Recent quotes:

Retail Traders Are Aggressive Buyers of US Stocks This Year Despite Volatility - Bloomberg

JPMorgan’s data shows that 60% of the inflows from retail traders went to individual stocks, with electric-vehicle maker Tesla Inc. and chip giant Nvidia Corp. accounting for nearly half of that, and 40% went to ETFs. Mega-cap technology companies have consistently been retail favorites, with Elon Musk’s Tesla a major beneficiary of the trend.
#USAUSA #trump #etf #tariffs - bloomberg.com

Opinion | The Maps That Show That City vs. Country Is Not Our Political Fault Line - The New York Times

In fact, only two regional cultures consistently exhibit urban-rural vote splitting, and together they account for just 15 percent of the population. Only in the Midlands has the split been a stark one. While urban Midlanders preferred Democrats by between six and 18 points in the three elections, their rural counterparts voted Republican by 15.2, then 22.6 and finally a blistering 40.8 in 2016. As in Yankeedom, this dramatic Trump surge among rural voters had an outsize effect on the Electoral College outcome. Nor should cities be assumed to be reliable bastions of Democratic support. The core counties of major metropolitan areas, including Phoenix, Jacksonville, Fla., and Virginia Beach — and lots of smaller ones, like Boise, Idaho; Colorado Springs; Mobile, Ala.; Knoxville, Tenn.; Tulsa, Okla.; and Wichita, Kan. — went Republican in all of these presidential elections. Notably, not one of them is in Yankeedom, the Left Coast or New Netherland, even though those nations account for nearly 30 percent of the United States population. Look at counties within medium-size metros — those with a population of between 250,000 and one million. Instead of being blue strongholds, such counties in four of the “nations” — Deep South, Greater Appalachia, Far West and New France — voted for Republicans in all three contests, and those in the Midlands did the same in the latter two. Yet in the reliably “blue” nations, this same county type supported Democrats. Collectively, the very biggest core metro counties do vote Democratic in every nation, but by margins that vary enormously, from nine to 20 points in most “red” regions to 40- and 60-point landslides in “blue” ones.
#USAUSA #politics #cities #cosmopolitan - nytimes.com

Bessent Is Wrong About Banks Saving Treasuries - Bloomberg

When senior politicians start talking about technicalities of obscure financial regulations on mainstream TV you can be sure something is up. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent did just that in the middle of the US bond market selloff last Wednesday, a few hours before President Trump postponed most of his Liberation Day tariffs. Bessent was talking to Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Wednesday morning when he bought up plans for deregulation, claiming they’d be very powerful. “Part of the deregulation that’s coming in the banking industry will be changing what’s called the Supplementary Leverage Ratio, which will allow banks to buy more Treasuries without a big capital charge,” he said. “So I would expect that we will have created a new buyer for Treasury securities, a larger more durable buyer.”
#USAUSA #interst-rates #bessent - bloomberg.com

A visual guide to the elected officials who fly Christian nationalist flags at the Capitol – Baptist News Global

It’s interesting to note how Americans responded to the changing nature of the swastika during and after World War II. An archived article from The New York Times dated June 11, 1938, announced that New York Hospital was removing two swastikas from its 335-foot chimney and replacing them with crosses because the symbol no longer pointed toward well-being. “Sometimes the meaning behind a symbol becomes so horrifying that the symbol must be retired from use.” “More than 100 anonymous donors contributed $1,000 for the alteration, which is being made in response to numerous complaints that the swastika has taken on a new meaning since the pre-Hitler days when the chimney was designed and constructed,” the article explained. “The two swastikas, which were built into the east and west faces of the chimney as age-old symbols of human welfare, are being converted into Greek crosses to conform with those on the north and south faces.”
#USAUSA #fascism - baptistnews.com

Notable & Quotable: Robert Bartley on Trade Balance Fictions - WSJ

In fact, the United States ran a trade deficit in nearly all of its first 100 years, and ran surpluses in the midst of the Great Depression. A trade deficit is typical of rapidly growing economies, which require a disproportionate share of the world’s resources, and provide investment opportunities to balance the equation. Indeed, under the accounting identity, investment inflows must be balanced with a deficit on the trade account. The mystery is why we even collect these figures; if we kept similar statistics for Manhattan Island, Park Avenue could lay awake at night worrying about its trade deficit.
#USAUSA #trump #tariffs #trade-balance - wsj.com

