changegonnacome

All this is true......but the brutal fact of the matter is the US remains the global reserve currency holder...treasuries and dollars permeate ever inch of the global financial system.......you might not want to hold $2.8trn dollars of treasuries.....but the question quickly becomes "ok you want to dump treasuries - what exactly are you going to hold instead of $2.8trn of treasures? The answer is there is no answer......you have to hold treasuries whether you like it or not cause thats just the way the world is.....$$ TINA.

Funny to still see Trump with five aggregate years as President of the United States now......still not realizing that from a trade perspective its not possible to individually tariff select EU member states.

Yep - you might not like Trump but the Democratic ticket had no real agenda to restore fiscal sanity.......Trump's growth boom deregulation thesis at least provided a pathway but like you I'm a little skeptical that you can get the budget under control sufficiently (DOGE proving the point, OBBB confirming the same) while also accelerating the economy enough. Combined you shrink the annual fiscal deficit and then bend the curve on the debt to gdp ratio. The first part of that 'bend the curve' thesis is gone IMO.........DOGE blew up & OBBB was too pork filled.......so now all the heavy lifting has to happen on the growth side which looks shaky right now especially if this jobless GDP growth phenomenon continues.....jobless growth is income tax lite growth.....the growth is only useful to the fiscal to the extent that it drives income tax receipts higher.....giant Manhattan sized data centres with 20 people working in them, that are 100% expensed in Yr1 look great for GDP but are totally useless for incremental income tax receipts (unless AI starts driving job growth plus productivity enhancements versus say job losses)

Yep as I said....I think the adminstations position that 2025 was about setting the table for growth is fair enough nobody can argue they didn't do alot of things in 2025 when they got in. Agree - this is the bull case that things accelerate from here....however without looking at the 'Reagan recovery' I can assure you it was blistering GDP growth accompanied by employment growth and underlying real wage growth....the last two are the real formula for election success. I think Trump gets impressive GDP growth simply by virtue of the huge capex wave associated with AI investments......but ultimately people don't give a hoot about GDP growth - its jobs and real wage growth they feel and so presiding over an economy with impressive but jobless GDP growth is not a recipe for election success. The danger for Trump as the perennial marketer salesman (and we've seen this already with Oval Address) is that he oversells jobless GDP growth by telling people the economy is GREAT when they know it isnt for them. My gut on 2026 is this is probably what we are in for - endless marketing of AI inflated GDP figures while the non-AI economy (jobs/wage growth) tells a different story. That is potentially a politically toxic mix for the GOP at the midterms - you cant tell people things are great when they know it isn't. But lets see....there's a story to tell for sure that there's going to be lots of dividends to come from all Trump changes instituted in 25.

Big picture when you get down to it Trump promised a few key things - cut out the noise, the trith social posts here's what he's done: He promised to> 'Fix Inflation': YoY Inflation was 2.9% in December 2024 just before he took office its now 2.7% (it was 3% as recently as Sept 2025) Its basically been bouncing around in the same zipcode since he took office. No meaningful change & consumers are still sick of it as evidenced by consumer sentiment survey. Verdict: FAIL 'Fix' the Economy: Unemployment was 4% on inauguration day its now 4.4% 2025 is one of the lowest years on record for job growth GDP data isnt out yet for the full year so we cant compare 2024 to 2025 Verdict: FAIL Bring back manufacturing jobs: Since liberation day 70,000 people have been liberated from their manufacturing jobs i.e. they lost their job. The US in aggregate lost manufacturing jobs in 2025. Verdict: FAIL Fix Immigration i.e. stop it Deportations way up, Southern border crossings way down, ICE staffed up, border restrictions increased Verdict: PASS The administration knows they are floundering on the economy.........the talking point I've seen trotted out is that 2025 was about setting the table for future success and the dividends of the tough choices made in 25 are to come in 2026, 2027, 2028. Thats a reasonable position I think - so lets see how 26 and beyond plays out but also we can be cold eyed on 2025 - it was nothing to write home about for Trump on the economy (as measured by jobs/inflation/manufacturing) he presided over an economy that decelerated, manufacturing jobs went the wrong way and elevated inflation remained elevated.

The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many? Very woke, bleeding heart liberal of you...know you said this isnt political and totally get you on this is specific issue your basically just like I find this distasteful or whatever. Fair enough. Given that you might spare a thought then for the libtards out there who think like this all the time on various issues......these 'woke' agendas can all be seen in the context of the needs of the few outweighing the many. Its just amusing to see Trump pivot to a behavior that mimics so much of the wokeness he sought to destroy.

