I wanted to say just a little more about yesterday’s disastrous economic report. In the past few days I had noticed a lt of “the sky is not falling” stories in news media. Some of these discussed why the economy wasn’t a lot worse yet. But more were like this July 27 bit in the New York Post headlined Wall Street economist who ripped Trump admits prez may have ‘outsmarted all of us’ on tariffs. And while I don’t pay attention to Bill Maher, I’m reading now that on July 28 he came out with a podcast saying that Trump’s economy is doing surprisingly well.
And then we found out it was all a mirage. The economy isn’t doing well at all. And this takes me to this Atlantic article, The Mystery of the Strong Economy Has Finally Been Solved.
The Trump economy doesn’t look so hot after all. This morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released revised data showing that, over the past three months, the U.S. labor market experienced its worst quarter since 2010, other than during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. The timing was awkward. Hours earlier, President Donald Trump had announced a huge new slate of tariffs, set to take effect next week. He’d been emboldened by the fact that the economy had remained strong until now despite economists’ warnings—a fact that turned out not to be a fact at all.
No wonder Trump lost it. The numbers must have hit his inflated but fragile ego like a ton of lead bricks. Gilded, of course.
Reaction to the firing of the BLS commissioner has seemed to me to be subdued. But the investor class must be feeling pretty bleak right now realizing that there will be nothing but fake data about the U.S. economy from now on. Time to invest somewhere else, maybe.
Paul Krugman has an I told you so column up that points to a prediction Trump would cook the data books. The jobs report, Krugman says, “was presumably especially disturbing for Trump and those around him, who have been boasting about how hot the economy is and sneering at critics pointing to the harm being done by chaotic policy.”
I’ve also been trying to find out what will happen to PBS and NPR stations without the Center for Public Broadcasting. This AP story provides some clues. It’s likely stations in rural areas will have to close. Stations in cities may be able to find alternate funding. The programming may be hit and miss.
I'd be willing to bet that Trump believes that the previous job numbers are correct and the recent numbers are fraudulent. Not because there is any evidence, but Trump believes that there is no objective truth. He thinks it is what he says it is, and everyone has to fall in line. Before we're done, innocent blood will be spilled to punish the unbelievers.
I don't know the process behind assembling the job numbers. I'm not sure if the intermediate numbers are subject to FOI. So will we be able to spot it when Trump trots out numbers that contradict reality? Trump is sloppy – think of the Sharpie extension of the hurricane path on the map. I suspect the fraud next month will be equally clumsy. That he's caught won't change anything except the confidence of investors.
The three biggest trading partners with the US (pre-Trump) are China, Mexico, and Canada. The tariff rates for them are 30%, 25%, and 35%. A warning that employment growth has nearly stalled would prompt any other administration to reconsider its policies. By shooting the messenger, Trump warned every advisor that no one is to question the Emperor. For everybody else where the tariff is about 20%, that's where it was a century ago, and it was disastrous.
The previous TACO strategy of starts and stops allowed big business to stock up. That's pretty much over. If some businesses absorbed much of the loss while tariffs were on-again, off-again, this IS where we will be for a long time on ALL imports. I don't see a chance in hell that prices won't go up. This week Ford reported Q2 losses and predicted a downturn with the tariff news. They may have been the first to say it out loud but I predict it's a trend. (Manufacturing was one sector that lost jobs in the new employment numbers.)
The other factor that will only get worse is the availability of workers in agriculture and construction. I suspect a lot of those jobs in construction were cash payments to labor contractors. I used to see them a lot in… the home improvement company I work for… Hispanics buying hand tools with hundred-dollar bills. So these subcontractors have no crews, and builders of a lighter complexion will want a lot more to work in the Florida sun. What I hear about crop harvesting is only worse. So the US will have to import, at a higher cost.
Pain is a great teacher – we're in for some pain. Maybe not enough to kill off this country. Maybe enough pain to awaken the loyalty of the common man to the values that made this country special. Not perfect, but occasionally special.
Remember the movie "Dirty Dancing"? High-end resort for the rich with entertainment for the family, and entertainment with the staff in their private cabins for a fee. Johnny, played by Patrick Swayze, was the star dancer and gigolo who falls for a young guest. Wholesome entertainment for the family. Fiction, but with more than a hint of truth. In real life, that operation would have had more action with the young female staff and the male head-of-household guests, I propose. Anything not on the dinner menu is available on an unprinted menu.
According to the club manager, memberships at MAL now start at $700,000. What's on the menu? At one time, 16-year-old Virginia Guthrie was an employee at the spa before she was "poached" by Trump's buddy, Epstein. Guthrie committed suicide this year. She's the witness who took down Prince Andrew.
Speculating here… Trump has charged the highest fees he can get away with at MAL, but what are the guests getting. These days, it's access to the president but back when Trump first got the property and Guthrie was meat for Trump and Epstein, was she part of what members of the club bought access to? We'll never know… or will we?
