All_Pro_Bills

Ask your banker buddy if he expects the Fed to step into the market and initiate QE operations if they believe the Treasury market, and more importantly the consortium of Treasury dealer banks, are put at genuine risk. Of course they will which is why I don't worry to much about this other than the potential for dollar devaluation and possible inflation as a consequence of creating all that liquidity. But outright default or market failure? Not likely. What China is, and has been doing, is buying large tonnage of gold. Around 500+ tonnes per some sources. Recently, allowing insurance companies to allocate reserves to physical. In all that I think they're sending a message that the majority of market participants are ignoring or missing.

I understood it to be forced liquidation of highly leveraged Treasury bond positions of some large hedge funds rather than China selling. And if it proves to be the case, what did they buy with the proceeds? Selling treasuries for dollars and selling the dollars for what? Or just holding the dollars? Maybe Gold from today's early morning action. Or maybe rumors of China experiencing a dollar liquidity problem are correct? And the selling has more to do with stress in China's markets than responding to Trump? Lots to think about and understand.

It was a good time to buy. The problem for a lot of posters here is they couldn't see that because they're so emotionally invested in wanting to see Trump fail that they were blind to it. Rather they were hoping and praying for more carnage. Today's pause was greeted with the expected hostility. Foiling their dream of the demise of Trump or perhaps delaying it? We shall see.

I hear some conflicting points of view on that. One such argument is the tariffs are counterproductive because the lead time to bring up a factory is long and immediate tariffs are not an effective incentive. Just punishing buyers of foriegn goods. Another is the 90 day pause dropping the rate to 10% across the board is a good faith adjustment to acknowledge the effort and commitment of the other parties to work towards a resolution. All apparently except China.

I think it's premature to draw any final conclusions on manufacturing at this point. The statements today about "good news" was attributed to progress in conversations with trading partners which resulted in a 90 day pause in the high tariffs with instead a 10% rate. For now the markets like it.

If push comes to shove, the expectation is the Fed will come to the rescue with QE to buy up all the Treasury paper required to settle things down and inject a lot of liquidity into the market. A story circulating is China is a big seller of treasuries, using their big stash of bonds as a countermeasure in the tariff battle and another being there are some very large super-leveraged hedge funds that are "trapped" in the market with large unrealized losses that will render them insolvent.

Most of the financial and economic "experts" here are just pissing their pants over stock market losses and are assessing the situation from a state of sheer emotional panic. Like anyone that thinks China is trustworthy. How comical is that? Go ahead and make a deal with them and you'll wake up in an alley with your wallet missing and your pants pulled down to your ankles. Is there anyone that believes the current path of racking up 3 or 4 trillion dollar government debts every year forever, running huge trade deficits, and strip-mining the country of productive capacity is a path to long term prosperity? Its either fix it now with relatively little pain or face certain disaster later.

So far all I've heard from the DOGE effort and the SSA is they're purging the active files of dead people and examining the database to identify fraudulent applications for benefits and payments then taking the appropriate action to remove them too.

Everybody can stop crying about the markets for now as it sounds like a deal or negotiations, with Europe and a possible tariff pause, is on the table. Or maybe not?

Looking at the big picture this might mean the end of globalization. Rich hedge fund billionaires and multi-national corporations strip-mining cities and towns across America. And while the trend helped almost everybody in some way it doesn't help everyone equally. Such as a guy that lost his job at a small company supplying auto manufacturers in the US with parts vs. a hedge fund guy making billion dollar deals doing no real work and creating nothing of value armed with cheap money thanks to lose monetary policy and unlimited government spending. I look at it this way. Small town America and small businesses got decimated by globalization and offshoring work. Not to mention millions of IT jobs to India, Ireland, and elsewhere, call center jobs to the Caribbean, and other occupations. All so big multinational corporations can report an additional penny to their quarterly earnings and bi-coaster smug liberals can boost about their 401K balances and the superiority over others. Few to none have any sympathies for those rubes and "MAGA" types that lost their livelihoods. And now its the turn of the people that benefited the most to take their lumps. People crying about their life savings when others don't have any life savings because of globalization. Especially the baby boomers that have lived a very comfortable lifestyle for their entire lives without much hardship. Welcome to the party. While it hurts me personally I suspect much less than others because of all the crying here.

The screen has the DOW at 25,309 so that's probably 5 or 6 years ago. But the point is still relevant. Most people are just speculating on price movements based on sentiment and monetary & interest rate policy and couldn't articulate the rationale for investing in any particular stock except that the share price is going up. Investing through FOMO, fear of missing out.

Word is Tiawan, Vietnam, and Thailand have agreed to negotiations to end 2-way tarrifs.

