I didn’t agree with GWBs economic theories, but I could at least understand them and react to them. There’s no theory here. There’s no strategy here. If there was, there would be SOME market benefitting from that strategy. The only thing you can possibly do is turn everything to cash and bury it in your yard.
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: Yeah, I have no idea what the fed can do here. Same problem – with no strategy, there’s nothing to react to. Injecting cash doesn’t help – not the problem. You can’t lower rates enough to compensate for double-digit tariffs.
Nobody is hiring because nobody can anticipate what’s next. Nobody is investing because nobody can anticipate what’s next. These are not problems the fed can help with.
sab
My cats and dogs are in dominance battles right now. Everyone is old and cautious. No fur will fly. But boy do they whine and yowl (and kick their kitty litter out of the box) when somebody else gets what they want (scritches, sleeping in owners bed, first serve on breakfast, dinner leftovers…whatever else.)
Chill guys. You are lucky you even have a warm house with food.
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: Yes . US government morans do not realize the rest of the world has economies that would love to have Chinese goods.
Ruckus
@Kristine:
@sab:
Mine is due next week I’ve been wondering if it will show up.
I’m not holding my breath.
Aussie Sheila
@Martin:
Exactly. In these circumstances cash is King!
But new retirees relying on their ‘401ks’, have just taken a hit they’ll never recover from. I think the bull markets of the last decade or so (minus the Covid hiccup, from which they recovered fast) is over.
There will be a ‘flight to safety’ wherever that is determined to be, and the world has learned that the leader of the ‘free world’ is always one election away from catastrophe, for itself and the democratic world.
Christ what a cluster fuck.
sab
@sab: I have noticed that Chinese immigrants to Amrica invest in real eastae not the stock market. From my limited perspective that seems to have been a good plan.
But REITS are more stock market than real estate.
sab
@Aussie Sheila: When my dad died last year we cashed out a bit from my inheritance and bought a one story house we could toddle around in with walkers. The bank people were shocked. But we in the US have minimal government elder care.
House is paid for. So far I have Social Security. Everything else is just for stepkids to inherit, and that isn’t my problem.
Stock market meltdown I am so happy that whatever bad choices we all have houses paid for. What a luxury.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Grr. The money men thought they could control Trump, just like a hundred years ago, the money men thought they could control Hitler, and we all know how that ended.
Pete Downunder
I’m in a bizarre situation. My US IRA is tanking but so is the Aussie Dollar against the US dollar. Thus my social security check becomes a huge sum when converted to AUD as do any withdrawals from the IRA. Our government despite an upcoming 3 May election has been playing it pretty well. We might escape relatively unharmed but one can never underestimate the damage the idiot in the White House can do.
Aussie Sheila
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Well now that we know how that ended, what’s the plan to stop it happening again? I’m not being facetious here. It’s an obvious problem and its ramifications are now global as was obvious the moment the demented crim turned on Ukraine and sided with Putin.
I’m not particularly personally effected by the current turmoil, but the overall prognosis for democracy and human flourishing has taken a sudden nosedive, and I don’t see any plans for dealing with it.
Baud
Y’all are such worry worts, you don’t see the plan working.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud:
I had to check the link. JFC!
He’s absolutely demented. But we all know that. My issue is that the US appears to have a Parliamentary system with regards to Party discipline, (at least the Republicans do), but without its mechanisms for swift political action when things go sideways. The UK Tories swiftly defenestrated Truss when she crashed the UK pound and threatened the Bond market, but in the absence of ‘no confidence’ motions and the like, it looks like the US representative system is ‘ride or die’.
It’s fucking ineffable from here.
However, it is assisting us to retain our ALP government so far, so there’s that. Fingers crossed for 3rd May!
Martin
Oh, I missed that China put a number of rare earth metals behind export licenses. That’s a huge escalation. Limits the USs ability to make quite a few military products, not to mention really weakening the ability of the US to make competitive EVs.
