Category: Uncategorized Page 3 of 100

Whoa, Nelly!

•U.S. 20Y Yield: Spiked to 5.097%, up +10.7 bps intraday. •10Y Yield: Rose +11.1 bps to 4.592% •30Y Yield: Jumped +10 bps to 5.067%

This caused stocks to trend down and even the dollar. Simply put, the US is adding a lot of debt, reducing revenue by cutting taxes, and there’s wild amounts of uncertainties due to Trump’s tariff and trade policies. Bond traders are worried, Japan is reducing its Treasuries’ holdings, and everyone is looking imploringly at the Federal Reserve.

As a friend quipped, “the economy is perfectly healthy, as long as we keep it on life support.”

Which is to say the likely result is that the Federal Reserve will have to step up and start buying Treasuries again. The last time it did that was during Covid.

“Print more money to bail out elites.”

But here’s the problem. The US really is trouble. Yes, in principle the US can print as much money as it wants, like any sovereign that issues its own currency. But that’s not the issue. The question is, “What does the money being printed produce?”

QE has essentially produced richer elites, more monopolization, a poorer general population (a recent study found 60 percent of Americans cannot afford a “decent” lifestyle), and higher prices. You could also say it has funded a less competitive US that is falling further and further behind in technology.

It’s what you spend money on that matters. All QE has EVER done is make it so that current elites stay in power, keep getting richer, and are rewarded for driving Americans into the ground at very accelerating speeds.

The Fed can’t rescue the US from spending its money to do all the wrong things. That requires legislative and executive action. Those parts of the government, however, are even more fickle and stupid than the Fed, which is like saying that Mount Everest is taller than K2. Technically true, but both are so tall (stupid) that it beggars belief.

If there’s something the US can do wrong right now, it’s doing it wrong, and it if it isn’t, it’s a legacy policy they haven’t gotten around to fucking up yet.

This blog has always been free to read, but it isn’t free to produce. If you’d like to support my writing, I’d appreciate it. You can donate or subscribe by clicking on this link.

Open your wallets, donors:

At donor retreats and in pitch documents seen by The New York Times, liberal strategists are pushing the party’s rich backers to reopen their wallets for a cavalcade of projects to help Democrats, as the cliché now goes, “find the next Joe Rogan.”

Here’s the thing, Rogan could lean left (not centrist, left). Remember this?

Here’s the deal: There will never been a popular, centrist online presence which is stronger than the right-wing populist one. Centrists don’t do popular. They don’t have the instincts. It’s all about pandering to elite and PMC ideology — think Yglesias, Ezra Klein, and their ilk. They can run numbers, sure, but no one gets super worked up. No one who wasn’t going to vote Democratic no matter what loves them.

Rogan is a populist. He was willing to go left, he’s willing to go right. He’s not going to go Centrist. There will never be a centrist Joe Rogan.

This is a symptom of a larger problem.

Six months after the Democratic Party’s crushing 2024 defeat, the party’s megadonors are being inundated with overtures to spend tens of millions of dollars to develop an army of left-leaning online influencers.

If by “left-leaning” they meant left, this would be theoretically possible, but what they mean is centrist:

Democrats widely believe they must grow more creative in stoking online enthusiasm for their candidates, particularly in less outwardly political forms of media-like sports or lifestyle podcasts. Many now take it as gospel that Mr. Trump’s victory last year came in part because he cultivated an ecosystem of supporters on YouTube, TikTok and podcasts, in addition to the many Trump-friendly hosts on Fox News.

It’s been memory-holed, but there was a time when the left was stronger than the right online — vastly stronger. In the 2000’s, the days of the so-called Netroots or blogosphere, it wasn’t even close. The big names were left-wing, and the biggest right-wingers did numbers that were one-tenth of theirs.

This was widely acknowledged. There were mainstream press articles about the right-wing’s online problems.

Then Obama took power, and the word went out: If you’re a Democratic operative or donor, you should stop funding Netroots, and if you don’t, well, you will be frozen out of work as an operative, and if you’re donor, your interests will not be prioritized.

It was there, I was an insider, and I know. The combination of Google and Facebook systematically driving advertising revenues into the dirt, along with some other issues (basically related to Democratic core voters lack of any actual principles other than, “Our party is always right, the Republicans are always wrong, and the left owes us their votes and has nowhere to go”), Netroots died. It took a few years, but the job was done.

The Netroots’ mantra was, “more and better Democrats.” We fundraised for Democrats, but we also primaried Democrats we considered bad. This was unconscionsable to Democratic power brokers. We were supposed to be entirely an adjunct and not interfere in internal Democratic politics at all. So, they put Netroots down like a diseased dog.

