Category Archives: economic news

economic news

Make ’em pay their share

I feel this overwhelming desire to put this blogger’s current word of the day into perspective.

The word is “greed,” and it clearly has wrapped itself around the hearts and minds of mega-rich Americans over the issue of paying their fair share of taxes.

Donald Trump’s spending and taxation bill is now law and it contains those infamous tax breaks for the richest among us. Please consider the following …

If we demand that billionaires pay their fair share of taxes, they would still be richer than God. The going rate is about 38%. If someone were to pay that amount in taxes on $1 billion in gross income during a given calendar year, that still leaves the billionaire with more than $600 million in gross income for that year.

What could the government do with the money it collects from the billionaire? It could parcel it out to replenish food and housing assistance for Americans who are about to be deprived of such assistance. How about spending more money to arm Ukrainians with hardware to fight the invading Russian army?

We could do all of that … and the richest of the rich can still float around in their yachts and enjoy the decadent lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.

economic news

Musk is gone; his ‘legacy’ lives on

Elon Musk went to work for the Donald Trump administration vowing to make a difference in the way the government operates.

Brother … he left his mark. None of it, as near as I can tell, will be the stuff of legend. That is, if you count the destruction he performed during his time leading that idiotic Department of Government Efficiency.

He has to rescue his car company now. Its value has tanked. But when you’re the richest man on Earth, he can afford to lose a few trillion dollars and still be filthy rich.

I have been trying to wrap my noggin around what this moron accomplished during his time leading DOGE. He said he would slash trillions of wasteful dollars. He didn’t come close. He managed to piss off just about everyone with whom he came in contact, including — as I understand it — Donald John Trump. He boasted about taking a chainsaw to government agencies he determined were corrupt.

I will accept the idea that there exists plenty of corruption with the federal government. But you don’t dismiss tens of thousands of public servants who are there to do a job for the public they serve … and expect the department to miraculously cleanse itself.

Musk is now back in civilan life. He’ll return to making cars, launching space ships and presumably trying to recover the fortune he lost while torching the federal government. Truth be told, the richest man on Earth had no business making decisions on government programs that deliver essential services to those of us who need them just to make it through the day.

I just don’t know — nor will I ever understand — why Trump brought this clown into his sh**show in the first place.

business news, economic news

It’s called “check and balance,’ Mr. POTUS

The U.S. Court of International Trade has delivered a lesson on check and balance to the president of the United States … if only he knew what it means.

A three-judge panel ruled unanimously that Donald Trump overstepped his constitutional authority by issuing across the board reciprocal tariffs on the entire world. The ruling effectively ends — for now, at least — the idiotic trade war that Trump launched against this nation’s strongest trading partners and allies.

This really shouldn’t matter, given what the founders intended when they created a federal judiciary, but it’s worth noting nevertheless. One of the judges is a Barack Obama appointee, another one was nominated by Ronald Reagan, the third was selected by — you ready? — Donald Trump.

They spoke with one voice on this notion that Trump has no authority to act unilaterally by invoking these moronic tariffs. Trump has vowed to appeal the ruling. No surprise. It is his right to do so.

He keeps losing these court fights, yet he still claims to be a “winner.”

He’s not! Trump is a big-league loser.

economic news, national news

GOP is finding some backbone?

Lo and behold, great day in the morning and whatever exclanation you can recall! Republicans in Congress might have discovered their backbones and are stiffening them in a fight against Donaldl J. Trump and his “big, beautiful” tax and budget bill.

What has happened to these men and women? They have rediscovered the mantra their forebears used to recite to beat the daylights out of their Democratic opponents, which is that budget deficits and spiraling national debt are unsustainable.

U.S. Sens. Ron Johnson and Rand Paul have just signed on as “no” votes for Trump’s bill. It is looking for all the world as if the bill might be doomed. There are a few others who’ve also joined with their Democratic colleagues in opposing the legislation.

There’s a certain irony, of course, in Democrats opposing the bill on the grounds of deficit and debt expansion. Democrats used to scoff at GOP concerns over the deficit. Republicans led by Ronald Reagan blasted Democrats to smithereens because during the 1980 fiscal year, Democrats were calling for a deficit — get ready for it — of $43 billion! That amount today would hardly amount to anything.

The annual budget deficit is now in the trillions of dollars. The national debt has grown more under the Trump administration than during any other administration in U.S. history.

It is sounding to me as if congressional Republicans are getting the hint, based on their town halls and the ire they are hearing from constituents, that Trump’s notions aren’t worth backing.

What do you know about any of it?

economic news

Where’s the love for Biden?

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Let me get this straight: The stock market tanks and Donald Trump blames former President Biden for it.

The market then rallies big time … and Trump is silent.

No love for Biden. Why is that? Does the former president deserve to be showered with praise? No. Not really.

The point, though, is that Trump’s hair-trigger is far too quick to dish out criticism while his so-called kinder side just cannot be motivated to hand out a word of praise.

He’s a weirdo, man.

business news, economic news

Tariff tumult requires testing

Donald Trump’s fixation with tariffs has the markets in an uproar. Hints of Trump blinking send the Dow Jones averages into outer space. Then the numbskull in chief says all the wheeling-and-dealing is a mirage … so the markets tank again.

I believe the Trump skeptics who contend that POTUS 45 & 47 doesn’t have a plan. He doesn’t understand the economics of a tariff, which makes me wonder out loud whether he evrer learned against the Wharton School of Economics, where he says he earned good grades.

