Sweet

He shouldn’t pay. This is the dumb crap the EU does.

That’s my view too. I admit to liking old Jim, even if he does have a famous (albeit much exaggerated) curse, directionally his optimism has usually been right. It’s not just America, the same crap has happened in Europe too. Whole place has deindustrialised. Fair trade not free trade - agree. I also agree with Jim that this can be fixed, and I think it will be fixed over time. It’s so retarded that it really can only be improved.

Lol, the bar is low in 2025 though.

Regarding Chinese trade over time. Listen to Pelosi in 1996 in this video (ignore the text):

China pegged its currency at an artificially low rate for decades to boost manufacturing. They kept the dollars from these currency controls and bought assets with them. China’s economic policies are more sinister than tariffs. They had blanket bans on certain products and services from even being placed on their market, some of which remains today - famously Google. Many companies that do business in China have to partner with Chinese firms. China massively sponsor their industry, deliberately overproducing and swamping global markets with cheap goods to undercut competitors. Basically what monopolies used to do before they were outlawed. The EU have imposed anti-dumping duties on Chinese steel. More recently the EU have imposed duties on their electric cars citing that Chinese companies “benefits from unfair subsidization which is causing threat of economic injury to EU producers”. China has acted as a vampire on free market economies. It protects it own markets and industries whilst it can trade mostly freely with the rest of the world. Trade with it should have been stopped long ago. Let’s get serious.

Yep, China a few others. This policy though is silly.

Rather than me making the argument I’m going to link a PDF of a famous article from the former CEO of Intel Andy Grove. It’s not exactly related to tariffs but it is about manufacturing jobs and production. It’s about scaling in America and why that is important. For the record, I’ve argued for trade restrictions and tariffs against certain countries (but not others), on certain products (and not others), for a long time. But I think Trump’s implementation has been a disaster. andy-grove_-how-america-can-create-jobs 2.pdf

interesting counter point

Rough day. I count my blessings that I was sitting on a lot of cash, luck not skill in hindsight. Still I’m down a lot more than the SP-500, I’m down nearly 15% since January 20th. Edit - about 8% from Jan 1st (since everyone is doing ytd)

Come on, its these types of exaggerations that radicalise others to try and assassinate Trump, which in turn has radicalised a bunch of Trump supporters. It's a radicalisation spiral. Tell the truth, or acknowledge what is unknown.

Some of tweets on Fintwit chat are hilarious. I can’t tell what is funnier, the trolling memes, the haters, or the 4D chessers.

Pretty sure everyone not on the list get 10% default. Plus he might have something special for Canada and Mexico.

Yep. Although we are all somewhat susceptible to this unfortunately.

Interesting polling

Cubs and Greg, house prices have been out of reach for young people for wayyy longer than Powell raising rates. https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/03/23/opinions/millennials-almost-impossible-to-afford-home-olson ^ That was before rate rises. Low rates jacked house prices up, nearly everyone knew this was happening, few of those that owned real estate cared, and nobody did anything about it.

I understand. The increase in financing costs to get a mortgage as a result of rate rises are short term. Medium to longer term it works in the opposite direction. Low rates bid house prices up, people can keep bidding the house when interest rates are low - so when rates do rise and sellers won’t cut prices, what’s to blame? The ‘higher’ rates (historically average rates) or lower rates (historically low) that helped bid up house prices in the first place.

Powell didn’t fuck the common man. Covid policies by governments, rightly or wrongly, was the start of inflation. Historically low interest rates helped bid house prices for 15 years. That almost certainly made homes much more unaffordable than Powell returning rates to the long term average. Did he do so because he was drunk on the attention of hedge funds? No evidence to suggest that. And it’s counter factual to what I saw which was many hedge fund guys telling him he needed to raise rates while he refused: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/10/29/bill-ackman-calls-for-the-fed-to-start-raising-interest-rates-as-soon-as-possible.html

But 15 years of ZIRP played no role in house price rises. ZIRP would never increase the pool of buyers and would never bid up houses prices with cheap financing. It’s all Powell’s fault for pushing rates to a record breaking historic average.

“US officials object to European push to buy weapons locally” https://www.reuters.com/world/us-officials-object-european-push-buy-weapons-locally-2025-04-02/ Defies belief

Anything that involves financing, like getting a mortgage, is touched by rates. You mentioned this several months ago and about home buyers were affected. You were complaining about it. Your post for reference:

But interest rates rises tighten which is deflationary. This works two ways.

Real estate guy annoyed that zirp is over. Go figure.

Greg, you aren’t entitled to low rates. The low rates were a historic aberration. Powell raised the rates back to their - check notes - historic average. Big whoop. Powell himself thought inflation was transitory and sat on his hands for several months before lifting rates. Yes some people were hurt with increasing rates, and many people were hurt (retirees) from historic low rates - but you don’t care about them.