First up, I need to issue a correction to a post from yesterday, in which I misgendered a hummingbird! Thanks to commenters Elie and Greg for setting me straight, and apologies to the wee birdie for the error.
***
The Horrors are proceeding apace. On the economic front, CNBC says China will impose an 84% retaliatory tariff on U.S. goods starting tomorrow. Walmart yanked its quarterly operating income forecast, citing Trump’s tariffs.
Here’s a small “sir” story from a demented blowhard in a cotton candy helmet:
Trump: I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up kissing my ass. They are. They are dying to make a deal.
Here’s a small man worried about his own reelection:
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) on tariff strategy: “Whose throat do I get to choke if this proves to be wrong?”
U.S. Trade Rep. Jamieson Greer: “Well, Senator, you can certainly always talk to me…I’m at the tip of the spear…I would push back just a little bit on this.”
— C-SPAN (@c-span.bsky.social) April 8, 2025 at 1:00 PM
A small reminder: Republicans could stop this right now, today.
It’s small comfort, but at least there’s no ambiguity about who’s responsible for killing the U.S. economy. His orange fingerprints are all over the murder weapon, and his accomplices have R’s after their names and rings of Cheeto dust around their lips.
Open thread.
On The Road – Auntie Anne – Southeast Asia – Hanoi – Vietnam 3 of 5
They Call Me Noni
Good morning Miss Betty. Oh to be a penguin on an otherwise uninhabited island these days. I have the Tiny Terror so my day will be filled with blocks and play doh and not The Horrors.
NotMax
Open thread?
FYI. See-through science.
Making sturdy, semi-transparent wood with cheap, natural materials.
Jeffg166
The party of business.
azlib
Read Krugman’s substack today. Things are getting scary.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-chaos-this-is-getting
Scout211
Good morning all.
Trump loves a good food fight among his minions and the media is here for it. The public war of words between Musk and Navarro seems tame compared to Trump’s global trade war but we get our entertainment where we can get it right now.
. . .
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Scout211: Musk is right about Navarro being an idiot. Navarro seems to get his ideas about factories from a computer game like Command and Conquer.
Agreeing with Musk makes want to take a shower.
New Deal democrat
I saw John Cole’s overnight post, and got a request from YY Sima Qian for my take on the spike in the UST 10 year yield.
As usual, I looked for historical comparisons, and also to see if this was US-specific. Here’s what I found:
1. There were similar Treasury interest rate spikes approaching the bottom of stock market moves in both the beginning of 2009 and March 2020. There was also a similar move over about 10 days a month ago.
2. Interest rates in the last several days have spiked higher in Canadian, UK, German, and Japanese long term bonds as well. So this hasn’t been a case of investors fleeing the U.S. for other safe haven bonds.
Bottom line: the hard data doesn’t appear to support any geopolitical reason for the spike in 10 year Treasury yields – at least not yet. The most plausible hypothesis I have right now is investors facing margin calls usually have to sell their “winners” to get the money to cover the call. And in this case those have been Treasurys.
I do expect US bond yields to move higher – maybe a lot higher – over the next 5 – 15 years. That’s because interest rate cycles are very long – on the order of 60 years, or one adult lifetime – and the only demographic that has a living memory of the stagflationary 1970s are the Boomers. Everyone else thinks that interest rates move lower or are stable over time and that Dick Cheney was right when he said that “deficits don’t matter” and $$$ can be printed ad infinitim without ill effect.
Finally, emotional times like these are when icy blooded investors make a killing, by taking the opposite side of panicky moves. For example, overnight 10 year yields have varied between 4.30% and 4.50%! Who the heck as any idea where they will be at 4pm EDT today?!?
in that vein, I read an important note this morning that foreign car manufacturers are pausing exports to the U.S. not because they fear the tariffs, but because they realize our Idiot King might change his mind in a heartbeat. So why sell into a tariff when a few weeks or months from now the tariff might disappear again?
YY_Sima Qian
@New Deal democrat: Thank you for your input! Greatly appreciate it! Good counterpoint to some of the more breathless commentary out there
BTW, if the US bond is entering an extended high yield cycle, wouldn’t debt servicing them start to crowd out a lot of spending, be it social welfare, domestic investment, or defense?
catclub
1. You need the sales now.
2. Tariffs might be even higher in two months.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Soprano2
*raises hand* Boy do I remember that period, ask anyone in their 60’s about it. I graduated college in 1983, when the Reagan recession was full-blown. People even five years younger than me (that was my sister) have no idea what a really bad job market combined with interest rates in the teens and inflation at 7-8% was like. It wasn’t great. ETA – of course, I think a lot of that was caused by the Arab oil embargo, which is something that seems to have slipped down the memory hole. The price of all kinds of fuel doubled in a year, it was a huge shock to our economy. I guess that’s the role FFOTUS’s tariffs are playing in this scenario.
Betty Cracker
@Scout211: I hate to agree with a “senior White House adviser,” but I like the Musk – Navarro feud too. The donor/ideologue coalition that reinstalled crazy-pants in the White House have agendas that overlap but don’t match up perfectly. I welcome any signs of a crackup.
BritinChicago
“IF this proves to be wrong”??? —there’s some doubt about it’s wrongness? The situation might be partly, even largely, retrieved—Trump makes a lot of deals, lowering tariffs almost all the way back to where they were in exchange for trivial concessions which he calls enormous—but that’s a change in the situation, the “this” that Tillis is talking about, it’s not making the current situation non-wrong.
Why are we governed by malignant idiots?
YY_Sima Qian
@Scout211: Of course Musk is fulminating at Navarro. The global trade war (& the one more specifically targeting the PRC) that the latter has long championed is threatening the viability of Tesla.
Tesla depends on the PRC for ~ 50% of its production & ~ 30% of its sales. The PRC operations has been extremely profitable & saved Tesla from bankruptcy. Should the Sino-US trade war escalate further w/o found, the CPC regime will start to target the profits of US MNCs operating in the PRC, & Tesla represents a big fat target. It is easily replaceable in the PRC, since Tesla has been losing market share to local competitors, & its FSD is not alone at the leading edge of intelligent assisted driving in the PRC. Few other countries may be bothered by Tesla being targeted, given Musk’s support of the far right everywhere. If anything, Tesla sales are sliding faster in Europe than in the PRC, since Musk is still more admired than reviled here. That is not something a determined CPC propaganda campaign cannot fix, if it comes to that.
The PRC government may not target Tesla 1st, wanting to use Musk as a conduit to influence Trump. However, that will only remain the case if Musk remains useful in that role.
JML
I’m hearing that the GOP plan to make scholarships taxable is moving forward in the House. That’s just unbelievable to me.
YY_Sima Qian
A set of papers by Autor, et al trying to quantify the impact of US manufacturing from the “China Shock” (following the PRC’s entry into the WTO) have proved influential in how both the mainstream Dems.& MAGA now conceive of global trade & the economic relationship w/ the PRC. However, more recently there is growing push back at the analyses, a good digestible example below:
sentient ai from the future
TSLA had a dead cat bounce about a week ago so I bought an inexpensive put contract on the other side of their earnings call later this month.
