Say What?

$1600 a month isn't exactly one helluva bargain, but in a fairly hot resort town like Steamboat, it's not bad.

I'll stay skeptical since it sounds a lot like "company housing", and I'm not going to give any billionaire any credit for suddenly developing some sense of altruistic do-gooder thing.

My default position is still:

Billionaires are parasites

And I won't be changing that until I see consistent, widespread, and ongoing evidence to the contrary.

Steamboat Springs billionaire buys new apartment complex and slashes rent to help curb housing shortage

Venture capital investor and Steamboat Springs resident Mark Stevens acquired the 104-unit Riverview apartment complex for more than $95 million and offered units for well below market rates

Landin Hutchison was ready. The minute the office at the Riverview apartment complex opened, he was there with money in hand. A month later, he and his partner, Piper Rillos, who works with special needs students at Sleeping Giant School, and their 2-year-old son were moving into a new two-bedroom apartment in downtown Steamboat Springs, paying a little over $2,100 a month .

“We are pretty much saving a grand a month and living in town now,” said Hutchinson, a construction worker who moved his family from a home near Oak Creek a half-hour away. “We feel very, very fortunate. There are a lot of people here who are super appreciative of this opportunity.”

There are more than 100 local residents like Hutchison and Rillos in the new Riverview apartment buildings who can thank the complex’s new owner, 970 Steamboat LLC, which spent $95.3 million on the Riverview apartment complex in September.

The two buildings — a 64,000-square-foot apartment building on about an acre and a 42,000-square-foot building on a half-acre — on the banks of the Yampa River were envisioned as luxury apartments before 970 Steamboat LLC bought the buildings and announced they would rent to working locals for below-market rate prices. The record-setting transaction equated to more than $916,000 per unit.

The apartments were offered a month ago at low rates to anyone working more than 30 hours a week in the valley. There are no income qualifications or requirements for applying through the local housing authority.

“It’s life-changing for these two,” said Kipp Rillos, a professor at Colorado Mountain College who raised Piper and her two siblings in Steamboat Springs, as he moved his daughter into her new home. “They might be able to find a way to stay.”

The Riverview project has a long and unsettled history in Steamboat Springs. A developer in 2004 first proposed a condo-canyoned village on the 5-acre riverfront parcel, with 70-plus luxury units, seven affordable homes, a hotel, commercial space and underground parking. The late-aughts recession deflated those plans and the project sat largely dormant until 2017.

A Chicago-based investment group that took over the project in the Great Recession listed the entire parcel for sale in 2018 at $31.9 million. But the parcel was sold off piecemeal, with single-family and duplex lots selling for about $1 million, and Natural Grocers and local restaurants buying commercial lots.

Gorman and Company built the apartment complexes last year, with a low-interest loan from the city’s short-term rental tax fund to include 11 workforce housing units. The deal gave the city 11 deed-restricted units out of the 104 units in the two buildings. Gorman and Co. has developed more than 800 affordable housing units across the high country, most of them in Routt and Summit counties.

Then in September, that 970 Steamboat LLC group — which filed organization documents with the Colorado Secretary of State in August — swooped in and bought the whole project.

But unlike the anonymous donor who gave $24 million in 2021 to the Yampa Valley Housing Authority to buy the 534-acre Brown Ranch for local housing and worked hard to conceal their identity, this acquisition is trackable in Routt County records.

The two parcels purchased by 970 Steamboat LLC list an ownership address in Menlo Park, California. The address is the office of S-Cubed Capital, a private family office investment firm founded and managed by billionaire investor Mark Stevens. Stevens and his wife, Mary, have lived in Steamboat Springs since 2020 and in 2021 they bought the 562-acre Strawberry Park Ranch north of downtown.

Stevens is an early investor in tech companies like Nvidia and a minority owner of the Golden State Warriors NBA team. Emails to him and his S-Cubed Capital offices in Menlo Park and Steamboat Springs were not returned. Mark and Mary Stevens in 2013 launched an ongoing philanthropic campaign by announcing they were joining the “The Giving Pledge,” a billionaire-driven philanthropic mission with members like Bill Gates, Ted Turner, MacKenzie Scott and Warren Buffett, to give away a majority of their wealth.

The Stevenses are among a growing number of billionaire investors focusing their urban-generated wealth on Colorado’s mountain towns. Billionaire Mark Walters, who owns the Los Angeles Dodgers, has spent several years buying commercial buildings in downtown Crested Butte. Billionaire energy baron Bill Koch built his own Western town for his art collection outside Paonia. Cable magnate Bob Fanch, owner of Devil’s Thumb Ranch in the Fraser River Valley, is developing hundreds of homes as well as commercial and community spaces in Winter Park. And there are somewhere around 80 billionaires who own homes around Aspen, where Chicago investor Mark Hunt has bought up large swaths of downtown.

