For the United States of America. pic.twitter.com/sQUkMH4Urx
— Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) December 6, 2018
Meanwhile, across the aisle…
Fun Fact: Donald Trump now owns 10 of the Dow’s top 20 worst single-day declines in stock market history…
#1 2/5/18 -1175
#2 2/8/18 -1032
#3 10/10/18 -832
#4 12/4/18 -799
#7 /22/18 -724
#11 2/2/18 -665
#15 10/24/18 -608
#16 11/12/18 -602
#18 4/6/18 -572
#20 11/20/18 -551— UnsilentMajority ?? (@The_UnSilent_) December 5, 2018
The Dow is not only down for the year but also down since the 2017 tax cuts.
— Jacob T. Levy (@jtlevy) December 6, 2018
Trump’s two favorite economic metrics — the stock market and trade deficit — are failing him
Stock market gains wiped out for 2018
Trade deficit at highest level in 10 years (and growing)https://t.co/fqbf1DM6Yl #stocks #trade— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) December 6, 2018
Don't blame me, I don't make the rules pic.twitter.com/Ld1lYxzwkh
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) December 4, 2018
For the sake of my extremely modest 401(k), I take comfort in WaPo economist Jared Bernstein’s advice:
… So: tune out the market volatility, keep on eye not just on recession probabilities but on slowing growth, watch oil and its impact on real wages (+) and investment (-), and for Keynes’s sake, don’t listen to Trump!
satby
Tariff Man cost me $1k this week in the IRA I inherited from my mom. It’s not a lot of money to begin with, so that’s pretty painful. Especially considering it didn’t need to happen at all, it was a direct outcome of Tariff Man’s gross incompetence.
OzarkHillbilly
So much winning.
Blech.
Platonailedit
Unfortunately, this twit’s all earlier lying tweets against Obama have come back true to bite the murkans in their collective ass.
Betty Cracker
@satby: Yep — for once, Trump can rightly take credit for stock market performance since the free fall on Tuesday happened when investors found out he lied about the “deal” with China. Turns out putting a pathological liar in the White House is bad for business!
Platonailedit
Shortest Oscar host prize goes to Kevin Hart. Pun was intended.
OzarkHillbilly
Can somebody please give this seal a tissue?
Immanentize
A morning thread! Good morning All!
Baud
This is why I got out. Don’t want to deal with the volatility.
Derelict
Donald Trump voice: “Those reports of the stock market falling ar fake news! Don’t you believe it. The DOW is at 36,000 and going up every day–just ask my economics adviser Larry Kudlow! He wrote a book about that. But it’s all fake news because all of you have $1 million in your 401(k) because the media hates me and is the enemy of your investment!”
Immanentize
@satby: I’ve lost about 8% in my TIAA account this year. And that is while I continue to make my maximum contributions. Ugh. I really need to rebalance toward bonds, but I was hoping for a small rally before that happened. At this point, I really think the best thing for the markets would be Trump’s removal. But that will be ugly. Unless,
“The CIA, the Cubans and the Underworld Bosses,
decided that was it, they have to cut their losses”
JGabriel
Donald Trump via Anne Laurie @ Top:
What are we waiting for? Let’s get cracking, Dems! Those rats aren’t gonna
fuckimpeach themselves!Reporters should be confronting Trump with this quote and asking if he’ll resign, or if impeachment proceedings should be brought against him.
Since Trump will, of course, deny he ever wrote that tweet, it should be done in a setting (studio interview maybe?) where he, and the audience, can be shown/confronted with a graphic, or other evidence, of the tweet.
Immanentize
@Baud:
Mattress stuffed with fiat?
Betty Cracker
Did anyone see NC GOP chairman Dallas Woodhouse making the rounds on last night’s news programs to make excuses for the rampant fraud his party’s sleazy operatives perpetrated in the NC 9th? He’s got a Pharma Bro-level Backpfeifengesicht (face that cries out for a fist).
Anyhoo, my hubby is a liberal but not as into politics as I am, and he occasionally accuses me of being hyperpartisan in my comments on how the networks coddle Republicans, etc. Well, last night, CNN and MSNBC demonstrated the truth of my complaints in their treatment of Woodhouse.
While I was cooking dinner, hubby was watching Erin Burnett, who asked Woodhouse some tough questions but allowed him to babble a bunch of half-assed excuses uncontested. I grumbled about that, and hubby said I was being a hyperpartisan again.