It’s just about in the money at COB yesterday and I’m trying to figure out when I maximize my return on it, because options lose value as their date gets closer.
Might figure out what else I can bet on, but I think there’s so much volatility and people trying to hedge with put contracts that the space might be better for call options?
Either way, I think betting on a TSLA bloodbath is about as close to a sure thing as anything out there right now.
jonas
Ew. He puts that bronzing shit down there, too?
BritinChicago
@New Deal democrat: Thanks for looking into this and letting us know what you found. The story about margin calls is plausible, and surely at least part of the explanation.
Part of the reason for the halt to the shipment of autos to this country is that a lot more than usual were imported over the last three months or so, in anticipation of tariffs. So now there’s a lot of inventory and there will be (at least) a slowdown or pause in further imports. After that, who knows?
cmorenc
Tillis is already worried enough about his re-election prospects in 2026 that he is running tv ads about how he purports to be doing (entirely unspecified) stuff to protect seniors and social security. Helping force his hand are counter-ads being put up demanding that he vote against giving huge tax breaks to billionaires at the expense of huge cuts to government services to ordinary citizens. I hope popular recent ex-governor roy cooper runs against Tillis in 26.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Another Scott
@New Deal democrat: @Soprano2:
I would offer a caution that a huge amount of the reporting about the “record high inflation” under Biden was by 30-something reporters who didn’t live under the (much, much higher) inflation of the late ’70s and early ’80s. But they thought they learned the correct lesson about those times, and thought that a temporary, pandemic-induced, spike in prices was the same as grocery store magazines telling people to max out their student loans because they would pay them off with cheaper dollars, their labor contracts would give them big raises, and all the rest.
:-/
IOW, don’t expect that lack of personal experience to drive the reporting to be correct. As always, narratives by those who have agendas to push will be pushed very hard and will become the “truth”.
Clear thinking, and realizing the markets can be irrational longer than you can remain solvent, is essential.
I just mentioned downstairs that there is a new joint bill in the House to end the “emergency” and thus end the tariffs. About 20 Republicans can end this dangerous nonsense at any time.
Hang in there, everyone.
Best wishes,
Scott.
sixthdoctor
@JML: I found a Forbes article on this:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardconroy/2025/01/24/republican-proposal-would–make-college-scholarships-taxable-income/
I agree, it’s nuts, but in line with their goals to destroy education and have a populace happy with screwing iPhone cases together.
schrodingers_cat
Trump is torching the economy and tanking the dollar and elected Rs are still with him. Racism and bigotry are more important to them than $$
And anyone who argues otherwise is blinded by their own privilege.
Jackie
@NotMax: COOL! ;-)
cmorenc
@JML: The GOP does not respect the value of post-high school education for the general population, except for vocational trade school type training. Higher education tends to produce more liberal-minded citizens who are not as easy to baffle and misdirect with bullshit.
Lily
@They Call Me Noni: Sounds like a good day.
Jeffro
THIS, everywhere and every time, anyway you can say it or post it.
The MAGA GOP majorities in the House and Senate could end this insanity in 15 minutes if they wanted to…so make them want to. #CallCongress
Baud
@cmorenc:
“Not as easy” doing a lot of work there.
JerseyBeard
His Orangeness has turned America into an abusive, rapey, cheating, bad-faith, abuser, just like him. This isn’t about economics anymore. We don’t get to back to how it was just by stopping the hitting. I’m not sure there’s anyway to ever go back to how it was. Our reputation is cooked. Holding the idiots who purposefully did this to us accountable would be a good step, though.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: One of the things that was happening in the 70s was that the Fed kept raising interest rates to control inflation, but until the end of the decade, there were regulatory limits on banks actually offering people accounts that returned high interest. So loan interest was murderous, but if you wanted to save as a hedge against inflation, you couldn’t do it. The best you could do was spend all your money on stuff you already couldn’t afford because your money would be worth less tomorrow. A classic inflationary spiral.
I remember the high bank interest finally coming in the 80s–you could suddenly get these incredible rates on CDs. And that probably contributed to the Reagan recession, but it did actually pull down inflation because now people could save.
Jeffro
@schrodingers_cat: true…but we’re about to find out just how far the concept of “rule or ruin” really extends w/ the MAGA GOP
YY_Sima Qian
@New Deal democrat: Here is Brad Setter’s take:
The FT Alphaville note in question:
BritinChicago
@Another Scott: “About 20 Republicans can end this dangerous nonsense at any time.” But wouldn’t the bill need Presidential signature to become law? In that case, the number would have to be more like 75, wouldn’t it?
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: There are a lot of libertarian Silicon Valley Bros who love themselves some Musk. And there are a lot of IIT bros who love Modi and fall hook line and sinker for the RSS Hindu greatness propaganda
Educated == liberal is not always true. Cray Cray Navarro is a tenured econ professor
And there are plenty of conservatives in business schools and laws schools of even the most liberal academic institutions
Its not just the WWC who loves Rs. Elite journos with humanities education also love themselves some Trump.
Jeffro
At this point, the only thing that’s going to dial this insanity back even partially would be for Congress to fully take back its tariff authority and reset rates to wherever things were on Jan 20th.
(and then we’d just have some other trump tantrum/abuse of power – most likely, w/ the use of our military)
They’re going to have to remove him from office, either via impeachment or the 25th Amendment. And it’ll have to be soon, too.
BritinChicago
@Jeffro: “have to” is doing a lot or work here. Do you mean: If they don’t it will be really bad? That’s certainly true, but not much of an argument that they will, unfortunately.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: I agree for the most part. I also can’t believe that people don’t understand what FFOTUS is doing with the prison in El Salvador. A normal government would fix a mistake like sending the wrong people there in a heartbeat, but that wouldn’t send the message they want to send to everyone – comply, or we’ll send you to a gulag you can’t ever get out of. The message to immigrants is leave now, or we’ll send you to a gulag you can’t ever get out of. This seems obvious to me.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: +1
The ’70s and early ’80s was a time of huge, rarely appreciated, changes in the economy. Part of the reason the Gas Crisis was so disruptive was that there were price controls on gas and oil. At one point under Nixon, price controls on gas were lifted, but there were still price controls on oil (which makes no sense) which weren’t lifted until years later. Private ownership of gold (beyond jewelry) was legalized by Ford signing a bill in December 1974. Limits on interest rates paid, and limits on interest rates charged, changed a lot. The mania for corporations selling all their assets and leasing them back, driven by a pathology in the tax code, started.
Etc., etc.
All of these rules and changes to the rules have had a big effect as the MBAs and MotUs worked to find a way to collect their rents and have ever increasing shares of the national commonweal.
When I’m elected Benevolent Despot, things are going to change!!