“The folks we are trying to house do not have a decade”

A month after buying the Riverview project, 970 Steamboat LLC listed units for rent at prices well below market rates. The line formed quickly for studios renting for $925 a month, two-bedrooms for $1,600 and three bedrooms for $2,125. And aside from the 11 units previously set aside for city workers, there is no public subsidy for the apartments. The qualifications to rent are not tied to income or area median income charts, which have been skewed in mountain towns as work-from-homers relocate to rural communities. The only requirement for renting in Riverview is that tenants work in the community.

“Riverview serves the heart of the Steamboat community by providing true affordability for local workers. This is more than just a place to live in Steamboat, Riverview is about maintaining Steamboat’s culture, community, and connection (with) affordable housing for the neighbors who keep our town strong,” Kimball Crangle, the president of Gorman’s Colorado operations, said in an email. “The people who power this community deserve to live where they work and continue to make Steamboat thrive.”

In increasingly pricey mountain towns, where housing projects take many years to plan, approve and develop and often face stiff opposition from locals irked by density, could the acquisition of existing market-rate complexes become a model for swift answers to acute housing shortages in Colorado’s high country? Could one solution to the high country housing crisis be found in the benevolence of billionaires?

“Much of the high country is tired of growing inequities. Long-term solutions that arise from a home-grown concept will have success in moving forward,” said Crangle, who declined to discuss the ownership of 970 Steamboat LLC. “Conversely, plans that languish soak up the opportunity cost of time, public dollars and attention. In the meantime, that snowball just continues to gain speed while the years just keep ticking by.”

In Steamboat Springs, where voters last year rejected a Yampa Valley Housing Authority plan tobuild 2,264 homes on the Brown Ranch parcel the authority acquired with the anonymous donation, “speed of execution is probably the name of the game right now,” authority director Jason Peasley said.

“Taking something that is built or entitled or further along in the approval process is something we are looking hard at because of the fact that it can accelerate delivery,” Peasley said. “We have a big need right now and in the time it takes to go through the process of acquiring the land and planning the project and getting entitled and then building it … you can easily take a decade. The folks we are trying to house do not have a decade. They don’t even have a few years.”

The Yampa Valley Housing Authority last month began selling units in the Cottonwoods at Mid Valley complex from $266,000 to $464,000, offering the deed-restricted apartments for more than 50% below market rates. The 86-unit development, built with $10 million from the city’s short-term rental tax fund, has a list of more than 300 locals who had lined up to buy, Peasley said. It is the first large offering of for-sale affordable units in more than 20 years in Steamboat Springs.

“Our needs are running away from us and our ability to deliver is not keeping up,” Peasley said. “It’s exciting to see people stepping up with new ideas and different ways to execute. We need to hit this problem with an all-of-the-above strategy.”

Truth Bomb

I can quibble with him on a coupla points, but no lies have been detected.

BTW, the dream isn't dead as long as people with living thinking brains have just a little hope.

The Shawshank Redemption 1994:

A Simple Thing

Wanna know if a guy who shits in a gold toilet cares about you? Check your last bank statement - if you're closer to being homeless than you are to being a millionaire corporate officer, you've got your answer.

The Jobs Thing

  Unemployment
+ Inflation      

= Stagflation

There's a strong probability we're already in the kind of recession that played hell with an awful lot of Americans in the 70s.

It was a time of transition. We were trying to go from the glory days of post-WW2 expansion of the empire to actual globalization. It was also when we really began to find out that we had taught the world how to beat us at our own game, but we got all pissed off when they started to show they could do it.

Japan and Germany were building better cars and electronics, and making better and cheaper steel. France and Spain were turning out American-branded TVs and home appliances that were as good as any built here, and selling at a lower price.

Throw in a couple of nasty oil shocks, and we ended the decade in double-digit inflation, which gave the money-grubbers all the incentive, opportunity, and justification they needed to buy more congress critters and begin dismantling the middle class.

History doesn't repeat - but it sure as fuck rhymes. So here we go again.

Long-term unemployment at post-pandemic high, straining workers and economy

More Americans are experiencing joblessness for six months or more, a sign of labor market’s weakness ahead of the Federal Reserve’s highly anticipated meeting this week.

More Americans are facing stretches of unemployment of six months or more, a worrisome sign for the U.S. economy.

More than 1 in 4 workers without jobs have been unemployed for at least half a year, new data shows. That number is a post-pandemic high and a level typically only seen during periods of economic turmoil.

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In all, more than 1.9 million Americans had been unemployed “long term” in August, meaning they have been out of work for 27 weeks or more, a critical cliff when it comes to finding a job. That’s nearly double the 1 million people who were in a similar position in early 2023.

“We have a low-hire, low-fire environment — and that stagnancy means there aren’t a lot of new positions for people to move into,” said Laura Ullrich, director of economic research at the jobs site Indeed. “The probability of becoming unemployed has not gone up that much, but if you become unemployed, it’s much harder to find a job.”