The manufactured nostalgia of Trump’s tariffs

From the 1950s through the 1970s, for example, Black men and white men in the U.S. were employed in manufacturing at roughly similar rates. Yet, the average white man working the industry was paid substantially more than his Black counterpart — a difference of more than $10,000 a year in today’s dollars. On top of those wage differences, Black families also faced further discrimination in access to education, low-cost mortgages, and rapidly growing suburban neighborhoods.
#USAUSA #racism #tariffs - msnbc.com

The Echoes of Hitler

“If Tom can be master, what is to prevent Dick and Harry from having their turn too?” Hitler asks, with the implication that Dick and Harry are imbeciles. “We cannot be too sharp in condemning the absurd notion that geniuses can be born from general elections,” he says, because the majority “is not only a representative of stupidity, but of cowardice as well,” and thus democracy means “placing the ultimate decision in a matter in the hands of men totally lacking in every prerequisite to the task,” so that “the decision is always made by a majority of ignoramuses and incompetents.” It is “the rule of stupidity, of mediocrity, of half-heartedness, of cowardice, of weakness, and of inadequacy.” It is the good of the nation rather than equal participation that should matter: “The law of democracy seems holier to such a principle-monger than the welfare of a nation.”
#USAUSA #democracy #MAGA #fascism #hitler - currentaffairs.org

The Horrifying Fascist Manifesto Endorsed By J.D. Vance

Notably, Posobiec and Lisec do not seem to care at all about civil liberties. They say that they “believe in beauty, truth, law, and order.” Tolerance and freedom of expression are absent from that list. They are very explicit in saying that democracy is not a priority, admiringly quoting Franco saying “we do not believe in government through the voting booth.” They comment that “Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans. It is time to stop playing by rules they won’t.” The “great American counterrevolution to depose the Cultural Marxists” must be conducted “with the resolve of Franco and the thoroughness of McCarthy.” Beyond Franco, McCarthy, and Pinochet, their models include “Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Pyotr Wrangel, [and] Chiang Kai-shek.” These men were not squeamish about using violence, or terribly concerned with popular legitimacy.
#USAUSA #trump #democracy #MAGA - currentaffairs.org

Trump Blasts USA as 'Bloated and Fat and Disgusting'

“This country has gotten bloated, fat, disgusting, and incompetently run,” Trump added, before insulting Biden. “I think we had the worst president in the history of our country. He just left office. I think he’s a disgrace what he’s done to our country by allowing millions of people to come into our country like that and all of the other things he inflation, which he caused because of energy and stupid spending to spend hundreds of millions, trillions and trillions of dollars on the green new scam, a total scam.”
#USAUSA #trump - mediaite.com

How Does Budget Reconciliation Work? - Center for American Progress

Budget reconciliation (or simply “reconciliation”) is a special congressional procedure that allows for easier passage of tax and spending changes—as long as the changes adhere to certain rules. Congress can pass most bills with a simple majority in the House of Representatives, but 60 votes are needed in the Senate due to the filibuster. However, there are a few limited paths in the Senate to avoid a filibuster entirely and so pass a bill with a simple majority. The most well-known of these paths is a “privileged” process called budget reconciliation.
#USAUSA #GOP #medicaid #congress - americanprogress.org

January 5, 2025 - by Heather Cox Richardson

the political rhetoric in which many Americans have marinated since the 1950s: the idea that a government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights crushes the individualism on which America depends. Ronald Reagan made that argument central to American political debate in the 1980s. Joining those who claimed that the modern American state was creeping toward communism, he warned that the federal government was the current problem in the nation. He championed a mythological American cowboy who wanted nothing of the government but to be left alone. That cowboy myth arose after the Civil War, when former Confederates complained that federal protection of Black rights cost white tax dollars. They contrasted the “socialism” in Washington, D.C., with the western cowboys in the cattle industry, portraying the cowboys as hardworking white men who dominated the land and the peoples of the West and enforced the law themselves with principles and guns. The cowboy image of the post–World War II years served a similar function: to undermine a government that, in the process of regulating business and providing a social safety net, defended the rights of minorities and women. After 1980, Republicans increasingly insisted that regulations, taxation, and a social safety net were socialism, and they attracted white male voters by warning that the real beneficiaries of the government were racial, ethnic, religious, and gender minorities and women. In 1972 the Republican platform had called for gun control to restrict the sale of “cheap handguns,” but in 1975, as he geared up to challenge President Gerald R. Ford for the 1976 presidential nomination, Reagan took a stand against gun control.
#USAUSA #politics #guns - heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