;-)
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
jonas
It’s all a damn reality show to him. MAGA thinks it’s “bold leadership.”
FML
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: Yep, I was in college when all this was happening. I remember one of my econ teachers saying that the current situation was not normal, we normally wouldn’t have 21% interest rates. One of the reasons my husband sold his printing business in the early ’80’s was because he couldn’t afford to borrow the money to expand. I’ve been saying for several years that the “high” interest rates now seem normal to me. ETA – I had forgotten about the limits on savings account interest rates. Things were so different then, most people had savings accounts and few had investments in the stock market.
Jackie
Does Johnson have the cajones to accept?
Click the above link to read Jeffries’ challenge :-D
Gvg
@New Deal democrat: if we have 6 months of lines for gas, and republican congressmen losing support in a big way, then we may see impeachments.
Vance needs to be investigated so if need be he can go too.
Plenty of violating the constitution to point to, just not the will to stop it, yet
Jeffro
@BritinChicago: hmmm…I think I’m going to keep ‘have to’…when stocks, bonds, and gold are all crashing and there’s no reason for them to come back up…when the Orange Airhorn’s response to every country’s retaliatory tariffs is to retaliate (double down) further…and so on…
…yeah, I think ‘have to’ is probably right.
Someone in the right’s infobubble, or on Wall Street, or even Musk himself is going to start talking about removing trumpov and installing Vance. Just to stop the billionaires from bleeding away 90% of their wealth, if nothing else.
“With sorrow…and in appreciation for all that he has done to make America great again…I must vote to restore Congress’ tariff power while asking our Orange Emperor to continue deporting dangerous illegal immigrants…”
etc etc
Another Scott
@BritinChicago: Well, sure, if you want to be technically correct, yes 2/3 in both Houses are needed to override.
But the first step is passing both Houses.
In the time it takes for that to happen, pressure continues to build, and he may figure that it’s better to declare victory and move on than to keep fighting over it. And he knows he can always do another EO that does the same thing later (the bill specifically refers to the April 2 declaration).
Politics is slow and messy and infuriating and …
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
New Deal democrat
@YY_Sima Qian: Just to be clear, I would be careful of any instant analysis that claims to have a definitive answer. Overnight, Bund yields – and only Bund yields – have moved lower. France and Japanese bond yields have trended slightly higher, and UK gilts have matched the move in Treasurys.
it occurred to me that another explanation for the overnight move might be *fear* that foreigners are dumping Treasurys, so therefore sell now in order to get ahead of the move, thereby creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The main point is that T—-p has completely upended overnight the global order of trade that had prevailed for decades. To say that “uncertainty” is the main driver of markets now is an understatement. Particularly as T—-p could completely reverse course and declare “Victory!” at any time.
Bupalos
@Betty Cracker: Just a slight warning that this is essentially how Putin conducts his business, operating as referee to competing subordinates. It has proved quite durable, preventing alternate political forces from consolidating and challenging Putin.
Though it’s also fragile.
dc
I love it, “a small man worried about his own reelection”, what a great (and accurate) description of Asshole (and coward) Tillis.
Quiltingfool
@Matt McIrvin: Oh, I remember the high interest CDs! I worked at Farmland Industries (Kansas City) in ‘79/‘80) in the Investors Services Dept. My job was NOT glamorous. I recorded investor names and addresses, by hand, in large ledger books. I hated that job.
Anyway, people were getting 14 – 16% on short term CDs. They were selling like hotcakes!
RevRick
@New Deal democrat: @YY_Sima Qian: @catclub:
We are governed by an exceedingly stupid man, who is convinced that tariffs will lead us to Nirvana. “Let a hundred factories bloom!” He has been fixated on this notion since the 1980s when our rising competitor was Japan. And the thing about stupidity is that it is both arrogant and stubborn.
A man who claims he knows more and better than the generals is not someone who will easily concede that he has made a yuuge error. No, he will dig in and insist that the naysayers are weak-willed Panicans.
A lot of people have expressed the wish that this is all just some ham-fisted negotiation tactic. After all, he proclaims himself The King of the Deals. But there are clear signs of his mental deterioration, and if anyone has dealt with the elderly who are slipping, you know that they get ever more stubborn.
So, there is something of a war going on inside Trump. His self-image as a preeminent dealmaker versus his belief that tariffs are the road to making America great again.
Again, dealing with the elderly who are slipping, they tend to get snappish and easily frustrated. Especially when their self image is undermined. Their tendency is to pull inward. And tariffs represent Trump’s great pulling inward writ on a national scale.
I don’t see Trump backing down from his tariffs. He will be unmoved by the suffering he causes. He will will his grand vision upon us, even if it kills us.
New Deal democrat
@Another Scott:
The more time goes on, the more pressure will build to make the bill permanent, e.g., the President may only do 2 60 day declarations in any one Congressional term.
Also, does anyone have the slightest doubt that if it were Biden doing this, the Roberts Court would say “Major Questions Doctrine!” so fast it would make your head spin?
Trivia Man
Tariffs aren’t the inly tool in the box. I saw speculation that Temu could just stop shipping to america or just slow down the process to a crawl. My wild card guess is china could slow walk ALL container ship departures with delays in paperwork or reduced staffing at the ports. The JIT supply chain would snarl in less than a week.
And that supply chain snarl wouldn’t be just imports. Full trucks at the port cant unload.
Those trucks cant pick up their next load.
Warehouses fill up, cant take in more goods.
Shippers’ warehouse fills up, have to slow production lines because no place to put stuff.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Soprano2:
Same thing here. No jobs in 83 so it was go straight to grad school in the hopes things would improve in a couple of years.
First mortgage on a mobile home in a park still in existence by the Boulder airport (upwind from a now-gone poultry place so when the wind shifted, ooooh, the smell) was 13%.
Like you, economists back then blamed basically everything subsequent to the oil embargo on the reverberations of the oil embargo.
Regarding Tillis and “IF this proves wrong”, sheesh, what a marooon. This will be exactly like the oil embargo in that it’s effects will be felt for years and who knows what kind of shit response it could lead to (stagflation of the 70s led to Reaganomics of the 80s, the results of which we live with every damned day).
Melancholy Jaques
@azlib:
In his substack today, Krugman says:
A big factor working in Trump’s favor, so far, is that the majority of Americans & 95% of the political media never accepted that the economy was solid. The media said things were bad, maybe worse than ever, and the American people accepted that narrative.
So as Trump damages & destroys things, they see him as a necessary chaos agent. “He’s shaking things up.”
Meanwhile, various former highly placed Democrat big shots are lining up to dance on Joe Biden’s political grave.
Belafon
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: He gets them from a guy named Ron Vera, who is his alternate persona. So there’s no actual basis in reality.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: An odd thing I’ve noticed is that there are a lot of Americans who think private gold ownership is still illegal, even though that hasn’t been true for 50 years.
(I think part of the confusion is that there were recent bans on certain kinds of gold purchases where you don’t actually physically get the gold, because the area was rife with scams. Well, I imagine a lot of that is going to roll back!)
