Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, April 9, 2025
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46 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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BlueSky.
Call me Cassandra:
Countdown to bond market crisis, anyone?
After money from stock flowed into bonds, temporarily driving yields down it. now looks like bond markets are weighing the possibility of Trump trying to engineer an lower dollar.
Bond price fall/bond yield rise aka Dramatic sell-off of US government bonds as tariff war panic deepens
Looks like the MAGA praise for Trump’s “cunning plan” to refinance the debt at lower rates may have been yet another delusion.
Amazingly enough.
tbh, it hardly took genius prophetic gifts to see this one coming.
And what makes it worse, it looks like the Chinese are not engaged in bond-dumping, yet.
If that dam breaks, head for the hills.
It’s Wednesday, time for Texas’ measles outbreak update.
That’s 24 more cases than last Friday and one more county than last week (481 cases).
New Mexico has 56 cases and Oklahoma has 10.
Good news: MMR vaccinations are up 16%.
@JohnSF:
Also a few weeks ago, the felon was muttering about some interest owed on existing bonds wasn’t legitimate. Raises the question as to whether he’d default on some bonds.
@JohnSF:
Also a few weeks ago, the felon was muttering about some interest owed on existing bonds wasn’t legitimate. Raises the question as to whether he’d default on some bonds.
“Krugman”
Misclicked actually, didn’t mean to post that much of it, bolded what I meant to post.
Well now he’s being honest about his reason for starting a trade war…
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1909764953780728060?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1909764953780728060%7Ctwgr%5E4dd11148e918a2e96aff0986abd0a02dae7cb8c2%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffpost.com%2Fentry%2Fdonald-trump-tariffs-boast-reaction_n_67f60e06e4b06e09261da701
It’s all about his need for subservience and having his ass kissed. What a weak bastard.
@Sleeping Dog:
If he follows that line beyond just a one-off musing, the bond-market really will detonate.
Given the deficit, that generates a crisis that make the Truss debacle look like a vicarage tea party.
Costs of debt finance go through the roof, the prospect of effective end of the Federal Reserve independence and direct monetization of the debt by the Treasury, dollar drops off a cliff, inflation spikes, snow in July, oh my! and rains of fish.
Can we all spell “Weimar”?
The only way out is politics. It’s unlikely to get help anytime soon with that.
Jen Rubin:
“Rubin Gift”
I woke up pondering the fact that they weren’t eating the cats and dogs, but they are putting tariffs on Penguins.
We’re in the upside down.
Meanwhile, you would think it’s Christmas in MAGA land. My entire list of MAGA “friends” on Facebook (Which my family refers to exclusively as FaceAche) Are positively giddy about all of this. One of them bet be that if Trump’s Scheme doesn’t pan out he will invite me to a BBQ of stakes. I asked him how he would finance this feast is without a job, savings, and your house.
Lord … they know not what they do. Unleash some good Old Testament smiting please. (I whish it really worked like this.)
History should be remembered over and over again. This is long but worthwhile.
American liberators of Nazi camps got ‘a lifelong vaccine against extremism’ − their wartime experiences are a warning for today
@Scott: I swear. I am of the growing belief that a large percentage of this country has a death wish whether it be physical, economic, or spiritual.
Push for Texas to weaken vaccine mandates persists as measles surge
Mayby an economic incentive will work. Allow insurance companies not to cover medical or hospital bills if not vaccinated.
@Daryl:
It’s been noted for a while that the “sir” is a tell for when he’s making up an interaction. No significant country is calling to negotiate.
@JohnSF:
Or frogs
More economic news:
Brent Crude price now below $60 due to fears of trade war and recession.
That’s not going to making the US oil biz happy, or the sheiks
otoh, the Russian budget just went up in smoke.
It’s an ill wind…
Every CEO in this country should be calling and screaming at Speaker Johnson and JD Vance to get this mess straightened out.
And every SINGLE Republican complicit in this mess, and by complicit I mean anyone who enables Trump, should be voted out of public life for the duration.
Again, this is all so unnecessary and JFC if the Chinese decide to play hardball, we are toast.