Not 10 minutes later, we’d switched to MSNBC, and Woodhouse appeared on the Chris Hayes program. Hayes called bullshit on Woodhouse’s excuses and “both sides” obfuscations, bringing up facts that Burnett never bothered to mention about Woodhouse’s own failure to address an obvious fraud and leaving the sleazy bastard sputtering inanely.
I love it when events vindicate my opinions in real time. That happened once when we were walking between two enclosures containing small herds of llamas at Busch Gardens. I said I hoped they wouldn’t spit on us, and my husband, my sister and a friend who was with us laughed at the suggestion that llamas could spit.
Seconds later, two llamas started spitting at each other across the sidewalk that bisected their separate enclosures, and many humans (not us, fortunately) were caught in the crossfire. All I could say was HA! Toldja!
Jay C
Seen some reports around that don’t bode well for any trade talks with China. NSA John ( The Mustache Of
Belligerence) Bolton said that he was aware of the arrest in Canada of Chinese tech giant Huawei’s CFO at the US’ behest – ostensibly for evading Iran sanctions- but that President Trump had not been informed. While he (Trump) was meeting with President Xi to discuss trade.
A simple oversight, perhaps, but Bolton also seemed to suggest that the arrest of Meng Wanzhou might be used as a “lever” in negotiations: which sounds to me an awful lot like official hostage-taking as a trade- negotiation strategy.
But then, this IS the Trump Admin…..
evodevo
@Betty Cracker: Yes, they CAN spit and frequently do lol
Immanentize
@Jay C: At some point, maybe this evening, I will write up a comment on extradition and rendering….
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Instant karma is a blessing. (doesn’t exactly apply here but you get the idea)
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
satby
@Baud: @Immanentize: my mom had it in a G&I fund so it was already invested fairly conservatively, but the hassles of changing it combined with the rules on inherited IRA’s have made me reluctant to mess with it. It’s in a mandatory withdrawal status too, because my mom was 85 when she died, so I use it to pay property taxes every year. But if this insanity continues I may just pull it all and deal with the taxes and stuff.
JPL
@Immanentize: That would make for interesting Friday night reading.
If I were an American executive in China, I would head to the airport and to return home.
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning rikyrah ?!
Immanentize
@JPL: It’s is hard to fight extradition from Canada based on a US indictment. But the Trump gang is making it possible with their hostage talk.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker: For your morning trivia, the original Busch Gardens was on the Busch estate in Pasadena, CA. It was open to the public.
Immanentize
@JPL:
Like Warren Anderson did — CEO of Union Carbide (now part of Dow Chem.) After UC’s plant in Bohpol, India dumped poison killing thousands and cruelly injuring thousands more? Anderson was in India at the time, agreed to show up to Court later, then fled to Connecticut to live out his happy, very rich life.
That is a great extradition matter….
JPL
@Immanentize: What were they thinking when they equated her arrest to a hostage situation. Drop the tariffs or else is not diplomacy.
Chetan Murthy
@JPL:
They’re thinking like gangsters, not like policemen. Sigh.
Immanentize
@JPL: Every relationship with the Trump people is transactional. Truer words never spoken.
Of course they are wrong, about that. Canada doesn’t entirely believe that.
JGabriel
OzarkHillbilly:
Guardian via Ozark Hillbilly Link:
This is the kind of willful human self-blindness that the ironist in me just loves.
I mean, seriously, if you observe human nature for five minutes, you’ll see strange things.
Just to prove my point, within a minute of reading the article on seal nasal eels, I found the article on foreskin facial treatments because they were published on the same site within 8 hours of each other.
People IZ strange. (I’d have added a link to the Doors “People are Strange” there, but I ran out of links for this post.)
(Oh, hey, there’s an idea for the new site design – raise the link per comment limit from 3 to 5.)
Immanentize
@JGabriel:
I vaguely remember a joke about a Ron Popeil (Ronco!) foreskin wallet — stroke it and it becomes a brief case!
PS. I read the linked article. Now I know what Mohels do for a side business.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
JGabriel
@Immanentize: I just don’t think any human¹ is in a position to mock the seal’s accidental nasal eel for being strange, not when humans are apparently doing the foreskin facial thing on purpose.
(¹I’m looking at you, Charles Littman, lead scientist at the NOAA Hawaiian Monk Seal research program.)
A Ghost To Most
The epic Twitter storm we’ve been expecting is underway.
He’s come undone.
debbie
@Platonailedit:
Not even Trump is immune from the Law of the Universe: You get back what you put out. How stupid can a person be to think he can spew bile for years and then be treated respectfully when he comes to power?