Matt McIrvin
@Melancholy Jaques: Yeah, but at least some of them are going to remember he said he’d bring prices down. (And that the stock market was going to boom.)
Betty Cracker
@Jackie: Johnson would be a fool to accept, and since he is a fool, maybe? Especially if egged on by the orange fart cloud?
Regardless, I like Rep. Jeffries’ initiative in issuing the challenge. The Dems lack power, and that sucks, but one upside is you can road test new ideas and get creative, like Senator Booker did.
prostratedragon
@jonas: You know how you primp for that special someone.
Soprano2
@Quiltingfool: Hi! DId you see my post about the new quilting stores I saw in Springfield on S Kansas Expy right by Battlefield? I didn’t know if you would know about them or not.
Belafon
@JML: “Why should smart people get rewarded for hard work?”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The irony it was the US investors who forced all that offshoring to China in the first place. China only because a problem in the eyes of our elite when the Chines government start regulating things.
rusty
@BritinChicago: I was talking with a friend last night that runs a hobby store, most everything is imported. They literally bought everything they needed for the rest of this year as a precaution against the tariffs. He said he has to figure out where to store 9 months of inventory. These are the kinds of crazy decisions businesses have to make.
RevRick
@Matt McIrvin: You are pointing to Regulation Q, which came out of the Glass Steagal Act, which limited the amount of interest commercial banks could pay out to 4% and the amount Savings and Loans, which financed home mortgages, to 6%. This cap placed great stress on the banking system and led to a series of credit crises throughout the 70s, causing a repeated stop-start in the economy, hence stagflation. Since the whole purpose of commercial banks is to grease the wheels of commerce, Regulation Q put commercial banks in a squeeze. They were constantly hemorrhaging the money to lend.
To understand the scope and scale of the problem, US commercial banks went from possessing 75% of all reserves after the War to a place that not one U.S. commercial bank was in the top twenty in size by 1980.
Belafon
@YY_Sima Qian: I have never seen the term “China Shock” before.
Matt McIrvin
@rusty: My interest in videos about trains just resulted in my getting served a few from model railroading hobbyists. The model railroad guys are freaking out.
Soprano2
Yep, this is true. I rarely argue or contradict my husband anymore, because there’s no point to it. Even he would be a better president than FFOTUS, though.
Peale
@Another Scott: I had forgotten the gold craze that came about when private gold ownership became possible. LOL. Lots of people in line at a hotel in town when the gold buyer came to town to sell grandma’s dental crowns and grandad’s fillings.
Nelle
@JML: Hey, maybe they’ll make taxing scholarships retroactive and come after Boomer’s already threatened Social Security checks. They hate the idea that there was a penny out there that they didn’t hoover up
Soprano2
@RevRick: I just saw the headlines “Navarro guarantees no recession” and “Bessent (?) says laid off federal workers can fill the factories FFOTUS’s tariffs are going to create”. That second one I’m not sure who said it, I think it was Bessent. If this is indicative of their thinking, we’re truly screwed. No one can “guarantee” no recession! They have no idea who federal workers are or what they actually do, they’re like the first boss I had who thought we were all just interchangeable parts who could be easily replaced by any random person on the street.
Soprano2
No, it’s like how they’re suddenly upset that one judge can issue a nationwide injunction against a presidential action. There was no complaining when that judge in Texas was trying to stop every action Biden tried to take, but now suddenly it’s a huge problem.
Belafon
@cmorenc: Two of my conservative coworkers children had their tuition paid for because they graduated near the top of their classes.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: Yeah. Do they think these factories are going to spin up in a couple of months? Get a bunch of 19-year-old computer-science majors on it! They can work around the clock and sleep on a futon in the office!
Soprano2
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I couldn’t face the idea of two more years of school, so I went into the job market. There were normally double digit amounts of recruiters at my college (it was nicknamed one of the Ivy’s of the Midwest by some people); in 82-83, there were 4 recruiters total on campus. No one was hiring anyone, you had to take the first job you were offered because there might not be another one for 6 months. That’s why I say most of the younger people have no idea how bad it can get.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: …I saw one comment in a YouTube thread that I think was getting more to the MAGA soul: it was a video of the Dropkick Murphys performing in Boston, and they dedicated a song to laid-off federal workers. Someone mentioned that they were a laid-off CDC employee, and some MAGA responded that they should get jobs in private industry like a regular person and that it served them right for causing all the layoffs during COVID.
These people definitely blame the government for causing all the pandemic-era chaos and figure that if we’d just done nothing, everything would have been all right. So they’re making sure we can never do anything again.
TS
@New Deal democrat:
As in Krugman’s post – linked above
Permanent tariffs are bad for the economy, but businesses can, for the most part, find a way to live with them. What business can’t deal with is a regime under which trade policy reflects the whims of a mad king, where nobody knows what tariffs will be next week, let alone over the next five years. Are these tariffs going to be permanent? Are they a negotiating ploy? The administration can’t even get its talking points straight, with top officials saying that tariffs aren’t up for negotiation only to be undercut by Trump a few hours later.
Under these conditions, how is a business supposed to make investments, or any kind of long-term commitment? Everyone is going to sit on their hands, waiting for clarity that may never come.
But wait, there’s more. There are growing signs that we’re at risk of a tariff-induced financial crisis.
There are multiple indicators of that risk
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-chaos-this-is-getting
The Cost of Chaos, this is getting scary
schrodingers_cat
@JerseyBeard: This. He is recreating America in his image. This is not just about politics or economics anymore, its about who we are.
Soprano2
I think the MAGA’s see it that way. The “normie” voter, though, is already unhappy because prices haven’t fallen back to their 2019 levels. Just wait until they go up and up, those people will be furious! They’ll be mad because they didn’t vote for FFOTUS to make prices higher and “the economy” worse.
Scout211
Sure, sure, Donald.
rusty
@Matt McIrvin: Model trains are one of the things they sell. They have been getting tariff surcharges on orders since the first tariff boost. The charges have been added to orders already accepted, those shipped, and in one case, on the entire order even one some of the order was already delivered! The surcharges have been changing by the day. It’s a nightmare for a small business.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: That’s what they seem to believe. It’s delusional. It’s as if they think there are all these empty factories out there, with all the equipment and everything, just waiting for the workers to come back.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: Bernie Sanders and the tankie left has also contributed to a lot of this magical thinking about the economy.
YY_Sima Qian
@Belafon: The “China Shock” is freely bandied about in government, Congress, think tank & academic circles, & has by now become an article of faith among policy advisors & policymakers.
The irony is that “China Shock 1.0” was felt more keenly in the developing world, as the PRC vacuumed up so much of the labor intensive & low value added manufacturing that developing economies were planning to leverage to advance their industrialization. The developed economies mostly benefited from the shock, in aggregate, from buying lowly priced finished goods (& selling them on the domestic market w/ huge mark ups, supporting design, R&D, engineering, marketing jobs), while selling the highly valued components to the PRC for assembly, as well as the expensive capital goods to support the PRC’s industrialization. That the US failed to support the losers from globalization, & failed to more equitably distributed the gains from trading w/ the PRC & global trade in general, is a long running domestic policy failure.
