Monday’s Forum
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FILED UNDER: Open Forum
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Someone blow away the dust. From Associated Press– .Argentina’s Supreme Court finds archives linked to the Nazi regime.
Do you mean all those Get Smart jokes about Kaos being a retirement place/HQ for Kaos were actually not jokes? I don’t find that hard to believe.
@Bill Jempty: I lived in Argentina in 1964-65 (4th-5th grades). Our family doctor was German. I always wondered…
Oh cool, a 90 day tariff freeze with China. The 2nd of 15+ that we’ll get over the next 4 years (4 years-110 days). Need the constant chaos so people are focusing on what Trump says, not what he fails to do..
https://abc7ny.com/post/us-china-announce-agreement-cut-reciprocal-tariffs-90-days/16390257/
@Crusty Dem: Trump will expect – and will likely get, at least from his suck-up cabinet – lavish praise for (temporarily) saving the country from his own stupidity.
Along with a Trump corruption website, we need a daily Trump announcement vs reality website.
I’m at the place where any Trump announcement either direct or by one of his minions has to proven before acceptance.
GOP Budget:
FEMA: $0
Trump golf trips: $300M
Which will be of more use post-hurricane?
Today’s headline: Trump caves to Xi.
Donny Two-Dolls has bent the knee. So, I guess in MAGA terminology he’s a beta? Or is it a cuck?
@Scott:
We do seem to be at a point that given conflict between what the Trump admin says and the Chinese government says, most sensible people give more credence to the commies.
@Michael Reynolds:
The original article said 10%, now it’s 30%. If you told an economist in 2024 that Trump would be freezing tariffs at 30%, I suspect they would not believe the word “freeze” meant reducing tariffs, because that number would’ve been seen as absurdly high.
@Michael Reynolds:
Nonsense. The MAGAs are saying it’s all going exactly as Trump planned it.
@CSK:
I’m waiting for them to explain how this raises enough money from tariffs to finance tax cuts. Maybe even do away with income tax. This jackass now has China at basically the same rate as Canada and Mexico.
A tale told by an idiot. Full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
@Crusty Dem: @Michael Reynolds: Still a 30% tax on working Americans. All to fund a tax cut for the wealthy. Take money from below and transfer it to the top.
@Crusty Dem:
Nothing spells L-O-S-E-R like suspending a tariff war you started after the flow of goods have stopped and the pipeline will take 30-45 days to prime.
@Crusty Dem: @Michael Reynolds: @Scott: It’s the concept of a plan. You gotta trust that the experts know what they’re doing. Just like when you let the school decide your kid needs Ritalin. That always works out just so, right?
Trump is a burger-eating surrender monkey.
He was going to end the Ukraine war in 24 hours, he ends up trying desperately to surrender Ukraine to Putin, and Putin laughs in his face. He appointed Elon to save 2 trillion dollars with his chainsaw, and Elon and Trump jointly surrender after saving. . .rough calculation. . .fuck all. He starts a trade war and immediately caves to Apple, then caves to the EU, and now, a hundred days later, he surrenders to the Chinese. What will he cave on next?
Columbia University, ABC and the weak-kneed law firms should have stood firm. A lesson for all of us. Push back, fight back, counterattack. Come on Lesotho, you can take this bitch.
God it’s depressing how predictably shitty the press is with this. Here’s the Trump process:
1. Declare [extraordinarily stupid policy] based on [completely idiotic reason that, if you squint really really really hard, might give you some hand-waving legislative cover] as a means to enrich yourself.
2. Find out.
3. Declare you’re “negotiating deals”.
4. Ease up on [extraordinarily stupid policy], but don’t actually get rid of it.
5. Have the press declare that you got everyone else to negotiate and act as though [extraordinarily stupid policy] has somehow succeeded.
Press will never again discuss [completely idiotic reason that, if you squint really really really hard, might give you some hand-waving legislative cover] or how [extraordinarily stupid policy] was, in fact, extraordinarily stupid, and is not, in fact, gone.