Six months of unemployment often signals a turning point in a person’s job search, according to economists. They’ve likely run out of unemployment insurance benefits and severance payments by then, leaving them on shakier financial ground. People who have been unemployed for more than six months are also more likely to become discouraged and stop looking for work altogether.

The data shows how broadly the job market has cooled ahead of the Federal Reserve’s highly-anticipated meeting this week, when policymakers are expected to lower interest rates for the first time this year. Two months of weaker-than-expected jobs numbers, including widespread revisions, have led policymakers to voice concerns that the labor market could continue deteriorating.

Since 1950, the long-term unemployment rate has exceeded 25 percent in only a few other instances and always after a recession: for one month, June 1983, after an inflation-fueled recession; for an eight-year stretch following the Great Recession in 2009; and for about a year and half during the coronavirus pandemic.

The pickup in months-long unemployment coincides with broader cooling in the labor market. Although the overall unemployment rate, 4.3 percent, is near longtime lows, many employers have frozen hiring as they wait to see how new tariffs and other economic policies will affect business. Layoffs are rising, too, with weekly claims for unemployment insurance reaching the highest level since October 2021.

For the unemployed, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find new work — now an average six months, a month longer than before the pandemic, according to Labor Department data. And for the first time in four years, there are more unemployed people in the United States than there are job openings.

“I have 15-plus years in IT, I thought I should be able to step into any job,” said Steve Beal, 47, who has been unemployed since March 2024, when he was laid off from a six-figure job at Best Buy’s corporate office in Minnesota. “But so far I’ve applied to at least 300 jobs and it’s all rejections. Even with referrals, networking, résumé services, I haven’t gotten anywhere.”

Separate data this week showed that Americans’ confidence in their ability to find a new job is at a record low. A survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that people say there’s less than a 45 percent chance they could find a job in the next three months if they were to suddenly become unemployed, which is the lowest reading since the survey began in 2013.

Felicia Enriquez, a paralegal in Los Angeles, lost her job in July 2024. In the 14 months since, she’s applied to hundreds of openings without success. Local government jobs have dried up, and even temp agencies are coming up empty, she said.

Her unemployment benefits — $400 a week — ran out in February, and she’s six months behind on rent. So far Enriquez’s landlord has been understanding, but she said she worries about what will happen to her and her 16-year-old daughter when that good will runs out. Already, she’s relying on food stamps to buy groceries.

“It gets harder the longer it gets. That’s the vicious part,” the 47-year-old said. “At the beginning, when you lose your job you have money saved up, you get unemployment, things are okay. But when that runs out, then you really have to worry.”

Studies have found that workers who are unemployed long-term are less likely to find jobs than others. They’re also more likely to drop out of the workforce entirely. A 2014 study by economists at Princeton University found that nearly half of those unemployed for seven months or longer, in the aftermath of the Great Recession, ended up leaving the labor force.

“The longer people linger in unemployment, the more likely they are to lose their contacts and connections, and after an extended period of time, their skills can depreciate,” said Francine Blau, a labor economist and professor emeritus at Cornell University. “And there is the possibility that employers see [long-term unemployment] as a sign of a less desirable worker.”

Finding work has been especially tough for younger workers and recent college graduates, who are entering a job market with few entry-level openings. The share of unemployed workers who are new to the labor force remains elevated after hitting a 37-year high earlier this summer.

Nelson E. Caballero graduated in December with a degree in communications from Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. He said he’s emailed his résumé and cover letter to every public relations firm in the Washington, D.C., area with entry-level openings but has gotten just three responses in nine months: All telling him they’re not hiring at the moment.

The 27-year-old is living with his parents and fretting about what comes next.

“I feel stuck,” Caballero said. “Moving out, buying a car, getting married — it all feels like a pipe dream right now. I don’t mind living with mom and dad, but they can’t keep supporting me forever.”

In Grantsville, Utah, Jessica Howard lost her job seven months ago at a health care technology company, after 17 years there. Since then, she’s spruced up her résumé several times and applied to nearly 400 jobs. But finding a new position feels impossible, she said, especially since she’s competing with many others laid off this year.

For now, Howard has temporarily put her mortgage on hold and is using savings to pay for food, gas and other necessities. But it’s been tough to keep sending out applications and preparing for interviews After months of trying.

“They say not to take it personally, but after a while the rejections really get to you,” she said. “It kills your confidence and you start to wonder: Do I really have these skills? Have I ever had these skills? It starts to break you down emotionally.”

Today's Belle

Everything's fine until it isn't.

Asshole bean-counters, and coin-operated politicians, and slimy-dog captains of industry have been chipping away at this thing for decades, finding new and better ways to take a little more profit and leave a few more "other people" holding the bag - creating a mess that looks brand new and totally alien.