The “China Shock 2.0”, where the PRC industries have mostly caught up & at places pioneering the technology frontier, PRC firms competitive in innovation & design, & PRC industries advantaged by massive economies of scale (supported by the massive domestic market & generous state support), will be much more painful for the US & other developed economies. The competition is now direct, hence the much more protectionist stance by the developed economies & much more heated rhetoric.
Quiltingfool
@Soprano2: No, I did not! More fabric, just what I need! No, not really, I am well stocked up for the eventual price increase!
I am on a serious fabric diet for my projects, but I get to break said diet if I get a quilt commission and have to purchase fabric for the customer. I went to Missouri Star in Hamilton Monday (3 hours away) to buy fabric for a commission quilt. I’m looking forward to making it. Lotsa cat appliqués, yay. I showed the clerk at the batik store the patterns, and she shook her head and commented on how much cutting there would be!
I have been working on a new to me project; converting photos to appliqué patterns. Two are from photos shared by frontpagers, Betty Cracker and Tamara, another from a commenter for whom I have already made an appliqué of her beloved kitty. They aren’t as perfect as I’d like, but not bad if you don’t look too closely, lol!
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: And that every industry that makes the parts and materials the factories need is going to be there, too, all running 100% American.
schrodingers_cat
OT: I just bought two sets of Gouache before the tariffs go into effect. Winsor and Newton, which is a British brand and Caran’ dache which is a Swiss brand. Got good deals on both on Amazon.
Yay me. Paid half the price for both.
I see art supply prices go through the roof. The 100 percent watercolor paper I like is made in France.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@rusty:
Particularly for a brick and mortar hobby store like the one you describe. They’ve been struggling for decades now. Yikes.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: The idea of Trump as chaos agent to destroy the System was part of his horseshoe-left appeal in 2016, too. But a lot of those guys ripped the mask off and are just straight up MAGA now.
eldorado
Fox news by itself could end this at any time
BritinChicago
@Jeffro: So your “have to” implies “will”? Within what period of time?
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: There is little difference between what the horseshoe left and the RWNJs want. But it got me called a crank on Balloon Juice by the author of this post last week.
Melancholy Jaques
@Soprano2:
If the “normie” voters thought any president could bring prices down in a few months, then the “normie” voters are not just more stupid than we imagined, but more stupid than we can imagine.
It’s hard enough dealing with the racists & misogynists, but how do you reach people who believe the president determines the prices of things in the grocery store? Where do you start with people that fucking stupid?
BritinChicago
@Another Scott: You may be right, and I hope you are: once it passes there may be increased pressure on the extra members needed to get it over 2/3, and the extra pressure may work. Or may not, of course.
geg6
@Soprano2:
Same. They have no clue.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@YY_Sima Qian:
This graph shows the China Shock 1.0 affect in spades:
https://bpr.studentorg.berkeley.edu/2017/03/28/donalds-manufacturing-myth/
It wasn’t so much NAFTA (although that did significantly reorient things within the three-country region) but China’s accession to the WTO.
Who’s paid the electoral price for this? Dems.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: I’m talking about Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, not Bernie Sanders. He has his blind spots but he’s saying the right stuff now.
YY_Sima Qian
@Scout211: The PRC tacked on 50% to the tariff on imports from the US, in response to Trump’s escalation, so now the tariff level on US products is 84%.
The sky high rates will lead to a complete shut down of bilateral trade, w/ the exceptions of carve outs.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: He spawned a movement that has given rise to a lot of magical thinking about the economy on the left.
He is still grifting and criticizing the Dems.
Matt McIrvin
Anyway, I’m gonna go work on my backyard blast furnace.
prostratedragon
@Matt McIrvin: Also Negotiable Order of Withdrawal accounts came in, so one could get higher rates with almost the liquidity of checking accounts.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Matt McIrvin:
How ‘Great Leap Forward’ of you!
As always, the internet is here to help:
https://hackaday.com/2019/05/22/from-dirt-to-space-backyard-iron-smelting-hackerspace-style/
https://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/cupola01.html
Between that, you’re set for life in terms of making your own rebar.
RevRick
@Soprano2: One thing Dietrich Bonhoeffer pointed out about stupidity is that it’s a social phenomenon. You can dismiss one stupid person and work around that person, but a group becomes a real problem. And since Trump has surrounded himself with loyalists, there’s no one to contradict his stupidity. In fact, they’ll echo and amplify it, and his followers will ruthlessly attack any signs of disloyalty.
UncleEbeneezer
Happy Appomattox Day to all who celebrate! Surrender is the only thing associated with the Confederacy worth celebrating. Never forget that the proponents of “State’s Rights” made sure that any state that joined the Confederacy was prohibited from abolishing slavery. It was always and only about slavery.
Barbara
@Soprano2: Yes, I graduated from college in 1983, my brother a year later and it was horrible. I navigated the career harm by going to graduate school. Increased oil prices of course had a dramatic impact on the cost of all things, but the 1980s was also the decade in which the cost of housing began exceeding inflation. This was — at that time — largely the result of significantly increased household formation, with baby boomers becoming adults as well as other social phenomenon that increased the need for housing — divorce, people less willing to live with their parents until marriage and so on. But since oil and housing are both essential there really was no escape.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@UncleEbeneezer:
I dunno, Sherman’s March to The Sea is worth celebrating. Too bad he didn’t make a lot of lengthy detours in the process.
Barbara
@BritinChicago: Deals will not retrieve the situation and will conceivably make the impact of tariffs worse not better. The expectation or just the possibility of “deals” means that doing nothing is the safest thing — certainly, you are not going to make a significant capital investment in the U.S. knowing that the latest deal will blow the economics out of the water. The tariffs alone are stupid because they are incredibly blunt and not tailored to countering externally imposed unfair trade practices — but coupled with the uncertainty of whether they will endure and if so, which ones, makes them utterly destructive. We pay more for imports, our exports go down and no one has any incentive to increase production for domestic consumption.
schrodingers_cat
There is theory about why uber leftists hate Ds more than Rs. Many of these uber leftists come from really conservative families and hating Ds is in their DNA.
So being a DSA bro or sis gives them progressive cred without actually having to take on their conservative family members. Hating Ds gives them something to bond over actually.
prostratedragon
@Jeffro: Maybe they “would have to” do the thing in order for other things to happen, rather than “will have to,” as if something is compelling them to do the first thing thing to happen?
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: I think it’s probably more nuanced — there are many people in this world who blame their abused mothers for not protecting them from their abusive fathers. That might be fair in individual cases, but in many cases it is also an emotional reaction borne partly of still being too afraid to challenge the father. It’s a lot safer to vent your anger on someone you know is not going to actively try to hurt you.
