For no good reason I've become sort of fascinated by the daily Economic Uncertainty Index. I'm sure this will pass. But until it does, here's the latest:
The index has been above 75 every single day since November 2nd. The only other time that's happened in the past decade was during the first few months of the pandemic.
The numbers aren't so high that they suggest a panic or anything, but there's clearly a sort of persistent low-level uneasiness that's been gnawing at investors ever since Donald Trump won the election.
All companies have to do is double revenue and quintuple profits to bring P/E into sight of historical ranges.
No biggie.
Well, he is threatening a trade war with Canada and Mexico, and then annexing Canada, selling out Ukraine, selling out Taiwan at the same time he expands a trade war with China, cheering on bombing throughout the Middle East, privatizing the Post Office, destroying the Department of Education, and most of the government, trying to hire the biggest idiots, creeps and Russian spies he can find to run whatever is left and letting plagues and diseases run rampant because he is pro-plague and disease, and if you aren't he will appoint people to agencies try to destroy you, and, honestly, who needs the IRS anyway, because as a free society we should be able to trust people to voluntarily donate what they think they deserve to owe the government.
and that's just what pops into my head.
you forgot replacing the dollar as a reserve currency with the bitcoin reserve. Seriously I think the key right of the next admin wlll be whether to save the dollar as an actual functioning currency or ditch it in favor of bitcoin and then just print dollars to cover SS, Medicare, and military while still cutting all taxes on the rich and on corporations.
Toss in eliminating the pesky, ultra-liberal FDIC.
Eliminating FEMA and preventing disaster assistance to blue states, and establishing mass concentration camps for
Hispanicsillegal aliens run by the private prison industry.And yet, this is exactly what the billiionaires and millionaires voted for, and contributed their millions to elect.
It's all going according to his plan. Uncertainty breeds fear, which diminishes leverage, leading to begging, delivering bribes to Trump.
Trumpcession. It's coming.
As has been noted in previous posts, all signs point to a major market correction. Even Warren Buffet has sold off some holdings to have a good stock of cash for an upcoming buying opportunity.
Anyone who's sane knows the market has been excessively valued and is repositioning for the Trump recession and overall correction.
Having an idiot as POTUS isn't reassuring? Who would have thought?
Of course there's uncertainty.
But kinda hard to square that with Kevin's assertion that "*obviously* the only goal of the Trump administration is to make every rich person richer while further immiserating every poor person"...
For a more nuanced view of what's going on, and why no-one is quite sure how it will play out, you might want to read
https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/bringing-elon-to-a-knife-fight
written by someone who is not only a Democrat, but has actually served in federal government at the highest levels. And remember that all this is informed by people (not just Team Trump but also outsiders like Dominic Cummings) who are aware of how this has failed (or, very occasionally, not failed) in various prior circumstances,
For even deeper background, you might want to read up on your Mancur Olson, in particular The Rise and Decline of Nations...
Very interesting piece on eatingpolicy.
However I think she is making a major mistake in her analysis, which is assuming that the point of "DOGE" is actually what Elon and Trump are saying it is. But these guys have no interest at all in actually improving the efficiency of government. What Elon wants is to free up more money for tax cuts for billionaires and to reduce regulations so he and his buddies can pollute more, steal more data, and rip people off more easily.
(1) Republicans have the goal of making rich people richer, but the economy overall, and rich people in particular, actually do better when there's a Democrat in the White House (so voting for tax cuts aimed at the well-to-do is actually short-sighted), and
(2) Economic uncertainty has me re-evaluating whether I can still retire at the end of 2025. I'd be a year and a half away from Medicare, and if my 401K tanks, I need to work more.
Start selling now if that is your fear.
Yeah, because for maybe the first time in American history, a candidate explicitly campaigned on "I will destroy the economy" and ended up winning.