Well for the vast majority of credit card users its an excellent option which allows them in a cash flow pinch to access 45 day interest free credit, beyond 45 days your paying high rates but the 'loan' is fully pre-payable at anytime.........now a small portion of those same group of people turn out to be credit alcoholics that get into payment/cash flow trouble such that they end up in bankruptcy and unable to access credit....you might not like it but its a darwinian process that weeds them out and correctly excludes them from accessing credit again (recidivism is one of the great heuristics in life).....given you dont know ex-ante who those credit alcoholics are you need to charge high headline rates to compensate for future losses. That credit degens end up getting burned by CC's (but even then they've got the bankruptcy route) is kind of like saying we should close all the bars because 2% of the population can't handle alcohol...what about the 98% who can and enjoy it???!?!?!?!??!...credit cards are the same deal.....I thought the GOP was about keeping the nanny state out of people's lives.....the credit card system works great for the vast majority of its customers, it works great for retailers and economy and you want to torch it to protect what 2-3% of the credit card customer pool who are morons. Yeah thats not how things should work.

Eh...cough...bankruptcy....folks can literally burn the CC companies....your a hard money, hard collateral guy....think you forget the CC guys are writing loans underpinnned by thin air....totally unsecured.....you can go chapter 7 and have all your unsecured debt torched in 16 weeks, hardly a no way out proposition....hell even in States like Florida you've got big homestead expemptions where you could be sitting in a $1m home 100% equity go chapter 7 and keep your equity and your house and literally wipe your CC debt to zero in four short months!

Not sure there's much point discussing this CC proposal from Trump.....he's floundering in the polls on affordability & the economy and this populist bullshit is really just to the give the impression he gives a fuck about poor people So much noise - Jay Powell indictment, Fannie Freddie $200bn MBS, cheap VZ oil 'coming soon', credit card 10% cap, Blackstone cant buy houses anymore - give me a break........he's one tweet away from announcing the federal government will open 'MAGA Market' a chain of federal run grocery stores to help folks getting ripped off by Walmart & Costco!

The oil majors would be insane to step into VZ.....Captain Chaos has what? 33 months left....you'd barely have gotten delivery of your new shiny VZ equipment when the rug could get pulled by the new US administration to say nothing about the Maduro regime (still in place with a new figure head) waiting for their chance to stick one to the imperialists & neo-colonists i.e. us. Another example of Trump's simplistic mental model ("I can run VZ via telephone & take their oil") getting slammed by the real world and all its beautiful complexity. He's simple man, with simplistic ideas. Its why its important to have Kristi Noem and Pete around you need somebody dumber than you at that cabinet table.

You answered your own question......dont go into foreign nations ,mind your own business.....if Biden did it he'd get the same response from me....if for gods sake you do decide to go in, try for some good to come out of it....that usually amounted to the US attempting REGIME change.....whipping out Maduro who's a bad guy is not regime change if his whole regime is still there after! ....its like spray painting your toyota car and claiming its now a BMW....nah dude its a Toyota you just changed the paint.

Every single person in the regime minus Maduro that terrorised Venezuela, is still there and are still in their positions in fact 'we' promoted Maduro's hardline right hand woman. Indeed her brother was the chief architect of stealing the election from the people of VZ. For decades the USA usually had a good guy story, a narrative around why we decided to interfere in another countries internal affairs, this time we didn't even pretend.....we just took from that country that which was useful to us by coercive force. Must be very pleasing for Putin and Xi to see such behaviour. America is/was the biggest beneficiary of the rules based international order post WWII - hilarious to see a rich kid nepo baby with a history of destroying the value he inherited not realize that and start to rip it up before our eyes....a bit like he did with the fortune Fred Trump left him, now the fortune left to him is the global system that much wiser men than him built post-WWII and Trump is in the process of wrecking it.

You just described a war

I'll take that as complement. this could be written exactly for MAGA voters....they voted for an isolationist but when Trump turned interventionist (Iran/VZ/insert future international escapades) they decided that foreign adventures are actually a good thing....seems MAGA can't make up its mind on something until Captain Chaos does.

As I've mentioned previously......if you think Captain Chaos is going to wind down the Chaos Factory once the Dems are controlling the House and possibly the Senate in 27 and Scotus is clipping his wings before then I've got Trump Steaks in my freezer I'd like to sell you! Foreign military escapades have all the characteristics that are like cat nip to a sunsetting narcissist....unilateral executive control, attention generating and historic.....like putting his name on everything......he cant and wont be able to resist going down the military road.

Stealing ideas from Mamdani is not a good look for a Republican President....to say nothing about the fact that it will hurt housing supply.....

Yep all the facts are coming out now......Trump/Rubio aren't running anything.......Trump simply ran his mouth off at the press conference in Mar A Lago and subsequently at press huddles......Rubio et al have been walking this back for days now.....to the extent the new VZ VP wanted to acquiesce to US pressure post the capture of Maduro Trump's big guy bluster aren't helpful at all....it has undoubtedly unleashed nationalistic forces in VZ that will be marshaled by the opposition to their own end and against US aims. What a dumb thing to say by a sitting US President after such a successful decapitation operation.

