These hedge funds trade on tiny margins - your entire business model is based on that level of risk.
I’m old enough to remember when Wall Street believed that “market discipline” was a good and necessary thing. You bet wrong at the casino- you don’t get your money back.
The world would be a better place without hedge funds owning so much of the world.
I can’t think of a more fascist phrase than “improper ideology.”
We have created for the first time in all history a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests of any contradictory true thoughts…
Are these in addition to the “I-can’t-believe-these-are-really-airing” ads about how Homeland Security is coming to take you away that run almost hourly on Spanish-language TV and Youtube channels?
We were just placing orders…
As chilling as that phrase is, the fact he’s presenting at “Border Security Expo” is even worse. That means there’s enough companies and money involved that they are having conventions on this.
After days of consecutive declines on Wall Street, all three major U.S. stock indexes suddenly rose on reports that Kevin Hassett, a top Trump adviser, said the White House would consider a 90-day pause on putting tariffs on all countries but China.
Then, once it became clear that the speculation was based on a Fox News interview in which Hassett did not make that suggestion, markets quickly retreated again. The White House dismissed the report as “fake news.”
The extraordinary volatility captured more than Wall Street’s unease with Trump’s massive new tariffs. It also showed how ready speculators are to make money off the downturn.
Last Friday, Trump called on investors to buy low as markets plunged. “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH, RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!” Trump said on Truth Social.
I don’t think Trump was referring to the current downdraft in stock prices. He was referring to the coming recession.
Last week’s stock sell-off wiped out roughly $6.6 trillion in value from corporations listed on American stock exchanges. The clear message coming out of stocks, bonds, oil, and the dollar is the growing risk of a recession.
On Friday, economists at JPMorgan, America’s largest bank by assets and market capitalization, put the odds of a coming recession at 60 percent, labeling Trump’s tariffs as the “largest tax increase” since 1968, which will “fall heavily on the U.S. consumer.”
We can’t count on the Fed to take measures to avoid this recession. As I’ve said before, the Fed cannot simultaneously fight the inflationary effects of the tariffs and the recessionary effects of a slowing economy. If it lowers interest rates, it invites more inflation. If it raises interest rates, it slows the economy further.
The Fed views its main job as fighting inflation, which means interest rates will remain relatively high. As Fed chief Jerome Powell emphasized late last week, “Our obligation is to keep longer-term inflation expectations well-anchored and to make certain that a one-time increase in the price level does not become an ongoing inflation problem.”
It seems clear that Trump is planning to blame any recession on Powell (and, of course, Joe Biden). As Trump wrote on Friday “Fed Chair Jerome Powell should “CUT INTEREST RATES … AND STOP PLAYING POLITICS.”
So a recession seems likely. The American economy will contract over the next six months.
This will cause massive hardship for lower-income Americans because they’re likely to be the first ones to lose their jobs — at the same time they’re paying more for much of what they need.
But a recession is not necessarily bad for Trump and his billionaire buddies. America’s oligarchy depends on periodic recessions.
Recessions are opportunities to buy up real estate, companies, and shares of stock at bargain-basement prices. Recessions also give political cover to Trump, Musk, and Republican efforts to reduce labor and environmental standards.
Also, remember the business cycle. A recession early in Trump’s term is politically better for Trump and his Republican allies than a recession later in the term.
I believe Trump’s plan is for a recession in 2025 so that he and his billionaire buddies can ride the wave of a recovery in 2026 — just in time for the midterm elections.
I was thinking along those lines earlier, that Trump and his buddies want a recession. They saw how much wealth got created in 2008 and said “we want that, too.”
Last week thousands of federal employees who work for health agencies like the CDC, NIH and FDA lost their jobs. Selena Simmons-Duffin, health policy correspondent for NPR, reports on what kinds of jobs were cut and where the impact will be felt.
Bonus — segregation is cool again!
Selena Simmons-Duffin: This was a story that I heard about from a source of mine who works in federal contracting who said, “I just got this notice. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before in my many years of working on contracts in the federal government.” It was issued in what’s called a class deviation, which is usually used by the federal government when there’s an urgent need to adjust a lot of contracts. It included a list of clauses that would no longer be used in all federal contracts going out all across the federal government. This is massive. On that list was this clause that said, “Prohibiting segregated spaces in facilities.” The clause dates back to the '50s and '60s.
So puzzling that the recent announcements from the executive branch have failed to calm the markets:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/09/trump-cool-bond-markets-00280856
So it’s not enough that the congressional republicans won’t touch trump tariffs they want to make it official that they’re blocking congress from the congressional prerogatives of taxation/trade/tariffs
(“And with this bill [waves paper] spinelessness shall become the law of the land!” @$#!!)
