It’s been a fascinating day- two separate friend chats I am in, one from WVU days, one from the fraternity, have all been texting non stop about golf. It’s the Masters and they are have been talking about it for weeks and texting all day since Thursday. It’s so strange to me, because all these guys have different interests and do different things, but they are all drawn to golf, and quite honestly, only me and one other guy don’t give a shit. I don’t think I could name a player other than Tiger Woods since Payne Stewart died. Just do not care. At all. Honestly I aggressively dislike golf courses because they are such a fucking waste of water and all the chemicals they use and gas to mow it’s just awful, and all of that for fucking grass, the least useful thing on the planet to plant this side of Bradford Pears.
At any rate, enjoyed the car thread below. I am only on my fourth car, but I have really liked all of the cars I have owned, so much so that I can not say I have a favorite. I loved my ’83 Chevy Celebrity. I bought it from my grandmother’s estate when she died (mom wouldn’t just give it to me but said everything had to be sold at fair market value), and I drove that thing until I simply couldn’t anymore. I remember replacing the standard am radio with a cd player and my first disc was Little Feat, Waiting for Columbus. It had whitewalls, and all my friends made fun of it, but I had no car payments, and my insurance was like 25 bucks a month. I remember getting it inspected in like 2002 and the guy said “you only put 8k miles on it this year what is your other car” and I just said I don’t have one. I didn’t drive that much in the day (the bus literally drove by my apt and my place of work and was free for faculty and students), and I took cabs a lot because I do not drink and drive, and it just wasn’t needed. That car was great- I drove it until the cloth ceiling was falling down and I had to use pins to keep it up and finally it was just time to give it up.
My next car was a used 1997 Subaru Outback Wagon I got in 2006, the red one from the field as you all are aware of, and it was just so much god damned fun to drive. It was more of a go cart than a car because there was a lag in between pressing the pedal and it doing something, but it had that long body and handled like crazy and was an absolute fucking beast in the winter. I think this was back when it was the official car of the olympic ski team. I lived in Morgantown which is KNOWN for the steep hills and shitty road clearing in Winter, and I can not count the number of times I was riding by all the fancy suv’s and jeeps and humvees that were off in ditches, just plowing along. Great fucking car.
The next one was the used 2006 Subaru Wagon, the 3.0 R thing with the timing chain and weird spark plugs that had ridiculous acceleration for a subaru and was heavier and just felt like a tank. Gas mileage sucked, but man it was speedy and took WV curves like it was nobody’s business. It legit felt like an Audi sports sedan or bmw on the curves. Loved that thing, but maintenance sucked and finally there was an electronics issue, and I don’t fuck with that shit that will just be an endless money pit- ask anyone who bought bmw’s in the early aughts.
Finally the current vehicle, the Honda, which currently has about 160k miles on it and still drives like a damned dream. There is nothing great about the ride at all, the acceleration is lackluster, it feels a little boaty and top heavy, there are some blind spots you need to be cognizant of, but it has a great sound system for the kind of car it is, the console is still mostly knobs, it works with blue tooth, and even though it is an automatic it has the old style shifter instead of those god damned buttons and that step on the gas and press a button to start fucking bullshit. But most of all, what it does best is it fucking runs. I mean it is the most maintenance free thing I have ever owned. You change the oil when it tells you to, I put a new pair of michelin defenders every couple years, rotate regularly, and take it in for the factory recommended checkups. That is it. replaced a couple batteries, and at one point I flat out told them I wanted them to change the spark plugs because I had money at the time and it was over 120k miles and I just mentally felt it needed to be done. Literally the only things in my life that have been this indestructable are my matfer bourgeat pans and the Viking Chef knife I got in the 90’s. I hope to have this thing for at least another 5-10 years.
So I guess if I had to rank them, my favorite for sentimentality is the Chevy Celebrity- still remember picking up drunks when I was the DD and them sliding on the vinyl bench seats, my favorite to drive was the 1997 red subie, and my favorite as a financially mature adult is the Honda. Of all of the vehicles, I would recommend Honda to anyone. The new subies if you put a lot of miles on them can be pricey for repairs, and they still do not feel wagony enough for me after the model change in 2008. But they were all good cars.