And when it finally craters in on itself, everybody's going to be surprised - "How could we possibly have seen this coming!?!"

Today's Rich

Today's Mr Global

Artificial Scarcity:

When goods or services are made to appear scarce, even when there's enough capacity to produce or share them, often to increase demand and prices

And when you own several coin-operated politicians in the US government, you can do just about anything you want.

The Slam Is Coming

First:

On average, President Two-Weeks has flip-flopped on tariffs every 4 days.

Second:

He's 0-fer-90 on his trade deals.

Third:

The business bros are ignoring all this weird shit and forging ahead, &/or finding ways to countervail it.

Fourth:

I think we can expect higher prices long after the main effects of tariffs ease off. Sellers who enjoy relatively high profit margins may be willing to eat some of the tariffs, but grocers (eg) don't have that option.

And we've already seen what happens when prices go up because of natural causes, and then don't go back down once the market's upward pressure has eased. The parasite investor class won't tolerate low or no dividends for long, and they're going to expect companies to make it up to them.

Today's Belle

It's not policy - it's a mood swing.

Amy Siskind

New for me today: ADP hiring report says 62,000 non-farm pay check jobs were added in April.

How that stacks up against what Trump's DOL has to say in a few days, we'll just have to see.

note: We need 120-130,000 new jobs every month to keep the ball rolling.

Could be interesting. I think we all know Trump isn't exactly above tinkering with the numbers, so if Labor reports a nice high (ie: made up) number, I hope the Dems are smart enough to play it against the usual Republican refrain: "Who ya gonna believe - private enterprise or da gubmint?"

Meanwhile,

This remains unconfirmed:

But how can we be sure it's not legit?

The Point

When Howard Lutnick railed about the American dream not being about buying cheap goods from China, that wasn't criticism or a call to greatness - that was him telling us what Republicans intend to do to American workers.

GOP policies have been aimed at making us all "Chinese peasants" for 50 years - and they're not even trying to disguise it now.

A coalition of hundreds of employers is asking the Trump administration to override the NLRB and dictate labor law

With the Trump administration implementing a blizzard of anti-worker initiatives on a near-daily basis, it’s difficult to imagine that these early assaults could be only the tip of the iceberg. But President Trump and billionaire Elon Musk may well have far worse plans to attack U.S. workers and labor relations.

One little-seen proposal from outside the White House has the potential to upend our entire system of labor relations. It comes from the “Coalition for a Democratic Workplace” (CDW)—an anti-union trade association of several hundred employers and employer associations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers. The coalition sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking her to repudiate and invalidate more than a dozen major decisions issued by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) during the Biden administration, and to instruct all NLRB appointees and employees that they cannot treat these properly issued decisions as governing law.

The decisions in question address important issues like which workers have the right to form and join a union and what remedies are available to workers who are illegally fired in retaliation for exercising their rights in the workplace. Like all decisions issued by the NLRB—a multi-member body that acts as a court to adjudicate labor disputes—they were issued after full briefing and consideration of the issues and are treated as precedent governing subsequent cases.

Ordinarily, the way employers try to get the NLRB to change a decision they disagree with is to challenge the decision on appeal. Many of the decisions identified in the memo have been challenged, and those court proceedings are in progress. Employers also have the ability to argue to the Board in future cases that it should revisit its own precedent. The NLRB would then consider the issue and arguments and decide whether to change its earlier decision. This process comports with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which requires agencies to engage in “reasoned decision-making” when deciding cases. In other words, the agency has to explain itself when it changes course—it can’t just declare a new rule.

In what would be a radical—and clearly unlawful—departure from these well-established avenues for appeal, the employer coalition has asked Pam Bondi—who has no background or experience in labor relations—to unilaterally invalidate more than a dozen NLRB decisions with the stroke of a pen. While there is nothing in the National Labor Relations Act or any other federal law giving the attorney general any authority to overturn a NLRB decision, CDW cites President Trump’s executive order on independent agencies as authority for this action. That executive order purports to give the attorney general the authority to impose their own interpretation of any law onto independent agencies like the NLRB.

This dangerous suggestion is clearly unlawful in numerous respects. First, it completely undermines Congress’s directive that the NLRB functions as an independent agency, with labor disputes adjudicated by a panel of experts insulated from political influence. Second, if the agency did comply with this directive and revert to the law as it existed prior to the targeted decisions, any decisions following this earlier law would clearly run afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act, as the agency’s changed course would have no statutory explanation at all—the exact opposite of the “reasoned decision-making” that the APA requires.

Perhaps even more alarming is the damage this would do to our nation’s labor relations in the long term. One of the oft-cited criticisms of the NLRB is that the Board changes course and reverses itself too often, causing instability in the law. While reasonable minds can differ about how often is “too often” to revisit precedent, management and labor alike should be in agreement that abandoning the very concept of precedent altogether would be a huge step in the wrong direction.

