"The economic problems we face are serious, but this is not a serious way to address them." @rajivsethi https://rajivsethi.substack.com/p/reciprocal-tariffs
here's a handy heuristic!
when a guy says "They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats…They're eating the pets of the people that live there."
and in fact they are doing no such thing
maybe don't vote for them to become the most powerful person on the planet.
so who do we greet as liberators?
it's such a politically savvy play — now that you feel poorer, the prices of everything will blow up!
not only does it have the lowest tariff rates, but the penguins aren't unionized.
you gotta understand. if they hadn’ta cut a deal, they’d have had no shot at a piece of this.
from @ddayen.bsky.social https://prospect.org/economy/2025-04-03-theyre-not-tariffs-theyre-sanctions/
Text: But countries are not alone in the boxes; corporations and industry sectors are as well. The phalanxes of lawyers and lobbyists who try to ease sanctions through their contacts at the highest levels of power now have a new target. Companies have been lawyering up for months in anticipation, while enlisting friendly politicians for the task. The White House has fielded hundreds of letters from businesses pleading their case. And it's already working.
so, are they gonna make liberation day a national holiday?
So, is the EU finally going to get serious about replacing US search/social/AI with their own, regulable, firms?
if you want emergency powers, create an emergency (by using the "emergency" powers you already had!)
my son: “i feel like apostrophes can sometimes be really possessive.”
from @ryanlcooper https://prospect.org/world/2025-04-02-germany-finally-gets-over-austerity/ ht @ddayen
Text: More broadly, it is frankly maddening that it took a military crisis to get Germany (and others) to shake off austerity brain. An entire generation of Europeans saw their career prospects diminished or ruined entirely; Greece and Spain endured a catastrophe on par with the Great Depression. But it should be emphasized that austerity also left Europe militarily weak. Without the austerity poison, its infrastructure would be in better shape, its economy would be maybe 20 percent larger, and it would be able to afford rearmament much more easily.
i love the smell of liberation in the morning.
If you live in Wisconsin, Florida District 1, or Florida District 6, you are some of the most powerful people on the planet today.
If you haven't voted already, please go now.
you cut Federal research because you just want to be able to say shit and have that be the official truth without pointy-heads in the “deep state” telling you or anybody else you are wrong.
[new draft post] If we weren't idiots, Balance of Payments edition https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/04/01/if-we-werent-idiots-balance-of-payments-edition/index.html
my wife suggests maybe everyone should get a Trump tattoo to ward off deportation, rendition, enslavement.
it’s #pathetic that this administration mistakenly sent to foreign prison a US resident with legal status but can’t get the authoritarian leaders of a tiny little country to give him back.
what would be the appropriate due process under our laws for sending someone into enslavement for an indefinite, perhaps life, term, without possibility of appeal or parole?
nobody was indefinitely detained and enslaved under conditions tantamount to torture when a bunch of bumbling operatives broke into an office in the Watergate building.
there’s nothing more lawless than a law-and-order party.