That’s one of the reasons these tariffs are not gonna bring home more auto jobs. Not until American cars have the same stamp of reliability as Honda or Toyota and to a lesser extent, Subaru. There are some great American engines- so I know they are capable. I think the Opel(GM) engine was one of the best selling engines in Europe for ages. But fuck, I don’t have money to replace a car every five or even ten years. I can’t afford American. That’s the reality of the matter.
Joelle and I are having enchilada leftovers for dinner, and probably catch a show. Behave.
RevRick
Our son got us one of those bird feeders with motion sensor cameras for Christmas and we temporarily set it up on an old clothesline pole in our backyard. It turned out we needed a WiFi booster, but we still managed to get a closeup of a purple finch earlier today.
Oh, and our son installed the WiFi booster this evening so we won’t lose the signal.
TaMara
Honestly, the Kia Niro PHEV I’m driving now is great fun (and fits 3 Great Danes) – especially since it’s really given me a feel for trading it in for an EV (gods willing and we rescue the economy). ICE vehicles are declining in sales overall and more miles were driving in EVs since 2022. We are there.
The Soul was cute and before that my sporty little purple Saturn with standard transmission was a kick to drive.
jackmac
Traveled from Illinois to Arizona on Sunday for a few days vacation. But before the day slips away I wanted to post about a town hall meeting I attended that was hosted by Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) on Saturday in Ronald Reagan’s hometown of Dixon, Ill. Casten is from Chicago’s western suburbs and the difference in territory could not be more stark. The drive out to Dixon is mostly noted by farm fields coming back to life and a surprising number of wind turbines scattered over cornfields (which kind of mess with the rural landscape but hopefully gives Red America some juice.)
Dems control nothing in Washington these days and Casten’s talk in front of around 120 people (including some red hat MAGAts) was realistic and even a bit grim.
“We’ve got this situation right now where you have a White House breaking the law, the Justice Department who is not enforcing the law against the White House, a (Republican-run) legislative branch who’s not doing oversight and we’re depending on the courts,” he said. “I’m here because I want to make sure that everybody understands what the stakes are. … “We will get through this to the extent that we collectively stand up. But we are all in a constitutional crisis right now.”
Casten said he has hosted more than 80 town halls during his four terms, including two red district visits this weekend. Dixon’s representative in D.C. — Republican Darin LaHood — has hosted none. Casten is very thoughtful, quick on his feet and I listened to him thinking that he would make a fine United States Senator from Illinois some day.
Soprano2
I knew Bee Payne Stewart, Payne’s mother. She was a great lady and a great feminist. Fuck small planes.
Ohio Mom
I’ve told this story before, my MBA BIL worked his way up pretty far up at Ford, and one the perks were new leased Fords every year for the both of them. Each rung up the ladder brought a fancier model.
Then he retired and they had to start buying their own cars and it’s been Hondas ever since.
sentient ai from the future
yesterday i smoked up the apartment for hours making a halfassed attempt to reseason all my fucking cast iron.
i improvised some fantastic fucking chili tonight, had to do something with that roasted dried chili pepper puree i made a couple days ago and now that i have an enameled brasier to go with my enameled dutch oven i have less fear about doing tomatillo and tomato based stuff. mostly bean, but with about a 1/4 lb of ground chuck and HOLY MOTHER OF GOD BEEF IS FUCKING EXPENSIVE LIKE I HAVENT SEEN SINCE COVID.
re: tariffs. fucking shitbird dialed it and said “NO HOLD ON THATS FAKE NEWS I DIDNT SAY THAT” even though its a matter of public record, and my strong intuition which is apparently not shared by any commentators on bluesky is that he’s saying this entirely because Xi said “glad youre BACKING DOWN, numbnuts, look forward to working with you so that you can BACK DOWN the rest of your stupid bullshit, in the meantime, china DGAF, have a complete trade stoppage if you’re going to be a whiny little prick like that”
so of course he had to arglebargle IM NOT BACKING DOWN WE ARE STILL STUDYING IT.
we are so fucked.
i got out on my bike today, did 10 miles or so for the first time in ages and i need to do that more.