Some headlines:
NYTimes: “Global stocks jump after U.S. and China cut tarriffs”
FT: “The US and China have agreed to lower tariffs for the next 90 days”
WaPo: “U.S., China agree to lower most tariffs for 90 days as trade negotiations continue”
Each of these should say something about how the tariffs are, in fact, still higher than they were. Each implies the opposite.
@Michael Reynolds:
Status quo ante-felon
@ptfe: OTB: “US-China Suspend Tarrifs Amid Talks”
Nope.
@Scott:
Republicans gotta Republican.
@gVOR10: I can’t help but think that the Trump mob have investment managers tapping into private intel on the administration’s next herky-jerky moves, ready to push buttons and pull levers on a moment’s notice, while the world awakens from its slumbers.
@Michael Reynolds:
Trump said years ago that his solution to the Ukraine-Russia war was “give Russia what it wants.”
His words, exactly.
@Michael Reynolds:
You mean stable-genius stuff like this?
1. Set your house on fire
2. Call the fire department
3. Put the fire out
4. Leak stories about your beautiful fight battling the dangerous fire.
Meanwhile, for stuff that touches me, it’s a positive development. Not that it hasn’t done damage already, though.
I tried the baking soda hack. I think I had the proportions wrong, and maybe the wrong baking soda (it didn’t dissolve). The picadillo came off well, but then I let the broth reduce too much. the flavor is good, but it feels dry. So on Sunday I made beef broth gravy to add to it.
On other things, I’m halfway through season 3 of Blood of Zeus. Of all the TV shows and movies dealing with Greek mythology, I think this one involves the most elements. So many, in fact, that I keep checking Wikipedia to see which are legitimate. I think most of them are.
File this under lessons not learned:
Liz Holmes’s husband is raising money for a biotech diagnostic startup
It doesn’t seem completely illegitimate, but attempts to take technology developments from the lab to commercial applications is a very hard thing to do. This usually takes years, if not decades, and costs a lot of money.
Also, consider the source.
I’m sure Liz didn’t set out to scam investors. But when she failed to get a workable diagnostic tests as she wanted, she and Balwani did begin to purposefully fake tests, hack analysis machines, and hide everything from the authorities and even their own employees. All while claiming success and raking in millions in funding. Fraud works best when it’s baked in at the start along with an exit strategy.
Qatar wants to give away a big jet airplane. Now I read that a 5.5 billion dollar Trump golf course is coming to Qatar. Being President is a good gig.
@ptfe: “God it’s depressing how predictably shitty the press is with this. Here’s the Trump process:”
Noam Chomsky once said ‘The Wall Street Journal exists to tell businessmen what they need to hear; the Wall Street Journal editorial page exists to tell businessmen what they want to hear.”
These papers are no longer newspapers, but editorial pages.
Bought and paid for by others.
Paul Campos over at LGM has it right.
“This country is now a timeshare condominium complex with shuttle service to a shitty casino.”
@Slugger: “Qatar wants to give away a big jet airplane. Now I read that a 5.5 billion dollar Trump golf course is coming to Qatar. Being President is a good gig.”
He’ll be worth tens of $ billions by January, 2029.
@Slugger:
This strikes me as way too much money for a lawn.
Meanwhile, back in the real world……..
Use the toggle feature in the link to see when PE ratios break through 30 and higher:
1. Dot com bubble
2. Housing bubble
3. EZ credit bubble
Toggle the “all year” to see that PE ratios have tended to be mid teens to low 20’s for much of history. But economies evolve. A ratio of 20-30 is more like it since Alan Greenspan and loose credit. (toggle 20 yrs)
Now toggle 5 yrs. The max was PE 28. Its 27 now. That’s 3%, hardly “destroying the economy.” And look at some of the dips during Biden’s term. But crickets……. And how does one deal with the noise variance in the data. This blog just didn’t. It was just an opportunity to whine about Trump. But “analysis” was not to be found. But in the spirit of OTB, I have annualized the last month, and boldly predict that the DOW will 200,000 by the end of Trump’s term.
This guy makes the point I was making. The sane, and not insane TDS view. No one knows. Give it to Q2-Q3.
https://www.macrotrends.net/2577/sp-500-pe-ratio-price-to-earnings-chart
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/financial-medias-tariff-incontinence-retrospective
@Connor:
It’s weird how when Zero Hedge says things you agree with, it’s a worthwhile read, and yet, when they post anything critical of Trump, you seem to go silent on them. Or does Zero Hedge not count as “the real world” when they don’t agree with you?
