Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wall Street stocks tumble as investors fret over US economic slowdown

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 287 posts

Re: Wall Street stocks tumble as investors fret over US economic slowdown

#131

Post by chasd00 »

deepGem wrote: post #113
voidhorse wrote: post #7

This administration is either intentionally performing market manipulation or is simply incompetent. Either way, we all lose. Hope the general populous is happy with their choice, lol.

I don't know why there is this general vibe amongst technologists that they are somehow far superior in their thought process compared to the general populace. I have heard the words peasant class come up quite often in the tech circles. Why is this ? Aren't you part of the general populace ? At the risk of getting downvoted let me posit a different narrative. What if the past governments were just propping up growth…

> 35% government hiring in the last 3 years.

I've been wondering how a labor market miracle seems to happen every quarter in the face of steep interest rate increases. The Fed has been trying to engineer a recession for years now.

Re: Wall Street stocks tumble as investors fret over US economic slowdown

#132

Post by watwut »

deepGem wrote: post #113
voidhorse wrote: post #7

This administration is either intentionally performing market manipulation or is simply incompetent. Either way, we all lose. Hope the general populous is happy with their choice, lol.

I don't know why there is this general vibe amongst technologists that they are somehow far superior in their thought process compared to the general populace. I have heard the words peasant class come up quite often in the tech circles. Why is this ? Aren't you part of the general populace ? At the risk of getting downvoted let me posit a different narrative. What if the past governments were just propping up growth…

> What if the past governments were just propping up growth by increasing government spending. The facts that are coming out now point in this direction.

Nothing like that is seen now. You primary see markets reacting to tariffs and to boycotts. You see them reacting to large contracts that should be to Musk companies.

The government spending did not went down yet.

Re: Wall Street stocks tumble as investors fret over US economic slowdown

#133

Post by betaby »

deepGem wrote: post #113
voidhorse wrote: post #7

This administration is either intentionally performing market manipulation or is simply incompetent. Either way, we all lose. Hope the general populous is happy with their choice, lol.

I don't know why there is this general vibe amongst technologists that they are somehow far superior in their thought process compared to the general populace. I have heard the words peasant class come up quite often in the tech circles. Why is this ? Aren't you part of the general populace ? At the risk of getting downvoted let me posit a different narrative. What if the past governments were just propping up growth…

> Why is this ? Aren't you part of the general populace ?

In the country where I live/lived programmers are usually 1) top 25% earners 2) dis-proportionally vote liberal leaning candidates

Of course that 25% is a part 100%, however that absolutely not a random selection and very different from the "median" citizen and their problems.

Being top earner definitely skews ones views - not a novel phenomenon.

Re: Wall Street stocks tumble as investors fret over US economic slowdown

#134

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ChocolateGod wrote: post #47
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that Canada, Mexico, China and the EU haven’t banned Tesla imports yet is remarkable. I’d expect that plus additional registration charges on premium vehicles, especially Cybertrucks, within a year if this continues.

> The fact that Canada, Mexico, China and the EU haven’t banned Tesla imports yet is remarkable. Why do they need to? They can just apply tariffs and let the consumer do it without the political baggage.

> Why do they need to?

Messaging and frankly national security.

Re: Wall Street stocks tumble as investors fret over US economic slowdown

#135

Post by andrewla »

voidhorse wrote: post #7

This administration is either intentionally performing market manipulation or is simply incompetent. Either way, we all lose. Hope the general populous is happy with their choice, lol.

Is there a specific aspect of the administration's policies which you believe are causing this?

Candidates would include "actual impact of tariffs enacted" or "uncertainty about future tariffs" or the same things but with "geopolitical decisions" instead of tariffs. Or similarly "fiscal solvency" or "profile of government spending" etc. It's all well and good to make untestable post facto explanations based on vibes but I'd be interested in whether you (or other people in the thread) have specifics, so we can think about backtesting and prediction. Do you predict that these phenomena will have long-term implications or if they will self-correct?

Any assertion of the causation of a market movement is itself pretty economically tenuous. I think any of the above policies can be criticized on principled grounds; if the stock market is the arbiter of whether economic policy is correct I do not think that anyone would be happy with where this leads.

Re: Wall Street stocks tumble as investors fret over US economic slowdown

#136

Post by gadders »

hiddencost wrote: post #32
JKCalhoun wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know — depending on if it gets bad enough, last time we got a New Deal out of it.