Soapdish
I’m normally team Honda/Toyota, but I picked up a 2023 Chevy Bolt for $17k and the thing is awesome. I can charge it for free at work and it’ll accomplish 95% of the driving one would have to do. I wouldn’t recommend it for most people as a primary vehicle but it’s basically the perfect second car.
NotMax
Swallowed hard and cobbled together enough last month to pony up for the top tier Ford bumper to bum,per extended warranty for the ’22 Maverick hybrid. Original factory warranty on the engine is (IIRC) 10 years/100,000 miles, so the extra protection is a tad redundant.
But mostly because (1) am old and don’t want to piddle around with such things should the need arise and even more, (2) replacement parts are sky high. A single headlight assembly runs over two grand!
sentient ai from the future
@TaMara: the Kia and hyundai EVs are bomb, the polestar 2 is bomb, but i have yet to drive the chevys or fords. i am chomping at the bit to trade in my newish leaf, if the tax credit is still available on Jan 1 2026 somehow i am just going to pull the trigger on something
trollhattan
Low 80s breezy perfect spring day that also reinforces getting those allergy shots every two weeks. People who “don’t have allergies” do after they live here.
Two-hour bike ride substituted for pulling weeds. Winning!
sentient ai from the future
@trollhattan: budesonide (flonase) is the Light and the Way. i’ve found allegra works for me too but after an ENT on bluesky pointed out and i confirmed that the glucocorticoid nasal sprays are first line i tried that as directed and i am a convert
YY_Sima Qian
Trump is now saying “natsec” & sectoral tariffs are coming for semiconductors & electronics, which will probably counteract the exemptions on the “reciprocal” tariffs just announced on Friday evening. Expect more equity market turmoil on Monday, & another opportunity for the kleptocrats & favored plutocrats to make a killing from insider trading.
At the same time, the PRC is turning the screws tighter:
The blanket halt in export is worldwide, but expected to be temporary (otherwise will piss off all of the advanced economies). It is intended to prevent these critical minerals & magnets from reaching the US, until the PRC has implemented a system that can prevent rerouting such supply to the US via 3rd countries, such as the diversion of export controlled GPUs to the PRC via Singapore & Taiwan.
Surely the US (& other importers) will try to stand up their own capabilities to refine rare earths & produce rare earth magnets, to reduce reliance upon almost monopolistic PRC supply. However, it will take years, & the knowhow needs to be recreated. The PRC has an interest to keep the non-US customers supplied, & keeping the squeeze on the US. At the very least, it creates leverage for the “beautiful deal” w/ Trump.
While refined rare earth & rare earth magnets are critical, they only represent ~ US$ 1B in exports to the US. The PRC government can keep the producers whole by giving them subsidies &/or buy up the excess production.
swiftfox
Loved my 2002 Forester, that car took me on a bobsled rub halfway up a snowplowed road, and stuck the landing. Still, the best was the 2013 diesel Golf. Fun, fun, fun plus 45-55 highway mpg.
SpaceUnit
I wish Honda would bring back the Prelude. My first new car was an 86 Prelude. I’d just graduated from college and was working my first real job. Getting into that car was like slipping into a custom made velvet glove and it handled like a dream.
I live in Colorado now and have driven Jeeps for the the last 25 years. I love Jeeps, but if Honda would bring back the Prelude (in some sort of original form) I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.
Princess
A Subaru saved my life when I drove under a truck going 70mph in 2007 and I’ll never buy another make.
YY_Sima Qian
On climate change front, over the weekend most parts of northern China experienced strong winds from Siberia, bringing sand & dust from the Gobi in Mongolia. The fine sand in the air was easily visible even here in Wuhan, turning an otherwise clear blue sky yellowish, & making air quality quite hazardous.