Trump and his cadre of asshats seem determined to put The Onion out of business. Bessent and Lutnik are unabashed clowns; Karoline Leavitt makes Kellyanne “Alternative Facts” Conway seem rational and honest; Noem acts like she is auditioning for the lead role in, Illsa – Shewolf of the SS as she poses in front of El Salvador’s finest gulag with humiliated prisoners huddled behind her; and Bobby Jr. tells Texans it is ok to get mRNA vaccines while crossing his fingers behind his back. The best media approach to Trump is being practiced by the Daily Show, which sits back while videos of his babbling stream of consciousness raps fill the screen. No commentary is necessary…the aged and addled narcissist indicts himself.
Here is an interesting read, with lots of charts, on trends in manufacturing and other employment, and the effect (if any) of NAFTA and other policy on the trends.
“Link“
Anyone remember the Tim Walz National Guard retirement “scandal”?
Did we dodge a bullet!
@JohnSF: Same for West Texas Intermediate. It is well known here that producers won’t explore/drill if price is below $65-70. Or natural gas below $4 (it is at $3.50 today). And these oil/gas companies are quick to layoff workers. Actually starting to worrying about my son’s job which sells equipment to the industry.
As predicted. One quibble with the headline: Substitute Trump for DOGE. Also, how long do you think it will take before the Trump Administration will start blaming paid actors for tying up the phone lines.
‘It’s a shambles’: DOGE cuts bring chaos, long waits at Social Security for seniors
It is all a hypothetical at this point but where would we be if Trump didn’t tank the Trans Pacific Partnership and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action out of spite for Obama.
All this stuff is noise. You guys are refusing to focus on the good news. Trump won a golf championship last weekend! That’s more important than international trade; isn’t it? We might even get a hole in one against Iran soon.
I realize this will not garner much sympathy, but yesterday I did battle with a wine fridge and won. . . barely.
The wine fridge was rattling. We’ve lived here less than 2 years and the previous owners apparently never pulled it out for servicing or cleaning. So it was glued in place by accumulated crud. I spent two hours lying on my side hammering screwdrivers in to try and break the thing out of the crud’s grip. Did not work.
In the end I had to go around to the opposite side of the wall, drill not one but two keyholes in the wall, then insert an oak baton that I have (for beating on hippies) and then hammer the baton with a 15 pound weight about a dozen times, hard, to finally dislodge the goddamn thing.
The most irritating DIY project since I had to assemble an entire house full of IKEA in Italy back in 2008.
@Sleeping Dog: Don’t worry. Even if he does, Congress will put forth a bill cancelling the default in 60 days– so they’ve had a chance to evaluate the consequences.
@Michael Reynolds: A digression, somebody had a protest sign, “IKEA has smarter cabinets than Trump”.
John Oliver did this piece on trans athletes. It is quite good. I did not think it was possible to have a discussion this thoughtful and nuanced in the public sphere.
I’ve no doubt Dr. Oz could be replaced by a chatbot.
Real doctors, though, not so much.
@Jay L Gischer:
Oliver strikes me as having one of the clearest minds on the planet. The sheer quantity of facts he presents on each episode is staggering.
Today Waze indicated the drive to the office to be 27 minutes. a little slow given the time of day, 7:15 am, and the day of the week, Wednesday.
About 700-800 meters from the office, things came to a standstill. I mean I couldn’t advance for five or six minutes.
Ok, things like this happen sometimes. But then Waze tells me to turn around back where I came and take a different route, indicating a further 30 minutes. I usually ignore such detours, but this time it marked the street I was on as being closed*. So, ok, I’ll take the detour.
After battling traffic to get there, about 16 minutes all told, it pops message “Save 4 minutes by taking this route!” Which route? the one I was on before I took the long detour!
Somehow I refrained from throwing the phone out the window.
*That was extremely unlikely, but I’ve seen it happen before on other streets. Usually due to some accident, once due to a sinkhole.
@Jay L Gischer: It’s very good. I hope a LOT of people watch it.
@JohnSF:
Looks like re the bond market, there another factor at play.
The hedgies (again).
Reports are a lot of hedge funds were in positions requiring bond sales to cover losses on stocks.
The betting was probably that stocks fall = bonds rise.
But weak bond demand (possibly due to international traders anticipating declining surplus dollars from sales to US?) plus the scale of the stock rout broke the normal “seesaw”.