Let’s play it out. If this scheme is successful and somehow withstands judicial review (a big if), the Trump administration could immediately undo all significant legal precedents issued by the NLRB during the Biden administration. Indeed, if an attorney general can unilaterally impose their own reading of the law on the agency without restriction, there is nothing to stop Attorney General Bondi from going further and directing the agency to abandon far longer-standing precedents with which she disagrees. Literally any aspect of labor law that has not been explicitly endorsed by the federal courts would be ripe for instantaneous revision at any time. And nothing would stop a future administration from doing the exact same thing—instantaneously revising all of labor law in a pro-worker direction and overturning any decision that favored management. Labor law would become so unpredictable and changeable as to be effectively useless. Workers and employers would bring cases before the NLRB at their peril—under the CDW’s view of things, any favorable ruling could be immediately erased by the attorney general.

Unfortunately, the lessons of history demonstrate all too well the danger to workers, employers, and the economy that can result—such as labor unrest and economic disruption—when there is no neutral entity that people can turn to in resolving disputes.

One would hope that is not the goal of any of the businesses and trade associations that comprise the CDW. Any reasonable employer should take prompt action to denounce this radical agenda and ensure it dies a quick and well-deserved death.

This Will Not Be Fun

It seems unclear when we'll start to feel the crunch, but we're very much in line to expect increases in the cost of just about everything we buy. Duh.

And part of that problem is that some companies whose stuff isn't imported - or are selling stuff that's impacted just a little - will see the tariffs as an opportunity to jack up their prices right along with everybody else.

And I'll go out on the limb here and say there are politicians just itchin' to use the potentially backbreaking effects of the tariffs as leverage to kill taxes altogether (some have talked about this for a long time, and we're getting it from Trump now too). We may start to hear about attempts to re-animate some variation on the stupid idea that a flat tax is the fairest way to do things.

Also - there have been proposals floated that we should ditch income tax and go with a universal sales tax, or a value-added tax. This is all regressive as fuck and pushes what's left of the middle class down - and keeps everybody down - while benefiting only people who're making more than 3 or 4 hundred K.

I hate this shit. When we had a graduating, progressive tax schedule, it helped drive the societal machinery that made for a strong and stable middle class, which build up the best overall system ever.

Fake lord knows it wasn't perfect - far from it - but by the middle 60s it seemed like everybody was going to have a shot at the dream. And we'd begun to understand that when everybody has a shot, and everybody understands that everybody deserves it, then we're making the whole thing better for ourselves.

I sound like a sad old man waxing nostalgic, so back to the point:

This latest bullshit feels like more coercion. If they make us miserable enough, we'll bend to their will and sign on for whatever might ease the pressure.

So here's a look at what WaPo thinks is headed our way.

Here’s where prices could rise the most and least under Trump’s tariffs

Shoppers will see uneven price increases on goods.

The global tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump this week will cause prices to rise on a broad array of food, household items and electronics, economists warn.

But the increases won’t be applied equally — some items are likely to see much higher price hikes than others. Trump imposed 10 percent tariffs on imports from nearly every country and imposed higher rates on goods coming from about 60 specific countries.

Consumer goods will be more exposed to higher tariffs than food and drinks

That means products that the United States commonly gets from Vietnam, such as clothing and shoes, would be subject to a new 46 percent tax, whereas goods from Colombia, like flowers, would see a lower new 10 percent levy. Imports from Mexico, such as avocados, will have no new tax. In any case, shopping is about to get more expensive for Americans.

“There’s no way this is going to be absorbed by firms alone,” said Michael Pearce, deputy chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “This will be felt by consumers.”

The vast majority of consumer goods — almost 80 percent — brought into United States will be subject to tariffs of at least 20 percent, according to a Washington Post analysis of international trade data from the Census Bureau.

Canada and Mexico weren’t included in the latest round of tariffs, though a 25 percent tax was placed earlier this year on some of the goods they export to the United States.

“I think Mexico is breathing a sigh of relief,” said Michael Camuñez, president and CEO of Monarch Global Strategies, which advises businesses in international trade.

Mexico and Canada are the United States’ largest trading partners for food, and imports can avoid tariffs entirely if they are compliant with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) agreement. Still, experts expect food prices to rise somewhat with the new tariffs.

“The bottom line is, it does mean more inflation,” said Tom Bailey, a senior consumer foods analyst at Rabobank.

The prices of food products from other parts of the world, such as tea from Vietnam, could increase much more sharply with the high tax rates.

“Some retailers might just hang up a sign to consumers in shops and say, ‘price plus tariff,’” said Judy Ganes, president of J Ganes Consulting, which works with food and agricultural industries.

