You’re on fire these days, Don. I tried to tell a TDS pickleball player last Friday that exact thing-it’s not about tariffs, it’s about bringing companies and manufacturers home. “But the market! My IRA!” She wailed. I said Wall Street is a casino. The house always wins. It will be back up on Monday, which it was. Wall Street was the vehicle that took out all the storefronts on Main Street. I’m sticking with that guy who was in the cab of the trash truck last year. He’s heading to Wall Street to pick up the garbage.
I don't think the market is a casino, but it can seem that way, yes. The important point is that markets go up, markets go down. If you can't afford, financially or mentally, a market correction, you shouldn't be in the stock market.
And again I will remind everyone with a retirement plan—for every seller this is a buyer. The sells are matched with buys. If you panic and sell out at the bottom then you just handed a big portion of your portfolio to the confident buyer who understands that you buy when everyone else is overcome with fear.
Most folks should just make their contributions to the 401k and then forget it. If you do not understand how to do your own research and get upset when the market goes through regular “corrections” you just shouldn’t be involved at all in making the decisions.
Michael Walsh wrote, “To begin, what it’s not about is tariffs. What it is about is repatriating American manufacturing and thereby restoring Great Power status to the U.S.…..”
I think it’s not just bringing back production and making things of all kinds in the US. I believe it’s about ending the expectation since WWII that America is the equivalent of the Bank of Mom n Dad and we will forever feel guilty about having imagination, drive and self direction. Disparate tariffs, foreign “aid,” NGO “grants,” - all welfare and shakedown payments.
If countries don’t want to be colonized with American money they can stop acting like pampered pets asking for treats.
TDS is a form of dementia as exemplified by FJB who was put forward as the leader of the evil party. But despite Sleepy Joe now being relegated to a has been, his party continues in its criminally demented opposition to things like controlled borders, eliminating the fraud and abuse brought on by the Marxist/Democrat/Hate America Party, and by opposing Trump’s crusade to make America Great Again. The only cure is success of DJT’s policies. Keep the faith and be strong despite the constant din of the anti-American press.
TRUMP: “We're going to be announcing very shortly a major tariff on pharmaceuticals. When they hear that, they will leave China … and they're going to be opening up their plants all over the place in our country.” Big Pharma on the run. This is what winning feels like..
I lived in California when California was the place to be. We made stuff… cars, steel, airplanes…. all kinds of stuff. SF was a neat place to go… some sections were funky but I liked visiting the place.
Now what is made in Clownifornia? Homelessness, drug addiction and real stupid laws and rules that prevent anything being done.
Trump is trying to make America great again by making stuff in America again.
Oh boy do I remember when California was a destination! "And the girls all get so tanned". There were songs about it and many people were lured to the land of "Milk and Honey". The problem was all the Hippies moved out there and turned it into the state of "Sex and drugs and rock and roll." Same thing happened to my home state of Maine. The hippies from New York and Boston came there as said, "OH wow man, what a cool place". So they settled in smoked pot, went on welfare and turned it into a mess.
Tedious is exactly right! The 10% exasperating with the 10% ... "Oh no, my unjustified paper gains have been cut down slightly." The talking heads are jumping into the deep end of the stupid pool like usual with all this gnashing of teeth. Fox is the worst this morning. "If the stock market (of which 10% of Americans own 86%) doesn't return to it's bloated valuation there's going to be a blue wave in the mid terms!" Bull hockey!
A column that references Doris Day and Bloodrock covers a lot of territory. (Last time I heard Bloodrock’s DOA was on a portable 8-track while I was working as a lifeguard at an almost empty pool)
“Walsh cut to the chase: “Which would you prefer: plastic junk from China under free trade or helping your neighbor down the street to keep his job by buying American? This is Trump’s whole point. Wall Street is not America.”
But what Walsh gets wrong in his statement is that our trade deals with China, along with just about every other country in the world are anything but “free”, AND heavily weighted in those other country’s favor. The mythology that has existed since the creation of NAFTA has been that we’ve been operating on a “free trade” basis, which has never been true, and is now being exposed by Trump to have been a bald-faced lie, and always to the utter detriment of the USA.