Plus, when the only “expert” who agrees with you is this guy, you might want to reconsider your priors. But I think you really want to live that aging edge-lord alpha male style.
Like how you completely disappeared for the “Liberation Day” week… and the weeks after that.
Countdown to ‘cmon.
Data from the BLS:
The Biden administration’s phony jobs boom just went up in smoke. For months, it paraded numbers around like everything was fine, telling Americans the economy was roaring back, that job creation was on fire, and that “Bidenomics” was working. But the truth, long suspected by anyone trying to pay the bills, is now confirmed by the government’s own data: those jobs never existed.
According to new figures released this week, the 399,000 jobs the Biden team claimed were created between July and September of last year have completely vanished. Not only did the economy not add those jobs, but it also lost 1,000 private-sector jobs during that period.
“This more accurate dataset was just released by the BLS for the third quarter of last year,” EJ Antoni, a research fellow and the Richard Aster Fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, explains over at Townhall. “In stark contrast to the monthly job reports showing an increase of 399,000 jobs during the third quarter, these new numbers show a decline of 1,000 private-sector jobs.”
Nearly 400,000 phantom jobs were quietly wiped off the books. And this isn’t just a one-time discrepancy. Month after month during Joe Biden’s term, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) published inflated job estimates, only to revise them downward later, long after the headlines had already done their PR damage for the White House.
Recommended: U.S.-China Joint Statement Marks a Turning Point in Trade Showdown
Antoni breaks it down further: “Under Biden, these revisions were abnormal in magnitude and direction, being revised down with unusual frequency.” No kidding. In fact, the BLS’s more comprehensive annual benchmark, released earlier this year, revised down Biden’s job numbers from March 2023 to March 2024 by a jaw-dropping 598,000 jobs.
That’s not just bad math; that’s deception on a national scale.
While the Biden administration bragged about adding jobs, families across America were piling up credit card debt to keep the lights on. Over $1.2 trillion in debt wasn’t some fluke — it was a direct consequence of the inflationary, wage-crushing Bidenomics.
And the downward revisions to Biden-era jobs data are set to continue. From March through June of last year, the economy supposedly added 398,000 nonfarm payrolls, according to the monthly job reports, yet the BED data show a net loss of 163,000 private-sector jobs for that period.
In other words, “Instead of adding almost 800,000 jobs during the middle of last year,” Antoni writes, “the economy likely shed more than 160,000 of them.”
Antoni predicts that the next annual benchmark “will probably be a (retroactive) reduction of jobs under Biden that exceeds this year’s large downward revision.”
I sill stipulate lowering prescription drug prices is a good idea, and long overdue.
I will also question whether the felon rapist can do so by executive order.
Most countries control the prices of pharmaceuticals to some extent. My understanding is the US does not, ergo higher prices.
There are also generic drugs, which can be made by anyone once patents expire. Speaking of which, there are issues of when drug patents expire, given that some of the time granted by a patent gets spent during testing. And many other issues, like little interest in developing drugs for conditions that affect relatively small numbers of people, or people in low income countries that can’t pay much for drugs.
No one knew drug prices were so complicated!11!!1!!!!!1
Remember the notion of importing drugs from Canada several years ago? Essentially it meant importing Canadian price controls, rather than setting up American price controls.
@Matt Bernius:
Do you dispute the numbers, the interpretation, or the word of caution about waiting for a longer period of time to reach conclusions??
Attack the source if you like. The, ahem, “analysis” at OTB was just non-existent. It was simply “I hate Trump. Trump is stupid.”
@Connor:
Honestly, I don’t know enough about the topic to personally evaluate Mr Ivandjiiski’s analysis. I have read enough on mainstream economists, financial folks, and other’s takes on Zero Hedge to know that he’s not held in particularly high regard.
Equally importantly, I’ve engaged with you enough across all of your various identities to appreciate that your takes are almost always couched in so much intellectual insecurity and edge-lord emotion that you think “‘cmon” is a viable argument. So I tend to take anything you write with a grain of salt.