I don’t what his grades were. I damn sure don’t care. He isn’t exhibiting a scintilla of knowledge about basic economics with this tariff nonsense.

President Reagan of all people called tariffs a “national sales tax” He was speaking in 1987 when he denigrated the notion of attaching tariffs on goods imported into the country. The Gipper was right then. Trump is wrong today in proclaiming that tariffs on imported goods will “make America great again.”

He is turning a national economy that was held up as the gold standard for the world to emulate into an international laughingstock.

economic news

Do the math, Donald!

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Well, that was quite a day … don’t you think? The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened today in the tank per usual the past few days.

Then Donald Trump announced he would suspend tariffs levied against most nations for 90 days … except for China. What happened next was a rally for the books.

The DJIA launched itself into heavens, closing up nearly 3,000 points. The Standard and Poors 500 finished even stronger percentage-wise.

What does all of this say about Trump’s tariff tempest? It tells me that investors who control people’s retirement accounts, their livelihoods, and their run-around funds think ill of the notion of penalizing Americans because the president of the USA doesn’t understand the damage tariffs do here at home.

Trump’s tariffs would raise the cost of damn near everything we buy, given that we are a nation that imports so many essential goods, services and commodities.

Investors have good reason to be skittish over Trump’s unilateral — and unprovoked — trade war against our closest allies and trading partners. If investors are squeamish about it, think of how all of this affects people like you and me.

And do you believe Trump has any interest in protecting the interests of those he was elected to govern? If he stalls implementation of the tariffs and seeks better trade deals with our partners, then I’ll cling to a glimmer of hope that he does care.

However, I am not betting the farm on it.

economic news

Yeah, I’m tired of ‘winning’

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Donald Trump’s version of “winning” bears no resemblance to what the rest of us think of the term.

He insists America’s unprovoked trade war that has spread across the planet like a Texas prairie wildfire has earned the respect and admiration of our allies.

Um, Earth to Donald: No. It hasn’t.

Canada has vowed to retaliate. So has Mexico. We start with our two closest neighbors and two of our most reliable trading partners, and it only worsens beyond that.

The European Union is aghast that Trump would impose steep tariffs on goods imported from France, the UK, Italy and Germany. What’s a bottle of wine going to cost now that Trump has imposed steep tariffs on that item?

Here’s the bitterest irony of all the international reaction. Russia, Turkey and Hungary – nations all run by ham-handed dictators and thugs – aren’t feeling the tariff pinch the way our traditional allies are feeling it. Why is that? It must be that Trump so deeply admires dictators, so much so that he is exhibiting signs of becoming one himself.

And yet the POTUS keeps yapping about the “winning” strategy of declaring economic war on our allies. He says they’ll come around to seeing it our way. Really, dude?

It’s looking all more likely to this old man’s eyes that our allies are fed up to here – and you can determine where “here” is – with Trump’s ignorant push for tariffs that only punish Americans.

Am I tired “winning”? Yeah, I am sick and tired of it in terms that Donald Trump applies it.

economic news

Trump’s callousness in full view

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You want a measure of the callousness of the Dumbass in Chief, the guy who said he looks out for the “little guy”?

On the second day of Donald Trump’s unprovoked international trade war, a day in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed more than 2,000 points , costing total investments to lose trillions of dollars, Trump jets off to Florida to play a few rounds of golf.

Hey, no worries, man. The MAGA Moron in Chief doesn’t give a rat’s red backside about the loss of millions of Americans’ retirement funds. He said he does, but you know how believable anything is that flies out of Trump’s overfed pie hole.

It kind of reminds me of the February 2021 escapade in which Sen. Ted Cruz sought to grab a few rays in Cancun while Texans were freezing to death in the killer winter storm that paralyzed the entire damn state. Cruz got caught escaping, returned to Texas … and then blamed his daughter for talkiing the family into the ill-fated family vacation.

This time, the callousness belongs to the president of the United States of America, who launched an unprovoked international trade war by imposing tariffs on virtually every product imported into this country. Nobel laureates have proclaimed this to be a catastrophe. So have politidians of both parties. Even the great President Reagan beomoaned tariffs in the 1980s, calliing them a national sales tax that falls on every Amerixan to pay.

One of the countless lies that Trump told voters while campaigning for the presidency is that he cares about them, their welfare and their livelihood.

He doesn’t give a sh** about ’em, the folks who followed him all over creation to cheer on the lies he told them.

Here’s a thought: If he truly cared about us, he would keep the golf clubs stashed away and he would rescind the tariffs he knew would cause the havoc they have caused.

business news, economic news

Trump inscribe’s hideous legacy

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What does it say about a U.S. president who hears from the top economists on Earth that a policy he is considering would bring unvarnished disaster for Americans’ life savings … but then goes ahead with the decision to proceed?

It tells me that the president is hellbent on inscribing his place as the worst president in U.S. history.

How in the name of economic sanity can Donald J. Trump impose tariffs on our closest allies and most reliable trading partners and then watch as retirement accounts vaporize in real time?

He has through executive action spurred an international trade war, guaranteed a huge spike in inflation, forced the nation into a negative economic growth pattern and cost Americans billions of dollars in their retirement accounts.

Where I come from, that makes Trump the worst president in the history of the republic.

He doesn’t take advice. He heeds only his overfed “gut” and his “hunch.” He seeks to punish nations for “ripping us off,” yet imposes tariffs on such economic giants as American Samoa and Vanuatu.

Yours truly’s retirement account is vanishing before my eyes. Why? Because the numbskull in chief doesn’t care one damn bit about protecting the people who pledged to protect when he took office.