Bailey cautioned that prices will not rise exactly in line with the percentage of tariffs — a 46 percent tariff does not mean the final product will cost 46 percent more. Actual increases on finished goods are expected to be much less because some of the cost of the product comes from distribution and operations in the United States.

Countries in Asia are facing some of the highest rates, including goods from China, with tariffs of at least 54 percent, and goods from Vietnam, with a new 46 percent tax. That’s sure to mean higher prices for electronics such as phones, computers and video game consoles, which are often imported from the continent. The tariff imposed on goods from China could add roughly $250 or more to the cost of a $1,000 iPhone, though it’s not clear yet how much of the tariff costs would show up in consumer sticker prices.

The United States Fashion Industry Association said in a statement it was “disappointed” that the Trump administration imposed tariffs on the industry’s trading partners.

Most of the clothing sold in the U.S. is imported from abroad, and even clothing made domestically often relies on fabrics and yarn that are brought in from other countries, said Sheng Lu, a professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware.

Apart from paying the new tariffs, clothing companies could also face a pullback from consumers, as people grow increasingly wary about their personal finances.

“If consumers do not feel safe about their financial outlook, they may stop buying clothing,” Lu said.

It Won't Get Better

Near the end of this piece, Steven Rattner hits the mark by identifying the problems of income & wealth disparity, and the long slide from middle class prosperity into stagnation.

But he fails to fully acknowledge that the causes lie, in large part, with short-sighted corporate policies, and the lopsided advantages handed to big companies and their management teams.

None of this gets better until we burn a few CEOs at the stake.

    IF WE TAX THE RICH NOW

WE WON'T HAVE TO EAT THEM LATER

Coming Soon (ish)

I was there - it sucked.

Stagflation on the radar for the US economy, but no repeat of the '70s

• Stagflation risks appear higher in response to Trump tariff policies
• Unlikely to fully repeat the high inflation and joblessness of the 1970s
• Fed official: 'Nothing more uncomfortable' than a stagflationary environment

WASHINGTON, March 25 (Reuters) - Recent economic projections from Federal Reserve officials had shades of "Stagflation-lite," in the words of one economist, a sentiment increasingly echoed among other observers of the U.S. economy and central bank wondering if the country's outperformance during the pandemic is about to slide.

So what is stagflation and why is it suddenly on everyone's mind?

THAT (BAD) 70s SHOW

Stagflation, or a period of both high inflation and high joblessness, hit the U.S. notably in the 1970s, which may have featured the worst U.S. economic leadership since the Great Depression. Fed officials had their data and their framework wrong, and elected officials flailed against inflation with price controls and what now seem quaint public relations efforts, most notoriously the Ford administration's "Whip Inflation Now (WIN)" button campaign.

That shit was the lamest of the lame.

As economists in recent weeks have begun marking down their estimates of economic growth and marking up estimates of inflation in the face of dramatic economic policy shifts under President Donald Trump, it has sparked debate about whether that could be unfolding again now.

In theory, a weak economy with rising unemployment undercuts inflation, so the two should not coexist. But as with oil price shocks in the 1970s that drove prices higher, the tariff shock anticipated from Trump's trade policies now has the world guessing.

The Trump administration says the tariffs are part of what they bill as a transition for the economy that, coupled with other efforts to deregulate industry and cut taxes, will produce both plentiful jobs and lower inflation.

The hints of stagflation in current forecasts aren't near as bad as the 1970s, a decade in a league of its own when a surge in the so-called "misery index" combining the unemployment and inflation rates still stands out in charts of postwar economy.

But the direction of travel for major aspects of the economy has caught economists' attention. When Fed officials this week assessed the risks they see ahead they pointed uniformly towards higher inflation and higher unemployment than previously expected.

"Stagflation-lite," is what RSM chief economist Joe Brusuelas titled his analysis of the Fed's meeting last week. Policymakers' forecasts "implied mild stagflation ahead in the near term as growth slows and inflation increases," he said, noting the "pervasive uncertainty around the size and magnitude of the trade shock."

'NOTHING MORE UNCOMFORTABLE'

Fed policymakers last week left interest rates unchanged but still anticipate two quarter-point cuts by year-end. Their new economic projections, however, laid bare their conundrum. Growth is anticipated to slow, unemployment to rise a bit more than expected, and inflation to accelerate in the face of existing and widening tariffs.

Implied by their forecasts of rate cuts and higher inflation is a belief that tariff-triggered price increases would be one-off jumps, the same assumption the Fed made early in the pandemic when it called rising prices "transitory" - and was proven wrong.

Things are different now. Factories and ports are open and goods are flowing.
But given the scope and breadth of what Trump is planning, officials say the outcome remains unpredictable.

Hard macroeconomic data, as Fed Chair Jerome Powell noted in his press conference last week, remain solid. The misery index is rather low in fact.