But it’s even worse than that. There are hundreds upon hundreds of non-tariff trade barriers which have been in set up by other countries such as those in Europe and Australia as well, which have enabled them to ban the import of hundreds of individual US goods because they don’t meet their mostly “climate-change-green” or “political policy cooked up for the day” standards. So when
people like Ursula von der Leyen opens with an offer to drop all tariffs on “industrial goods” if the United States promises to do the same, Trump is going to retort, “that’s a start. But I want you to get rid of these other non-tariff barriers, too, or no deal.”
That accomplishes way more than just leveling the tariff playing field. It begins the mass disassembly, right down to the micro level, of the cocked up green madness, amongst other insanity, that has inflicted untold economic misery and woe upon the world’s economies.
Trumps tariffs aren’t just about the money. They are about restoring sanity and common sense back into the world.
The deals being negotiated cover more than tariffs. Aid, recompense for defense (in the case of South Korea), trade barriers, etc.
Trump is going bigly. And now he has 70+ countries stacked up on the negotiating runway, so he can just punch the CCP harder and pause most of the tariffs (steel, aluminum etc still in place and 10% remains.
Plus at $2B/day this is a good offset to the costs of servicing federal debt.
Meanwhile market is rebounding bigly. And the key treasury refi auction this am west well.
Having any of these economic geniuses given any thought about the fact that the health of Wall Street is contingent on the health of America? FJB and his puppet masters, had America on the road to ruin. If they had a few more years in power, they just might have had their dream come true of destroying us from within. Thank God that we now have someone at the helm who is looking out for all Americans not just the globalist one percenters.
We are now knee deep into the fight with China - Grassley's bill, while having no chance, divides and weakens us as this fight reaches its zenith. China has been dumping US Treasuries in huge chunks, trying to spook the bond market and force a liquidity crisis. It was a major player in the market sell off yesterday afternoon. Supposedly they are buying gold with all the cash, which if Trump is successful will crater in price. We are playing tit for tat with China on tariffs - I am assuming we will meet the latest China hike with one of our own.
Remember, the trade war always works against the player with the positive trade balance. In this case - China. Reports are beginning to surface on the interweb that Chinese ports are grinding to a halt, and if true, the youth unemployment issue in China is about to get worse. The last US monthly jobs report on the other hand was more positive than we have seen in years.
I'd be interested if these tariff negotiations with other countries doesn't take a bit of an anti-China slant. China was brought into the WTO. It doesn't mean a concerted effort couldn't in essence take them out of it. Hang on everybody, the bumpiness is about to increase. The payoff could be glorious beyond imagination.
I was talking to friend this morning. We both keep up as best we can with the current situation. There are rumors circulating that the polit bureau isn't happy with the economic situation in China and Chairman Xi, could be looking at being deposed. What my friend and I are thinking is perhaps they will remove Xi and then as a face saving measure his replacement says, "Oh gee yeah, Xi was FUBAR and we are here to negotiate our way back in the the good graces of the USA. Just two old guys thinking, hoping the China situation will cool down.
We have paused the balancing tariffs for 90 days and the reciprocal tariffs have been immediately lowered down to 10% if I read the statement correctly.
We have moved China tariffs up to 125% from 104% immediately. It looks like the China gambit is in full swing.
Always a great history lesson from Surber...with perspective and humor.
"Which would you prefer: plastic junk from China under free trade or helping your neighbor down the street to keep his job by buying American?"
We binged on products of Chinese slave labor for more than 30 years. Now is a good time to be more refined and appreciate quality products of a free people.
Don's mentioning of Jamie Dimon particularly caught my eye today. Several months ago, one of the commenters here recommended the book "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis, about the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2008, which occurred along with the transfer of power from Bush to Obama. I had followed this in the news when it happened, but never read the book. When I did read the book about 5 months ago, I was surprised to realize that quite a few of the big names in this debacle back then are STILL in very prominent finance positions TODAY.
Jamie Dimon has been the CEO of JP Morgan since 2006--he shared responsibility for that subprime debacle, but never even lost his position, and is still CEO today. As were many others. And today, as Don says, Jamie Dimon bought into ESG, DEI, etc., and has been prominent on the Davos scene.
This is the result when there are no consequences, for failed leaders and poorly performing organizations. Pair this with the Federalist article CFP has up today on the stack-- about the increase in violent assassination rhetoric on the Left, and the failure of any Democratic leader to rebuke it.