Cutting Government Is Easy... If You Go After McKinsey

Why take on management consultants? Well, for starters, the government spends far too much on people giving it advice. In it's 2024 budget, the Biden administration requested $70 billion for management consulting, aka “professional services,” which is 5% of all discretionary spending. The Defense Department alone asked for $32.9 billion. So just cutting all management consulting would be a big chunk of savings. But it goes beyond just the raw spend on consultants, to how consultants misdirect other monies. An important study in 2023 on what it costs to resurface roads at a state level - a very simply and standard need everywhere - showed why procurement waste in America is so persistent. A key reason is consultant bloat. It turns out, when you hire government employees for long-term planning, costs go down, but when you use third party consultants, they go up.
#USAUSA #consulting #DOGE - thebignewsletter.com

The influencer lawsuit that could change the industry - The Verge

“I do think that there’s space and definitely enough money for everyone that’s in [the Amazon influencer] program,” she tells me as we sit on her cream sofa. After all, Sheil’s aesthetic is spare, bland, or, if you wanted to be ungenerous, you could call it basic. It’s a look and feel so commonplace on the internet that I can’t imagine anyone claiming ownership over it, especially in a legal context. The next day, I fly to meet with Sydney Nicole Gifford, 24, the Amazon influencer that is suing Sheil, at her home outside of Minneapolis. Gifford and her mother, Laura, greet me at the door. They are enthusiastic and inviting. Stepping inside, I am overwhelmed by a familiar palette: alarmingly neutral, not a single speck of color in sight. The house is still and silent, a vessel for content creation. In other words, it’s like I never left Sheil’s house — someone just shuffled the pieces around and plopped me onto a different set.
#USAUSA #social-media #amazon #lawyers #influencers #style-substance #affiliate - theverge.com

A Firsthand Account of What Homelessness in America Is Really Like

And can I truly afford to live in affordable housing? Based on my past experience, rent is about one third of your income. My SSDI is $960. Paying $320 a month in rent, I would be left with $640 to live on. I would have to get a job, maybe at a gas station, a job I might be able to handle. Out of every $100 I made at this job, the housing authority might take $33. If I’m paid minimum wage, $14 an hour, I might only keep about $9. To make up for the original $320 subtracted from my $960, I’d have to work about thirty-six hours. Nine hours a week doesn’t sound like much, but I know that I would struggle to perform the job well enough to retain employment. And then I’d have no more money than I have now, and I’m not making it. I’d have to work more hours for what amounts to $9 an hour. But I can’t work many more hours without jeopardizing my SSDI. How many other people are in this position, too ill and poor to afford affordable housing? And too poor to be homeless?
#USAUSA #homeless - esquire.com

Jaywalking Is a New York Tradition. Now It’s Legal, Too. - The New York Times

About 92 percent of the 463 people who received summons last year for crossing a street against a signal were Black or Latino, according to city records.
#USAUSA #nyc #race - nytimes.com