The fact that you have demonstrated yourself so constitutionally incapable of critically examining your own positions or behaviors (again see your many rage fueled quitting of this site only to return a few weeks later and your absolute avoidance of it when things are not going well for Trump) also lead one to really question your ability to judge what the “real world” is.
Or rather, we see that you think “the real world” is anything that agrees with your already established viewpoints. It also calls out how you also disregard anything that runs against your viewpoint (including by people who you often consider credible when they agree with you)… which is just a sad way to go through life.
@Connor: Matt Bernius wants me to criticize the Outside the Beltway conservatives more, so I think he means you.
The BLS employement series always gets revised. It uses prior months’ assumptions, so it tends to fail when the economy takes a turn, but it happens every time no matter the administration. It’s not bad math or deception. It’s unavoidable. Current economic statistics are based on the available data, and they’re regularly revised based on new data. They make the revisions because they know the preliminary data is incomplete.
@Fortune:
Weird. I’m really curious to understand what in my writing suggested that was what I wanted. I don’t agree with that interpretation at all. I was simply calling your attention to topics you, in my experience, tend to respond to (i.e. DEI).
Also, if I remember correctly, you are often concerned with others misinterpreting or overly reading into what you write. So on the one hand, I appreciate that you might say this is an example of show “us” what that feels like. I’d also love for you to consider how this is also a great example of how easy it is to read unintended things into comments.
Also, I appreciate the passive-aggressive framing of this. Extra points for that. (Or wait, is that me reading something you didn’t intend into what you wrote?)
All that out of the way, I totally agree with your underlying point about BLS data. And BTW, it’s an important reminder that maybe Trump supporters shouldn’t be touting recently released BLS or economic data that the President said are “proof” that his policies are working.
Though, given the gutting of government agencies, who knows if revised data will ever be published or when that will happen.
When it comes to economic statistics that are within the scope of government presentation, especially after seeing cherry-picked numbers and shifting analyses, I find it helpful to consult the St Louis Fed charts. Here’s one that tells the big picture story of total nonfarm employment.
Relevant to the current subject of interest–manufacturing in the U.S., here’s another that presents manufacturing employment. It’s impossible to ignore the downward trend from about 2000 to 2010. And keep in mind increases in manufacturing automation and an overall high labor productivity rate in the U.S.
@Kathy: There were actually people who bought tickets to Fyre Festival 2. One assumes these are the same people who would invest in a biotech company founded by Elizabeth Holmes’ husband.
@wr:
Or… I don’t know, vote for Donald Trump a third time.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
@wr:
I do wonder how many people who fall for a Nigerian type scam, turn to another one to recoup their losses.
@Matt Bernius:
The third time was 2024. The next will be a fourth time.
@Connor:
What’s wrong with telling the truth?
Trumpers’ is simply, “Trump is stupid, but we’ll still slavishly defend anything Trump says or does. Because some of us are equally stupid, and some of us are dishonest cowards.”
@Matt Bernius: I thought you’d be happy I’ve challenged 100% of the conservative commenters today and only a small percentage of the leftist ones.
@Matt Bernius:
Can we trust BLS data? The Department of Labor has been DOGEed, so I don’t think we can necessarily trust BLS data anymore than we can trust estimates of crowd size at Trump’s first inauguration or claims about the 2020 election or claims about vaccines causing autism.
And when the prevailing Republican view is that the numbers have been being fraudulently altered, there’s a very high incentive to “unskew” them to curry favor with the new bosses.
This trust issue has been a problem in general since the first day of the first Trump administration, but it’s only in this second administration that we are seeing significant activity in the data gathering parts of the government. And since activity elsewhere has resulted in alternative facts and other euphemisms for lies, it’s difficult to say that this hasn’t happened here.
To quote Mon Mothma in Andor:
(autocorrect wanted me to quote Mon Mothra)
I will also quote Senator Roark from Frank Miller’s Sin City:
Does anybody know why Connor doesn’t always provide links for the material he’s quoting?
@Connor:
Like your multiple personalities?