But softer measures like sentiment are sliding, something policymakers feel could cause businesses to stall investment and hiring and households to cut back, even as tariffs lead prices to keep rising. Fed officials note growing concern among business contacts, and have begun discussing the difficult choice moments of stagflation pose for a central bank tasked with controlling inflation while sustaining employment.

“There is nothing more uncomfortable than the stagflationary environment...where both sides of the mandate start going wrong. There is not a generic answer...Which is worse? Is it bigger on the inflation side? Is it bigger on the job market side?" Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said Friday on CNBC. "Higher tariffs raise prices and reduce output so that is a stagflationary impulse."

NOTHING TAKEN FOR GRANTED

If the Fed is caught in the middle, their priority is clear: To ensure that not just inflation, but public expectations about inflation, remain under control.

Perhaps the key mistake of the 1970s was a failure to understand better the role that public psychology plays in future inflation. Scarred by rising prices, Americans' belief that costs would keep on rising kept pushing prices higher even as the economy weakened.

It took punishing interest rates and two successive recessions under Fed chief Paul Volcker to begin to establish the Fed's credibility and reset expectations through the rest of the 1980s and into the 1990s.

That's a lesson Powell has said he takes to heart, and one he says he won't repeat.

"I don't see any reason to think that we're looking at a replay of the '70s or anything like that...Underlying inflation is still running in the twos, with probably a little bit of a pickup associated with tariffs," Powell said at a press conference after the Fed's most recent meeting. "I wouldn't say we're in a situation that's remotely comparable to that.

But stable inflation expectations are "at the very heart of our framework," he said. "We will be watching all of it very, very carefully. We do not take anything for granted."

Bob Reich

Connect the dots.

Last week, Trump’s social media corporation — Trump Media and Technology Group, in which Trump personally owns a majority of shares — announced plans to sell financial products, including a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), aimed at what Trump calls the “patriotic economy.” Its shares jumped 6 percent on the news.

Devin Nunes, Trump Media’s CEO, said the Trump ETFs give investors a chance to put money into “American energy, manufacturing and other firms that provide a competitive alternative to the woke funds and debanking problems that you find throughout the market.”

Woke funds? Debanking problems?

Two weeks ago, Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to direct the FBI, was given 25,946 shares in Trump Media, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. They are now worth about $840,000. What was this a payoff for?

Last weekend, the Trump-Musk regime shuttered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The federal government is no longer protecting consumers of financial products. Trump-Musk ordered all work to stop at the CFPB. Its X account was deleted and its homepage unplugged. CFPB employees who went to the building Sunday to retrieve things they needed to work remotely were turned away by security.

Keep connecting the dots.

The shutting of the CFPB was welcomed by the crypto crowd, including Musk, and by those issuing Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, such as Trump.

Besides his financial interest in crypto, Musk has stated publicly he’s seeking to create an “everything app” that could be used for all financial transactions. Mark Zuckerberg and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen are aiming for the same thing.

The CFPB had proposed that such apps be supervised the same way banks are supervised. Well, scratch that now. No supervision. And no insurance by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Brace yourselves for fraud and bank runs.

Musk, Zuckerberg, and Andreessen — all Trump backers and lapdogs — had claimed that the CFPB was trying to “debank” or remove them and other Trumpers from the banking system. In fact, the CFPB proposed the first-ever rule to block debanking.

Andreessen is invested in companies like Synapse, which have cost many people’s life savings. Some firms in his portfolio were shut down by the CFPB for scamming people. Zuckerberg says Meta is not a bank, although it has a payments business and Zuck wants to start a currency.

Now, connect all the dots and what do you see? An oligarchy unleashed and in the open. Their extraordinary wealth is buying the power to make them even wealthier.

It’s bad enough that Trump and Musk are making room for their own personal financial products and those of their major backers.

Trump’s financial products also invite people and corporations seeking to curry favor with him to invest in his products. Outright bribery.

Who will be left holding the bag? Surely anyone gullible enough to put their savings into one of these initiatives. Worst case, all of us if the stock market crashes and pulls the economy down with it.

This, my friends, is pure corruption. Mark my words: It will blow up in Trump’s and Musk’s faces. I just hope it doesn’t blow up in ours.

About Those Tariffs

On products and materials we import from Mexico and Canada:

• Cars & Parts
• Electrical & Electronics
• Machinery & Boilers
• Dirty fuels
• Pharmaceuticals
• Opticals, Photographic, Medical Equipment
• Furniture & pre-fab buildings
• Beverages & Vinegars
• Fruits, Nuts, & Veggies
• Fats & Oils
• Fertilizers, meats, other farm/farming products
• Plastics
• Iron & Steel
• Precious metals & gems
• Rubber
• Cereal grains & flour
• Paper products
• Aircraft & Spacecraft
• Aluminum
• Lumber & wood products

Add them all up, and you've got almost $732 billion worth of imported goods from just those 2 countries.