Soprano2
@Melancholy Jaques: I don’t know, but I believe that’s what a lot of them thought, that somehow the president could magically make things cheaper. From what I’ve read of focus groups, these people are already unhappy. I think all of our tech advances make people think everything can happen in a flash.
Another Scott
@Soprano2: +1
Melon – “We’ll fire everyone in the federal government and replace the critical positions with AI! Genius! Fired workers can go work in factories!!”
MotUs – “We’ll fire everyone in the factory and replace the critical positions with AI! Genius! Fired workers can go start their own businesses and build new factories!!”
Workers – “Well, I don’t want to, but I guess I have to retire. I can’t get a loan to start that business that I have dreamed about for years. Good thing that I’ve got a small 401(k) and Social Security to fall back on…!!”
Bessent and Lutnick – “Everything’s going great just like 47 promised! Nobody needs jobs or money any more, we’re the leaders in AI and AI can do everything, everything’s more efficient and sensible and there are plenty of sparrows and curtain rods for the transition!! MAGA!!11ONE”
:-/
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Barbara
@Another Scott: And yet, somehow, the biggest social problem in their universe is people not having enough babies.
Old Man Shadow
With the gutting of the IRS, there will be a plunge of revenue for the Federal government and an explosion of debt.
I do think Trump will push to void that debt. He’s done it in his personal life and he is stupid enough to think that a nation-state works the same way as his businesses.
He will be oblivious to the consequences.
Belafon
@schrodingers_cat: So they’re zealots in the same sense of a protestant converting to Catholicism or vice versa.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: A lot of it that I saw around was just simple toxic masculinity stuff, which was why it emerged against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Clinton as your cringe mom was this incredibly powerful image to guys with mommy issues. She was a symbol of everything they hated about authority, and Trump was this hilarious chaos clown.
Barbara
@Soprano2: Other countries are riven by factional political parties that usually have to engage in coalition politics, and this has its own weaknesses. However, our structure shows the weakness of having only a binary choice. It’s not even usually a question of people rationally thinking that things will become instantly better, but that if they are unhappy with A, their main recourse is to choose the only alternative, which is B. Yes, they should know better, but to a certain extent our political structure drives this result.
Spc123
@BritinChicago: 67 in the Senate – around 280ish in the House – need 2/3 from both houses.
Matt McIrvin
@Old Man Shadow: The forgiveness of student debt was a huge moral outrage to a lot of center-right people (who would sometimes phrase it in “progressive” terms as a giveaway to the rich).
Old Man Shadow
@Matt McIrvin: Inconsistency has never stopped MAGA before. If Trump said he’s going to invalidate the United State’s foreign debt, MAGA would be behind him.
Belafon
@Matt McIrvin: So, people who could afford to pay their tuition up front were taking on college loans?
Belafon
@Barbara: Especially when your choice is between the party that that promises to cut taxes on the rich and end Social Security and the party that thinks women should be able to make their own reproductive choices.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Spc123: Speaking of that….
Yep, they are behind him 100%
frosty
@Soprano2: Yep, I remember. I graduated with a BS in ’73 and a MS in ’81 and it took a year to get a decent job. In both cases it wasn’t the career I wanted or the place I wanted to live.
YY_Sima Qian
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I recommend you read through Kyle Chan’s note that I shared earlier. “China Shock 1.0” had an impact on US manufacturing employment, but the impact was actually in the noise for the fluctuations in the overall US employment numbers. Meanwhile, the share of manufacturing jobs to overall employment in the US has fallen steadily since the ’50s, & NAFTA & the PRC’s entry into the WTO don’t even show up as blips on that plot.
The sectors in the US most likely to have been adversely impacted by “China Shock 1.0”, were probably the remaining apparels & furnitures industries in the US. These industries would probably have been offshored even w/o the “China Shock 1.0”, albeit perhaps a bit more slowly.
sentient ai from the future
that clip, ffs
when someone takes you hostage, yeah youre goddamn right you kiss the hostage taker’s ass right up until the point that you get free of them, so that you can then take them out so as not to endanger others.
We are so fucked.
Bill Arnold
@dc:
On first scan, processed that as ““a small man worried about his own reflection”.
Betty Cracker
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Hahaha! IIRC, Trump dropkicked Emmer into the sun during the slap-fight that broke out when the party was trying to find someone to replace McCarthy as speaker. Emmer probably calls Trump “President C-word” at home, so it slipped out in public.
frosty
@Jeffro: I called both Senators and my R Representative and asked them to support Cantwell/Grassley and the House resolution from the Democrats. Seems like pissing into the wind to me but we’ll see.
A Ghost to Most
Blame the cult that stole the Supreme Court. They set the conditions.
David Collier-Brown
@Bupalos: Also used by medieval kings: keep the lords fighting, and they won’t gang up on you.
Of course, it doesn’t last forever: King* John got “invited” to Runnymede for a discussion.
[Formerly Prince John, of the Robin Hood stories. He was forced to sign the Magna Carta at that time, or have a chat with the headsman (:-)]
Miss Bianca
@Melancholy Jaques:
Well, to be fair to the idiots among the electorate, it looks like *this* president *will* be determining the prices of things in the grocery store.
Just not in the way they want.
Miss Bianca
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Ah, so you too are a Hackaday reader!
Another Scott
Dean Baker of CEPR today (soon to be at Beat The Press):
I’m shocked, shocked that the pre-election reporting might not have adequately informed the voters about the candidates’ policies!!1
:-/
Big money hasn’t done much fighting back yet. But they are starting (WSJ via archive.is)…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Bill Arnold
@RevRick:
An additional complication; he is also incapable of admitting error. He is not just stubborn about it, and not just standard GOP about it; it is a lifelong habit, at least post high school.
David Collier-Brown
@Trivia Man: That’s happening in the car industry as we speak. Stellantis (Chrysler) shut down plants in Canada and Mexico, and much of the US company is now facing layoff.
Ruckus
@catclub:
At least our “leader” is consistent in his stupidity. Rarely to never making a positive mistake, and always being an ignorant ass.
One has to respect consistence, and knowing that whatever the question or situation he will always be wrong.
JML
@Betty Cracker: It’s seems likely. Emmer’s exactly the kind of guy who uses that slur. but he won’t actually do anything or take action against the Current Occupant. He’s part of the legion that won’t meet with constituents, does “telephone town halls” where he controls all the questions and they make sure he never hears from anyone who might be upset, and always finds a democrat to blame everything on.
YY_Sima Qian
Smuggling will be a growth industry!
As will Americans traveling abroad to load up on everything to carry home:
Not to mention medical care eve w/o insurance is much cheaper & much faster in the PRC than in the US w/ insurance.
Ruckus
@BritinChicago:
Why are we governed by malignant idiots?
Voters.
That and malignant idiots are a dime a dozen. To buy. To fix their malignancy costs far more.