Tungsten, indium, yttrium, dysprosium, and terbium. It would take quite a while to tip up domestic production. We have a single mine for dysprosium in the US, but all refining was done in China, and we have refining in the lab, but not production. We have tungsten deposits but they haven’t really been mined for decades. We have no indium extraction, and there’s only one domestic site identified. We have one yttrium mine in the US, that also isn’t in operation. The same dysprosium mine is also our only source of terbium, and has some refining capacity. All of that was funded by DOD so the commercial market is going to have to get in line.
Dysprosium and terbium are needed for making rare earth magnets – like the kind used in wind turbines and EVs.
Getting domestic supply chains of these is critically important and the US should have solved this long ago (free market being a notable impediment here) but the tariff situation makes this harder, not easier.
ColoradoGuy
@Pete Downunder: Be grateful you are in Oz, a happy, well-managed country with a functioning safety net. Here … none of those things, with 20~25% of the population not sure if they want sleek 21st-Century Nazism or a return to the coal-powered, high-tariff 1880’s. Or both at once, like Disneyland made real.
Aussie Sheila
@Pete Downunder:
The tanking of the AU$ against the US$ makes the 10% tariffs against Australia moot. Our exports become as cheap as they were before the tariffs. Christ what maroons they are.
Aussie Sheila
@Martin:
Well that’s awkward if the US decided to attack Iran, or tries to mimic South Korean chip making. What a joke.
Martin
@Aussie Sheila: Willing to bet that Trump turns to Putin for help with the metals. Putin will set his terms.
sab
@Aussie Sheila: Mindboggling how incompetent they (my government) are.
My husband said today that the thing that most irks him ( other than the decline of our retirement accounts) is that in the first time in his long lifetime he is hoping for our government ( aka us) to fail because every track we are on is massivly wrong.
Aussie Sheila
@Martin:
Yep. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least. But I wasn’t aware that Russia had these ‘rare earth metals’ in abundance. I take your word that they do, in which case, it’s Putin’s way or the highway!
I vividly remember the hoopla among US centrist intellectuals in the 1990s when they thought that the defeat of a degenerated exhausted Soviet regime meant that the US had ‘won history’ or something. It was laughable then.
It’s a tragedy now.
Betty Cracker
There’s an op-ed in the WSJ, co-authored by trickle-down/Club for Growth conmen Art Laffer and Stephen Moore, with the title “A Win-Win Exit Strategy for Trump on Tariffs.” Here’s a gift link, though I don’t really recommend it because it’s a load of horse shit.
It’s illustrated by a photo of Trump being chauffeured in a golf cart by one of the chinless sons, but it should feature the “I wish you into the cornfield” meme from the Twilight Zone because of the tone the authors take — terrified grownups wheedling and fawning over an all-powerful, monstrous child.
sab
Africa also has rare earths. Any leverage we had is gone because we shut down USAID who helped people ( who knew we did that?) around the world, including places that had rare earths.
Aussie Sheila
@Betty Cracker:
That is a disgraceful position for a powerful nation state to be in. Simply disgraceful.
Not dissing you or your comment at all. It’s just an observation about how absolutely mind boggling it is to see the most powerful polity in the world being brought to its knees by a demented, criminal moron, with no democratic representative mechanisms to bring it to an end.
Again, it’s simply ineffable.
Martin
@Aussie Sheila: I suspect they do, but they likely don’t have the capacity to refine them. But Trump is so fucking gullible he’d sign on to Putin’s demands without understanding that.
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: I supposed I should write off my 401K in the US? Right now I have most of it in cash, & will probably move the rest if there is any bounce equities. However, holding cash in USD is also a recipe for depreciating value against the coming inflation.
It does not seem like the PRC government will aggressively devalue the Yuan, since 104% tariff is impossible to mitigate via depreciation (& Trump can just raise tariffs further, anyway), so the purchasing power of my Yuan earnings will hold, especially as inflation is low in the PRC.
I could consider pulling my 401K out, but the tax & penalty implications are unpalatable. Also, putting all of my savings in Yuans is risky, since PRC capital controls makes getting the funds out cumbersome. Then again, perhaps a form of capital controls is coming to the USA, too.
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: I have to assume one of the billionaires will rid us of this meddlesome president before we get to capital controls.