Democrats want a cheering section. They don’t want anyone who will do anything but promote the candidates chosen by insiders.

That’s NOT how a popular online movement works. It isn’t how any of the movements which have been successful on the right worked. They all primaried Republicans they didn’t like and pushed policies they believed in — even if the party didn’t agree.

So donors can throw as much money as they like at the problem, but unless they’re willing to fund the actual left, and to understand that funding doesn’t mean they get complete control, they will fail.

It would be better to encourage already existing, left-wing populist figures and give them some funding, as opposed to trying to astroturf a new online movement.

But then, an already-existing figure might say, “Free Palestine” or “Biden is senile,” and they can’t have that.

No one will really trust an astroturfed “left-wing” figure, and they won’t grow to huge stars.

You can have effective, powerful left-wing online populists, or you can have court eunuchs who always back the party line.

Choose one.

This blog has always been free to read, but it isn’t free to produce. If you’d like to support my writing, I’d appreciate it. You can donate or subscribe by clicking on this link.

by Tony Wikrent

The (anti)Federalist Society assault on the Constitution

Trump in TROUBLE as Amy Coney Barrett SNAPS at Supreme Court (YouTube video)

[Legal AF, May 16, 2025]

[TW: Leah Litman, Michael Popok and Alex Aronson discuss the Supreme Court hearings on Friday 5-16-2025. This is ostensibly about birthright citizenship, but perhaps the more important issue is  whether US District courts can impose injunctions nationwide. I do not recall ever before having linked to a discussion of Supreme Court hearings, but these were extraordinary in showing how (anti)Republicans and conservative are attempting to obliterate two and a half centuries of legal development and reasoning in the USA republic’s experiment in self government. Recall that the (anti)Republicans and conservatives / libertarians repeatedly sought and obtained injunctions to stop implementation of Biden policies they disliked. But now that Democrats and liberals are stopping Trump policies with court injunctions, (anti)Republicans and conservatives / libertarians are arguing that only the Supreme Court can impose nationwide injunctions.

[But it’s even worse: Trump’s former personal attorney, now serving as U.S. Solicitor General, D. John Sauer, actually argued that a court injunction can apply only to the particular case and the particular litigant. (This was the point in the hearings that Justice Amy Coney Barrett sputtered “Really?” with some incredulity.) In other words, according to Sauer, if you want to prevent Trump / Musk / DOGE from disposing of 12,351 workers from an agency, you would need 12,351 injunctions for each of the 12,351 agency workers to protect all of them. As Justice Sonya Sotomayor, pointedly asked Sauer, “You’re talking about the hundreds and thousands of people who weren’t part of the judgment of the court. They would all have to file individual actions?”

Litman, Popok and Aronson also discuss how (anti)Republicans and conservatives / libertarians are pushing for laws and legal decisions that would almost totally restrict the path for class action lawsuits, the only alternative to using court injunctions to legally protect large groups of people. With this, you see the outlines of the legal assault on American law and jurisprudence that has been developed during the past half century in the seminars and conferences by the Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society, Mercatus Center, and the rest of the apparatus of plutocrat-funded conservatives and libertarian entities.

[As I have argued before, the “left’s” response to this assault on American law and jurisprudence has been crippled by the “left” rejecting the legitimacy of American history and institutions for being based on racism and misogyny. I firmly believe this is the primary reason the doctrines and ideas being developed by conservatives and libertarians were largely ignored for the past half century. The “left” has yet to deal with the question of why the plutocrats are expending so much to reinterpret and change American law and jurisprudence. What was there in place before the plutocratic assault that plutocrats want to obliterate, and the “left” has been ignoring?

[Especially frightening is that “Justices” Thomas and Alito appear to have accepted Sauer’s arguments.]

In Birthright Citizenship Case, Trump DOJ Asks Supreme Court Justices to Make Themselves Irrelevant

Garrett Epps, May 16, 2025 [Washington Monthly]

… Thursday’s argument had two aspects, which appeared and disappeared like the Katzenjammer Kids playing peekaboo throughout the nearly three hours of oral argument. The Court had formally assembled to hear the first: When is it okay for one federal district judge to block a government policy nationwide?

The second was: Has every Congress, every Court, and every administration for the past century and a half read the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause wrong, leaving Donald Trump, on his sole authority, to upend the rule that all babies born in the U.S., except the children of diplomatic families, are citizens at birth?

Though Sauer began his argument by boldly proclaiming the administration’s novel interpretation of the Amendment (it applied, he said, only to the children of free slaves in 1868 and has no effect on the children of immigrants today), he quickly moved to the administration’s real aim in bringing this “emergency docket” application before the Court.

