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Wall Street stocks tumble as investors fret over US economic slowdown

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

#241

Post by ModernMech »

mattmaroon wrote: post #50
JKCalhoun wrote: post #8

It'll be wild to see how Congress responds.

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…

You're framing this as an incentive for them to moderate their positions, but I'm reading it as a motive for them to rig elections.

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

#242

Post by robocat »

softwaredoug wrote: post #14

After the election I know Canadian and colleagues from other countries thought of moving to US for an easier time building a business. Curious if anyone from the founder / small business crowd has had this feeling and either is still interested/happy with such a move? Or regretting it? IIRC Culturally it was said by many that the US is much better that EU / Canada for building a business as US rewards ambition. While…

Be thankful you're not in New Zealand. Our current government claims to be business oriented, but they appear to desire to screw our economy. Partly because of trying to appeal to voters that are generally socialist here (a strong preference to hobble greedy business owners and often little sympathy for anyone who exports something to bring a USD into the country). Short sighted policy goals aiming to sell off anything to overseas "investors". When everything is for sale, we all lose. Eventually there will be fewer productive export businesses left to pay for our free healthcare, our retiree's superannuation or our other welfare benefits. Lose lose. Our socialist policies are good and humane, but they are hard to balance against economic growth.

We lack economic balance over here even though we have MMP voting. Swinging leftwards and less leftwards (NZ is mostly lefty) seems to be the only way we achieve a modicum of compromise over the years.

The US idolises successful business owners (even the notorious are validated).

NZ does have a couple of successful tech companies that list in Australia (e.g. Xero) or moved to the US (e.g. RocketLab). They often keep engineering in NZ because staff are skilled and cheap.

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

#243

Post by ModernMech »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #200
boo-ga-ga wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But he continues doing what he started. Considering the fact that he is very smart and definitely hungry for absolute power, you can think about his true goal. If he is ready to risk that much of his worth, it means that the potential win for him will bring so much more.

> that the potential win for him will bring so much more. what do you think is the potential win for him?

Vast control over the US Federal Government and impunity for him and all his companies to violate the law.

It's hard to put a price on the power to fire people investigating your company for wrongdoing.

Or the power to blow up starships even though you were told by the government you can't launch more because you blew up the last one, raining down debris on everyone and causing their flights to be grounded.

Wouldn't you love to be able to do that without any repercussions?

Or to test your driverless car tech on public roads and not get in trouble no matter how many people they kill.

Or to sell your unsold vehicle inventory, that's building up because your product is a boondoggle, directly to the government.

Or the power to bully foreign governments into using your product with the full backing of the United States military.

Or to award yourself and your companies government contracts worth billions of dollars without having to bid or compete over them.

Or to train your fledgling AI on all the information you're scraping about Americans from government data sources unavailable to your competitors.

Or to cancel government projects that benefit your competitors, like killing investments in EV charging infrastructure, forcing everyone to use the one you own.

Or to test your brain implant on human subjects without the pesky FDA up your ass making sure it's done "humanely".

On and on and on. The corruption is just endless if you're creative enough...

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

#244

Post by insane_dreamer »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #229
insane_dreamer wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Congress intervenes on tariffs the tariffs on Canada/Mexico haven't gone into effect yet and Trump may yet again change his mind or end up keeping it restricted to a few select industries (i.e. steel) who are clamoring for it (my guess is the latter) As for China, I think many in Congress from both parties are supportive of them, so I would expect those to stay

They certainly have gone into effect. They've been paused on USMCA covered goods, but that's only 1/3rd of the goods from Canada and 1/2 from Mexico.

> 1/2 from Mexico.

That's what the WH said. But the Mexican president said that nearly all Mexican exports to US were covered under the USMCA.

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

#245

Post by ModernMech »

bad_user wrote: post #70
iamtheworstdev wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's intentional. Anyone thinking otherwise hasn't been listening to Treasury Sec Bissent talk these last two months. The goal to lower prices is to "increase supply and lower demand," and yes that's a direct quote. You don't lower demand by asking people to stop buying things. You lower demand by reducing people's ability to buy things.

I mean, sure, inducing a recession works for lowering prices, but it's freaking stupid and makes people poorer.