Aussie Sheila
@Martin:
Oh well. I trust in the future, if there is a fair and clean election in 2028, the Democrats can field a winning team up and down the ballot and that this time, they take both electoral reform seriously and appoint an absolute Rottweiler as AG.
They’ll need him or her.
In the meantime I suggest they telegraph that lawbreaking by current Admin flunkies will be charged on a State by State basis thus making trump’s pardon power moot.
They need to be planning now for swift retribution.
I come from a political tradition that takes ‘No forgetting, no forgiveness’ and ‘Vengeance in victory, malice in defeat’ seriously.
Betty Cracker
@Aussie Sheila: I keep coming back to a line from “The Birdcage” — it’s like riding a psychotic horse toward a burning barn.
I do what little I can personally do to oppose this madness, and I try not to lose hope, but Jesus, what a fucking nightmare.
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: The PRC placed export controls on rare earth metals to all destinations, precisely to reduce the US’ ability to obtain them via 3rd countries, & provide leverage over Japan, SK, Taiwan & the EU, just in case policymakers start thinking about submitting to MAGA & place tariffs on imports from the PRC, in order to obtain tariff relief from the US.
Russia does not have rare earth metals refining capability, either.
The PRC government has also launched an antitrust investigation into DuPont (China), a shot across the bow that the PRC can go after the massive profits that many US MNCs can still extract from the PRC market/supply chain, far more than any profit PRC companies are earning from the US market. This is a weapon to be deployed if the trade & finance war really escalates to the no holds barred level.
Aussie Sheila
@Betty Cracker:
I’m truly sorry for good people caught in this. I really am. But this disaster is not just trump’s making to be honest. It really isn’t . This clusterfuck has been brewing in the US since at least the 1990s.
TS
@Pete Downunder:
My retirement income is not escaping unharmed – 2008/9 I was still working with time to rebuild, this time I am not. The Oz pension will not replace the investment capital/income I am losing with this one – might be little harm for some – not for myself and contemporaries.
cain
@Baud:
Someone on reddit said that every time he uses a line that includes “sir”, it is a tell and that he’s lying.
I know no country is begging. Those countries are talking to each other and working on their plans and it doesn’t include the U.S.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: As of this moment the problem is not the structure of government defined by the US Constitution. There are mechanisms for Trump to be removed or checked. The problem is the reactionary Repubs in Congress are not interested in exercising those powers (impeachment, or passing legislations over Trump’s veto to countermand his EOs). In fact, a large number of them are just as craze as Trump/Navarro/Miran/Bessent, if not more so, & the rest of scared for their lives.
Neither is the reactionary majority in the SCOTUS.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
That should capture the attention of US oligarchs.
I trust my own government to steer us through this, and I am also confident in the competence of the PRC to steer their way through as well. Except that I feel bad for good people in the US suffering because of this, I would be all out of popcorn.
And popcorn isn’t good for one of course.
Rusty
The “big, beautiful bill” Trump wants is only going to make things worse. Cutting spending as we slide into a recession (could already be in one!) is counter stimulus. The tax cuts could be a stimulus, but they are going to people who don’t need to spend, but with a recession aren’t going to invest in ways that stimulate the economy. They may well be incentivised to invest overseas! Add the loss of tax revenue, made worse by the lack of enforcement, and we get rapidly rising deficits that will be financed by pulling more money from the economy. It really is a plan for a long, painful downturn.
Betty Cracker
Another WSJ op-ed title, this from the editorial board: “The Country Needs a Tax Cut, and Soon.”
LOL! Never change, WSJ editorial board!
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
I quite understand the Constitutional and political impediments of the current US situation. My point is that this should be a ‘learning’ experience for democratic forces in the US, and short of amending the US Constitution which is an impossibility, they need to come up with an electoral and political strategy that makes a repeat impossible, or near as impossible as they can.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: Unfortunately, the “normal” plutocrats seem to have no influence on Trump & his gang, the latter is animated/goaded by a very select group of kleptocrats.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
Then the democratic forces in the US should openly threaten those particular plutocrats with retribution. Power only understands and responds to power.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: Defeat & neuter the reactionaries so that they are no longer > 40% of the electorate. Then reform the 1st past the post voting system, so that that the political landscape are not completed dominated by two major parties. This would shunt the extremists to marginalized small parties w/ limited influence in the legislature, & less of a chance of the extremists hijacking one of the major parties.