Matt
@JerseyBeard:
Nitpick: the average Trumpkin was already most of those things quietly. All the big guy has done is make it acceptable to be those things loudly.
This is also why I think the “we just need to reach out to Trump voters” is a doomed endeavor; good people don’t vote Republican. They love lying and doing evil and they elect politicians who promise to do the same.
David Collier-Brown
@Matt McIrvin: I successfully used a perfectly ordinary customer account at Swicher Statsbank, in Swiss francs, in Switzerland.
They’re now part of UBS, and still offer accounts to foreigners
chemiclord
@YY_Sima Qian: Well, I’d argue Musk is doing more damage to the Tesla brand than anything else right now.
Ruckus
@jonas:
Ew. He puts that bronzing shit down there, too?
That’s probably where he started……
Eolirin
@Another Scott: It’s more like 100, we need a veto override in both chambers.
Matt McIrvin
@David Collier-Brown: Where I noticed it was the comments on one of NileRed’s chemistry videos. He did one where he used mercury to do some simple gold refining in his lab, and a bunch of people responded “actually it’s illegal to just have gold like that”. Like it was 1963.
David Collier-Brown
@Soprano2: If they kill enough of the US car industry, they can “favour” the remaining third and provide factory space from the rest to all the reshored manufacturing.
Of course, without automation, the jobs are going to be “inserting tiny screws”
Deputinize America
@Soprano2:
Graduated college into the shit job market of 1984. Your observation is spot on.
Bill Arnold
@Matt McIrvin:
Did a little one with fire bricks as a kid, fed with charcoal and coal, blown with the output from my mom’s prized Electrolux vacuum cleaner and a run of extension cords.
Managed to melt iron with it.
prostratedragon
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
What the author of the article containing the graph actually says with my emphasis:
These changes might or not have anything to do with a “China shock.” The only mention of China I found on the page was in a boilerplate editor’s link to another article, so I’d say the issue is not addressed here.
Ruckus
@New Deal democrat:
What you are saying is that shitforbrains has his head up his ass and can only see a smelly darkness.
Which seems spot on……
Melancholy Jaques
@schrodingers_cat:
Sanders only gets media coverage when he is castigating Democrats for abandoning the working class.
Matt McIrvin
@David Collier-Brown: Again, there was huge right-wing outrage at the government bailing out General Motors during the Great Recession, guys urging boycotts. Got to get that creative destruction going! They wanted to see more mass layoffs!
YY_Sima Qian
@Another Scott: To Dean Baker’s point (gift link to WSJ article below):
Greater context:
David Collier-Brown
@Barbara: I was only a little girl* for a couple of afternoons, but it became pretty obvious:
Men beat up on their wives, often physically.
Women beat up on girl-children.
Boys would have too, but they were strictly segregated from one another.
[* My cousin Elthea introduced me as her half-sister Vida, I introduced her as my twin brother Al. She enjoyed it more]
Ruckus
@RevRick:
I believe that it is possible that you are giving shitforbrains more credit than he deserves….
He is an educated simpleton. He sees about a half step ahead and believes he’s found the absolute truth, that he can never do or be wrong, and proves on a regular basis that he can be and is.
The problem is that it isn’t his education, it’s his ego. And being in a position to do pretty much as he believes, which is anymore always wrong – because of that ego, and the seemingly setting in of senility – at an amazingly rapid pace.
prostratedragon
@RevRick: This raises many questions, of a sort which is best entertained when one is less
prone to dissolving into fits of hysterical laughterbusy: If aggregate stupidity is measurable, is it a simple mean of the group members, or perhaps weighted by their power indexes? Is it a network? Defined by its stupidest member? Is it synergetic, as if there were a holy ghost of stupidity?Citizen Alan
@JML: Someone tell all the useful idiots presently in college who fancy themselves communists and screamed about “Genocide, Joe.”
Matt McIrvin
@David Collier-Brown: I think having a prince of a dad who was both a former jock and a tech geek and the epitome of mid-century restrained masculinity, and an outspoken, politically active mom who was literally getting an advanced degree in child psychology, gave me what now realize was a really unusual perspective on human and family relations.
Steve LaBonne
Krugman today is suggesting based on the behavior of bond markets that the first clump of shit to hit the fan will be a financial crisis. Wheee!
Barbara
@prostratedragon: There is nothing magical or mystical about manufacturing jobs. I had one when I was in college. Because it was non-unionized I barely made above minimum wage, and even the permanent workers there made half of what union shops made.
It has long been obvious to me that many people including voters and journalists are conflating manufacturing jobs with the kinds of market conditions — including but not limited to union protections — that prevailed in the United States for a long time for many industries, but especially heavy manufacturing, basically until the late 70s and early 80s.
Manufacturing jobs now are more likely to include automation and robots with the assistance of skilled humans. It’s just not going to happen again in my lifetime that you will be able to graduate from high school (or maybe not even!) and walk into a secure, highly paid unskilled position that will allow you to buy a house without being part of a dual income household.
Melancholy Jaques
@Miss Bianca:
That another thing that enrages me: the only way we get rid of Trump is to let him do so much damage that even the thick-skulled can see that he is crazy & stupid.
Geminid
@JML: Rep. Emmer’s immediate goal aligns with Trump’s. House Republican leaders want to pass a budget bill this afternoon; I think its the bill Senate Republicans passed already.
Some House Republicans are balking, so Trump gave them a pep-talk at the same RNC event where Emmer slipped, telling the hold-outs:
Emphasis added, by a reporter in this morning’s Politico Playbook.
The Rules Committee held a meeting at 8:45 this morning, and I expect Speaker Johnson henchmen are now whipping votes. The two-week Easter Recess is fast approaching, so they basically have 48 hours to “git ‘er done,” as Chip Roy would say.
Veteran Capitol Hill reporter Jaimie Dupree should be a good follow on these proceedings. He’s on BlueSky now.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: He is the patron saint of toxic masculinity.
Barbara
@Ruckus: It’s not just his ego, although one can quibble about whether lack of empathy is just the flipside of ego — he doesn’t care if he is wrong. It is more important that he continue to be able to maintain that he is right than that you avoid bankruptcy. He. Dosn’t. Care. About. You. At. All.
This is what infuriates me about MAGA — that they think Trump cares about them! Most of us are stupid about many things outside the realm of our experience, but most of us care enough about fellow human beings to (a) admit that when it’s important and (b) correct ourselves when our errors become obvious.
In that respect, anti-vax attitudes are a microcosm for a truly scary kind of mindset that Trump typifies — I am right even though I have no scientific understanding and I don’t care if you or anyone else dies because I am wrong and won’t admit it.
TS
Reading all the comments, the news from around the world & the news from the US, this whole tariff concept is a disaster in every possible way, but especially for the people of the US. Is the US so full of idiots that it goes ahead with this plan – or has the country turned into a giant sect, who have given themselves over to the man who they think is the second coming of their lord???
schrodingers_cat
@Melancholy Jaques: And yet our elite media wanted him back. They are not gauche MAGA idiots driving big trucks. We are told time and again that’s who is base is.