It's a stupid decision from the perspective of the people getting poorer, but what about the people who are getting richer? It' a great decision for them.

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

#246

Post by lostdog »

rayiner wrote: post #192
Aunche wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tariff may be worse for the economy, but threatening tariffs as a "negotiating tactic" with Canada and Mexico is just plain stupid. Unless if they have insider information, businesses simply have no idea how to operate. For example, it would take years to build a factory, and they don't want to sink hundreds of millions in a factory in the US if tariffs don't actually go through or vice versa.

That makes building the factory in the U.S. the safe choice whether tariffs are implemented or not.

The safe choice is not to build the factory.

Even if you build the factory in the US to avoid tariffs on the goods you sell, did all your inputs also get built in the US? Are the tariffs on your inputs going to wipe out your profits?

To build a factory you want to predict out the cost vs benefit. But if the costs are highly uncertain, then the numbers in your spreadsheet fluctuate wildly. So you just sit on the money you have and wait to build the factory until things are more certain.

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

#247

Post by intended »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #8

It'll be wild to see how Congress responds.

Why? Congress is majority republican, who have been under selection pressure to be party faithful. If that fails, they are getting death threats to stay in line.

The Republican strategy is to punish bi-partisan efforts.

From a Dem standpoint, its simpler to point out the fact that they have no real power, and let the Republicans take the heat.

What can Congress do?

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

#248

Post by intended »

voidhorse wrote: post #40
Trasmatta wrote: post #3

Remember, this is the president that won largely because of people's dissatisfaction with inflation, and his promises to "fix" the economy. Instead, he's decided to wage a pointless trade war that nobody asked for, and came out yesterday essentially saying he's totally okay with a recession coming out of it. The only thing more absurd is the fact that some people didn't see this coming. He signalled everything that h…

> The only thing more absurd is the fact that some people didn't see this coming. He signalled everything that he's doing now during his campaign, over and over. Right, I think it's less that they "didn't see it coming" and more so a basic lack of understanding around how anything works and a complete trust in perceived wealth and authority. The vast majority of people I know that fell into the camp of voting this in…

The core base is also given a flawed understanding of how anything around them works. America has been enduring under a self inflicted information and disinformation war for decades now.

Some amount of swing voters may have done so because of inflation - but a large number of voters didn’t show up.

There was also ample evidence that he was going to engage in trade wars. In November, I was already checking with friends in finance and banking what the amount of stress the global financial system could endure.

This is very much like the 2008 crisis, in that low information consumers are being misled by corporations with massive teams, marketing and financial power.

Its an uncompetitive market of ideas, being foisted on viewers and information consumers.

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

#249

Post by intended »

Trasmatta wrote: post #35
jghn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong. And yet he's polling well. And as long as people poll surface level questions like "do you like that he's cutting things?" he gets general support. Drill into specific topics item by item and it's a bleaker picture however. But that's how these things always go, like the ACA for instance.

He's still in the honeymoon period for approval ratings. Even given that, he's barely above water.

https://www.axios.com/2025/03/10/trump-maga-inc-power-fundra...

It looks like there is preparation for low polling numbers. A fund to ensure that senators and lawmakers will toe the line or be primaried.

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

#250

Post by intended »

idle_zealot wrote: post #226
usefulcat wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not enough to have a plan, as a sibling commenter pointed out. Looks more like straight-up irrational team-based tribalism to me. That and ordinary ignorance. How else do you explain a Republican candidate campaigning on raising taxes and winning?

It's not about the concrete details of a plan, it's the feeling , the messaging and the rhetoric. Kamala did not read that the electorate wanted a promise of dramatic action, and ran on competent administration and minor, incremental improvements while largely staying the course. That does not motivate people upset with the status quo to come out and vote.

This is the wrong question - in that if you spend your time focusing on why Harris lost, you will miss the question of what allowed Trump to run in the first place.

The second question tells you far more about the actual arena within which the electoral narratives are sold. Here the Dems are the Heels, and the meta story is about having the information warfare power to sell these stories.

Focusing on Harris is the mistake of assuming if you are perfect, you can get people in an unfair relationship to treat you better.

Betting on winning in an unfair fight, is bad strategy and tactics. At some point, its far more effective to spend your energy on ensuring the arena terrain is even and not severely slanted against one team.

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