rogermunibond

https://www.wiley.law/alert-Federal-Judge-Blocks-NIH-Cap-on-Indirect-Rates-for-Grants

CPI came in tame. Looks good for a Fed cut in May. CR in the House maintains Biden admin spending levels of $2T deficit. Bad. Only Rep Thomas Massie is opposing it. Better to dump the tariff mess, cut the Federal budget, and extend TCJA. If the above happens markets rally.

If you're low/middle class workers in the US in non-tradeable sectors, you've done fine. HVAC, plumbing, trades, auto mechanics etc. They can't be competed against by Chinese service sectors. Govt, healthcare, education - those sectors have done even better. Finance, insurance, financial technology have all done great. The tradeable sectors have hurt but where the US is competitive globally (highly engineered, high value add) those products are fantastic. But even here the lead in competitiveness is eroding. The issue is that the HS-educated or less white/black/Latino male or female worker has no chance. But they have to upgrade their skills or they have to move to a place where they can get work. Putting in tariffs to have a lot of unskilled low value added manufacturing work in the US makes no sense.

Real wages have grown but a lot more for women than men.

Some common sense discussion on trades and tariffs. AEI, thank god, unlike Heritage, hasn't drunk the Kool-Aid. https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/-three-simple-principles-of-trade-policy_142937157317.pdf

Eh gads. Learn economic history. Calling this a "science experiment" is much too kind. Trade wars overall lower GDP of all nations involved. Greg Mankiw has been blasting Kevin Hassett for spouting economic nonsense. https://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2025/03/kevin-hassett-forgets-econ-101.html

Agree on CP and CNI. Still waiting for them to get as low the December dip from Can/Mex tariff fears.

Mark Carney is the new PM

GS economics team — Larger tariffs will give a larger boost to consumer prices. In the absence of tariffs, we would have expected year-on-year core PCE inflation to fall from 2.65% in January to 2.1% by December 2025. Under our previous tariff assumptions, we expected core PCE inflation to remain in the mid-2s for the rest of the year. Our new tariff assumptions imply that it will instead rise a bit and peak at about 3% year-on-year, and in the risk scenario it would peak at around 3.3%. — Larger tariffs are also likely to hit GDP harder through their tax-like effect on disposable income and consumer spending and their effect on financial conditions and uncertainty for businesses. While our previous tariff assumptions implied a peak hit to year-on-year GDP growth of -0.3pp, our new assumptions imply a peak hit of -0.8pp. In the risk scenario, this would grow to -1.3pp. — Taking on board this additional 0.5pp drag on growth from our new larger tariff assumptions, we have reduced our 2025 Q4/Q4 GDP growth forecast to 1.7%, from 2.2% previously. This implies that GDP growth will be slightly below potential rather than slightly above. We have bumped up our unemployment rate forecast by 0.1pp to 4.2% in response. — We have also raised our 12-month recession probability slightly from 15% to 20%. We have raised it by only a limited amount at this point because we see policy changes as the key risk, and the White House has the option to pull back if the downside risks begin to look more serious. If policy headed in the direction of our risk scenario or if the White House remained committed to its policies even in the face of much worse data, recession risk would rise further.

Gold buying isn't tariff front running per se.

January increase in imports mostly from gold buying. Strange one. Minus the gold buying, the AtlantaFed GDPNow would be 0.4% for Q1 GDP growth. Still very weak. https://www.ft.com/content/1f58f6ac-fa3c-4df8-8d13-545097838654

Druckenmiller? Please link to where he says that. He's been an inflation and debt/deficit hawk since I began reading his commentary. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-02/druckenmiller-warns-us-debt-crisis-worse-than-he-imagined?embedded-checkout=true

Bessent worked for Druckenmiller and Soros. He's no dummy. But he works for someone who Druckenmiller called a "blowhard" and couldn't vote for.

Bessent wants commercial banks/private credit to be the monetary transmission mechanism and not the Federal govt. No wonder Jamie Dimon loves him. If Bessent's low growth (adjustment period) takes too long or causes a recession, then he will be axed. Trump doesn't have the patience for a long 18-24 month adjustment. https://singjupost.com/larry-kudlow-interviews-scott-bessent-at-the-economic-club-of-new-york/

Pay attention to what Bessent says. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/07/treasury-secretary-bessent-says-economy-could-be-starting-to-roll-a-little-bit.html PS doesn't he look a bit like Homelander from the Boys. freaky

Folks this is a non-political board so let's keep the discussion civil. WSJ board hates tariffs as everyone knows. IIRC there is a bill being introduced to challenge the "State of emergency" https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-tariffs-emergency-power-ieepa-trade-mexico-canada-33e2739a

He and his administration are incapable of reworking the current global monetary/trade imbalances. Wrong temperament, wrong approach, and wrong talent. Prior to the election Bessent said that what they were trying to do might take ten years. In the meantime, the confusion, chaos, and reduced economic activity would ensure a global depression. Trump's not stupid. He doesn't have ten years. Mexico, Canada and ROW aren't stupid either. They've called his bluff.

I'm not so hot on EPIC Systems overall. Having watched its adoption and implementation at a large hospital system, it's terrible software that requires huge amounts of in-house effort to keep maintained. The only thing is that between EPIC and Cerner neither is very good. I fully expect AI and software innovation to come for EHR, ERP, and business process software developers. What appear to be moats now because of complexity will be worn away by AI/software development streamlining the innovation of these complex systems.

https://www.ft.com/content/cd33d571-f558-4a89-83fb-2ffa271ea2df US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick has said that all goods compliant with the sweeping 2020 trade deal with Canada and Mexico will probably be granted a one-month reprieve from tariffs, in a major expansion of a planned carve-out for car imports. The policy shift comes a day after US President Donald Trump said that carmakers compliant with United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement would be granted a one-month reprieve from the 25 per cent tariffs his administration imposed on America’s two biggest trading partners earlier this week.