The Economy Is in a Pickle
ET
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
We’re in an economic pickle, and it’s self-induced. Home sales were down 5.9% in March. Consumer sentiment is chasing 10-year lows. Capital spending plans are way down. Cargo shipments from China to the U.S. are down by about a third. Truckers don’t get hired to haul empty containers. Retailers may lay off workers as store shelves empty. Apollo Global Management predicts all this by late May and a summer recession. Then look out below for corporate earnings. Increased private credit loan defaults could drive stagflation, the worst of all worlds.
Interpreting Mozart or the Constitution is neither mechanical reproduction nor unfettered creativity. It is about using your eyes and ears and lived experience and education and critical lens and passion and skepticism and, above all, humility, to tease out the text’s infinite implications, and in doing so, to come closer to its essence.
A Pianist and a Law Professor Meet at the Bar …
Jonathan Biss and
Mr. Biss is a concert pianist and Mr. Serkin is a professor at Vanderbilt Law School.
Friday, May 2, 2025
A comment on native Spanish expression in contrast to English language that I live with
The Things Only English Can Say
Mr. Maroño Porto, an associate editor at The Atlantic, is originally from Spain.
Mr. Trump’s bet is that Mr. Xi will blink first because the pain for the Chinese economy will be so great that he will have to strike an accommodation that will, over time, allow the United States to get back to something approaching normal. Mr. Xi is betting the opposite: that Mr. Trump has overreached, and can’t withstand bad G.D.P. numbers, rising inflation or plummeting polls. Only one of them is right.
A Flashing Economic Warning and a Sharp Political Jolt
The report that the economy contracted in the first quarter underscored how much President Trump has at risk as he pursues an aggressive trade war.
David E. Sanger has covered six American presidencies and served as both a business and national security correspondent in Asia during a previous era of trade wars with the United States. He reported from Washington.
Thursday, May 1, 2025
Trump may have unintentionally reduced carbon emissions just like a left wing moron
Trump May Have Unintentionally Reduced Carbon Emissions
Carbon emissions, largely a byproduct of going places and making things, have always been tethered to economic growth. Forecasters increasingly anticipate that Mr. Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs could tip the economy into recession as companies and consumers cut spending in the face of higher prices for imported goods.
I always held Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew as a shining authoritarian light but an individual dies and so does the light
My Father Founded Singapore. He Wouldn’t Like What It’s Become.
Mr. Lee is a son of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founder and former prime minister. He wrote from London.
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
The attached article dwells on small businesses dependent on confident foreign trade to continue but no mention on how Trump is causing his enthusiastic trucker supporters to be laid off
‘Things Have Ground to a Halt’: Tariff Uncertainty Paralyzes Businesses
The Times heard from hundreds of American companies, most of them small businesses, that face a reckoning because of President Trump’s steep import taxes.
Daisuke Wakabayashi, who covers business and economics in Asia, reported from Seoul.
Sunday, April 27, 2025
Who wins the trade war? Every time you think you understand the state of play, President Trump simply flips the game board. The result: American economic uncertainty is now off the charts, registering highs well past the peak of pandemic panic. Economists are expecting a recession, automakers are already rolling through layoffs, and fund managers haven’t been so bearish on American assets in decades. The stock market looks more and more like a meme coin, heading for a possible rug pull, and the president looks like someone who simply enjoys inflicting pain on almost anyone while unable to feel any of it himself.
If Mr. Trump were to abandon all the tariffs he has proposed — and there is no sign of that actually happening — the problems he has already introduced wouldn’t all vanish. By tearing asunder the fabric of international relations, he has raised enduring questions about the validity of U.S. promises in trade and diplomacy, and added deep uncertainty to the planning of businesses, investors and workers around the world. He can improve the situation, and I certainly hope he does, but it’s too late to pretend that none of this has happened.
Bracing for a Slow-Moving, Self-Inflicted Economic Storm
The markets face a baffling prospect: continual disruptions from the White House with potentially severe consequences.
Jeff Sommer writes Strategies, a weekly column on markets, finance and the economy.
Friday, April 25, 2025
I’ve detested at least three-quarters of what the Trump administration has done so far, but it possesses one quality I can’t help admiring: energy. I don’t know which cliché to throw at you, but it is flooding the zone, firing on all cylinders, moving rapidly on all fronts at once. It is operating at a tremendous tempo, taking the initiative in one sphere after another.
Thursday, April 24, 2025
United States Department of State whose offices were built in a formerly swampy area of Washington, D.C. , known as Foggy Bottom because of the vapors from the swamp and office
Critics Call Rubio’s Overhaul Plan a Blow to U.S. Values
Michael Crowley covers diplomacy and the State Department. He reported from Washington.
On the other hand what is holding Trump back from eliminating the the Department of Energy?
Secretary of State Marco Rubio moves to overhaul one of Washington’s more dysfunctional operations.
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
If you hadn't noticed I'm a fan of Jason Riley
‘Economic Affirmative Action’ Won’t Work
Putting ‘class’ ahead of merit may be legally defensible, but it’s sure to prove counterproductiv
ET
Monday, April 21, 2025
I'm in the middle of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19 by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley that makes me a believer of the Lab Leak
On New Website, Trump Declares Lab Leak as ‘True Origins’ of Covid
Sorry Benjamin your defense of the wet market origin of covid is pointless. I believe Matt Ridley because you state
"But the page does not address other details about the early spread of the virus, like where patients lived and worked and genetic clues from an illegal wild-animal market in Wuhan where many cases were detected. Many scientists believe that information points to the virus having spilled from animals into people at the market."
When according to Ridley few if any of the early covid victims were people who had visited the local wet market.
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