There is a whole layer of prominent people in America today who have never had to pay any consequences for their mistakes and destructions. These finance and government people all stupidly cooperated with the rise of the Marxist Left. And to think that there could be even a teeny chance that Shelley Moore Capito could be re-elected to the Senate next year! There is not a specific scandal associated with Capito, but she has been a silent and passive RINO cooperator with everything that has gone wrong in government in the past few decades.
It is time for a "changing of the guard" across our whole society--they have had their day, and did not do well. And if we could finally get some consequences to be felt, it would really propel the US forward.
By serious, heavy-duty continued exposure of the damage they do; money tracing; crime tracing.
Some, I hope, would just decide to step aside / retire. Like Shelley Moore Capito And Jamie Dimon. He has been in it all up to his eyebrows now for decades. He looks very tired. Doesn't he have plenty of money now? Why not retire and enjoy the rest of his life. If they are not retiring, there are only two reasons: (1) this has become their identity and it gives them a sense of self-value to have "important positions", and they would feel like a nobody if they stepped away; OR (2) they are compromised and their behind-the-scenes "handlers" refuse to allow them to retire.
The upswing yesterday, albeit short lived, should be an indication that when the deals are struck and the countries fall in line with fairness the retirement accounts will rebound bigly. This is about ending china's manufacturing dominance and also bringing some manufacturing back to the USofA. China has a losing hand and is pushing all in. Trump knows this and so do we. china is over and my only fear is that they lash out and attack Taiwan kicking off a military problem.
Yeah, the Taiwan thing concerns me as well. However, I really think Trump has this all mapped out. I really do. I just hope our military is up to the task and isn't back in the barracks painting their nails.
I am certain that is on their table, as they are in an existential crisis right now. But what they’re also trying to calculate is whether such a move might take them down in the process. It would be an all or nothing gambit.
Hence, their going to the WTO to complain about Trump’s efforts to level the playing field, which is really just a move to buy some time, time they don’t have if they refuse to budge.
Also in their calculations must be the fact of knowing Trump would not hesitate to throw the kitchen sink at them if they went after Taiwan. Such a move might even be welcomed by him, possibly sending China back into the dark ages.
It’s a frightening thing to contemplate, but even in that scenario, Trump still holds all the cards.
If China does attack Taiwan, to distract us from the Tariff Campaign, we should not take the bait. Going to war over Taiwan makes no sense and is not worth the risk it entails.
But this kind of brinksmanship could tip over into nuclear war. Although it would be repulsive to watch, if China takes over Taiwan, I think that actually this would backfire, because there are alot of people used to freedom in Taiwan, and even if militarily overcome, the population of Taiwan would hamstring and undercut China on everything.
China could choke on Taiwan. Yes, they could stifle the population there with suppression, but that would simultaneously "kill the goose that lays the golden egg". The US wouldn't need to bring China down--China would have brought its own self down.
You’re making my point. In their calculations whether to take Taiwan, they have to confront the ultimate question: will we win? And by every metric the answer to that is no.
They could win militarily, unless we elevate it to a nuclear level, which no one wins. I would rather they failed because Taiwan turns out to be "indigestible".
You’re on fire these days, Don. I tried to tell a TDS pickleball player last Friday that exact thing-it’s not about tariffs, it’s about bringing companies and manufacturers home. “But the market! My IRA!” She wailed. I said Wall Street is a casino. The house always wins. It will be back up on Monday, which it was. Wall Street was the vehicle that took out all the storefronts on Main Street. I’m sticking with that guy who was in the cab of the trash truck last year. He’s heading to Wall Street to pick up the garbage.
I don't think the market is a casino, but it can seem that way, yes. The important point is that markets go up, markets go down. If you can't afford, financially or mentally, a market correction, you shouldn't be in the stock market.
You haven’t lost until you sell. Don’t sell
And again I will remind everyone with a retirement plan—for every seller this is a buyer. The sells are matched with buys. If you panic and sell out at the bottom then you just handed a big portion of your portfolio to the confident buyer who understands that you buy when everyone else is overcome with fear.
Most folks should just make their contributions to the 401k and then forget it. If you do not understand how to do your own research and get upset when the market goes through regular “corrections” you just shouldn’t be involved at all in making the decisions.
