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by Les Leopold | April 29, 2025 - 5:05am | permalink
I recently wrote about a somewhat mysterious group of financial traders known as the bond vigilantes. Their actions caused Donald Trump to abort many of his Liberation Day tariffs, but that does not make them the good-guy defenders of democracy. In fact, they are quite the opposite.
Many understood that point, thankfully, but others wondered about the government bond market, how it worked, and why the value of something fully backed by the faith of the U.S. government might be mutable in value.
Readers had questions and the answers will help us understand why Trump flinched when the bond vigilantes drove up the interest rates on government bonds. As we shall see, what seems like a small change in interest rates has a very big impact on the value of outstanding bonds, causing the loss of trillions of dollars in a flash.
And:
by Thom Hartmann | April 26, 2025 - 5:03am | permalink
The Trump administration just gutted Meals on Wheels. Seriously. Meals on Wheels!
Donald Trump didn’t just “disrupt” America; he detonated it. Like a political Chernobyl, he poisoned the very soil of our democratic republic, leaving behind a toxic cloud of cruelty, corruption, and chaos that will radiate through generations if we don’t contain it now.
He didn’t merely bring darkness; he cultivated it. He made it fashionable. He turned cruelty into currency and made ignorance a political virtue.
This man, a grotesque cocktail of malignant narcissism and petty vengeance, ripped the mask off American decency and showed the world our ugliest face. He caged children. Caged. Children. He laughed off their cries while his ghoulish acolytes used “Where are the children?” as a punchline for their next QAnon rally.
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by Robert Reich | April 14, 2025 - 5:24am | permalink
— from Robert Reich's Substack
As tens of millions of Americans hussle to pay their taxes, Trump has put the entire global economy into chaos. 401(k)s are tanking, savings are shrinking, treasury bonds are losing value, supply chains are convulsing.
Even America’s oligarchs are petrified. They contributed millions to Trump’s inauguration. Many invested heavily in his campaign. They lavished praise on the new president and have supported his every move — in order to benefit from his promised big tax cut.
But the chaos he’s unleashed on the world economy is causing many of them to go public with their worries.
“Obviously,” Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, said in a conference call with reporters, “the China stuff is significant. We don’t know the full effect.”
And:
Opinion | The bond market just sent a big warning for Trump - The Washington Post
Excerpt:
“Investors started dumping U.S. government bonds. They sold and sold and sold. This is not normal. Typically, U.S. government bonds are a safe haven. Whenever stocks tank or there’s turmoil around the world, investors rush to buy plain vanilla bonds from the U.S. Treasury. It’s the equivalent of chicken soup for unhealthy markets. But suddenly, those bonds turned bitter. Ultimately, Trump caved to the bond markets. He didn’t want to follow the fate of British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who resigned in humiliation in 2022 after a similar bond market fiasco in reaction to her policies.
This unsleeping, unfeeling, unsentimental voting bloc forced Trump to change course on his tariff tornado. Other forces sagged into exhaustion in the face of Trump’s obsession, but the votes of the bond markets kept piling up, second by second, hour by hour, day by day. Forget about memes, sick burns and capital letters on Truth Social. The market eschews parades and petitions and marathon speeches. It is an endless murmur of individual transactions, each one a vote, and a landslide swept Trump away.
Trump and his team tried to happy-talk their way past the stock market collapse, but the tireless voters weighed in. His attempt to brush off his defeat in the bond markets by saying that traders had gotten “yippy” fell flat. This is the world’s infrastructure of finance we’re talking about, and it’s built on the value of government promises. Yips have nothing to do with it.
And the pillar of this infrastructure is the credibility of the United States.”
And:
Opinion | Trump is deliberately destroying America’s scientific edge - The Washington Post
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