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American Disruption

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Re: American Disruption

#131

Post by flakiness »

jacobgkau wrote: post #116
mullingitover wrote: post #100

Surprised there isn't mention that a big part of the tariff strategy is to throw the equity markets into chaos in an effort to drive down the price of the 10-year bond. There was a panic last night because the 10 year bond price started going up as stocks were trading down, which is not supposed to happen. It would be truly disruptive if the whole game gets blown up by a lack of buyers for US debt.

> the 10 year bond price started going up as stocks were trading down, Correct me if I'm wrong, but the abnormal thing happening was that treasury yields were going up, which meant that prices were going down (due to lack of buyers, as you said), right?

+1

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/09/dramatic-se...

> The yield – or interest rate – on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury bond rose to 4.516% on Wednesday before slipping back to 4.451%, up 0.14 percentage points on the day.

Re: American Disruption

#132

Post by pstuart »

jhanschoo wrote: post #129
morsecodist wrote: post #13

Talking about the merits of these tariffs kind of misses the point. The person who wrote this article is very smart. I am sure they are smarter than I am. He has produced a pretty solid analysis of trade policy. But in articles like this people ascribe their own motivations and goals to the tariffs that aren't actually there. Buried in this article is the assumption that the motivation of tariffs and trade policy is…

Indeed, Paul Krugman has been doing the rounds on podcasts recently and he seems to think that Trump is doing tariffs and trying to eliminate trade imbalances because he has always had that idea of doing tariffs and thought that trade deficits were being taken advantage of, and the talk about a greater strategy are post-hoc rationalizations. Sometimes a simple person has a simple reason divorced from complicated real…

Trump thinks he can replace income taxes with tariffs: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/20/economy/trump-abolish-irs/ind...

Punishing other countries is just a bonus.

Re: American Disruption

#133

Post by lamp_book »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #26
morsecodist wrote: post #13

Talking about the merits of these tariffs kind of misses the point. The person who wrote this article is very smart. I am sure they are smarter than I am. He has produced a pretty solid analysis of trade policy. But in articles like this people ascribe their own motivations and goals to the tariffs that aren't actually there. Buried in this article is the assumption that the motivation of tariffs and trade policy is…

It reminds me a lot of Brexit. Politicians in the south of the country were warning that the financial sector (predominantly in London) would loose 100,000 jobs and people in the north were saying "oh, that sounds pretty good". A few years later when that didn't happen to that extent I remember an interview with someone from a fishing port which lost a lot of business that previously went to Europe. They were complai…

MAGA is just hate doctrine, rooted in propaganda not a functional worldview. And the hate is primarily reserved for the educated professional class - not even the truly wealthy elites.

Re: American Disruption

#134

Post by empath75 »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #4

Sure, but aren't we past rational debate on this point? Not only are the new trade policies irrational, it's quite possible that they're intentionally irrational as a bargaining or maneuvering tactic. We're not going to reason or argue our way out of this one. As I commented yesterday, there's a playbook for reshoring that's being totally ignored: First you invite industry to reshore via subsidies and preferential ac…

I think you actually _should_ assume that he's acting rationally, just that his motivations aren't aligned with what you think they should be. Trump has a mafia mentality, and the purpose of the tariffs has absolutely nothing to do with policy and everything to do with control. He wants to have a guillotine hanging over the head of every country and corporation that he can use at will, so that every CEO has to come to him and bend the knee, so he can grant them an exemption on a case by case basis in return for personal loyalty to _him_.

There is a reason that the power to tax resides in congress, and it's specifically to prevent that. They've just abdicated their role and here we are with a king instead of a president.

Re: American Disruption

#135

Post by torginus »

My 2 cents in wake of recent news:

It's all a scam, Trump is literally stirring the pot to manipulate the stock market and to enrich his fellow billionaires. This is the same man that started his presidency with a crypto rugpull less than 6 months ago. No wonder DOGE went so hard after every stock market regulatory agency so hard.

