Blake Hampton

And this doesn't scare you at all?

That surprises me too but I can't imagine Trump himself agrees with it. I think republicans generally will follow that man off a cliff.

Even if tariffs are a large slug, will federal spending programs adjust to the new price level? Congress is currently planning on cutting trillions in taxes. Interest rates will at least stay steady if not increase, which will amount to an upward pressure on our interest expense as Treasury debt roll overs. Tariffs might raise $800 billion? Our current net deficit is $2 trillion.

These deficits are here to stay until Congress gets serious about taxes and entitlements.

I’m in both small and large upstream producers. I like the oil itself, the reserves.

I'm not worried.

Buying. I don't have any view on immediate oil prices in the future, but I think $60 a barrel is pretty damn cheap. The market seems to be going crazy right now. Oil prices are crashing and rate cuts are being priced in for policy that will very likely slow growth and be inflationary, otherwise known as stagflation. The market isn't very forward looking.

This is awesome. I'm in love with oil and it's falling off a cliff. This is the most excited I've been in a year.

We'll see.

"Whatever you think of the legitimate reasons for the newly announced tariffs—and, of course, there are some—or the long-term effect, good or bad, there are likely to be important short-term effects. As for the short-term, we are likely to see inflationary outcomes, not only on imported goods but on domestic prices, as input costs rise and demand increases on domestic products. How this plays out on different products will partially depend on their substitutability and price elasticity. Whether or not the menu of tariffs causes a recession remains in question, but it will slow down growth. There are many uncertainties surrounding the new tariff policy: the potential retaliatory actions, including on services, by other countries, the effect on confidence, the impact on investments and capital flows, the effect on corporate profits and the possible effect on the U.S. dollar. The quicker this issue is resolved, the better because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be hard to reverse. In the short run, I see this as one large additional straw on the camel’s back." - Jamie Dimon, 2024 Letter to Shareholders

Destroying a century build up of global free trade is now no big deal.

Yep

I believe Charlie Munger's most important rule was to understand someone's incentives.

You must not like a lot of politicians then.

I wonder what Trump's blood pressure is. That man's heart is a BEAST.

I'll also add that almost nobody thinks the way that everyone on this board does; we are certainly the exception and not the mean. A lot of people can't even spell "monetary policy," let alone understand it. When events happen and those same people eventually react, that's when I believe you'll see something real.

Is it possible for our government to be more financially imprudent than they are right now? Huge sums are being spent with little in taxes to offset it, and wild lending practices exist for both student loans and mortgages. They're seriously considering cutting taxes even more—so, I guess it is. This madness eventually has large implications for the U.S. dollar. Pull one out of your wallet. Look at it. Notice how it's just a little piece of paper. The degradation of something so important to the world as the dollar is an extreme event, to say the least. A lot of you think that Bitcoin offers some kind of escape. That a lot of these equities trading at extreme valuations can be an escape. That cash is simply trash—and that one day, that same cash will be worth 10% of what it is now, your equities will be worth 10x, and the world will keep functioning as it always has. I hate to say it, but it just isn't that simple. There can be a lot of carnage in the interim between cash as it is today and its future state. Jamie Dimon said he believes that events during the next decade will define our lives. Think about that.

Of course it changes things; it simply means more inflation. When Buffett talks about big banks getting wiped out, and Jamie Dimon explicitly states that deficits are coming close to causing "real problems," there is some serious shit going on. Don't listen to me, listen to them.

I don't know about "became," but I'd say that it largely started around 2008-2009. The government had to step in and bail out the entire system, and that's also when a lot of unsustainable practices began. Think Fannie/Freddie going into conservatorship, ZIRP delaying the pain of running perpetually large deficits, etc. COVID exacerbated the issue quite a bit.

This economic stuff is bigger than Trump. If the democratic party were to consolidate both executive and legislative power tomorrow, I would have largely the same concerns. Of course, some of the smaller risks would change, some quite dramatically, but the systemic ones are just that — they're systemic. @dealraker has often said that events will soon control Trump rather than the other way around. I also believe this is true. Systemic: relating to a system, especially as opposed to a particular part.

Trump himself has it confused. On Wednesday while he was announcing the tariffs, he kept rattling on about how our trade deficits were responsible for our debt.

I'm 23 and I live in Oklahoma. I'm definitely going to be the person sewing those Nikes.

I would say the problem is that many of these same people have been sounding alarms for decades, yet Congress has never made any real effort to address them. Now we're at the point where the problems are so large they feel nearly impossible to fix. We're about to be forced to clean a house we've put off cleaning for 30 years — and this house is fucking nasty.

The text had tariffs mentioned in it. I’m covered.

^ I think he sounds optimistic.