Trump in FB

I think it's a mistake for Democrats to focus on calling Donald Trump a fascist. Of course, Donald Trump probably is a fascist, or at least has fascist beliefs. He believes that a single man rules better than the messy back and forth of a democracy comprised of consensus-building mechanisms, institutions, and checks and balances. He believes the military should be loyal to him, not the Constitution. He believes his opponents should be imprisoned or expelled. He believes in "American blood," not American values. But from the perspective of winning an election, Democrats would do better to call Donald Trump un-American. I'll offer seven quick arguments, though I'm sure there are hundreds more out there. First, and most importantly from the perspective of winning votes, my guess is that while "fascism" may sound bad to many voters, the concept does not viscerally alarm many people. It's not that voters like fascism; they're just not sure exactly what the word means. "Fascism" as a concept or historical movement last came up in middle school history class in the chapter on WWII. The last time the USA was actively at war with fascists, Donald Trump hadn't yet been born. (It doesn't help that the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, our sworn enemies from 1945–1990, constantly described the U.S. itself as fascist.) Second, if the goal is connecting with undecided voters, it is far more powerful to call Trump un-American because he abhors so many beliefs that are foundational to the USA. Trump is anti-democracy. He actively works against core American principles of "liberty, equality, and justice for all." He wants to deploy troops against U.S. citizens. Even when his own VP's life was on the line and scores of police officers were being pummeled by thousands of his own supporters on January 6th, Trump watched gleefully and waited hours to lift a finger (assuming he types with just one finger) to try to quell an attack on the U.S. Capitol. Today, Trump calls those bashers of cops and trashers of history "heroes." Trump is anti–rule of law. He thinks Lincoln should have compromised on the South's demand to continue slavery. Trump admires authoritarian anti-democrats—who also happen to be our military and/or ideological enemies—like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Viktor Orbán. Third, although (or maybe because) all of Trump's grandparents were born outside of the U.S., didn't grow up speaking English, and came here to avoid destitution or prison—Grandpa Drumpf was a German draft dodger, after all—Trump actively ignores the fact that most of today's U.S. citizens are descended from people who came here without visas, and that America's great strength as a society and economy is our diversity. Fourth, Trump talks regularly about repressing freedom of speech and a free press — American values that are so bedrock that they're spelled out in the very First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The Founding Fathers—Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and many others—had lived the First Amendment before they wrote it, conceiving and refining the idea of the United States in newspaper articles and speeches over the span of 50 years. Fifth, Trump has said regularly that POWs and wounded American soldiers are suckers and losers. This alone makes Trump un-American. (And, BTW, mildly unfascist, since fascism glorifies warriors as the ultimate representatives of their country.) Sixth, Trump has bragged on tape about molesting women ("grab 'em by the pussy") and gawking at naked teenagers at beauty pageants he hosted. While these aren't the acts of a fascist, per se, viewing women as objects to exploit rather than as agents of progress is certainly un-American. Finally, Trump tries to wrap himself in the flag, claiming to embody America. Calling out Trump as unAmerican directly addresses the brazen fraud— just as in his bankrupt casinos, airline, steaks and university — in Trump's attempt to hijack the American flag and the institutions it signifies.
#USAUSA

Military veterans support Trump by wide margin in 2024 election | Pew Research Center

63% of veteran voters identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, while 35% are Democrats or Democratic leaners. As with voters overall, there are demographic differences in veterans’ partisan identification. For example, about seven-in-ten White veterans (72%) identify with or lean toward the GOP. That compares with just 11% of Black veterans, who overwhelmingly identify as or lean Democratic (82%).
#USAUSA #trump #GOP #military - pewresearch.org

You Can Still Get Tickets to Burning Man - Bloomberg

This is speculation, but I do think it's possible that yeah, Burning Man has become too mainstream and if you see a drop in popularity, it might be reflecting that. It might be reflecting people feeling like this thing that used to feel like an unusual or sort of like counter-cultural thing to do is just kind of normal now. Um, I wonder if it's just a victim of its own popularity and that, like, as with many things, it starts off as this, like, weird side thing to do and then, like, just, the more popular it is, the less it is that and, you know, what once was a signal about Eric Schmidt versus other CEO candidates, now it's kind of like I think, you know, at your most cynical, you could say that if you're in Silicon Valley, going to Burning Man is a good way to network. Like that is a very different scenario than it was, you know, 10 or 15 years ago.
#USAUSA #burningman - bloomberg.com

Right on Red: The Culture War Comes for Traffic Lights - POLITICO

“The anti-home rule Republican effort to interfere in D.C. traffic laws, a quintessentially local issue, by inserting riders in the annual D.C. appropriations bill is a petty, offensive attempt to meddle in local D.C. affairs,” said D.C.’s non-voting Congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton. “The nearly 700,000 D.C. residents, a majority of whom are Black and Brown, are worthy and capable of self-government. These riders are an antidemocratic attempt to govern D.C. without its consent, and I will do everything in my power to defeat them.”
#USAUSA #cycling - politico.com

Trump's Messianic Video About God Sending Him To Save World

I need somebody who can shape an ax but wield a sword. Who had the courage to step foot in North Korea? Who can make money from the tar of the sand turned liquid to gold? Who understands the difference between tariffs and inflation? We’ll finish this 40 hour week by Tuesday noon, but then put in another 72 hours. So God made Trump.
#USAUSA #trump #religion #nationalism #video - mediaite.com