I’m buying Tesla today. Go Elon!!
Now is the time to buy silver. Just sayin'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkruJpYqWhs
Now is the time to buy silver. Just sayin'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkruJpYqWhs
👏👍💯🎯🇺🇸
04/09/25: Beautifully said. Thank you.
Michael Walsh wrote, “To begin, what it’s not about is tariffs. What it is about is repatriating American manufacturing and thereby restoring Great Power status to the U.S.…..”
I think it’s not just bringing back production and making things of all kinds in the US. I believe it’s about ending the expectation since WWII that America is the equivalent of the Bank of Mom n Dad and we will forever feel guilty about having imagination, drive and self direction. Disparate tariffs, foreign “aid,” NGO “grants,” - all welfare and shakedown payments.
If countries don’t want to be colonized with American money they can stop acting like pampered pets asking for treats.
💯
Ha ha. "pampered pets asking for treats." Exactly. Perfect.
Your comments are always spot on. Tell John H. I saidn "Hi."
👍
You need another choice for the poll - Musk & Trump are stealing from oue Social Security!
Got news fo ya, Congress already did that decades ago.
The boomer gals like to scream that one
TDS is a form of dementia as exemplified by FJB who was put forward as the leader of the evil party. But despite Sleepy Joe now being relegated to a has been, his party continues in its criminally demented opposition to things like controlled borders, eliminating the fraud and abuse brought on by the Marxist/Democrat/Hate America Party, and by opposing Trump’s crusade to make America Great Again. The only cure is success of DJT’s policies. Keep the faith and be strong despite the constant din of the anti-American press.
That is a major key to sucess. Pick a course of action, stick to it and don't worry. God has this.
TRUMP: “We're going to be announcing very shortly a major tariff on pharmaceuticals. When they hear that, they will leave China … and they're going to be opening up their plants all over the place in our country.” Big Pharma on the run. This is what winning feels like..
Oooh, be still my beating heart.
I lived in California when California was the place to be. We made stuff… cars, steel, airplanes…. all kinds of stuff. SF was a neat place to go… some sections were funky but I liked visiting the place.
Now what is made in Clownifornia? Homelessness, drug addiction and real stupid laws and rules that prevent anything being done.
Trump is trying to make America great again by making stuff in America again.
It’s that simple.
Oh boy do I remember when California was a destination! "And the girls all get so tanned". There were songs about it and many people were lured to the land of "Milk and Honey". The problem was all the Hippies moved out there and turned it into the state of "Sex and drugs and rock and roll." Same thing happened to my home state of Maine. The hippies from New York and Boston came there as said, "OH wow man, what a cool place". So they settled in smoked pot, went on welfare and turned it into a mess.
Tedious is exactly right! The 10% exasperating with the 10% ... "Oh no, my unjustified paper gains have been cut down slightly." The talking heads are jumping into the deep end of the stupid pool like usual with all this gnashing of teeth. Fox is the worst this morning. "If the stock market (of which 10% of Americans own 86%) doesn't return to it's bloated valuation there's going to be a blue wave in the mid terms!" Bull hockey!
A column that references Doris Day and Bloodrock covers a lot of territory. (Last time I heard Bloodrock’s DOA was on a portable 8-track while I was working as a lifeguard at an almost empty pool)
Did you ever have a run-in with CornPop? Heard he was a bad dude that frequented pools.
It was a pool at a church camp so no Corn Pop types, but now that I think about there was plenty of room to hide a body.
Don is just like Nelson DeMille. They always send me to the dictionary. Case in point opacity. 🧐
D.O.A. on my favorites playlist. No never owned an 8 track.
A great quip from Oscar Levant, "I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin."
Reminds me Truman Capote on Marilyn in a gold lamé dress…thar’s hills in them thar gold…
“Walsh cut to the chase: “Which would you prefer: plastic junk from China under free trade or helping your neighbor down the street to keep his job by buying American? This is Trump’s whole point. Wall Street is not America.”
But what Walsh gets wrong in his statement is that our trade deals with China, along with just about every other country in the world are anything but “free”, AND heavily weighted in those other country’s favor. The mythology that has existed since the creation of NAFTA has been that we’ve been operating on a “free trade” basis, which has never been true, and is now being exposed by Trump to have been a bald-faced lie, and always to the utter detriment of the USA.