I've worked all my life too. But maybe I'm just a better and more informed investor, that's very well prepared for what's happening this week, than most of the people complaining about losing a few percentage points on their portfolio? And while they're panic selling and getting all emotional I'm monitoring my buy list of great qulaity companies for either entry points or adding to current positions at discounted prices. This quote I saw nails the attitude of the "outraged" people. "Market participants have been falsely conditioned by our monetary and fiscal policy in this country to always expect comfort and never expect interruptions from the market moving higher, or the quality of life status quo that we believe we are entitled to here in the United States to suffer". Not that I'm in the circle of trust on any trade talks in progress, but don't be surprised if there's some positive announcement or news after the bell today. Perhaps about the administration being close to an agreement with Canada and Mexico that will result in a decent rally on Monday's open. And whether its this weekend or the next or a month from now that's how this is going to work.

I'm not sure what you mean by both "embrace" and "Maoism". What traits of the CCP have been adopted?

I think most people in a state of panic about the tariffs are more worried about losses to their multi-million dollar stock portfolio than they are about the economy.

Then maybe she's really a democrat? Because the majority of them are the definition of ugly unless you're into lesbians with crew cuts dressed in flannel shirts and combat boots.

Millionaires and billionaires are going to report "tip" income? I'm dying to see that. Extending the tax cuts is not a cut. And given 50% of Americans don't pay any federal taxes how do you cut their taxes? Send them more free money? As for the IRS I have no insights into the working of the agency. Its hard to evaluate the impact of these staff cuts because for starters we don't know what they were doing? 38% of how many people? 100 or 1,000 or 10,000. What I also find preposterous is the idea Trump and Musk are in this for self-enrichment. I don't know about anyone else,but I'm not going to get shot at, charged with a bunch of bogus "crimes" just to make more money when I have enough money to live on forever. And Musk doesn't need more money and if he did there are other more direct ways to generate more income for the guy than getting involved in the headache of government. The idea Trump and Musk are pulling off some get richer caper is a narrative the opposition likes to peddle because they can't say, hey, we support fraud, waste, and abuse in government spending because we're the people committing fraud, waste, and abuse and a lot of that money is funding our causes and ending up in our pockets.

The tax cuts I'm hearing about are excluding tips and overtime pay from taxation along with eliminating the tax on social security benefits. Unless the "wealthy" are waiting on tables and catching some extra hours in the warehouse or depending on SS for their existence what exactly is the proposal on the table for cutting rich people's taxes?

Populists aren't attacking people and committing criminal acts here. When these socialist/leftists ass holes can't get their way through the ballot box they resort to violence and lawlessness all while claiming the other side is threatening democracy while they ignore democracy and resort to street violence and criminal behavior.

This tariff thing is a 2nd step in a reset of the global financial system. The first step was central banks allocating more of their reserves to gold. It would be wise for investors to follow the bankers actions. They're always properly positioning themselves to mitigate risks. Instead of moaning and groaning about the impact of tariffs adjust to a new set of arrangements. Or lose your ass going forward.

These NGO's need to be exterminated. Cutting off their access to free taxpayer money was the first step. Stripping them of tax-exempt status is another. They are partisan political organizations that don't qualify for tax-exempt status. Next, arrest their leadership and donors for inciting violence and criminal activity. Harass the crap out of them and their legal representatives. I say this knowing it might cross the line but its a line the opposition has crossed already. There can be no compromise with them here. Time to play hardball.

I might ask why are tree hugging California libs dumping raw sewage into the water in the first place? It sounds like something they should be dead-set against and assigning blame to the court ruling regulators over-stepped their authority in imposing limits seems misplaced. Shouldn't the ire in this case be focused on the city government of San Francisco?

I agree. So where does that leave us as a nation? We consume more than we produce incurring big trade deficits year after year. Our businesses are not cost competitive as other nations have cheaper labor and business costs aided by things such as weaker environmental and work safety rules. One conclusion is eventually there needs to be an adjustment in our overall standard of living. A downward adjustment to re-balance the economic and business realities of global trade..

I think raising taxes to cover the government's entire fiscal year budget and eliminating borrowing is a great idea. I also think the 50% that don't pay any federal income tax should start paying their fair share. Getting 100% of the benefit with 0 costs doesn't seem fair. Make rich people pay more too. And the middle class. Higher corporate and business taxes too. Because getting American's to pay for the entire federal budget instead of pushing the costs off onto younger workers and future generations through massive federal debts to the tune of 2 to 5 to 7 trillion dollars each year will wake everybody up to the obscene cost of government. Hitting them in the wallet for the entire annual tab might suddenly convince everyone of the idea we need to get control of out of control spending. And free health care, free housing, free food, free education, free everything, is not free.

Identity of Democrats 2028 Presidential candidate revealed!