His base is the media. They are still soft pedaling the coverage.
JML
@Citizen Alan: well, it’s hardly new for college students to flirt with things like communism and take over-the-top positions. Students are frequently passionate, idealistic, and have an incomplete understanding of issues. While I think students treating Biden as “Genocide Joe” were wrong and needed to think about the 2024 election more holistically…I’m not gonna be too mad at them. They need to have room to explore.
The adults egging them on? the outsiders coming to campuses and trying to manipulate students for their own ends? That’s another story
lowtechcyclist
@Barbara:
They’ve fixed that. Now a lot more people won’t be having any babies.
StringOnAStick
@schrodingers_cat: I come from extremely conservative parents, john Bircher idiots. I was a liberal from the day I was born and they have hated that about me ever since and certainly tried to beat it out of me as a kid and browbeat it out of me as an adult, so I just walked away from them, especially after they refused to speak to me for 2 years after Obama was reelected. So your theory might work in some situations but it is not true for mine. People are complicated and some parts of our personalities are pretty determined early in life, as any parent who finds their children interesting will tell you.
prostratedragon
@Barbara: They do keep running into themselves, don’t they? Result of enclosing themselvws in a hall of morrors, I guess.
Matt McIrvin
@Melancholy Jaques: The problem being that by the time the reaction happens, getting the bad guys out may be a matter of facing bullets and bombs rather than just voting.
WaterGirl
@Barbara:
Truth.
Ruckus
@Scout211:
He knows what he is doing.
He just has no concept of why. Or when to stop or when to…….
He is a person that operates off of whatever is going on in that disaster of a mind because he thinks he is the world’s smartest and all knowing person. But it’s his ego that is the center of everything in his world but he thinks his ego IS his brain.
lowtechcyclist
@Deputinize America:
But…but…it was morning in America!
Ronnie told us that himself! How could the job market have possibly been bad?
/s
Matt McIrvin
@StringOnAStick: I think liberals who grew up with liberal parents, and people who had to rebel, end up with somewhat different perspectives. Of course the people in category 2 often ARE the parents of category 1.
I’ve sometimes wondered if I have slightly too cozy attitudes toward authority, and too-jaded attitudes toward the people as a whole, that come from the fact that in my youth I mostly had an easy time with parents and teachers, and my big problems were with bullying peers.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: Hit people hard enough for long enough and they might be grateful when you ease off a little.
Ruckus
@Old Man Shadow:
He will be oblivious to the consequences.
He always is…..
Because any
otherroadmap takes actual, rational thought……Oh wait, you are talking about shitforbrains…..
karen gail
Just caught the headline that Bessent isn’t ruling out delisting Chinese Stocks; he is framing it as Trump’s decision. Yeah, we all know how well orange one does at making decision; his are all based on his view of revenge.
Ruckus
@Bill Arnold:
He’s not just incapable of admitting error, he fights it with every fiber of his whatever. He thinks admitting error makes him look weak but it is one of his foundational errors because it makes him look like an idiot – because he has more than enough errors. Far more than enough.
Juju
@BritinChicago: Because malignant idiots vote for malignant idiots.
Soprano2
@Deputinize America: This is why I’m so startled by how cavalier so many younger people are about their jobs. They act like it will be easy to find another one, so if they don’t feel like showing up one day, or want to come in hours late, that’s OK because they’ll just get another job in a few days or weeks. It sure wasn’t that way when I was young!
catclub
They are aiming at Great depression. The greatest depression!
catclub
@Juju: Because democracy is the theory that the people know what they should have, and they should get it good and hard.
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
It is a fairly different world than when olds were young.
The reality is that while this is the same planet it is not the same living as it was half a century or more ago. For one the population is just a tad larger, we know more than we did then, we make things differently than we did, we have a lot of things made elsewhere because it is cheaper, we have a lot of things that barely existed or existed at all – how old are cell phones (in actual usage, like where some no longer have a landline phone), is your car just a tad different than a car from say 60 years ago. Life is still life, but living has changed just a tad.
schrodingers_cat
@StringOnAStick: Of course, people are not electrons, they are not fungible. I hope your parents come around some day.
azlib
@Melancholy Jaques:
When people’s 401Ks continue to tank, people will notice. And if there is a full blown recession that will be noticable as well.
They Call Me Noni
@Lily: She’s napping at the moment. We watched an episode of Bluey this morning. To anyone who doesn’t have a little and is not tuned in to all things toddler you should check it out. Sometimes it’s just the salve your tortured soul needs.
Melancholy Jaques
@azlib:
People noticed the economic collapse & recession in 2009, but they didn’t blame the Republicans.
Martin
The problem with Treasuries long term are the two risks now presented:
Investors still believe in a global economy, so you can’t easily run to other markets. I’m not sure what happens when investors realize that there is one, but the US isn’t part of it any longer. I’ve had this quote going through my head since around last September, from the Marxist Jameson:
“It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”
And that’s a pretty good encapsulation for how the American public has been behaving in the last year.
New Deal democrat
In this morning’s thread I wrote:
“ I read an important note this morning that foreign car manufacturers are pausing exports to the U.S. not because they fear the tariffs, but because they realize our Idiot King might change his mind in a heartbeat.”
And “ The main point is that T—-p has completely upended overnight the global order of trade that had prevailed for decades. To say that “uncertainty” is the main driver of markets now is an understatement. Particularly as T—-p could completely reverse course and declare “Victory!” at any time.”
And just like that! This afternoon both CNN and CNBC are reporting that the Idiot King has hit “pause” for 90 days on almost all countries except China (CNN) or dropped rates to 10% for all countries except China (CNBC); and the S&P 500 has rallied 8% as I write this.
He is still the Idiot King. Rely on his latest whim at your peril.
Ruckus
Aww the thrill of having a moron in charge of an entire country. An old, deluded, ignorant, pompous, arrogant moron who doesn’t even know what he doesn’t know – because he
thinksimagines that he is the bestest, smartest, human alive. And proves every damn second thatevenespecially his imagination is bull and shit. And his imagination is all he has left.Medicine Man
Maybe I’m simple-minded, but I personally would not assume China would fold easily to anything resembling mercantile exploitation.
Ruckus
@Martin:
The American public has been behaving?
In general or do you have any specifics in mind?
Because it seems, at least to me, that a not insignificant percentage of the American public likes, wants, or at least think they want shitforbrains in charge. When he has all the capability of being in charge of hmmm, oh there it is – NOTHING.
Another Scott
@New Deal democrat: ROFL. Made me look.
He lies about everything. People should have learned this by now.
“No, Never! The Tariffs are Permanent! No Negotiation! Sure we can talk with everyone about bilateral agreements. Kiss my butt and we’ll see what happens!! No, I never change my mind!!” And on and on.
Hang in there, everyone. It’s going to continue to be a slog.
Best wishes,
Scott.