Spring sandstorms from the north used to be an annual occurrence for Beijing, due to overgrazing of grass lands of Inner Mongolia & uninhibited strip mining. A decade+ of caps on grazing & strip mining, monumental tree planting, & de-desertification programs had mostly resolve the problem by the late ’10s. In the past couple of years, sandstorms have come back, due to overgrazing & strip mining in Mongolia, & stronger winds due to AGW. I do not recall sand ever reaching as far south as Wuhan (& even further south).
sentient ai from the future
@SpaceUnit: was 86 late enough to have 4w steering or was that the subsequent refresh?
rekoob
@SpaceUnit: You may not have to wait long:
https://www.caranddriver.com/honda/prelude
@sentient ai from the future: Maybe not. 4 wheel steering was an option (Honda says 1987).
Ivan X
My favorite car was a 91 Subaru Legacy (non-Outback edition). Looked like a Camry, drive like a spaceship. I’d regularly look down and see I was going 85, oops. You couldn’t even hear the thing. It also had ergonomics galore, everything felt contoured for the driver in such a smart way. And it had a hill holder so you didn’t roll back on a hill (manual transmission). And it had an aux line in right in the front for my portable CD player.
I have a 2010 Outback now and it’s super useful and feels like a tank in good and bad ways, but it doesn’t bring the same joy that Legacy did.
SpaceUnit
@sentient ai from the future:
Don’t remember 4w steering as a thing in the 80’s.
YY_Sima Qian
This is actually pretty smart. certainly better than taking the opportunity to price gouge, as some businesses are sure to do (gift link to WSJ article):
Another Scott
re your last paragraph, it’s hard for me to see the US dominating auto production again. US employment in that industry is likely to continue to decline, and I expect even with automation that US production numbers will continue to fall. Based on the way economic development has happened for most everything else (non-military) in history, it’s hard to see autos these days being different. Mass produced cars are about 125 years old at this point. Lower cost production has been the goal from the beginning, and places with lower costs are going to continue to get more of the pie.
E.g. Reuters.com (from September):
China supposedly is massively overproducing autos, and their exports are growing. That’s a problem, but if it weren’t China it would be someone else because the existing cost structure in the West is higher than what can be obtained elsewhere (for good or ill).
Deindustrialization can be a risky feature (especially in times of military tension or conflict!). Shepherding national production for worst cases is a difficult task when everyone in “normal” times wants cheap fancy new vehicles that they can afford. And trade and cultural exchanges can reduce the need to have military factories waiting to be spun up in the first place…
Economic change is inevitable, but that doesn’t mean we as a society should just sit back and let it take any form that the MotUs want at the moment. Governments have a responsibility to guide the transitions, make sure that masses of people aren’t left behind, and make sure the country (and not just a few lucky billionaires) is better off.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
SpaceUnit
@rekoob:
Holy shit. God exists.
Seriously, holy shit and thank you for that link!
Suzanne
@trollhattan: My allergies are absolutely handing me my ass over the last few days. In AZ, I had a difficult time all year, but in PA, it’s mainly springtime. But man. Zyzal and the allergy eye drops.
NotMax
@sentient ai from the future
Kirkland brand Aller-Flo spray at Costco less than half the price of Flonase.
BretH
1990 or so. Had an old Datsun pickup that served my future wife and I just fine until it blew a head gasket and that combined with its age made us search for another vehicle. Intrigued by Volvos and Saabs we went to a friend who worked in a garage who said “Whajaa wanna buy a piece of junk like that for?” and sold us a 1969 Buick LeSabre. Amazing car, took us everywhere, commanded respect on the road and sounded great once I put a pair of bookshelf speakers in the back seat and used my Sony D6 cassette recorder to feed the amp. Cheap gas, good times.
eclare
I love my Honda CRV because as you said, it runs. I am not a car person, so I don’t care about acceleration time or how it corners or how fun it is. As long as it starts and the A/C works, I’m good.
Also I’m single so taking a car for repairs is a PITA. Reliability is key.
YY_Sima Qian
@Another Scott: The PRC auto industry supposedly has massive capacity (~ 40M units / year), but total production is just over ~ 30M units / year. This is unsurprising given the ongoing rapid transition from ICEs to New Energy Vehicles (NEVs, or BEVs + PHEVs). NEV capacity is being ramped up, while ICE capacity idles & either convert to NEVs or are scrapped. So the PRC is in fact not utilizing all of its capacity to “dump” on the world market.