Not fool-proof, of course, see the AfD‘s momentum in Germany.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: Why do you think Musk travels around w/ a 100-person security detail?
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
Agree with those prescriptions. As for Musk, he’ll be lucky to escape his fate at the hands of the usual demented US assassin. He’s a ‘marked man’ and not just from the US. I doubt he’ll live to be a great age, if you know what I mean.
Pete Downunder
@TS: I understand your point. My Aussie shares are taking a hit. I have zero expertise in this but I am hoping the Aussie economy will manage to isolate itself from the self immolation of the US. Good luck to all of us.
YY_Sima Qian
@cain: Trump & MAGA are already doing a bang up job of undermining the foundations of US service exports (especially inbound tourism & higher education).
Aussie Sheila
@Pete Downunder:
The only and best advice is don’t sell on the downturn. You crystallise your losses. I don’t think things will look this bad economically in three months. Politically is another matter.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: Also why he is traveling around w/ a 4-yr old human shield.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
That is so disgusting. Using your own child as a human shield. He really is a psychopath. But a smarter one than trump of course. Which wouldn’t be hard.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
I’m agitating for the Australian government, if the ALP is returned of course, to reach out to US scientists, medical researchers and the like, with a great deal. It would enrich us immensely and they would enjoy living here. I know I do.
YY_Sima Qian
Time for the ROW to consider how the World Band & the IMF are to function w/ a rogue US.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: That is the play for every country in the world, w/ the means to attract such talent.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
Indeed. Although I thought the previous trump administration withdrew the US from the WTO. Or was it the World Bank. I lose track with the international institutions the US hates and rejects. I guess ‘international’ means the US rules, otherwise, it takes its marbles and goes home.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
Well Australia has the means to attract such talent. Without the concomitant risks that face such emigrants in other countries. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure you do.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: Trump made the WTO dysfunctional by refusing to fill vacancies in the Appellate Body for Dispute Settlement. Unfortunately, Biden kept it broken. The WTO is no longer relevant, unless the ROW kicks out the obstructionist US, but I don’t think there is mechanism to do so.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
Thank you. I knew the US withdrew from one of the International financial/trade Organisations. The fact that Biden maintained the withdrawal emphasises that such behaviour is US ‘volk’ politics, rather than any particular partisan politics.
Well we’ll see how much that behaviour works going forward.
Deputinize America
@YY_Sima Qian:
Reality – not one of his hired goons will take a bullet for him. He doesn’t inspire that sort of devotion.
Whack the goon on point and see the rest scatter, leaving Musk standing there alone.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila:
The market expecting a global recession, I think 3 months from now will be much worse.
I think Australia should go all in on solar & wind, & use all of that free energy to make green methanol, ammonia & hydrogen for export. This way, Australia can retain its position as a key energy exporter, while not relying upon coal & natural gas. (I know there is a project sending Australia electricity to Singapore.)
Buy as many cheap Chinese solar panels & wind turbines as possible, & go nuts on deployment. In fact, since solar cell & panel fabrication are highly automated, perhaps Australia can negotiated a tech transfer deal to localized production & capture more of the value. However, this requires a re-imagination of both the Sino-Australian relationship, & a re-balancing of the vested interests w/in Australia.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: Just to clarify, the US has not withdrawn from the WTO, although Trump is making noises about doing so, but its obstructionism has made the WTO irrelevant.
Might be better for the WTO & the world if Trump does take the US out of the WTO.
Glory b
@Aussie Sheila: As I mentioned in another thread, Democrats haven’t won the majority of white voters since the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.
Ever since the Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act, voter suppression laws have abounded, making Democratic victories that much harder.
I’ve recommended it to others, I’ll do it again now, you should read “Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland” by Jonathan Metzl.