Re: American Disruption

#136

Post by dehrmann »

anon84873628 wrote: post #103
arcbyte wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First you invite industry to reshore via subsidies and preferential access to government contracts. If necessary, the government must directly invest in new firms. Summarized: the government gives money to companies, or more charitable "invests". I would totally agree with you on this path forward BUT FOR the fact that thos nation is dead broke. Completely dead broke. There's no responsible money to do this with. N…

It's not though. The US has been getting compensated for its military investment all around the world. The explicit architecture of the petrodollar system is that the US will protect international shipping, and in return all petroleum contracts will be priced and executed in dollars. This makes the USD the international reserve currency, and every country participating in international trade needs to hold USD. How ca…

> that the US will protect international shipping, and in return all petroleum contracts will be priced and executed in dollars

People say this, but the dollar is free-floating against other currencies and oil is priced on (OPEC-manipulated) supply and demand, so it seems like an accounting fiction. Like, we could price oil in pork belly futures.

Re: American Disruption

#137

Post by _DeadFred_ »

mullingitover wrote: post #100

Surprised there isn't mention that a big part of the tariff strategy is to throw the equity markets into chaos in an effort to drive down the price of the 10-year bond. There was a panic last night because the 10 year bond price started going up as stocks were trading down, which is not supposed to happen. It would be truly disruptive if the whole game gets blown up by a lack of buyers for US debt.

Trump explained his tariff idea to Oprah in previous century. But sure, it's a dynamic plan in response to a 2025 bond sale.

Re: American Disruption

#138

Post by stronglikedan »

diego_moita wrote: post #121

I find amusing that people still want to rationally discuss this thing. What the U.S. is doing is just Brexit 2.0. If reason didn't work with Brexit, why would it work with this? The best each one of us can do is to isolate ourselves from the disaster.

> I find amusing that people still want to rationally discuss this thing.

You certainly seem to practice what you preach, lol

> Brexit 2.0

Apples to oranges

> isolate ourselves from the disaster

The one that will never come? Go ahead, more for us "rational" folks.

Re: American Disruption

#139

Post by gopher_space »

acdha wrote: post #86
renewiltord wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes sense for me. I would easily pay $20 more to take an Uber over a cab in SF. The prices are the other way around which is convenient for me. The last time I took a cab from the airport the guy asked me which cross streets and how to get there. That's not my Uber experience. I don't want to be telling this guy how to do his job. I want personal transportation and we can chat about something else if he likes…

Yeah, there are real regional variations. I think the problem Uber has is that they’re valued like a high-end tech company (with locked in overhead like compensation) but they don’t have much of a competitive moat. They can have a better app and global reach is a plus for frequent travelers, but at the end of the day their profit is anchored by how much a taxi costs – even if the service is better people only value t…

They've created a business model any metropolitan community can duplicate for practically nothing, and the first community that does so will share their notes with the rest of us.

People should be asking themselves if their service is a quango waiting to happen, because most of them definitely are.

Re: American Disruption

#140

Post by ta1243 »

Terr_ wrote: post #115
mullingitover wrote: post #100

Surprised there isn't mention that a big part of the tariff strategy is to throw the equity markets into chaos in an effort to drive down the price of the 10-year bond. There was a panic last night because the 10 year bond price started going up as stocks were trading down, which is not supposed to happen. It would be truly disruptive if the whole game gets blown up by a lack of buyers for US debt.

> a big part of the tariff strategy You mean, a big part of one of the inconsistent explanations people are desperately theorizing, because they're too afraid of the simple answer... that there isn't any strategy at all? [Edit: Or, to be more precise, no strategy which is both (A) sane and (B) designed for America rather than for specific individuals.] > chaos in an effort to drive down the price of the 10-year bond…

> Instead, economic trust in the US--built up over decades--is being actively firebombed into the dirt by the new Republican regime.

I think that's an important thing to reiterate.

This isn't Trump. This isn't MAGA. This is the entire Republican Party apparatus that is allowing this to continue. The Republicans of the Nixon, Regan, Bush eras are long gone.

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