We counterpunch too, baby!
JPL
@A Ghost To Most: Just in case folks are curious, you can read trump’s tweets here
https://twitter.com/RealPressSecBot
OzarkHillbilly
We jackals love to bitch and moan about the present state of our country, but we’re still a far cry from Venezuela.
MomSense
All this winning is exhausting. If only there had been some way to predict that a business man who is really bad at business would also be bad at managing our economy. I blame the media, too. There was plenty of material for them to cover before the election but they chose not to.
JPL
@A Ghost To Most: There’s a woman in charge of prosecuting Corsi? Wouldn’t Corsi have to be indicted first. wtf is he even saying
Quinerly
@A Ghost To Most: he has left us hanging in mid sentence. Maybe he has been tranquilized? Long wait for this 5th tweet.
Matt McIrvin
I kind of hate the “record single-day declines” thing going around, just because points on the Dow are meaningless–they’re record point declines because the Dow had a huge rally last year. Every President’s administration probably has some of the record-setting single-day declines in the stock market just because the numbers keep going up over the long term. It’s percentage decline that’s important.
And every time people repost that, the right-wingers get to point out that we’re being innumerate, and they do.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
There was a random comment from a foreigner on Reddit a while back who couldn’t believe we were still a functioning country with everything that’s going on with Trump. It could be (and can get) a lot worse.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: You’re right but they would do it to us. Sometimes you can’t control what’s effective.
NotMax
Someone needs to make a “Friday! Friday! Friday!” audio file available, done in the exact style and cadence of the auto racing Sunday! ad slogan.
debbie
@satby:
I pulled mine after 2008. Not that there was much to pull at that point. I’m not making much now, but at least I won’t be losing it.
Platonailedit
@MomSense: The media mofos happily colluded with the traitorous thug. Fucking fifth columnists.
Matt McIrvin
(Speaking of which: Yahoo Finance used to have an option to chart stocks on a logarithmic scale, and I don’t know why they took it away. It made so much more sense than anything else.)
debbie
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Should there be a link?
debbie
@Jay C:
What kind of magical thinking must it have taken to think this was a good idea?
CliosFanboy
We moved 95% of our 401K to safe harbors in early 2017. We’re both near retirement age so it made sense…
OzarkHillbilly
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah but it’s their president who likes to brag so much about the stock market. Somebody should point that out to them.
In other words, fuck the innumerate right and their deficit exploding tax cuts..
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Things can always get worse, and about half the time they do.
Platonailedit
@Matt McIrvin: So, rw’ers calling the left as innumerate? Their usual projection, who gives a shit?
Cheryl Rofer
Here you go…
Dorothy A. Winsor
Poor Molly.
I see Don Lemon’s show was evacuated last night over a bomb threat. Good going driving that Enemy of the People out of the building, Donny.
Matt McIrvin
@Platonailedit: It matters that it’s true in this case.
Platonailedit
@Cheryl Rofer:
Isn’t it used to be 7 angry democrats? When did more angry dems joined the posse?
Schlemazel
Donny Dollhands is going nuts on Twitter this AM & it makes me want to post tis link
https://www.poemuseum.org/the-tell-tale-heart
Quinerly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s so creepy how he keeps referring to the wife. Pretty sure her name is Nelly.
Platonailedit
@Matt McIrvin:
I am sure it does for you . You were always concerned about dems.
Cheryl Rofer
@Platonailedit: I think he’s increased the number as Mueller added staff.
Frankensteinbeck
@Cheryl Rofer:
Luna almighty. This is not even close to the most deranged gibberish he’s said, but it’s up there near the top of spittle-flecked rants. Racist Uncle feels the noose tightening for sure. This is a classic narcissist ‘How dare you catch me’ speech.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@JGabriel:
Peer pressure. “Hey guys, you oughta try this!”
Only half joking. I recently read Frans de Waal’s book Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? and have a lot more respect for the idea that many species have cognition and local cultural customs.
JPL
@Quinerly: He’s creepy. I wonder if Corsi is going to be indicted today, since he referred to his prosecution.
Baud
Most criminals don’t get daily updates about the progress of the investigation against them. Might drive me insane too.
Procopius
@Betty Cracker: Well, the idea of running government like a business is probably the fourth or fifth worst idea in politics. Businessmen mostly lie, cheat, and steal, and pollute the environment. There are glaring exceptions, of course, but they are about as common as real Christians. I consider Peter Thiel the norm.