I know that you have poo pooed my suggestion that white America’s race issues make what should be a clear path forward almost impossible. But Americans saw how Trump mishandled the pandemic, that he is a demented malignant narcissist, and that Biden had done a lot to repair the damage but voted for him AGAIN.
It’s a democracy, the majority gets the government they wanted. Even if it kills them.
YY_Sima Qian
One person’s musings on Bessent’s motivation on the global trade war (so take it for what its worth):
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
The ALP has offered subsidies for Oz households to buy batteries. ATM Oz households are producing so much electricity from solar panels that the costs of dealing with it are driving down solar rebates. The problem is energy storage after dark.
That, and the inadequate storage and transmission at scale right now. If the ALP wins I expect the battery subsidies will be taken up with alacrity. But it’s far from an optimal policy imo. Municipal and local battery installation together with grid upgrade would deliver more bang for the clean energy buck in my opinion.
Betty Cracker
@Deputinize America: Something to look forward to then!
Seriously, the one upside to this horrifying shit-show is that the perpetrators have been loud and proud about their activities. As the shit hits the fan, there won’t be any ambiguity about who is responsible. The cultists will use their last dollar to purchase the cyanide-laced Kool-Aid from Trump Inc., but they aren’t a majority.
Aussie Sheila
@Betty Cracker:
No, they aren’t a majority of the US electorate as a whole. But unless the US centre left can mobilise its electorate en mass, the reactionaries are quite capable of eking out respectable wins. This is the problem.
The reactionaries are the problem, but the solution relies on a political Party that has to win all the time. The reactionaries only have to win once.
That is the lesson the world is now learning.
sentient ai from the future
@Betty Cracker: nine r senators now in favor of ending the emergency declaration that permits shitbird the power to impose this round of tariffs.
whether the house will go along, whether it will be enough, who knows, but electeds are starting to reassort along different lines.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
xirtman has a point. One that I’m inclined to agree with. Not knowing anything about Bessent’s prior activities, my money would always be on the PRC’s capacity to turn a challenge into an opportunity.
Ksmiami06
@Aussie Sheila: I fully expect the US to break up over all this into several smaller nations. The next steps are blue states starting to ignore The federal government edicts.
Betty Cracker
@sentient ai from the future: I read somewhere that Pastor Johnson used a procedural trick to ensure no one in the House can introduce a measure to reclaim Congressional control of tariff policy by ending the bogus “emergency” declaration for the rest of the year. So unless that can be overcome, no one has the power to pull us out of the nosedive. Can anyone confirm? Can’t remember where I heard that.
sentient ai from the future
also carney has pledged an ambitious effort to increase affordable housing stock in canada that will also be keynesian in its utilization of canadian lumber that the US wants to tariff.
i think the canadians are going to be the global winners here, and i don’t know how to put my remaining money there other than buying USD-denominated Big 5 canadian bank stocks. i think i need to get an additional broker that allows me to do things like that but that presents liquidity challenges.
sentient ai from the future
@Betty Cracker: that’s true, but my understanding is that it only is the case for ONE of the emergency declarations at issue, the one supporting canada/mexico tariffs.
TS
@Pete Downunder:
We did better in 2007/8 because the government went Keynesian big time – that could well happen again, but I think the pain will be greater this time around.
Labor has certainly been given a boost for May, I don’t think many of us want to see any appeasement of or negotiations with trump. When Dutton said the PM should be off to the US, he may well have lost the election with that statement.
Aussie Sheila
@Glory b:
Er no, actually. The US isn’t a ‘democracy’ in the sense that most of the world understands. For a start California, a state with with 40 million people has the same representation in the Senate as Wyoming. A state with a population equal to about four Australian electorates. Out of 151.
