USA Economics - Protectionist Waste Management down 2pc

New American economics thread

would love to post here but need to spend the afternoon reviving beatles threads in order to make up for the current deficit

calstars just woke up, maybe we can see what he thinks about futures for imported beer

how bout that american economy yall

previous thread from the 2008 crash:
Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

USA: "hold my beer"

line go down

if you were in australia then line go up, makes u think 🤔

maaaate

that's a bloody outrage it is

I have had it up to here waiting for the US economics thread to get rebooted!

lol markets were up bigly this morning and took like a 2000 point swing to the negative by close

no one has any idea what going on or why theyre doing what theyre doing

we did it

idk shit about the market but the upticks right now are the admin trying to hold things up with twigs and bubblegum until the investors see through it and down she goes

Surely you can leak a story every morning about how tariffs are being clawed back and then say "nuh-uh" in the afternoon and the stock market will stay even forever.

lol markets were up bigly this morning and took like a 2000 point swing to the negative by close

Brokers clocking in saying to each other, "Surely he'll have given up on this insane bullshit, right?" Then realization that no, insane bullshit is pretty much his only mode now, and... down, down, down we go.

Public Image Ltd. Album Titles appropriate for the moment:

This is what you want…this is what you get
Happy?
The greatest hits, so far

I think it was the doubling down on China that punctured whatever hope helium there was. Or that plus just everyone trying to guess where the bottom's gonna be.

I alone can fix it.

cool thanks

Sorry, that was supposed to read “AI alone can fix it.”

damn

that's what you get for asking chatgpt to make yr posts ;)

I can call you Betty, and Betty when you call me you can call AI

Mr Krasnov, tear down that wall!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNrQOUtXYOo

I think it was the doubling down on China that punctured whatever hope helium there was. Or that plus just everyone trying to guess where the bottom's gonna be.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra)

we're in portland. we're _all_ in portland.

please send tops. don't worry about that hope helium, we're all _very_ good at blowing.

lol

Trump claims tariffs bringing in $2bn a day for US
Donald Trump has been speaking as he signed executive orders from the White House.

Trump claimed that the US is making $2bn a day from tariffs. He did not provide any details.

“The tariffs are on and money is pouring in at a level we’ve never seen,” he said.

“America is going to be very rich again very soon,” he said.

What can you even say...

“America is going to be very rich again very soon,” he said.

with U.S. taxpayers' money

I was just thinking if he was referring to people paying taxes which include higher capital gains in 2024 and more babby boomer RMDs

What can you even say...

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, April 8, 2025 4:03 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thread for Screaming Into the Void

Here is more details on who might be making that money.

https://rajivsethi.substack.com/p/engineered-volatility

^^^

"buying the dip" but on AI steroids

An economic lesson from er, Ronald Reagan, tweeted by er, Chinese embassy US account.

Ronald Reagan vs. #tariffs : 1987 speech finds new relevance in 2025pic.twitter.com/CuAMw1eQXN

— Chinese Embassy in US (@ChineseEmbinUS) April 7, 2025

as one does

William Huo, Intel’s first rep in Beijing: “America got conned by its own elite. And now we’ve got the privilege of importing our own poverty in shiny containers labeled “Made in China. When a politician promises to bring back American manufacturing with tariffs, ask them: who’s going to rebuild the ecosystem Wall Street torched three decades ago? Tariffs won’t fix decades of deindustrialization driven by elite consensus. Only massive, consistent investment in R&D, education, and infrastructure ever could. But first we have to say the quiet part out loud: America was deindustrialized not by China or Mexico, but by its own ruling class chasing yield.”