But it’s even worse than that. There are hundreds upon hundreds of non-tariff trade barriers which have been in set up by other countries such as those in Europe and Australia as well, which have enabled them to ban the import of hundreds of individual US goods because they don’t meet their mostly “climate-change-green” or “political policy cooked up for the day” standards. So when
people like Ursula von der Leyen opens with an offer to drop all tariffs on “industrial goods” if the United States promises to do the same, Trump is going to retort, “that’s a start. But I want you to get rid of these other non-tariff barriers, too, or no deal.”
That accomplishes way more than just leveling the tariff playing field. It begins the mass disassembly, right down to the micro level, of the cocked up green madness, amongst other insanity, that has inflicted untold economic misery and woe upon the world’s economies.
Trumps tariffs aren’t just about the money. They are about restoring sanity and common sense back into the world.
The deals being negotiated cover more than tariffs. Aid, recompense for defense (in the case of South Korea), trade barriers, etc.
Trump is going bigly. And now he has 70+ countries stacked up on the negotiating runway, so he can just punch the CCP harder and pause most of the tariffs (steel, aluminum etc still in place and 10% remains.
Plus at $2B/day this is a good offset to the costs of servicing federal debt.
Meanwhile market is rebounding bigly. And the key treasury refi auction this am west well.
I read Trump has already turned the EU down. Perhaps he is looking at the “green issues” too. The guy really knows his stuff.
Having any of these economic geniuses given any thought about the fact that the health of Wall Street is contingent on the health of America? FJB and his puppet masters, had America on the road to ruin. If they had a few more years in power, they just might have had their dream come true of destroying us from within. Thank God that we now have someone at the helm who is looking out for all Americans not just the globalist one percenters.
👍
We are now knee deep into the fight with China - Grassley's bill, while having no chance, divides and weakens us as this fight reaches its zenith. China has been dumping US Treasuries in huge chunks, trying to spook the bond market and force a liquidity crisis. It was a major player in the market sell off yesterday afternoon. Supposedly they are buying gold with all the cash, which if Trump is successful will crater in price. We are playing tit for tat with China on tariffs - I am assuming we will meet the latest China hike with one of our own.
Remember, the trade war always works against the player with the positive trade balance. In this case - China. Reports are beginning to surface on the interweb that Chinese ports are grinding to a halt, and if true, the youth unemployment issue in China is about to get worse. The last US monthly jobs report on the other hand was more positive than we have seen in years.
I'd be interested if these tariff negotiations with other countries doesn't take a bit of an anti-China slant. China was brought into the WTO. It doesn't mean a concerted effort couldn't in essence take them out of it. Hang on everybody, the bumpiness is about to increase. The payoff could be glorious beyond imagination.
I was talking to friend this morning. We both keep up as best we can with the current situation. There are rumors circulating that the polit bureau isn't happy with the economic situation in China and Chairman Xi, could be looking at being deposed. What my friend and I are thinking is perhaps they will remove Xi and then as a face saving measure his replacement says, "Oh gee yeah, Xi was FUBAR and we are here to negotiate our way back in the the good graces of the USA. Just two old guys thinking, hoping the China situation will cool down.
We have paused the balancing tariffs for 90 days and the reciprocal tariffs have been immediately lowered down to 10% if I read the statement correctly.
We have moved China tariffs up to 125% from 104% immediately. It looks like the China gambit is in full swing.
Great info. Thanks.
A Patriot: “Make no mistake: America will not be made great again by those who are content to manage our decline,” he warned.
Always a great history lesson from Surber...with perspective and humor.
"Which would you prefer: plastic junk from China under free trade or helping your neighbor down the street to keep his job by buying American?"
We binged on products of Chinese slave labor for more than 30 years. Now is a good time to be more refined and appreciate quality products of a free people.
Don's mentioning of Jamie Dimon particularly caught my eye today. Several months ago, one of the commenters here recommended the book "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis, about the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2008, which occurred along with the transfer of power from Bush to Obama. I had followed this in the news when it happened, but never read the book. When I did read the book about 5 months ago, I was surprised to realize that quite a few of the big names in this debacle back then are STILL in very prominent finance positions TODAY.