Rusty
@Betty Cracker: They will never get enough votes to override a veto. I think this is a dead end.
sentient ai from the future
@Rusty: i dont know enough about emergency declarations to say one way or the other, but this doesnt seem like “a bill that needs to pass”, it seems like “the law previously passed by congress says this is an option” which is why johnson used the procedural trick to insulate the tariffs on canada and mexico, because it doesnt actually require a veto-proof majority.
i’m doing a lot of inferring from context, maybe someone more familiar with what’s actually happening can do a post about the facts of the matter
p.a
Yes. Even BAD policy, if consistent, will have winners and can be adjusted to (by those with sufficient resources.) Preznit Yo-Yo’s “policy”, on the other hand…
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: Battery storage (BESS) is still only relevant for Australian domestic use, to stabilize the grid while mitigating the intermittency of solar/wind. There are bigger opportunities.
Eventually, the world will move off dependence on coal for power generation & natural gas for both power generation & petrochemical feedstock.
Australia should be one of the best endowed countries in the world for solar & wind power. It can parlay that endowment into production of green hydrogen, methanol & ammonia for export. If it can localize solar panel/cell production, & since green hydrogen/methanol/ammonia are industrialized processes of synthesis, this may give Australia a chance to diversify away from minerals extraction & commodities, & re-industrialize to an extent. Australian industry has always faced the constraint of limited domestic market (& thus poor economies of scale). Well, for deployment of solar & wind, the the constraining factor is not population, but suitable land area. By using energy conversion processes to produce green fuels & chemical feedstock (even aluminum smelting) there is really no limit to the uptake.
The PRC is now deploying these combined solar/wind/green chemicals projects at scale, in Manchuria & Inner Mongolia, & will probably be financing projects at suitable locales around the world (Central Asia, MENA, parts of South Asia & LATAM). Australia should be very well positioned.
Baud
@Rusty:
Congress is the only end, dead or not.
Ramalama
@sentient ai from the future: you could buy some loonies to start. The USD still remains high against the Canadian dollar.
Banks here in Canada have better exchange rates for USD than counterparts in the US banks for Canadian. But maybe there’s a reverse Norbert’s Gambit you can find.
Or else just take a trip here with $9999 dollars and make the exchange in person.
Baud
Blumenthal putting a hold on all Trump nominees.
Via reddit. Ignore the negative nellies in the comments.
Baud
@Baud:
Lots of reddit threads infected with trolls and bots right now. Pouring cold water on any resistance.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
Australia has great potential regarding clean energy and its export, and I hope they are exploited to the full. But like the US its economy is far more oriented to services now. Mineral extraction will continue to be a major export for the foreseeable future, although if there is a global slump the income will drop considerably.
different-church-lady
I think bracing ourselves is the wrong approach. We should just take a relaxed pose and let it wash over us.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud: ugh just like ballon juice.
Shit—I replied to a troll!
Baud
Trump’s secret service name revealed.
TS
@Aussie Sheila:
I assume then, that you don’t consider Australia as a democracy either. The state of Tasmania with 600,000 people has the same senate representation as NSW with 8.1 million people.
The northern territory with 250,000 has 2 senators, Tasmania with not much more than double that has 12 senators
This is how Federation was formed, both in the US and in Australia, the Senate is the States House.
NotMax
@Baud
Reddit has been infested with bots since the get-go.
Baud
@NotMax:
Very true. But some threads are better than others. The bot swarms are pretty obvious.
NotMax
@Baud
It doesn’t work on my browser set-up so c’est la vie.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: LOLOLOL
Princess
@cain: Oh countries are probably seeking deals. But they are thinking of them as temporary stopgaps while they adjust to the new reality.
zhena gogolia
@Rusty: We know Trump is a coward who walks things back all the time. He might not veto but use it as an exit ramp.
Baud
Princess
@sentient ai from the future: Canadian etfs traded in the US: https://etfdb.com/etfs/country/canada/
Matt McIrvin
@Rusty: If we can’t get the votes, hammer the Republicans for it at election time. It’s cold comfort but you have to try it and get political juice out of it if it doesn’t work. Try to get into people’s heads that politics isn’t just a game; it has consequences.
Matt McIrvin
@TS: In 2008, the crisis became acute during the home stretch of a Presidential election campaign. This time, it’s being perpetrated BY the new President shortly after taking office–and he’s doing everything he can to signal that he’s going to make a bid to be dictator for life. So any policy relief is a long way off. Could be decades off.