Yep.. anything to get away from paying a living wage to American workers

on the other hand we got cheap tvs have you seen these things its like $300 for a big flat screen tv

theyre quasi disposable

my (much-older) cousin runs a small music store in a small CA town, and as much as he'd love to have his walls lined with shinty Fender, Martin & Gibson guitars, he just can't really afford to, so he orders guitars from Korea, China & Indonesia. He's shown me a few and I have to admit they seem pretty well constructed, probably using a lot of computer-assisted machinery. They're not 'rough' like we think of Japanese & Italian guitars from the 60's. And they actually sell, because he's not really selling to pros but to people just starting out.. same with brass & woodwinds

theyre quasi disposable

the alleys of Oakland are littered with them, I can attest

This passage from Bob Woodward's book Fear shows just how fucked we are:

Of course the United States manufactured things, but the reality did not match the vision in Trump’s mind. The president clung to an outdated view of America — locomotives, factories with huge smokestacks, workers busy on assembly lines. [Gary] Cohn assembled every piece of economic data available to show that American workers did not aspire to work in assembly factories...

Mr. President, can I show this to you?” Cohn fanned out the pages of data in front of the president.

“See, the biggest leavers of jobs — people leaving voluntarily — was from manufacturing.”

“I don’t get it,” Trump said.

Cohn tried to explain: “I can sit in a nice office with air conditioning and a desk, or stand on my feet eight hours a day. Which one would you do for the same pay?”

Cohn added, “people don’t want to stand in front of a 2,000 degree blast furnace. People don’t want to go into coal mines and get black lung. For the same dollars or equal dollars, they’re going to choose something else.”

Trump wasn’t buying it.

Several times Cohn just asked the president, “why do you have these views?”

“I just do,” Trump replied. “I’ve had these views for 30 years.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re right,” Cohn said. “I had the view for 15 years I could play professional football. It doesn’t mean I was right.”

He really believes his insane bullshit, and no one can convince him otherwise.

far from the worst thing during this cursed time but can i just say that i’ve really been disliking seeing scott bessent’s stupid smug face

Cohn’s mistake was referring to other people, who don’t exist to Trump. Should have asked him do YOU want to shovel coal eight hours a day

People might actually take factory jobs over service industry/LVN/etc. jobs if they existed and the pay was decent, the idea that the two options are "blast furnace" or "incredibly easy e-mail job" isn't real life.

So many not-blast furnace trades jobs (HVAC tech, plumber who gets called out at midnight when the shitter is backed up, etc.) are a) highly demanding of overtime and b) now actually sales jobs because staying employed and making a living wage depends on upselling the person whose AC you're fixing in the middle of August.

From the old thread, ShariVari sez

Lots of angry chuds out there trying to Gamergate the fake, woke, feminised economy (in this specific case, a viral TikTok video from Australia they are all still mad about a year later).

And I was like wha? Like, doing office work is for women? Then why were they excluded from it, in living memory?

And lo, yes there are people saying things like this.

https://wapo.st/42nDYfR

Rotimi Adeoye

Like the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it glorifies physical labor as moral purification, only now the purification is from the supposed “wokeness” of desk work, filtered through TikTok, X and Twitch. It’s not about creating jobs. It’s about creating vibes: strong men doing hard things, reshared until they become ideology. As one MAGA influencer put it, “Men in America don’t need therapy. Men in America need tariffs and DOGE. The fake email jobs will disappear.”

Employers announced 108,435 job cuts in January, the highest tally for the first month of the year since 2009, according to a report out Feb. 5, and a sign employers may be taking defensive steps against economic uncertainty.

going well

bitcoin having a month as well

The resident goldbug/silverbug/cryptobug guy at work has gotten reeeeeeeeeal quiet the last couple of weeks

and this: US Consumer Confidence ‘Collapsed’ Sharply in January

fake news, no doubt

A downbeat mood among US consumers is showing up in corporate results as companies that sell them food, drinks and household goods warn of soft sales.

The chocolate and biscuit maker Mondelez International pinned a drop in North American revenue on “economic anxiety and low consumer sentiment”, while Chipotle Mexican Grill chief executive Scott Boatwright said traffic to the US burrito chain fell for the fourth straight quarter as diners are “pulling back on overall restaurant spend”.

bitcoin having a month as well

― (•̪●) (carne asada), Thursday, February 5, 2026 2:57 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

its having a six hours

it was 97k mid Jan now at 63k

biscuit maker Mondelez International pinned a drop...

traffic to the US burrito chain fell...

bitcoin having a month...