The ~ 40M / year capacity estimate is also suspect, including double counting of capacity when a plant is converted from ICE to NEV, & missing capacity reductions from foreign legacy makers writing off idle ICE plants in the PRC.
Finally, the dropping prices (& the “chassis for clunkers” trade in incentives in the past year) of NEVs has expanded the domestic demand for passenger vehicles, helping to absorb the excess capacity.
Honus
@swiftfox: those Golf TDIs were great. Six speeds, 45-50 mpg, turbo and the GTI suspension so they were a blast to drive.
sentient ai from the future
well that’s fucking wonderful. laptop completely dead, unresponsive. fucker is only 2.5y old too. always thought the power button as part of the keyboard was a design flaw.
slow ass tablet for now, not sure what ill do about actually typing.
fuck.
Melancholy Jaques
@jackmac:
I closed my eyes and wished he replaced Dick Durbin right now. It didn’t work. It’s never worked yet, but I’m gonna keep on trying.
Gretchen
Love my Subaru Crosstrek. It was great when I had to drive to work in a snowstorm at 3am. Being late just because it’s snowing want an excuse in corporate America. You should be glad you have a job!
Harrison Wesley
@Melancholy Jaques: Wishing? Remember the old saying, “if wishes were Cybertrucks, beggars would experience rapid unscheduled disassembly.”
RaflW
This evening my phone (via the omipresent google) fed me an article about how cheap used Polestar 2s are. I took a peek and a 2022 dual-motor AWD with 31,000 miles is asking $26,749 which seems like a low price.
I owned a Volvo for several years, a V70 wagon with just FWD. There were things I liked about it, long highway trips were very quiet and pretty comfy, but maintenance was expensive and things broke too often (esp compared to the Subarus I’ve had before and again now). Also, for a Swedish car, it was crap in snow unless I put Michelin Primacy Alpin true winter tires on it, then it was just ok – hence looking, eventually, at an AVW EV.
We’re probably not dipping our toes into an EV this year, but I do wonder if any Juicers have plumped for a Polestar (hopefully used, because sticker prices are -yikes-).
Kristine
I’ve had two offers to buy my 2002 Forester in the last month or so. One was from one of the guys at the detailing place where I took Kuro to get washed. The other was from a guy in the grocery store parking lot who was a total Subaru geek. He explained the reason behind the head gasket issue in some older models—meanwhile his wife is sitting in the car and smiling like “yes, this is the man I married.”
It’s reached the point where 22 Illinois winters have taken their toll as the structural issues are cropping up. But I just had the timing belt replaced and the brakes done and I really would like to keep him going for a few more years. The engine is supposed to be good for 300K and I’m only at 188K so fingers crossed.
Martin
So the freakout last Wed/Thursday is that China, Japan, and the EU (possibly more, but at least those 3) started selling notable numbers of US Treasures and converting the resulting dollars to their own currency. That sent the dollar weaker against all three and sent US bond rates up opening a notable yield gap with bond rates in their home countries. This is a dynamic that shouldn’t naturally happen as normally money would flow from lower to higher yields and it was doing the reverse.
This could be an uncoordinated strategy against US trade policy, but it operationally a weakening of the dollar as reserve currency and possibly a move to replace it. Given that both China and the EU have initiated structural trade responses to the US that can’t be wound down overnight, I suspect it’s the latter.
Secondary effect of tariffs, US airlines are refusing to take delivery of new Airbus planes. Air travel demand is weakening and they don’t want to pay 25% tariff on a $100M plane. It’s not like you can just ring up Boeing and buy one of theirs – waiting times are in years.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, Big Coffee is going to be upset about this, but Big Coffee Maker may get some ideas for new machines… Phys.org:
Best wishes,
Scott.
RaflW
@Kristine: I loved my ’98 Forrester. Even with ‘the head gasket issue’, which in my case was really caused by a faulty twelve dollar cooling system thermostat.
Thankfully a very conscientious mechanic at a Subaru dealership in Salt Lake City coached me on how to get back to MN safely (if not stress-freely) so that my local mechanic could save me a ton of money.
Drove that ‘roo another 46,000 miles after replacing the gasket, so it was well worth the (IIRC) 1600 bucks. What used car for $1,600 would have had AWD and 3 more years of pretty darn good service life?