You’re a bootlicking sellout to Trump — a pathological liar and lifelong con artist who incited a terror attack on Congress with sore loser election lies. Since when do you oppose deception? Be for real.
I’m finding hard to believe that the Boeing 747-8 gift from the royal family of Qatar will actually happen. And not for the reason that it would be an act of corruption impossible to ignore and impossible to justify, but for security and safety reasons.
The U.S. government presumably had no part in the chain of custody of the aircraft and its components, nor conducted inspections during it’s preparation. Since Air Force One houses one of the government’s most secure workspaces, I don’t see how they get around the need to strip it down to a bare-bones condition, thoroughly inspect, and then refit it, which probably makes the whole venture impractical.
There’s a reason that Air Force One takes years and costs billions of dollars to produce, and it’s not just because of Boeing’s project management skills–it’s almost certainly driven to a great extent by complex government requirements that involve re-analysis and tradeoffs as the project progresses.
@just nutha:
His rampant intellectual insecurity mixed with laziness.
He realizes on a some level how uncredible PJ media is. He’s not dumb. But he’s also so insecure that he doesn’t want to own that he agrees with them and is quoting them. It’s also why he disappears whenever things are bad for the Trump administration or ideas in the real world are running counter to his way that he thinks they should go. He never wants to be committed with the idea he could be wrong.
The problem is that he’s apparently also emotionally unstable enough or undisciplined enough to follow through when he promises to do things like quit this site. He gets too much of a kink about going against what others think.
Like I said, being that insecure is a terrible way to live. I say that with a lot of empathy as living with that level of internal conflict and self-loathing is something I’ve been working through for years.
@Gustopher:
You don’t get to play that game without proof. BLS has no political appointees.
@Fortune:
Totally agree with the first sentence. We don’t want to go down the route that Republicans and Conservatives have played with government data during the Obama and Biden administrations. Heck, Conner for example told us we can’t trust FBI/URC data towards the end of the last administration. Don’t be a Connor.
As for the second sentence, that is currently true; however, it is important that the lack of political positions is exactly what the Trump administration is attempting to undo. This is also exactly why anyone who cares about data should resist the “bureaucrats bad” narrative that is so popular on the right these days.
For more details about the attempt to essentially politicize the BLS, see: https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/05/02/concerns-over-bls-data-raised-by-proposed-trump-rule
@Michael Reynolds:
IMO it’s not really about surrendering. Trump is an impulsive, shallowly educated incurious man learning about the complex world economy by means of trial and error. As his megalomania magically transforms errors into a brilliant successes, perhaps “learning” what’s really going on though.
So, ChatGPT for foreign policy.
Because it did so well with international trade policy, right?
Let’s play the actual BLS game:
In Q3 2018, the same statistics that Matty M (PJ Media) used – and quoted here without attribution by Connor – showed 679k jobs gained using the month-to-month numbers. Using the business employment dynamics set, it shows…about 86k (7399k lost vs 7485k gained). That’s a difference of almost 600k jobs – just POOF disappeared! From Trump’s record.
THEY’RE LYING TO ELECT SLEEEEEEEEPY JOE BIIIIIDDDDEN AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Or alternatively, these datasets measure very similar things in different ways and are useful for different purposes, and Connor – despite claiming to understand economics – definitely does not understand this very basic fact. But he could have had it for free, in less than the time it took him to read that article, copy-and-paste it into the comment form, and hit the stupid little button.
I dunno man, seems like investing more than 0 brain cells is the better way to get information.
@just nutha: “Does anybody know why Connor doesn’t always provide links for the material he’s quoting?”
If I were quoting crap that stupid, I wouldn’t provide links either. What’s he going to say ” “The homeless man on the corner screamed this today”?
@ptfe: I’m old enough to remember Democrats claiming Bush I was cooking the books. It’s not a left or right thing, it’s a hack thing.
@Fortune: Exactly this.
BLS isn’t (yet) in the business of bullshitting about jobs numbers. Their numbers are gathered using standard methods and compiled in good faith month-to-month, good or bad or neutral.
As you also note above, they are always revised after several months. There’s a cottage industry on both left and right of declaring BLS is “in the tank” for the other guys, depending on which way those revisions go and who’s done what lately economically.