@JohnSF:
Maybe I’m just not savvy enough, but I’ve been finding it increasingly hard to find positions that hedge against stocks falling. It seems like, more and more, everything moves together — even the historical extreme hedges like precious metals and real estate. Am I imagining that?
Kash Patel, director of the FBI, has been removed as acting director of the ATF, since he never showed up for work at the latter.
@CSK:
The world would be a better place right now if more Trump appointees just never came to work. I think we would gladly pay them to stay home.
@Kathy: I have no doubt that LLMs are entirely capable of providing medical care for people we don’t care about.
And, with an increasingly friendly regulatory culture, we can look forward to these innovations in the very near future. It will disrupt the current stranglehold the gatekeeping medical professionals have placed between Americans and the care they deserve.
We should, of course, streamline medical malpractice claims to really capture these efficiencies.
Alternately, we can use the corporate veil to protect investors — what if each time you saw the Doctorbot, Doctorbot Inc were to spin up a new subsidiary, which does the actual medical work, and assumes all the risks? The subsidiary then pays Doctorbot Inc for processing power, rent, etc, and holds zero assets. Feel free to sue Legally Distinct Doctorbot 1c407243-c4a4-4702-bd3b-36e608f8bf6d Inc for all they have.
@JohnSF:
Hey, my partner is about to be paid in Pounds. Guess we’d be paying off our US debt pretty quickly. Provided she has a job for long enough.
This is all such bullshit.
@DrDaveT:
Well, the bonds/stocks antiposition was traditional.
But, ironically, the more big funds take hedged and leveraged positions on margin calls, the less that applies.
Because then stock falls trigger bond sales to cover; and vice versa.
Oops.
Honestly have no idea about other hedges.
My default position on hedges: use hawthorn, blackthorn, and hazel, trim them every year or so, get them properly layered once a decade. 😉
Oi be rural.
Invest in land, lad.
They baint be makin’ more of it. 🙂
@Gustopher:
Some data mining companies already blame the algorithm for recommendations that prove harmful to their subjects. As if the software they implemented were an independent actor they have no control over, beyond having written, developed, and deployed it.
@Beth:
Incidentally, looks like you were right on the hedge funds playing silly buggers on the stock market again, and this time directly coupling it to the bond market.
Which might have been smart, except Trump threatens to blow up the overseas dollar supply, and also the administration talks about the benefits of dollar depreciation.
Oops.
This also makes calculations about Fed policy on interest rates, and exactly how much leeway the US has on the deficit, a bit fraught.
Interesting times.
@Michael Reynolds:
Speaking of IKEA, we went there yesterday before getting the keys to our new place*. We asked several times if we could speed up the process so that we could get out of the hotel. Contract said we got possession on the 8th. We didn’t get keys until 2. They made it seem like a big process, but it wasn’t. Just wasting a day.
Anyway, because Jarnathan didn’t let us into the unit, I misremembered the bed sizes. We went to IKEA and bought 3 rainbow bags of mostly bedding. I summoned the strength of my Lithuanian great grandmother and lugged two bags back on the train. Almost all the bedding was wrong.
Today I lugged one bag down on the Tube and two bags up. The bedding is still wrong. I’m beginning to think the UK runs on frustration for the sake of frustration.
*JohnSF, what is the secret to getting our countrymen to be less unhelpful? I’m giving Jarnathan 1 hour to respond to my email tomorrow before I just go down to his office and sit in his lobby until he answers me.
@CSK: I am not surprised. These campaign types are adrenaline junkies who wither in normal jobs that require focus and boring day to day stuff. I predict more of this.
Warning: NSFFS*
New dress code for cabinet officers…
*Not Safe For Full Stomachs
@Beth:
Polite menace, plus the periodic, appropriately judged, obscenity often works.
Some people just need a bit of a prod.
@Kathy: That is the Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, etc way. Why not apply it to every company?
Summary of a former Meta person testifying before Congress today:
https://bsky.app/profile/psst-org.bsky.social/post/3lmfrjjxjk22c
@dazedandconfused: I’m so glad Trump is ancient and fat.
When it happens, there will be dancing in the streets. Given his age, I should probably take dancing lessons.
@Gustopher:
There’s always the Trump dance: stand in one place and mime milking a cow. Or jerking someone off.