Goodbye to the Bull Market for US Treasury Bonds - Bloomberg

Second, the US government’s fiscal health keeps deteriorating: Last month, the Congressional Budget Office raised its estimate of this year’s federal budget deficit to $1.7 trillion from $1.5 trillion, and no improvement is likely anytime soon given the political deadlock in Washington. The outlook will probably deteriorate further as higher interest rates drive up debt service costs and retiring baby boomers push up Medicare and Social Security expenditures. Larger deficits push up r*, and add to the bond term premium by increasing the risk of long-term lending to the US government.
#USAUSA #bonds #debt #yield-curve - bloomberg.com

Pret a Manger, Itsu Founder Says High UK Interest Rates Not ‘End of the World’ - Bloomberg

Americans, it's a fundamentally different thing. So your marketing and your communication in America has got to be unbelievably clear because Americans are much more gullible and less cynical than here in Europe. Europeans are unbelievably cynical where Americans are not. Americans on the whole will believe you so your marketing communication has got to be unbelievably good. So when we opened it … initially Itsu made a terrible mistake in America where everything was self service for speed and Americans … they can't get their head around the concept of fresh food being self service. They like interaction, they're so used to bespoking their food. So they have to be able to make it theirs. Now we are ready. If we went into America today, Itsu would probably be very successful. We would have to do better on communication. Healthy is too blunted. You have to really, really communicate why it's better for them. And are they ready to eat gyoza? Maybe now. Yeah, maybe. As long as you can explain.
#USAUSA #food #advertising - bloomberg.com

How the Other Half Votes: The United States, Part One – Sabato's Crystal Ball

Overall, Joe Biden won 126 of the 151 top half counties, although that still means that Donald Trump won 25 of them, which might be somewhat surprising in a national electorate where population density seems so highly correlated with partisanship. Biden’s haul was up from Obama, who won 112, but Obama won more counties overall, 692 to 538 for Biden (those numbers come from Crystal Ball Senior Columnist Louis Jacobson, who wrote about county-level voting patterns for us in 2021).
#USAUSA #politics #networks #modernity - centerforpolitics.org

Car dealers and electric vehicles: At a blowout party for unsung GOP heavyweights, the men were drunk—and anxious.

As of 2021, the top 10 dealership groups in the U.S. had annual revenues around $100 billion, more than any company that actually makes cars.* The NADA became one of the most influential lobbying entities in Washington, with 16,000 dues-paying businesses spanning 32,500 franchises. Soon enough, a stop at the annual NADA convention became routine for presidential hopefuls and even presidents. Lyndon B. Johnson, Ronald Reagan, and Hillary Clinton all attended ahead of presidential runs; Bill Clinton and both Bushes came after they left the White House.
#USAUSA #cars - slate.com

Car dealers and electric vehicles: At a blowout party for unsung GOP heavyweights, the men were drunk—and anxious.

hen the first car dealership opened in 1898, in Detroit, it was seen as a convenience for cash-strapped manufacturers, who were overwhelmed just by producing the cars. They needed a means to reach customers without having to build their own sales networks. A class of middlemen sprang up. Car dealers quickly became pioneers of influence, concocting new and astonishing breakthroughs in the very American alchemy of converting riches to political sway. As the automobile industry flourished, so did the dealership model—but the American entrance into World War I threatened to interrupt that ascent. So, in 1917, a group of 30 Chicago dealers went before Congress to argue that cars shouldn’t be classified as luxuries by the tax code. The luxury distinction would have allowed car-manufacturing facilities to be converted to use for wartime production. That would have been fine for manufacturers, which would have continued making money manufacturing, but disastrous for car dealers, who couldn’t just sell tanks.
#USAUSA #cars - slate.com

Car dealers and electric vehicles: At a blowout party for unsung GOP heavyweights, the men were drunk—and anxious.

Auto dealers are one of the five most common professions among the top 0.1 percent of American earners. Car dealers, gas station owners, and building contractors, it turns out, make up the majority of the country’s 140,000 Americans who earn more than $1.58 million per year.* Crunching numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, data scientist and author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz found that over 20 percent of car dealerships in the U.S. have an owner banking more than $1.5 million per year.
#USAUSA #wealth - slate.com