Is Trump's claim to fame the "Pimp-in-Chief"? Trump is not the brightest candle on the birthday cake. If he was working the various beauty pageants to recruit help at MAL, Virginia Guthrie was not the only young employee work at the spa over the years. There are tax records with birthdates that is a list of victims – maybe.
Who has subpoena power? The FBI won't. Florida won't. The House Oversight Committee, if Democrats had the House…
Virginia Giuffre, not Guthrie.
Thank You.
The dirty thirties they called it nigh onto a century ago. The roaring twenties preceded it but none of my grandparents talked about it much. One of my great aunts was a bit of a flapper in her day, and a few pictures survived with her in the attire. Black and white pictures of course. Pictures were expensive then even in black and white. Indoor pictures even more so as they needed light. Flash bulbs were not cheap and good for one shot only. I mention this because money became scarce in the dirty thirties. People had to do without necessities and did not even talk much about the excesses of the previous decade for the rest of their lives.
It was capitalism, and booms and bust cycles were the nature of the beast. Some saw it coming but few were well set to survive it without great upheaval.
It took quite some time and much adjustment to correct flaws in capitalism so that busts were never this severe and trust could be reestablished. The banking system and certain parts of government had to be changed to assure independence and insulation from politics. The same features that are now under attack.
There was no real place to hide in the thirties. The whole industrialized world was involved in the economic crisis.
Those with high debt loads and no plan B, C, or D. got hit the worst. They learned about the hierarchy of needs from the school of hard knocks. At the time there were no social safety nets. The old safety nets now in tatters or under attack. We get to do high wire acts as they did in the dirty thirties of a century ago. Without working nets.
Young people today talk about the Covid as quite the bad time. The great depression was five times as long in duration. But remember who we have in charge. He will want his depression to be even greater than that. You know that for sure.
Trust is the foundation of any economic system not just capitalism. Trust comes from an honest, transparent, and objective accounting system. Fearless leader fears the objective, as his world is perception based. To him, perception is reality. Most of the rest of us know we can't afford to think that way or we shall quickly learn so or suffer greatly and possibly perish. The mirage of water in a desert quenches no thirst and dashes false hope. It just looks like salvation. Perceptions can and do lie.
For the record job data and unemployment are a lagging indicator of the health of the economy.
That means the economy has been failing for a while. I am sure more people than Warren Buffet and Jamie Diamond have seen earlier signs but kept silent. Who wouldn't. Bad news messaging has never been so dangerous.
I am sure a lot of Texans would have appreciated better warning messages before the flash flood hit. Unfortunately, the people with the power to approve such warning were irresponsible and failed. Tragedy followed. Irresponsibility and failure to give honest and timely messages needs be what is dangerous. That deserves it.
regarding Doug's "Pimp-In-Chief" speculation, Trum's grandfather made a bundle running a brothel in Alaska in the early 1900's…. I think shady enterprises run in the family.
@Bernie wrote:
Young people today talk about the Covid as quite the bad time. The great depression was five times as long in duration. But remember who we have in charge. He will want his depression to be even greater than that.
I've been thinking about How Trump's Childhood Shaped Him. Trump is raging inside with resentment and grievance because of his childhood, and he projects it outward on anyone and everyone. He has been at war with the world his entire life, harming and destroying anyone near him, to get vengeance for what was done to him.
Logic and facts don't mean anything to him. and so wackadoodle economic policies, which he thinks will somehow make him rich and impoverish everyone else are his idea of a fine time.
Yeah, Bingo! All tantrum all the time.
… and when he acts as if he cares about his supporter's concerns, it's actually:
"Come into my parlor" said the spider to the fly.
It's probably wishful thinking, but I think the recently fired commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistic should file a libel suit against Trum. Based on how the Dominion Suit against Fox went, I think it would be a slam dunk. Sue him for 100 million.
It doesn't matter whether the suit succeeds, because during the early stage of the process it will be shown that Trum lied when he said she altered the data. There will be exactly ZERO evidence of tampering, and that fact will become public.
I’ve dealt with psychopaths before. They view themselves as ubermensch hunters, and everybody else who’s not like them as prey. Or, as sucker/ally/henchmen/cultists to be used up and then discarded when no longer useful.
What interests me isn’t their existence. We’ll always have psychopaths around if temperamental eugenics doesn’t become a thing. They’re just an extreme (and fortunately rare) temperamental anomaly which the rest of us should be better at dealing with. What interests me is how resistant their prey are. And all those suckers, allies, henchmen and cultists.
I get Bill Maher. His primary focus in life is the coin. Charm his greedy ass over dinner (with a few veiled threats) and he’ll be good to go for a while longer. What I don’t get, are the incorrigible suckers who aren’t really getting much of anything out of being that way. Why do they keep sucking long after they’ve been able to observe what’s happened to so many of their fellows?