For sure - the range of outcomes from this point are very very large. re: VZ. The most hilarious thing on X are the MAGA folks who in their gullibility and naivety really do think that everything got fixed last night in Venezuela with the extraction of Maduro and that just like that Trump/USA are now "running" Venezuela because Trump told them so from a beach club in Florida. 'The remote colonization of Venezuela complete. Its just all oil cash dividends from now to eternity. The End.' Its a bit like Iran and the "obliterated" nuclear capability stuff. The threat is over because Donald said so. Reality is Iran is now racing towards a bomb at light speed with no international inspectors with eyeballs on anything....the next you'll hear about the Iranian nuclear program will be a seismic event or a joint US/Israel ground invasion to stop a seismic event. Meanwhile back in the real world you can see how the table is now set for serious trouble down the line. The reality is Donald has dragged the US now deep into the mud with Iran (as per the above) and the buffoon is knee deep into getting the US stuck in the mud in Venezuela.....perhaps the timeline will exceed his Presidency (that's the bull case for him).....but the Iranian nuclear story is not over and I can assure you the Venezuelan story isn't over and to believe Donald's marketing huckster overlay on both....well I guess you graduated with honors from Trump University.

100%…..your standard Republican voter is not a cultist….the reality is that Donald’s genius was to engage a group heretofore disengaged voters and never voted to add to the GOP vote…his control over the whole GOP comes from their knowledge that without this incremental Trump personality ‘cult’ voter the GOP just wouldn’t have had the numbers to make the WH viable in 2016, 2020 & 2024. @73 Reds is 100% right…..a lazy democrat just see’s Trump cult supporters on the other side ….the reality is the cultists are a very small tribe within that….but they’ve given Trump a huge amount of leverage over the GOP as a whole.

I hope I'm a 100% wrong and he concerns himself with enriching himself and his family in his final few years in the WH.......no doubt Eric and Don are standing up a wildcat SPAC drilling company as we type or TMTG is about to merge with one.......but money isnt enough for an ageing narcissist like Donny.....some kind of multigenerational fame or infamy (if fame isn't an option) is what he'll shoot for in his last couple of years in office which means highly consequential acts. Again hope I'm way off the mark!

& he gets to put his name on something else! what a great day in the office! Kennedy Centre > Trump Kennedy Centre now its..... Monroe Doctrine > Donroe Doctrine "Removing Maduro Was ‘Donroe Doctrine’ in Action, Trump Says" https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/venezuela-strikes/card/removing-maduro-was-donroe-doctrine-in-action-trump-says-ZfqEF5T6l1aSvpej6rxP He's gone from branding buildings....to trying to brand history itself.....I almost feel sorry for him, I really do, as much as some might hate Trump I can assure you NOBODY hates Donald Trump more than Donald Trump hates himself. This is what a true congenital narcissist looks like....as I've said above....his last two years in office are gonna be WILD on the international front for sure....a narcissist facing impending irrelevance while simultaneously staring down the barrel of his own mortality (the final irrelevance) is not going to let this last two years of relevance on Earth slip by quietly. That is not how someone with this pathology would act. There will be endless Trump naming of things to come arts centres, classes of new battleship are just the start, I'm almost certain he'll find a way to get name/brand/signatures up on to the moon on NASA mission there in 2027..........the most dangerous though IMO will be his attempts to have his name/brand echo through history which will involve consequential acts. Trump is indeed bringing manufacturing back to the USA.....Trump the narcissist is literally going to manufacture history from the Oval Office in his final few years and its gonna be wild!

Its a good thing.....and its clearly Presidential overreach. Its also funny to watch thesis creep in real time on X - all these MAGA guys completely disgusted by decades of foreign escapades by US Presidents vote in Trump on a defacto isolationist & non-interventionist platform. A year and change later....Trump has unilaterally attacked Iran and executed full regime change in Venezuela while saying the US will now "run" Venezuela....and the X MAGA crowd cheer on in support. Kinda confirms, if any confirmation was needed the personality cult aspect of MAGA. All this BEFORE he becomes a domestic lame duck in 2027.....all I'll say is BUCKLE up folks!!........cause if you see Trump through a lens of a congenital narcissist (as I do) who needs to be the centre of attention at all times & then you realize his ability to do really consequential newsworthy things domestically is going away after the midterms (even before as SCOTUS seemingly clips his wings weekly now)......well you can see where his need to be the centre of attention will move to...and that's causing havoc & creating attention for himself on foreign matters. Get the popcorn out.

The thick black heavy goo type matters most for refinery capacity in the US....Venezuela has this type in droves. Trump promised lower prices at the pumps.....promises made, promises kept

...now there's a good Somali....very hard to commit medicaid fraud off the coast of Africa though I'm sure its been tried!