NotMax
Been a hurtin’ cowpoke for the past day or so.
Slipped on a patch of wet grass on the slope from the cottage down to the driveway and fell hard, twisting the heck out of the knee on the bad leg. Any chance of sleep for more than ten minutes at a time impossible Monday night.
Aspirin on a regular schedule marshaled.
This too shall pass.
Gvg
@YY_Sima Qian: he should fear the security detail. They all have relatives, and none of them are of the super rich class themselves. They also get a really good look at the class standing around listening to them all the time. Seriously, he has to give them more than money, he has to pay attention to them and their needs or they will not keep him safe. I think they are just a show since they are so new. He probably hasn’t figured it out and they probably haven’t figured him out yet.
Aussie sheila
@TS:
It’s not optimal but preferential voting for the Senate improves it somewhat, and the discrepancies in Aus Senate representation looks like a blip compared to the US. Oh, and majority votes also improves its democratic responsiveness and legitimacy imo.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The friendly fire gets me down sometimes. I was reading a thread elsewhere about the protests and someone mentioned there are more scheduled for April 19th, and there followed a big argument about the protests being on weekends: why not do them on weekdays when the media will pay more attention? A bunch of people fired back “people can’t get off work”, then there were complaints that these were privileged comments because the true working class has to work Saturdays, and questioning why bootlicker Americans couldn’t donate their working hours to fight the dictatorship, etc. etc…
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
That just boggles my mind. I’m trying to come up with a way that a tax cut (largely aimed at the already-rich, I’m sure!) is in any way a meaningful response to the insanity we’re in right now. And I’m drawing a blank.
It’s about as meaningful as “what this country needs is a good 5-cent cigar.” Maybe they should editorialize for that.
MagdaInBlack
@NotMax: Ow. Ice? On the knee as well as in the drink.
NotMax
@lowtechcyclist
“This would be a great time in the world for some man to come along that knew something.”
– Will Rogers
;)
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: In Trump’s own mind, the high tariffs seem to be a way of replacing revenue so we can eliminate the income tax, and I guarantee, the moment that happens he’s going to get back a lot of his support from the moneybags guys. Economic rationality doesn’t enter into it–it doesn’t matter whether they come out ahead; the income tax is this gaping emotional wound for them, the punishment society inflicts on them personally.
And I think there’s a lot of grassroots support for that, in part because even if income tax isn’t a big chunk of your expenses, you may not consciously realize it and mostly experience the pain of filing.
lowtechcyclist
@YY_Sima Qian:
Tru dat, but Australia is one of a handful of nations where it’s easy to get about even if you know no other language than English. And that’s a big plus for attracting talent from the U.S.
Glory b
@Aussie Sheila: Okay, then, under our system of Democracy.
But the point still stands.
NeenerNeener
@Matt McIrvin: Pinchbeck says the whole point of this is to kill the middle class in the US:
https://danielpinchbeck.substack.com/p/paul-krugman-is-wrong?utm_source=multiple-personal-recommendations-email&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true
TS
@Matt McIrvin:
I understand that for the US, this time around – but I was talking about Australia – we are in the midst of an election & there will be promises in regard to assistance. I don’t think we will be able to do as much as we did in 2008/9 but it will certainly be more than what US people can look forward to.
My main concern is voting in a government that tries to appease trump – he deserves nothing & if I lose much of my retirement income because of his actions, rather that, than bow down before him. It is easy to understand why Ukraine will not give in to a foreign dictator when we see what trump is trying to do to the prior allies of the US. (Being attacked creating physical insecurity is, of course, much worse than being hit with financial insecurity).
We do have a pension style safety net in Australia – if it survives the current economic chaos.
NotMax
@MagdaInBlack
No swelling to speak of; strictly an internal torsion sprain. Improved today as compared to yesterday, though still walking gingerly.
Have to go into town for the monthly grocery/errand run today, so will see how that goes.
;)
TS
@Aussie sheila: I see little difference other than the basic difference between the US system and the parliamentary system.
Our Senate looks to have been based on the US system, we simply have a smaller number of states & much smaller population. The fact that trump is taking over the functions of the congress (our parliament) and the judiciary is what is taking away the US democracy, nothing else.