Need to check in on other vital economic sectors such as bananas, bismuth, and barleycorns.

pork bellies are having a run though

what about bacon

Not great, Bob

I guess ILX doesn't have many (any?) 20-somethings anymore, my exposure is mostly through my own kids and my friends with kids. But anecdotally people are not feeling good about prospects of many kinds at the moment. Lots of kids with fancy degrees living back home with parents. The "economy" feels a little flimsy.

My eldest just started college. Their career plan sounds a optimistic to me, but I wasn't all that realistic at 18 either. It's not my job to be Captain Dreamkiller - the world is going to find a way to kick everyone in the nads, as Mr. Springsteen says.

We will see.

AI will give us free time to sit on the front porch and wave at empty driverless cars passing by

DC is pretty grim because of a lot of laid off feds with advanced degrees. A friend was laid off from USAID almost a year ago and is still unemployed.

US economy unexpectedly loses 92,000 jobs. Expectations were for 55,000 additions.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-loses-92k-jobs-in-february-200907779.html

"unexpectedly"

Dag. Was just reading a “preview” in the NYT about how it would show “continued strong hiring.”

That article appears to have vanished from the website lol.

"unexpectedly"

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 6 March 2026 09:00 (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it actually is unexpected tbh, net job growth has been very “stubborn” despite *gestures* everything. there’s some funky stuff going on with revisions (most of which are downward but not enough to be negative) but lots of people have been waiting for the other shoe to drop for a while. maybe it’s happening now idk

That article appears to have vanished from the website lol.

I still see it?

definitely a big relief for kevin warsh

lots of people have been waiting for the other shoe to drop for a while

Which is why it didn't seem that unexpected to me.

yeah the economy feels like shit and a sandwich costs 20 dollars

you don't need a sandwich! Just a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla and one other thing (like liver)

that'll be $17.50 please

Plus 3% credit charge surcharge, and another 3% on top of that to pay for additional operational costs. Plus 10-cents for the carry out bag.

my county charges a 10% meal tax, which fair enough, if you can eat out or buy a sandwich you cam pay it

ready for trump to start blaming lazy ppl for not competing for jobs with effort against ai, or counting ai usage hours by companies “employment.”

January's surprise print of 130,000 payrolls

seasonal help getting paid for 2 weeks earlier.

92,000 people losing their jobs, just think of all those new job openings! That's how it works, right? Right!?

THE DOW!

they call it the dow because it's down

The dow which can be spoken of is not the true dow

The Dow of poo

pam bondi’s in trouble

This morning saw a clip of a reporter actually invoking the word stagflation.

Financial pundits have been invoking stagflation for at least a year now … and arguing about the risk of it happening

1973 style oil crisis + 1930s style depression u love to see it

Good thing no bad things happened in the 70s or 30s

70's style oil crisis? yup.
30's style depression? nowhere close, yet.

A bit of random insight into what has been holding up Tesla stock. So far today oil prices are up about 1% for Brent and Bitcoin is taking a 2.5% drop. So far today Rivian stock price is up about 1% and Tesla is down about 3%.

Don’t worry the dow was at 50k once

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mhgennml4f2s

just 4834 points short of 50,000 now

The professional traders are hedging against surprise developments over the weekend. They're obviously way more worried about downside risk than about missing out on a rally from good news.

So much is automated rn tbh —- it’s also almost April 1, the deadline for boomers to take RMDs from retirement accounts, which means a larger than normal amount of stocks get sold for cash. Idk if that has a major impact though, but it is a thing that doesn’t get discussed as much as it should.

lol

Stock futures rise as Trump signals progress in U.S.-Iran war talks: Live updates

markets have contained to tank this week, I'm anticipating an announcement Monday morning that Iran has fully surrendered and is now a US territory

― (•̪●) (carne asada), Friday, March 27, 2026 2:59 PM

nailed it

also the war must be going terrible for us, and markets easier to manipulate than we give them credit for, if all Trump can do is “signal progress” and they jump.