"Even before Trump opened a Pandora’s box of economic woe, we knew numbers weren’t his strong suit. He had six bankruptcies, and his father had to buy $3.4 million in chips to save one of his casinos." - Maureen Dowd, NY Times, 'A Lot About Trump Doesn't Add Up'
While we're at it, let's put the kibosh on the nonsense Trump's decision to pause his 10% tariffs (on most nations) was done out of his clear common sense and the 'tariffied' nations begging for his relief. No way in hell! The truth? Trump had to capitulate after the bond market began to crash yesterday morning. You read that correctly. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Howard Luttnick (Secretary of Commerce) told the orange dope that the Japanese were dumping bonds and sending bond yields crashing, destabilizing the bond market. Kudos to Charlie Gasparino - FOX News Business reporter- for first breaking the news of Japanese selloffs, e.g.
Charlie Gasparino: "It is the White House who capitulated" | Media Matters for America
Excerpt:
"You know, Bessent knows this better than anybody, when you have yields on the 10-year rising to 5%, stuff starts shutting down when you have the lending market screwed up. By the way, who's dumping the bonds? Somebody asked him if it was China, right? It wasn't, it was Japan. While he was negotiating with Japan, Japan, according to my sources, were running major money management firms that are involved in the bond market, without giving up names. Japan was dumping bonds because they believed this was not a great place to do business. That forced their hands."
As the CBC (Canadian) news also reported:
"U.S. government bonds underwent a big sell-off early Wednesday, signaling investors were dumping the usually safe assets as tariff turmoil continues to rock the world. After approaching 4.5 per cent in the morning, the yield — or interest rate on bonds — on the 10-year Treasury note pulled back to 4.37 per cent following U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement of a 90-day pause on tariffs for most countries and a 125 per cent rate for China."
Bessent and Luttnick basically told the senile fool that unless he pulled back on the tariffs the U.S. economy would crater and even a depression was possible. That's given we know:
"These bonds, which are the bedrock of the global financial system, are typically seen as a safe place for investors to park their money. They are essentially loans to the U.S. government, made by the investor who holds the bond. They're typically seen as the safest bonds in the world because the chances that the U.S. government would default on the loan is virtually inconceivable."
So don't believe for a second Trump is the one dictating global trade terms and stocks went back up by his saving graces. NO! It was massive distrust of the U.S. bond market that reined this demented turd. As Chris Hayes put it on ALL In last night:
"Why not just go to the Ockham Razor's simplest explanation. The rash moves of a malevolent idiot had to be pulled back. After all the full faith and credit of the US is not what it used to be — not when it is entirely bound up in the whims of one man. And those whims were tied up in Treasury bonds this morning. But you cannot run a national economy far less a global economy based on who is kissing Trump's ass hour to hour. I mean here's the thing people have to understand: the market pricing over the last few days was not market pricing based on any policy.
It was the pricing based on how insane, malevolent and clueless this man really is. They were pricing in the belief he was going to destroy the whole thing. And the fact he backed off a little bit was because Luttnick and Bessent finally got through to him about a bond market bonfire."
Bear in mind, my friends, the Dotard hasn't done diddly or squat. Despite the "pause", the Trump administration’s 10 percent levy is still a charge layered on top of existing duties across a broad spectrum of goods - from 75 nations.
Also, 25% tariffs remain on auto parts which will drive prices for new cars into the stratosphere of added payout bucks. All this in concert will spike inflation to levels not seen since the > 9% post-pandemic supply chain rates in 2021.
Blackstone chief Larry Fink it superbly: "The U.S. has mutated from the global stabilizing force to the global destabilizer" - under Trump.
As one percipient Reddit commenter put it: "All he did with his tariff pause was exchange a shit burger for a vomit shake!"
He nailed it.
See Also:
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’s tariffs lost to bond market’s winning hand - The Washington Post
Excerpt:
“Exhaustion is a primary weapon in President Donald Trump’s
political arsenal. He will grind on a subject longer than ordinary humans can
bear to listen — and thus appears to win arguments simply by sticking to them
long past tolerance. His cunning remora, provocateur Stephen K. Bannon, summed
up the strategy in a quotable scatological burst: Trump “floods the zone with
shit.”
But there exists a voting bloc that never tires, never
flags. Operating across continents and centuries, traders of government bonds
have peered narrowly at the performance of world leaders and registered
judgment in cool percentages. They are the villains of countless conspiracy
theories, these minions of international finance, precisely because they cannot
be steered by populist frenzies or demagogic appeals.
No statesman is immune to these voters — not for long, anyway. Napoleon Bonaparte fretted over French credit even as he conquered Europe. Abraham Lincoln tracked the price of Union bonds as intently as the movement of Union troops.”
And:
What Trump’s Tariffs Mean for Global Economy, and You - The New York Times
And:
Donald Trump bends to the power of the markets
And:
by Robert Reich | April 10, 2025 - 5:26am | permalink
— from Robert Reich's Substack
Friends,
In the last week, Trump has gone wild on the global economy, saying tariffs are the key to American prosperity.
As a result, global stock and bond markets tanked.
Today — telling reporters that “you have to be flexible” and conceding that “over the last few days it looked pretty glum” — Trump paused his tariffs for most countries for the next 90 days, backing down on his policy that had sent markets into a tailspin and threatened to upend global trade.
The reversal prompted the S&P 500 stock index to climb over 7 percent in just minutes.
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