Matt McIrvin
@NeenerNeener: I’ve proposed the “they want a crash”/disaster capitalism thesis myself at times. The question I then have to ask is, why do Elon Musk, Steve Ballmer and Bill Ackman seem so upset right now? Is that all just kayfabe? That’s exactly what they WANT you to think?
Nah, I think they didn’t actually see this coming. They love the part about slicing up the federal government and getting rid of labor protections and regulations. They do love the idea of whacking their own professional-class workers–that moneybags Trumpism is a strike by the billionaires against the upper middle class is, I think, correct. But they don’t want to tank their own businesses as the price of global serfdom.
In general I tend to be suspicious of “Trump the secret chessmaster” theories.
Matt McIrvin
(Also, the “liberals need to shut up and pay attention to the far left” folks tire me in part because I remember how much of the far left clearly wanted Trump to win in 2016 and maybe in 2024 too, precisely because they hate the same professional-class liberals he does.)
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin
It ain’t chess, it’s 52 pick-up.
lowtechcyclist
@NotMax:
La vie.
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: The other one I’m thinking of is the claim that the “Hands Off” protest movement is playing into Trump’s hands because massive protests are just the precursor to agents provocateur and false-flag actors turning it all violent so he can start shooting.
Which, yeah, he expected that, but did he expect that the protests would be so heavily weighted toward white grannies with walkers? I think he’s fighting the last war–he wanted them to be the George Floyd protests redux. But what he’s doing is antagonizing retirees. It’s not actually smart.
(I’ve noticed that the people most likely to push this theory were not on the ground last weekend because they’re not in the US.)
Glory b
@NeenerNeener: Why of course, we can’t let THOSE people get ideas about getting ahead…
https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/young-black-americans-embrace-the-stock-market-a5c09c62
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin
Thus the proposal floated this week for new tariffs on pharmaceuticals.
Chris T.
@YY_Sima Qian: I can’t speak for New Deal Democrat, but a lot of people are having to come up with cash fast, and one way to do that is to sell one’s bonds. So it’s kind of traditional in Giant Market Crash Times to have bonds sell off at the same time as stocks drop.
It’s what happens in the next few months and years that matters in the end. Destroying trust in the US government will hurt bonds more than this initial surge.
p.a.
I conceive of him as a bucket. The bucket consists of narcissism, racism, rage, all the negatives we can see. This limits what the bucket can hold. But what it holds varies, and it varies, I think, by whoever last had access to him; who he listens to in the moment. This makes his Chief of Staff and Appointment Secretary the most important people on the planet. 😱Or Fox “News” bobbleheads.😱😱
Another Scott
@Chris T.: About 20 Republicans could end this dangerous nonsense at any time.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
…aaand my wife just told me Yarvin posted some long brainfart about how maybe Trump is too dumb to carry out his masterplan. Which suggests to me that this isn’t all part of his masterplan.
Bupalos
@YY_Sima Qian: I Yes, it is about time to hear from the world band, according to my watch. I think right now they’re rearranging the chairs so they have space there on the port deck.
rikyrah
@YY_Sima Qian:
Thank you for this information
Bupalos
@Matt McIrvin: It more or less is, it’s just a master plan that has no significant chance of working as planned.
Denali5
Anyone else wondering why Musk has disappeared from the headlines? Other than for his own personal safety. I can rest easy because I am not a financial person, and my initial inclination was to sell our Tesla stock which I am told was umpossible because it was part of the Index Fund. So I am bowing out of the financial discussion and concentrating on the next foreboding possibility of deporting citizens to prisons in foreign countries. Won’t that be fun to fight.
YY_Sima Qian
@Chris T.: Makes sense.
dnfree
@YY_Sima Qian: Exactly. This is entirely on the Republican Party. They could have shut this whole thing down back when Trump mocked the handicapped reporter.
dnfree
@Glory b: I just finished reading the new biography of MLK, by Eig. It’s well done, and the last few chapters, where he expands his attention to the Vietnam War and socioeconomics, is heartbreaking.