We got a world war out of it as well

..which did more to boost the economy than the New Deal.

Re: Wall Street stocks tumble as investors fret over US economic slowdown

#137

Post by betaby »

rayiner wrote: post #62
voidhorse wrote: post #7

This administration is either intentionally performing market manipulation or is simply incompetent. Either way, we all lose. Hope the general populous is happy with their choice, lol.

The administration is trying to definancialize the economy. Everything points in that direction, from tariffs to foreign policy moves that would reduce the dollar’s status as a reserve currency.

> definancialize the economy

Not sure what does it mean in the context of the economy in general.

Re: Wall Street stocks tumble as investors fret over US economic slowdown

#138

Post by rufus_foreman »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #110
rufus_foreman wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stock market falls by 10% or more on average every 1.2 years: https://www.covenantwealthadvisors.com/post/understanding-st... . There were 5 such drops in 2020, 4 in 2022, and 1 in 2023. Somehow, the nation avoided ruin during those periods.

> There were 5 such drops in 2020, 4 in 2022, and 1 in 2023. Somehow, the nation avoided ruin during those periods Come on, look at your numbers. Recession in 2020 with 5 blips on the monitor. Last quarter we saw negative real GDP Q1 ‘22, 4 blips. 1 blip in ‘23 and none in ‘24 while the economy did so well prices overheated. Now we’re seeing 1 blip in Q1. If we annualise that to 4 blips, it puts us back in the last y…

I am looking at the numbers.

And what the numbers show is that a 10% drop happens on average every 1.2 years and is not something that needs Congress to get involved in every time it happens.

If you can't tolerate 10% drops on a regularly occurring basis, the answer is not to beg Congress for help, it is to invest in something safer with lower returns.

Re: Wall Street stocks tumble as investors fret over US economic slowdown

#139

Post by skippyboxedhero »

wahern wrote: post #55
adrr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump says he wants to start Nord Stream pipeline which means Europe will buy less American natural gas and replace it with Russian natural gas.

Such a curious dance. About 5 years ago the headline was, "President Donald Trump has signed a law that will impose sanctions on any firm that helps Russia's state-owned gas company, Gazprom, finish [Nord Stream 2]." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50875935 Of course, Trump isn't the only one to do an about-face. In 2019, Germany supported Nord Stream 2, but now opposes Russian gas imports.

It isn't a curious dance.

The story that the parent is referring to, so far, hasn't actually been attributed to anyone in the govt. A US-based consortium is trying to get it reopened, the FT weren't able to say who this person met with, one of the people thought to be involved (a German) denied meeting with anyone, and there is no actual evidence of anyone in the government saying they are working on this...it is just a story that aligned with something that the journalist thinks the US govt is doing...but was unable to produce any evidence of this.

What is possible is for NS2 to come into ownership of the US who will be able to cut it off when they choose. One of the issues with NS2, as Trump said before the war but the EU literally laughed at him for saying, was that it would make an invasion of Ukraine possible.

In reality, Russia was still paying Ukraine transit fees until earlier this year. So NS2 didn't actually make a difference because Ukraine kept transiting Russian gas through the war. It made a difference before the war because Russia thought Ukraine would cut them off, Germany didn't listen and Putin gambled based on this that Germany would keep NS2 open.

The time to do something was BEFORE the invasion...obviously.

Re: Wall Street stocks tumble as investors fret over US economic slowdown

#140

Post by bryanlarsen »

SlightlyLeftPad wrote: post #103
mattmaroon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's commonly said Presidents get 100 days in office to enact the bulk of their platform. It's an approximation, of course, but it's about then that the new-to-office approval rating bump starts to wane and Congress starts gearing up for midterms. We're about half way there. If the economy is in bad shape in May, I would not be surprised if Congress intervenes on tariffs. The fear of being primaried by MAGA loyalists…

It should be clear now that the GOP has nearly total and absolute control over the MAGA base, meaning they will take whatever spin they’ve been given by the party. In other words, the GOP can do whatever it wants or nothing at all and it will get little pushback from their voters. That’s a pretty powerful position to be in as a party.

They get little pushback from ~95% of their voters. However, the last 5% of their voters are center/center-right voters, and it's those voters that flipped the election from Biden/Harris to Trump and are presumably willing to flip back.
Post reply on HN