In Sauer’s view, the case was about a broader issue than the permissibility of “universal injunctions” (federal district court orders that block new executive policies nationwide). Article III of the Constitution, which created the federal judiciary and gives it its powers, he argued, does not permit any federal court, at any level, to issue such injunctions.

This raises the question: What if the government loses in the district court—and then loses again in the Court of Appeals? What if it loses in the Supreme Court? What court can order it to stop engaging in behavior that Article III courts have found to violate the Constitution?

Without quite saying so, Sauer let it be known that the answer is: None.

If plaintiffs won in the Supreme Court, he graciously conceded, they could take the judgment to the bank—for themselves, that is. But Sotomayor asked him, once the Court decided the constitutional issue, would its order bind the government to stop the unconstitutional action against anyone?

Well . . . said Sauer . . . Not so much.

The result of such a case, Sauer said, would not be a Supreme Court order binding everyone else, but instead a Supreme Court precedent. And of course, plaintiffs still being injured by a government policy (for example, by being rendered stateless by an executive order) could cite that precedent in their cases. “If there was a decision that violated the precedent of the Court, then the affected plaintiffs could get a separate judgment,” he said.

Responded Sotomayor, “You’re talking about the hundreds and thousands of people who weren’t part of the judgment of the court. They would all have to file individual actions?”

Maybe not, said Sauer—if the case could satisfy “the rigorous criteria of Rule 23,” to be certified as a class action.

But if not, said Sotomayor, “you are claiming that not just the Supreme Court—that both the Supreme Court—and no lower court can stop an executive from universally, from violating those holdings by this Court.”….

If a president can simply wave away that much adverse authority—and then only grudgingly apply his losses in court—then the role of the federal courts will be, from now on, quite different from the one they have played for the past 100 years. American-style judicial review would become something like the Mexican writ of amparo, by which parties can get a judgment blocking an unconstitutional law only as to their individual cases; others in the same situation must go to court to get their own amparo. In the atomized world envisioned by the administration, judicial review might be called the Writ of Sisyphus. No matter how often a court pushes the rock up the hill, it will face the same task over and over if the government so chooses.

The Visionary of Trump 2.0: Russell Vought is advancing a radical ideological project decades in the making.

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by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

Congressman Casten: Trump’s Assault on the Rule of Law Is Causing Capital Flight Out of U.S. by Foreign Investors

Pam Martens and Russ Martens, May 5, 2025 [Wall Street on Parade]

Last Wednesday, Congressman Sean Casten, Democrat of Illinois, stated the following in an open meeting of the House Financial Services Committee:

“For the first time in my memory, foreign investors are not only fleeing U.S. equities but are fleeing U.S. Treasuries. I met with banks last week – banks under our jurisdiction – who said that the international community is putting a risk premium on investments in the United States because of regulatory risk and because they question whether the rule of law that they depend on to execute contracts in the United States will be executed as it will be in European markets where that capital is running to.

“So, if you need to tell yourself before you go to bed that you’re a deficit buster, fine, but just acknowledge you’re lying. This is not about deficit busting. This is about making rich people richer, and that’s it.”

Has Asia just taken a step away from the US dollar?

Alice Li, 7 May 2025 [South China Morning Post]

Asia’s largest economies have broken new ground by approving an emergency financing tool using the yuan and other local currencies

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Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – May 4, 2025

by Tony Wikrent

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

‘We’re Not Stopping’: Trump Border Czar Vows to Ignore Judges

[The Daily Beast, via MSN 03-18-2025]

Judges Who Rule Against Trump Become Target of New MAGA War

Malcolm Ferguson, May 2, 2025 [The New Republic]

At least 11 federal judges and their families have been threatened and harassed since they ruled against President Trump on issues of deportations, federal funding, and his war on “wokeness.”

The judges, under anonymity, told Reuters that they had received multiple intimidating calls and emails to their homes and offices. Some have been subject to the disturbing “pizza box” method, in which antagonists will anonymously send a pizza to the home of a judge or their relatives just to show that they know where they live.

This is only compounded by the countless attacks and doxxing attempts that people like Laura Loomer and Elon Musk have made on X. When U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled against Trump’s illegal deportation of 137 men under the Alien Enemies Act in March, Loomer and Musk shared photos of his daughter, while their army of keyboard warriors called for the execution or arrest of Boasberg and the rest of his family. Loomer did the same to Judge John McConnell after he blocked Trump from freezing education grants, posting a picture of his daughter who had worked for the Education Department. Loomer’s post conveniently omitted that McConnell’s daughter left the department before Trump was even inaugurated….

You Already Knew He’s The WORST President Ever— Did You Also Know He’s The Most Blatantly Corrupt?