CliosFanboy
@Platonailedit: I was thinking the same thing. Screw them. they’re about as good with numbers as a blind monkey in a washing machine.. (I have no idea what that means)
JPL
The president is departing the White House at 9 in order to fly to Kansas City, MO to deliver remarks at the Project Safe Neighborhoods National Conference Whitaker is suppose to join him on the flight, and let me add god/dog help us all. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Platonailedit
@Cheryl Rofer:
What a fucking nutjob of a whacko.
NotMax
It’s A Wonderful Life, the modern version, wherein Dolt 45 discovers everything – EVERYTHING – would be bigly better without him.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Schlemazel: Heh. So glad I’ve got other people quoting that.
Pace yourself, friend. It’s a short tale and we have a lot of unraveling still to go.
Although today is the release of a couple more big sentencing statements, isn’t it?
Schlemazel
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I am disturbed by the joy I get from his agony.
But that joy is negated by the damage I know he is doing with this shit
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
Tell that truth, BC
CarolDuhart2
@Baud: I knew from the beginning I would be thanking Federalism. A lot of the levers aren’t in his hands, and we have non-partisan civil servants for the fact that things can still run at all. Local entities and federal entities has money and skills Trump can’t even begin to touch.
Quinerly
@JPL: It would be a great ending to another fast paced Infrastructure Week!
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: Thanx for the warning. (checks watch) Plenty of time to get out of the state.
rikyrah
@A Ghost To Most:
You all read him so that the rest of us don’t have to ?
OzarkHillbilly
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Most likely highly redacted sentencing statements.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
May be a record setter for an Air Force One plane – carrying most brain dead presidents in a single week.
NotMax
@NotMax
Oopsie. That was a reply to JPL.
rikyrah
@Jay C:
Did we arrest the executive because they think that this will be leverage over the Chinese?
Procopius
@Immanentize: The only Canadian extradition case I followed was that of Rakesh Saxena, an executive of the Bangkok Bank of Commerce. After it went belly-up in 1996 Saxena fled to Canada with several tens of millions of dollars. The president of the bank was jailed for several years. It took the Thai Prosecutor’s Office two or three years to get the paper-work right, and after that the Thai press, especially the Bangkok Post checked on the status every couple of years. One surprising thing was that Saxena was allowed to continue his investment service in Canada and defrauded more people of more millions of dollars. After the court approved his extradition to Thailand, some Commissioner remained whose approval was needed. Saxena spent many millions on appeals, and the case sat on the Commissioner’s desk, unsigned, for several years, leading to dark suspicions here that the fix was in. He finally was returned, convicted, and imprisoned, but by then he had no money left. I hope he died in penury, but he probably didn’t.
opiejeanne
@satby: I’m afraid to look at my stocks now. Maybe in a few days if the market starts recovering. Mine are inherited from my parents too and we have treated them as a safety net. I probably should have cashed everything earlier this year when they had recovered most of what they lost after the election. They’re all blue chips, but Trump has managed to make Clorox stock exciting.
bemused
@Betty Cracker:
Oh boy, would I love to see a herd of angry, spitting llamas smuggled into the WH and set loose among trumpie, Jarvanka, Giuliani, Sarah, Miller, John Kelly, Whitaker, etc and entire GOP.
I am somewhat disturbed that I immediately envision all unfortunate incidents such as spitting llamas and eels stuck up seals’ noses and worse happening to the trumpers and GOP.
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
It appears that we arrested the executive because the company is neck-deep in violating international law. Trump’s administration has immediately beslimed that already complex issue by going “Hey, while we have her, let’s use her as a hostage!”
NotMax
@bemused
Not llamas, please; we’d be bombing Venezuela before sundown.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
It is true, though, the larger point. The economy is going to slow and Donald Trump, this specific president, is uniquely unsuited to dealing with that when it happens. “I alone can fix it”. No, he really can’t.
He should have put something aside for bad times, some good will, some relationship with people outside his base when he had the good economy, but he did not and it’s too late. It’s not like his business, where he can turn to sketchy lenders when he’s screwed everyone else. There’s just one electorate and he had a thin margin at the outset.
They all make choices and they have a fairly narrow window to get a big initiative thru- he chose tax cuts. He could have chosen immigration or infrastructure but he did not. It’s hard to choose- there was a lot of second guessing on Obama choosing health care (including from me) but Obama’s bet is turning out to be a good one for Democrats, longer term.
Another Scott
“2 minutes ago
China talks are going very well!”