@Matt Bernius: Since everything the Trump administration gets actively involved with becomes propagandized and filled with lies, and DOGE has been doing stuff in the Department of Labor, I think you can no longer trust the BLS data without some kind of external verification.
If you see a rat in a house, odds are high that there are also rat droppings.
So I ask: do we have external verification of the BLS numbers?
@ptfe:
How do you know? And how would you know when it does happen?
RFK Jr. Took His Grandkids for a Dip in a Sewage-Contaminated Creek For Mother’s Day
The National Park Service bans swimming in Rock Creek due to “high levels of bacteria.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/rfk-jr-rock-creek
Huh. I just realized that the seafood restaurant in Seattle that I like is named after a shit filled creek. Maybe the E. coli is not the part they feel an affinity towards.
@Gustopher:
From the restaurant website:
Rest easy, Gus, different Rock Creek. 😉
@Fortune:
What can I say, I apparently communicate as well to you as you often do to the rest of us.
Honestly, it would be far more refreshing for you to spend half as much time actual critiquing Trump and his policies that you disagree with than attempting to explain him or defend how we are getting his policies wrong.
I am much more interested in finding the common ground issues we have then being told we are attacking him wrong or being unfair to him.
But how you comment is your choice. Just as pointing out trends in the content of your comments is my choice (for all my sins).
@Fortune:
Again totally agree. I am also happy you too apparently agree that @Connor is a hack (out is promoting hacks). In the past you told us we were to hard on him.
@Fortune:
What can I say, I apparently communicate as well to you as you often do to the rest of us.
Honestly, it would be far more refreshing for you to spend half as much time actual critiquing Trump and his policies that you disagree with than attempting to explain him or defend how we are getting his policies wrong.
I am much more interested in finding the common ground issues we have then being told we are attacking him wrong or being unfair to him.
But how you comment is your choice. Just as pointing out trends in the content of your comments is my choice (for all my sins).
@Fortune:
Again totally agree. I am also happy you too apparently agree that @Connor is a hack (out is promoting hacks). In the past you told us we were to hard on him.
@Eusebio:
AF1 has like double the wiring a passenger B747 has. It also has IR jammers and other defensive measures against missile attack, a ton of comm gear and encryption equipment, and all of that as well as the essential flight systems are shielded against EMP in case of a nuclear strike.
This is only what’s known publicly. A lot more is classified. Not to mention all has to be flight certified and tested. So, no way that plane ever flies as AF1 in the next 4 years.
What really hurts is the blatant corruption. Qatar could just as easily had promised the bribe, with a surety bond as guarantee, and kept it quiet, then given the rapist felon the plane after he left office.
Even if the plane were being donated by a foreign government to serve as a presidential plane, there’d be tons of ethics questions involved. It’s not like a treaty is involved giving the US basing rights, or technology transfers, or access to intelligence, or even to weapons systems.
So, what is Qatar asking in return?
@Matt Bernius:
This is the first time someone’s admitted they want full agreement on Outside the Beltway.
@Fortune:
Hmmm, I’ve reread this a couple of times, and I’m still not parsing or interpreting this the way you did. But personal interpretation aside, I am but a bone deep ignorant Luddite (With apologies to Cracker), and unlike you, I’ll admit I could be wrong.
@Fortune: “I’m old enough to remember Democrats claiming Bush I was cooking the books.”
You mean you’re not seventeen? Man, there is just no excuse for you then.
@Fortune:
Again, for someone who constantly compains that they write clearly and that there is no way their words can be misinterpreted, you sure engage in a lot of motivated interpretation of what others write.
Or again, perhaps neither of us write as clearly as intended.
Either way, I continue to interpret your strain of “bold heterodox thinking” as “I will do anything I can not to agree with people I perceive as political enemies in public.” Aka the same type of boring “embarrassed Republicanism” that is pervasive in bold heterodox libertarian-esque thinkers.
And the fact that you can’t seem to even entertain that idea or see that behavior is really telling about your intellectual honesty and your ability to think in actual heterodox forms.
Again, while you get facts right, your thinking and anyalsis never seems to go past “nuance for me and not for thee.”