The Economy

Most 401(k)s have several places in which to move around your money. 82% of mine is in a money-market fund with no risk. I could make it 100% with the press of a button if I wanted to. I could make it 0% and bet it all on the market by buying the dips if I wanted to.

 

Risk-free sounds great until you realize the FDIC might be one tweet away from being fed to the woodchipper.

 

If you haven't already, or perhaps if it's been a little too long, go (re)watch the film "Margin Call."

Super rich people don't care. The market crashes, it doesn't really hurt them too badly, and they have enough to enjoy the ride back up the wave when it eventually comes. It's a worthwhile "gamble."

Fuck those scrubs in the middle.

 

Yeah, but the transgender athletes were eating the dogs and cats for their pregame meal before their JV girls soccer match.

 

Elon Musk being the one to drastically downsize government and also bringing about the collapse Ragu predicted for 15 years is the greatest joke.

It’s okay to laugh at that. That is absurd. That’s a Larry David script. You can’t write a better joke.

 

Sure would be nice if some of the people who aren't dementia-ridden, infantile shitstains would step in and make the case to knock of this ridiculous trade war. He's accomplishing nothing but punching everyone in the balls.

The ONE fucking thing I hoped he wouldn't completely fuck up.

Nope.

 

On the economic side, the bigshot people, especially Lutwick and Bessent, are either as psycho as Trump, in it for the opportunities to steal big, or both. They don't care if the ship hits the rocks. They're not in steerage.

 

Wifey wanted me to liquidate in 2017 and I told her the market is resilient. I gave in and liquidated one education (529) fund. Thereafter, she never questioned me again.

I'm certainly not perfect about this. But I'm a long run guy. I'm not looking to buy on the upswing or even the low point. I'm not good enough to time the market. I've got to believe in the longevity of our economy.

Even if I pull out of equities, if the economy is going to go to shambles, the $$ are not going to be worth much either. I've got to believe that these clowns do not have the stamina to totally tank the markets for the long run.

As for the trade war, it's idiotic. You only slap on tariffs to respond to tariffs or actually protect domestic products from foreign products. FatF*ck did neither. He slapped tariffs on goods coming in that do NOT compete with anything we produce. He wasn't even protecting any specific market. What products from Canada are a serious threat to US products? Is Moosehead beer squashing Budweiser?? No.

Is Chinese steel threatening the US steel industries?? NO because the US gave up on large production of steel long ago.

It's totally stupid. I'm betting that they lose interest after the voters start to get pissed.

 

The tariffs are the same thing as when the rapist traitor felon discovered the pardon power. He can do it and nobody can stop him. And the fucking dementia-ridden toddler gets attention.

At some point, trumplicans who’ll need votes to keep their power are gonna have to find their balls and spines and actually get him to knock it the fuck off.

 

Trump is just indescribably stupid. Unfortunately, he is dangerously so, too.

Another Upside-Down Day of Trump Diplomacy

He denounced the European Union as “hostile” and “abusive” while threatening to ratchet up tariffs on some of its most famous goods by 200 percent. He openly mused about annexing Greenland while sitting in the Oval Office across from the head of the military alliance that would be called to defend it. He vowed to escalate a trade war with Canada while threatening its very right to exist as a sovereign nation.

But when it came to the authoritarian leader in Moscow, President Donald Trump boasted of his relationship with Vladimir Putin and declined to say that he would pressure his Russian counterpart to agree to concessions as part of a cease-fire deal with Ukraine. Trump’s sympathies seemed to lie with America’s foe over its friends, further unnerving already-whiplashed allies watching anxiously as the president’s handpicked envoy met with Putin at the Kremlin.

And that was all today—a day not unlike many in the early weeks of this new administration.

Trump’s proclamations underscored how quickly the new president has reoriented U.S. foreign policy and the nation’s global priorities. Old allies are now economic rivals. Friendly neighbors are territories to be seized. Authoritarians—not just Putin, but also the leaders of China and North Korea—are to be respected and, potentially, transformed into partners with whom to carve up spheres of influence.

The dizzying day began, as it so often does, with an early-morning social-media post.

Trump took to Truth Social to escalate his trade war with the European Union, vowing to impose 200 percent tariffs on European wine and champagne in a move that worsened anxiety among consumers on both sides of the Atlantic. He reacted angrily after the EU retaliated against a first wave of U.S. tariffs, with the bloc hitting back by levying 50 percent tariffs on imports of U.S. whiskey and other products. Trump deemed the tariffs “nasty.”

Trump wrote, “The European Union, one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the World [was] formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States.”

Yeah, sure it was, idiot.

 

I just don't think they will. They'd just get primaried by the next wave of idiots, so they'll keep on keepin'....drown.

 

If you’re going to do tariffs, you do them for select emerging technologies or national security industries and you tie picking the winners to businesses that actually compete well internationally first. Like Japan did.

There’s a case to be made that if you wanted to do tariffs, you would’ve had to start in about 1973-74 before hyper-globalization kicked in and the gutting of America’s industrial might, but you would’ve been doing that in the teeth of inflation.

Across the board tariffs in 2025 are idiotic. We’re using an 1870 strategy to attack a complex world.