Jamie Dimon has been the CEO of JP Morgan since 2006--he shared responsibility for that subprime debacle, but never even lost his position, and is still CEO today. As were many others. And today, as Don says, Jamie Dimon bought into ESG, DEI, etc., and has been prominent on the Davos scene.
This is the result when there are no consequences, for failed leaders and poorly performing organizations. Pair this with the Federalist article CFP has up today on the stack-- about the increase in violent assassination rhetoric on the Left, and the failure of any Democratic leader to rebuke it.
There is a whole layer of prominent people in America today who have never had to pay any consequences for their mistakes and destructions. These finance and government people all stupidly cooperated with the rise of the Marxist Left. And to think that there could be even a teeny chance that Shelley Moore Capito could be re-elected to the Senate next year! There is not a specific scandal associated with Capito, but she has been a silent and passive RINO cooperator with everything that has gone wrong in government in the past few decades.
It is time for a "changing of the guard" across our whole society--they have had their day, and did not do well. And if we could finally get some consequences to be felt, it would really propel the US forward.
You’re not wrong but how do you get rid of Jamie Dimon, Bill Gates, George and Alex Soros, and all the rest of the WEF?
By serious, heavy-duty continued exposure of the damage they do; money tracing; crime tracing.
Some, I hope, would just decide to step aside / retire. Like Shelley Moore Capito And Jamie Dimon. He has been in it all up to his eyebrows now for decades. He looks very tired. Doesn't he have plenty of money now? Why not retire and enjoy the rest of his life. If they are not retiring, there are only two reasons: (1) this has become their identity and it gives them a sense of self-value to have "important positions", and they would feel like a nobody if they stepped away; OR (2) they are compromised and their behind-the-scenes "handlers" refuse to allow them to retire.
The upswing yesterday, albeit short lived, should be an indication that when the deals are struck and the countries fall in line with fairness the retirement accounts will rebound bigly. This is about ending china's manufacturing dominance and also bringing some manufacturing back to the USofA. China has a losing hand and is pushing all in. Trump knows this and so do we. china is over and my only fear is that they lash out and attack Taiwan kicking off a military problem.
Yeah, the Taiwan thing concerns me as well. However, I really think Trump has this all mapped out. I really do. I just hope our military is up to the task and isn't back in the barracks painting their nails.
I am certain that is on their table, as they are in an existential crisis right now. But what they’re also trying to calculate is whether such a move might take them down in the process. It would be an all or nothing gambit.
Hence, their going to the WTO to complain about Trump’s efforts to level the playing field, which is really just a move to buy some time, time they don’t have if they refuse to budge.
Also in their calculations must be the fact of knowing Trump would not hesitate to throw the kitchen sink at them if they went after Taiwan. Such a move might even be welcomed by him, possibly sending China back into the dark ages.
It’s a frightening thing to contemplate, but even in that scenario, Trump still holds all the cards.
If China does attack Taiwan, to distract us from the Tariff Campaign, we should not take the bait. Going to war over Taiwan makes no sense and is not worth the risk it entails.
But it would be an opportunity for the US to utterly cripple China for decades.
If they go that route it will be an admission they are beyond desperate, but also a move they absolutely cannot afford to lose.
As Clint Eastwood would say, “China, do you feel lucky?”
But this kind of brinksmanship could tip over into nuclear war. Although it would be repulsive to watch, if China takes over Taiwan, I think that actually this would backfire, because there are alot of people used to freedom in Taiwan, and even if militarily overcome, the population of Taiwan would hamstring and undercut China on everything.
China could choke on Taiwan. Yes, they could stifle the population there with suppression, but that would simultaneously "kill the goose that lays the golden egg". The US wouldn't need to bring China down--China would have brought its own self down.
You’re making my point. In their calculations whether to take Taiwan, they have to confront the ultimate question: will we win? And by every metric the answer to that is no.
They could win militarily, unless we elevate it to a nuclear level, which no one wins. I would rather they failed because Taiwan turns out to be "indigestible".
Why do you believe they could win militarily? That is by no means a given, and, even if it were true, at what cost?
They also are most assuredly considering the fact that Trump is now our Commander in Chief. And THAT fact alone provides a massive deterrent.
Taiwan has some rare earth depsits China wants.