(It also tended to eat wheel bearings, but that was because I drove it overloaded too often. The Forrester was so capacious, it was easy to go over the 950 lb load weight)
Jay
@Martin:
Plus it’s a Boing,…… sorry Boeing, often subject to rapid unscheduled disassembly or the software crashing the plane.
Other funny thing is 45% of the major subassemblies are also made off shore and subject to tariff’s.
It is probably more that air travel to and from the US is down 75%, bigger than Covid and internal US Air travel is stalling.
eclare
@RaflW:
A good friend of mine had a reliable Acura for years before it was totalled. She then bought a Volvo and then a Mercedes (I can’t remember the model of either car, but the Mercedes was supposedly one of the top of the lines).
Numerous problems and repairs over the years. Two stand out: the Volvo’s exhaust system failed inspection in ATL just after the warranty expired and the Mercedes once just died as she was driving.
She now drives an Infiniti.
sab
@eclare: Years ago I had an Audi that couldn’t be driven in rain because an air intake was cardboard and dissolved when wet. My Hondas have all been extremely reliable little tanks.
Soprano2
@Gretchen: Glad to hear someone loves this vehicle, it was one I thought I’d look at.
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: USD has weakened against all of the major currencies over the past week, but the Yuan has held steady due to more energetic People’s Bank of China/State Administration of Foreign Exchange interventions & [more likely] the “national team” of state owned commercial banks. That means the Yuan has weakened along w/ the USD against the currencies of the PRC’s major trade partners, making PRC manufactured goods even more competitive. Probably causing some consternation in capitals around the world.
Of course the conventional wisdom was that the PRC has to do a massive devaluation against the USD as Trump imposes prohibitive tariffs on PRC goods, so holding steady can already be interpreted as acting confidently & responsibly. If the CPC regime engineers a Yuan appreciation against the major currencies, thereby increasing PRC imports to make up for some of the lost U.S. demand due to broad based tariffs & presumed recession, that will really be making a statement.
As it is, broad based tariffs is supposed to a stealth devaluation of the USD, as the result of higher inflation, but USD weakening at. Liminal exchange rate is highly unusual. It should be the other currencies that weaken.
The US financial hegemony is perhaps getting exposed:
YY_Sima Qian
Brad Setser trying the impossible – to make sense of the shambolic tariff policy:
Ruckus
Had an early 70s Opal Manta and it was a hoot. Actually one of the better cars of it’s time, in my opinion.
Ruckus
Anyone want to buy a 2016 Ford Focus SE 4 door hatchback? Less than 19, 000 miles, very clean, dealer serviced. I’m not renewing my license at 76 years old as I just do not want to drive any longer. LA county has pretty decent mass transit that I already use for across the county trips, I can walk to the store, and we have pretty decent bus service as well.
sab
@sab: I briefly had one of the new VW beetles. Then I got married and my husband hated it. I took it in for service one time, and as I was driving out of the dealership its check engine light came on, 15 minutes after its last service. So we drove it to the Honda dealer and traded it in. Everything since has been a Honda. We have never had a Honda fail. We just pass them down to the kids and buy new ones. The kids are all still driving their hand me down Hondas.
sab
@Ruckus: Twenty years from now you will be sorry you didn’t renew your license.
My grandmother (born 1895) had a rich friend who never drove but had a license. Her family’s chaffeur picked it up for her in the early days when there were no standards, and she renewed it faithfully for the rest of her life. She never did learn how to drive.
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: Any effort to make sense of the tariffs amounts to fan fiction.
I can tell you first hand that Navarro has a thing about China because the university he worked at had an enormous number of Chinese American and Chinese International students and he always had big mad that they were displacing white students. That’s it.
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: Setser is still sanewashng the Trump tariffs.
A deeper problem is that Setser, along w/ Michale Pettis & Matt Klein (co-authors of Trade Wars are Class Wars) are enthusiastic proponents of the view that the persistent US trade deficits are caused by the artificially high saving rates & artificially suppressed consumption in the persistently trade surface countries, w/ an implied normative judgement that the US has long been victim of perfidy by surplus countries. They also suggest that persistent trade deficit is the root cause of the US’ deindustrialization over the past few decades.