Howie Klein, April 26, 2025 [downwithtyranny.com]

…On Thursday, Drew Harwell and Jeremy Merrill reported that shady characters have poured tens of millions of dollars into Trump’s meme coin since he advertised on Wednesday that top purchasers could join him for an “intimate private dinner” next month. “The holders of 27 crypto wallets have each acquired more than 100,000 $TRUMP coins, stakes worth about a million dollars each, since noon on Wednesday, when the team announced that the 220 top coin holders would be rewarded with a ‘night to remember’ on May 22 at the president’s Trump National Golf Club outside Washington. Crypto wallets are generally anonymous, making it challenging to identify who the purchasers were.”

They also advertised something so blatantly illegal that they partially removed it, no doubt at the insistence of White House lawyers: an offer of a tour of the White House for the 25 top $TRUMP coins purchasers. Now they’re just offering a tour but with no indication of what. This idea of offering direct presidential access to those who pay into a project benefiting the Trump personal bottom line would be enough to get him impeached if House Republicans weren’t so wedded to enabling his criminality. Not one House Republican has spoken out about this.

Harwell and Merrill wrote that “the biggest buyer acquired 2 million coins worth about $24 million.” That’s a substantial bribe, especially coming from a criminal in China who desperately needs a pardon from Trump. “Taken together, the 27 wallets acquired more than 8 million $TRUMP coins, worth about $100 million as of Thursday afternoon…

How Trump Accidentally Sabotaged His Own Case Against Abrego Garcia

Greg Sargent, May 3, 2025 [The New Republic]

He has now said it right out in the open—not once but twice. In two major interviews, President Donald Trump openly declared that he has the power to bring the wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States. And on both occasions, Trump said straight out that he is not doing so because administration lawyers have told him he doesn’t have to—or that he shouldn’t.

This has been widely seen as an admission that Trump is defying the Supreme Court, which has directed the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return. Yes, it is that. But these two moments are also their own story. They offer a unique glimpse into the deep rot of bad faith infesting Trump and Stephen Miller’s broader project to expand the president’s removal powers into something extraordinarily vast and entirely unaccountable….

Men DOGEbags at Work

‘There’s Never Been a More Blatant Corporate Incursion Into the Public Sector Than DOGE’ 

[FAIR, via Naked Capitalism 05-02-2025]

Jeff Hauser is the executive director of the Revolving Door Project:

“We, in general, track corporate influence in politics, with a particular focus on the executive branch. And there has never been a more blatant corporate incursion into the public sector than DOGE, which reflects the privatization of our domestic policy, and increasingly our foreign policy as well, by people who are not even bothering to give up any of their private sector ties, and actually join the government for a few years—which we’re not fans of; we believe in career civil servants. But these people aren’t even doing that much. They’re just continuing to run, say, Tesla and SpaceX while running large swaths of the government, and never having been put before the Senate for nomination.”

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by Tony Wikrent

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

‘We’re Not Stopping’: Trump Border Czar Vows to Ignore Judges

[The Daily Beast, via MSN 03-18-2025]

Prepared to Return Abrego Garcia—Until Trump Intervened

Malcolm Ferguson, April 25, 2025 [The New Republic]

Some officials in the Trump administration tried to bring back Kilmar Abregoa Garcia just days after he was deported, but the president shut them down.

Since Abrego Garcia was unlawfully deported last month due to an administrative error, the White House has vehemently maintained that it will not try to return him to the United States. But a report in The Atlantic Friday revealed that in the days after Abrego Garcia’s deportation, some officials did in fact try to bring him home.

A lawsuit from Abrego Garcia’s family reportedly “sparked urgent conversations among attorneys at the Departments of State, Justice, and Homeland Security,” and concern about the lack of evidence behind Trump’s claims that Abrego Garcia was part of MS-13, sources told The Atlantic.

The officials floated plans for the father of three’s return and sought ways to protect his safety while he was detained in El Salvador’s notorious megaprison, CECOT. But at the same time, backlash against the administration’s response (or lack thereof) took off, prompting the White House to change course entirely. Abrego Garcia’s case was no longer an “administrative error” but now the justified deportation of a “foreign terrorist” and MS-13 member—an evidenceless story Trump is now using to defend his unlawful deportation efforts as a whole.

“Abrego Garcia’s deportation became far more than just the case of one man; it developed into a measure of whether Donald Trump’s administration can send people—citizens or not—to foreign prisons without due process,” The Atlantic’s Nick Miroff wrote.

Trump Makes Alarming Confession on Wrongly Deported Immigrant

Malcolm Ferguson, April 25, 2025 [The New Republic]

Donald Trump is openly admitting his defiance of the Supreme Court on Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

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