Since he lies about everything, well… :-/
Have a good Friday, everyone.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
The Root (@TheRoot) Tweeted:
Ross Douthat’s NYT piece: “Why We Miss The WASPs” made #BlackTwitter go crazy and proved that some white people really do yearn for white supremacy:
https://t.co/DfXB53pxa9 https://t.co/gD2PAkf1fP https://twitter.com/TheRoot/status/1070771419347329024?s=17
Procopius
@JPL: I don’t know about federal procedure, but don’t many states have a procedure called “Arraignment,” an alternative to an indictment? Instead of convening a Grand Jury, the prosecutor takes the defendant before a judge and presents evidence that a crime was committed and he has probable cause to believe the defendant was complicit in it. The judge then sets a date for the trial. In fact that’s the way all misdemeanors and most felonies are handled, if I understand correctly. Or maybe Corsi was indicted and out famously free press just didn’t think it was newsworthy.
TS (the original)
@Matt McIrvin: It’s also the volatility that impacts how people react to changes in the markets. Maybe I’m wrong – but I have no memory of such wide swings in market values within a small time period as has been happening recently. The 2002 and moreso 2008 declines were mainly continuous downward trends. Trump opens his mouth & creates massive swings in either directions. Other Presidents have spoken in relation to what is happening in the markets – trump speaks & causes the market happenings.
rikyrah
???
HillReporter.com (@HillReporter) Tweeted:
Trump’s Team Considers Removing Mike Pence from 2020 Ticket
https://t.co/M7B4qj6cSd https://twitter.com/HillReporter/status/1070449725747412992?s=17
Immanentize
@Frankensteinbeck:
I’m not so sure about the underlying charges. What’s been reported is that the company, of which she is an officer, violated sanctions on Iran. What sanctions? US sanctions only? The newly imposed sanctions? Old sanctions? What US Attorney (district) indicted her? All this might matter if it she mounts a political exception defense to extradition
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
He really wasn’t responsible for the good economy but he claimed credit for it- staked his whole presidency on it- so it will be perfectly reasonable and just when people blame him when it slows.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Procopius: Running a business is sort of the opposite of running a government. In business, the point is to turn a profit and the product/service is just a means to do that. If GM could make more money by not making cars, they’d stop making cars. In government, the opposite is true. The money is just a means to provide the service.
NotMax
@Kay
Tomorrow’s tweets today:
“EVERYONE is saying if Hillary won the Dow would be down 8000, not 800.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@NotMax: LOL. Tasteless, but funny!
Immanentize
@Kay:
Well, expect Trump to blame the Democratic Congress for the economic downturn in 3, 2, 1…
Meanwhile, did you see the latest low quality hire in Trumpworld? The ex Fox and Friends celebrity who went to State as spokesperson will now be our Ambassador to the UN.
Dorothy A. Winsor
New thread posted. I can’t keep up.
TS (the original)
@Immanentize: Quality people refuse to work for trump ( a definite career ender) – he is left with Fox pundits and friends.
OzarkHillbilly
@TS (the original):
Except he has no friends, just hangers-on hoping to get some cash out of the deal.
bemused
@OzarkHillbilly:
Fox and Fiends would be more accurate.
Gelfling 545
I annuitized my 403(b) last January. As my agent said, nobody can predict what’s going to happen with this guy in charge. They were struggling at the time to figure out what in hell the GOP tax bill was going to do to people – regular ones, not corporation ones.
Jay C
@Immanentize:
Hard to tell exactly why Ms. Meng was nabbed: our discussion here at B-J is about as much coverage as I’ve seen. It MIGHT be that the Trumpsters are looking to Huawei to make an example of for whatever: their idiotic Iran sanctions are as good an excuse as any. But of course, Bolton had to stir the turd by bringing up the “leverage” issue: we will have to wait for more info.
oldster
That video of the new Democratic House Members reciting the Preamble?
It made me cry. So good. So much the America I believe in, still.
Procopius
@Kay: I dunno. Trump may have enough time still to build some good will somewhere. I don’t think he has the skill set, but whatever. The slowdown/slump/recession/crash/depression won’t come until next year, probably Fall or Winter, and maybe not until Summer 2020. The statistics at Lambert Strether’s 2:00 PM Water Cooler at Naked Capitalism keep getting weaker, but as one tilts a little more toward slump one or two others seem to recover a little. The yield curve almost, but doesn’t quite, invert. Just on duration of the “recovery” we’re past time, but if the gods really hate us they’ll stave it off until after the election.