This view gained currency during the Trump 45 & especially Biden terms (Setser worked in Biden’s Treasury Department). The Trump 47 gang’s view are built on the same foundation, but taken far further in terms of self-pity & xenophobia. That is the intellectual justification, such as it is, of trying to force the goods trade into balance through economic coercion. Setser has been sympathetic to the idea of raising trade barriers to help reduce the US’ persistent trade deficits, though he certainly doesn’t think much of the Trump team’s shambolic execution. Pettis has in fact argued that tariffs are futile in reducing trade deficits, & that the problem can only be solved by addressing the surplus countries recycling their surplus into the US, thus financing the US’ deficit. He is advocating capital controls…
Critics of the Pettis/Klein/Setser view contend that they mistake correlation with/ causation, fail to address the causes for the persistently low savings rate in the US economy, & that the dynamic (high savings & surplus in E/SE Asia & Germany, & low savings & deficit in the US) is at least interactive. Furthermore, the root cause of the deindustrialization in the US is actually the hyper-financialization of the economy, which incentivizes concentration in services & especially rent seeking activities, which are less tradable than manufactured goods. Hyper-financialization also incentivizes offshoring to exploit poor foreign labor w/o adequate protection, & disincentivizes domestic investment in either human capital or public goods that would help sustain domestic industry, & misallocates what human capital there is toward financialized activities. The same applies to the UK. Trade barriers do not solve this problem.
YY_Sima Qian
If there any thought that MAGA would be able to coerce the U.S.’ trade partners into decoupling from the PRC, as the price for reaching bilateral deals w/ MAGA, Xi’s visit to Vietnam should put that to rest.
Vietnam only sent a deputy Prime Minister to greet Putin during the latter’s state visit last year.
Vietnam was among the countries cited by MAGA types to have caved to the U.S. by opting not to retaliate against the “reciprocal” tariffs & quickly request negotiations.
Booger
Waiting for Columbus FTW!!
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: This reads like all those confessions about cryptocurrency or NFTs that go “I must be a complete dolt; I can’t understand it at all” when the problem is that it’s scams and nonsense so there’s nothing there to understand.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: Brad Setser is a serious economist & analyst. In terms of diving into the details currency flows, reserve management, & balance of payment, there is no one better. However, his just has the wrong conceptions of the root causes for the U.S.’ persistent trade deficits, as well as the structure of the PRC’s political economy.
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: he needs a Benoit Blanc to yell “MILES BRON IS AN IDIOT!!”
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: LOL
Kosh III
I drive a Crosstrek and hubby drives an Outback. We LOVE Subaru.
Soprano2
@Ruckus: Good for you, too many people drive past when they should. That was a major point of stress for me, hubby still wanting to drive even though he shouldn’t. That’s why there’s still a GPS in his vehicle. Wish he would have realized he shouldn’t drive anymore.
Soprano2
@YY_Sima Qian: There is no way to make sense of what they’re doing with tariffs, because it makes no sense. I saw a Yahoo headline today that FFOTUS said he didn’t say electronics can have an exception from the China tariffs. Can’t wait until people find out their new IPhone costs over $2,000 now. Leopards, faces, who knew he was crazy? *raises hand* I sure did.
YY_Sima Qian
@Soprano2: Trump meant that consumer electronics from the PRC are only exempt from the 125% of “reciprocal” tariffs imposed last week by wildly abusing the International Economic Emergencies Powers Act (IEEPA), but are still subject to 20% of tariff imposed on the PRC for fentanyl earlier, also abusing the IEEPA. Lutnick & Trump signaled over the weekend that additional tariffs on semiconductors & electronics are coming in the next month or two, under the Section 282 Trade Authority. It is unclear how high those punitive tariffs will be, whether it will be targeted at the PRC only or also include other countries, nor whether the new tariffs will ensnare Apple & other consumer electronics brands, again.
sab
@Soprano2: My mom actually hit a train. Guy in the pickup behind her at the crossing saved her life. And she still wanted to get her drivers license back. And I lived a mile away and was always willing to run errands for her. Fun times.
brantl
Golf courses are where fishing ponds and lakes go to die.
TerryC
@brantl: But not disc golf courses!
Cole, you would truly enjoy the egalitarian spirit of the game. Sadly, Morgantown is not a hot bed of disc golf like Ann Arbor (150 courses within 50 miles). Check out this story about my two private courses on which I have planted 17,000+ trees!
Cars! I have had SO many great and memorable cars. My favorite car I ever drove though was before I owned a car – my HS girlfriend’s older sister had a Red & Chrome 1958 Buick Century convertible that she let me drive a lot. Swoon.
Drove an ugly brown 1978 Honda Civic from Ann Arbor to Acapulco then to San Francisco and back home to Ann Arbor, 10,000 miles in five weeks, while I studied for the bar exam listening to cassette tapes in 1981. Started having trouble before we got back to the states and no one would work on the Honda. “Que es Honda?”
Brendan In NC
Growing up in the land of DougJ and Mistermix; I had a ton of $500 beater cars. Then went through my sports car phase. My last cars have been my favorites – a 2007 Escape that I drove until the transmission started going at 180,000 miles. And my current 2014 Ford Edge it’s a WV/PA Car with 65k on the odometer. I’m still trying to figure out what all the buttons do!!!
Brendan In NC
@TerryC: Same kinda thing here. My younger brother had a ’68 Cougar XR-7. Hated driving it to school. So I’d let him borrow my Chevy Baretta. In return; I got to take the Cougar out on weekends – what a car!!!
AKA The Man
Tr*mp & Co getting into a trade war with China is some real big brain galaxy stuff. Like wrassling with pigs.
BillD
Living in Dallas in ’73, saw an old Jaguar that I liked. A 1957 XK-140 roadster. Multiple coats of paint, some rust, chrome pitted but the lines were classic. Couldn’t afford the $2,600 they wanted for it. Saw it again a little later for $1,850. Bought it. Over the years picked up replacement parts, put a new motor in it, eventually around early ’90s had the bodywork stripped, repainted, brightwork rechromed, all in New York. Got new interior leather, wire wheels, knock-offs and radial tires in Oregon where it won three ribbons in a car show. Sold it in 2013 for $52K. It drove like a truck but it turned heads everywhere I drove it.
Regarding golf courses: they’re good for one thing, tearing ass over them on a dirt bike. Mine was a 500cc Triumph. (I didn’t mess up any greens.)
Pittsburgh Mike
Well, I’ve heard a number of people tell me that they get rid of Honda’s when they’re bored with them, not because they break down, and we’ve had great luck with them as well. Subaru’s these days are quite reliable as well. We have a Subaru Legacy now for the same reason you had one in Morgantown — they drive in the snow like the snow isn’t even there.
“Not until American cars have the same stamp of reliability as Honda or Toyota and to a lesser extent, Subaru. ”
I’ll never buy GM again. My first car was a Buick Skyhawk, and after 8K miles it blew a head gasket. Also, that whole thing where GM saved like $0.05 per car by using a crappy ignition, and heavy key rings were turning off cars on the highway told me that GM would never have a ‘quality first’ mindset.
But in fairness, Honda Accords are built in Ohio. It’s the American car companies, not American workers, that suck.
Matt McIrvin
@Pittsburgh Mike: I killed my Honda Fit by not driving it during pandemic lockdown. It already had a broken air conditioner that would have been quite expensive to fix, so I was contemplating replacing it, but its real death was from abuse. It had been driven very heavily up to that point–maybe the best car I ever owned for overall quality.
Matt McIrvin
@TerryC: I mostly know Morgantown for its retro-futuristic transit system, the PRT connecting the WVU campuses to downtown. Depending on the mode it’s operating in, you can dial in your destination like operating an elevator:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgantown_Personal_Rapid_Transit
Transit geeks often deride this type of thing as a “gadgetbahn” (a system bought more for technical appeal than for practicality, often locking you into proprietary tech), but in the 1970s these PRT systems were often touted as the wave of the future, and if the idea had really caught on, it would no longer be a gadgetbahn. I like that it’s still running.