Procopius
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Thank you, you put very clearly. One of the problems is that the old WASP establishment families who used to determine policy (which was why we got involved in Vietnam from 1946 onward) are no longer prominent. The new PTB do not have that sense of being responsible for the orderly running of the country. They’ve been replaced by the people who are moved by naked greed, seeking out opportunities for loot wherever they can find it. They loot the companies they work for, and then they move into government for a while to set up the next opportunity to loot then move back to the private sector to direct their company to take advantage of the loot they set up and then loot the company to put the money in their own pocket. It’s been downhill since the Powell Memo. An anecdote I enjoy. After he was on the losing ticket in 1920 (as candidate for Vice President), Franklin Roosevelt was asked if he regretted losing. He replied that, no, he didn’t regret it. The country was fed up with Democrats for now so he really hadn’t expected to win. He knew, though, that Republican fiscal policy would destroy the country and he wanted to be ready to run after that happened. He figured about 1932 would be the time.
PaulWartenberg
@OzarkHillbilly:
They actually measured it. They tracked the difference between a trump tweet – when he tweeted out his nickname TARIFF MAN – and how the market would react to it. Within a minute of his TARIFF MAN tweet the Dow dropped 200 points (and kept dropping soon after). So we have a metric. a trump tweet about tariffs = negative 200 points on the market.
Part of me wants the whole DOW to drop to Zero. I know a lot of IRAs and retirement plans would get nuked in the process, but at least we will ALL know the cause for it: Republican perfidy in destroying the economy PLUS trump’s tweeter-tantrums.
Uncle Cosmo
@bemused: But redundant.
JR
last year’s rally was an illusion. CAPE (cycle-adjusted P/E ratio) is still high (~30 with a historical average of ~20). There are other factors that play into that ratio but irrational exuberance abounds. This is the highest its been since the .com bubble.
catclub
@debbie:
I left mine in after 2008 and now it is up over 200% from there.
catclub
@Procopius: this. A recession with very low unemployment and rising salaries sounds kind of like Japan for the last 29 years or so. Which is really not so bad.
Or just unlikely to be a recession.
catclub
@PaulWartenberg:
this is usually the difference between people who think government matters and people who just want to watch things burn.
There are lots of other innocents around who will get burned.
But for you, today, burning looks good. Not for me.
WhatsMyNym
Just to close this thread –
the NASDAQ is still up 3.38% for the last year (365 days),
the DOW is still up 1.40% for the last year (365 days).
(Bloomberg charts)
bobbo
The last bit in Spanish actually made me tear up. FSM bless America!
jl
The increase in the trade deficit is no mystery. The GOP tax heist bill, by the GOP’s own logic on how it worked, would be expected to increase the trade deficit (unless that US acted exactly like a national economy that was so small, like Estonia or Singapore) that what goes on here has no effect on the rest of the world. The GOP logic was wrong, but the GOP tax heist bill did blow up the deficit. Deficit spending is an important determinant of trade deficits, something often overlooked. The budget deficit has to be financed, and effects interest rates for a large economy like the US. So macro national budget conditions set boundaries for what the trade deficit will be.
So far, I think the stock market drops are just corrections to keep the equities market on a reasonable long run growth path. There was some oveer-exuberance in the expectations for growth due to deregulation and the GOP tax heist, and I think now it is clear that neither does anything for growth. And then there is the effect of Trumps insane tariff war, and the Trumpsters incompetent diddling around with NAFTA.
Edit: so more true than ever that Trumpsters are riding on the Obama expansion, which has some big pros and big cons. Much of nature of the expansion was set by centrist technocrats who had a lot in common with the competent Dub financial technocrats, though with more honest and useful Keynesian stimulus, which was supported by Obama.
Uncle Cosmo
Here’s yer bumpersnicker for the current political situation:
debbie
@catclub:
It was all I had. I couldn’t afford that luxury.
debbie
@NotMax:
Hopefully, Clarence would be smart enough not to give him the chance to get back to the real world.
Procopius
@catclub: Your point about Japan is well taken, but salaries have not been rising since 2008 and I see no reason to think they will start going up when unemployment goes up. Well, average about 2.5% a year, with inflation at 1-2%, and the bottom quintile actually going down a little. The top quintile has been doing pretty well, which is why the average is so high. You certainly are right that there could be no recession. I just believe it’s inevitable there will be another one, and I’m hoping it comes before November 2020, If the economy keeps on like now Trump will probably be reelected. Best would be if it bottomed out in Summer 2020 so people didn’t start feeling the improvement before November, but did start noticing during January 2021.