Multiply that by .25 (25% tariffs), and that's $183 billion in additional cost to American consumers (not including the "downstream" costs like packaging and packing materials, added costs for housing and transportation, and the rise in prices just in case things get even worse, and let's face it, this Donald fucking Trump we're talking about here - things will get worse).

Divide that $183 billion by 127 million households, and we all get to pay $1440 more than what we're paying now, plus whatever extra we'll have to pay for everything because of the inflation caused by something as fucking stupid as Trump's tariffs.

Wanna talk about the stuff we import from China?

Illustration

Today's Belle

There's trouble in MAGA paradise.

BTW - notice how MAGA loves to bitch about American kids not being taught the good STEM stuff, while they diligently avoid talking about the problems caused by 45 years of GOP attacks on public schools.

 

It's the same as their constant griping about the loss of the "nuclear family structure" while ignoring the fact that Republicans have stripped everything out of the economic system that made it possible for the average one-income family to survive.

Simple translation: Hey, MAGA, do y'all just never get tired of being played like a cheap banjo?

MAGA civil war breaks out over American "mediocrity" culture

A MAGA-world civil war erupted over Christmas when a social media post on American culture turned into a pitched battle over race, immigration and billionaires versus the working class.

Why it matters:

The fight exposes one of the MAGA movement's deepest contradictions: It came to prominence chiefly via the white, less-educated, working class but is now under the full control of billionaire technologists and industrialists, many of them immigrants.

• It also sets up a tense MAGA vs. DOGE moment that could infect the early stages of President-elect Trump's second presidency.
• While some want to make America great by restricting immigration and promoting the American worker, others want to cut costs and increase efficiency no matter who does the work.

Catch up quick:

The skirmishes started Sunday when Trump named venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as his adviser on AI policy.

• Krishnan's appointment triggered an anti-Indian backlash on social media, particularly given his past advocacy for lifting caps on green cards.

Vivek Ramaswamy escalated the conflict into a full-blown war Thursday morning with a post on X blaming an American culture that "venerated mediocrity over excellence" for the growth in foreign tech workers.

• "A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers," Ramaswamy wrote, calling for a 1950s-style "Sputnik moment" to prioritize "nerdiness over conformity."
• "That's the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence," he said.

Between the lines:

Elon Musk's X is the town square for the MAGA movement, and by stepping into that square and firmly criticizing American culture — while praising the immigrant work ethic and parenting model — Ramaswamy threw down a gauntlet.

• Musk spent most of the afternoon trying to defend his DOGE co-leader and explain his argument, framing it as using immigration to supplement, rather than replace, American workers.
• "Maybe this is a helpful clarification: I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning," Musk wrote.

The problem for many MAGA adherents, though, was accepting the very notion of immigrants telling them America needs more immigration to fill lucrative jobs in America.

• It revived old tensions around the H-1B visa, which is reserved for people who "perform services in a specialty obligation" but practically speaking has become a crucial tool of Silicon Valley's growth.
• In some recent years, as many as 75% of those petitioning for that visa came from India, from where Ramaswamy's parents immigrated.

What they're saying:

"The Woodstock generation managed to build out aerospace, the one before went to the moon, America was doing great. Underlying your post is that we were all living in squalor until being rescued by H-1B's. Then why did everyone want to come here?" right-wing personality Mike Cernovich responded to Ramaswamy on X.

• "There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers," Nikki Haley, the former GOP presidential candidate and herself a daughter of Indian immigrants, wrote.
• "I want the little guy to matter too. Not everyone has $1 million but they still love their country and want to MAGA and close the border," far-right activist Laura Loomer posted.
• Loomer posted a series of missives throughout the afternoon, calling out Ramaswamy, Musk and anyone else in Trump's orbit who isn't fully committed to closing the borders.

Zoom out:

The fracture was familiar to anyone who's seen a movement expand — early adopters criticizing the latecomers for bringing different ideas.

• "Tech bros who took 8+ years to figure out that President Trump is not the bad guy and is in fact, the solution to America's problems, are really out here pontificating to MAGA patriots who figured it out a decade before them?" conservative streaming host Brenden Dilley posted on X.

The bottom line:

For now the fight is mostly confined to X. But it's sure to raise difficult questions in the coming days about what Trump's administration will mean for immigration, labor and the American worker.

• It will also potentially settle a looming conflict over who has the most influence in Trump 2.0 — his historic base or his new-found techno-libertarian allies.

Today's Belle

What's to stop him?

If he does what he says he intends to do (admittedly, always a big if), and it stands to trigger the kinda of global shit storm they say it will, who's there to stop him this time?

And if it gets to be as bad as they say it's bound to get, how fast can the Republicans move to finish totally fucking up the elections process so 'we the people' can't do anything about it either?

The explainers from Impartial Points:

Today's Vic

Book mark this one for your MAGA friends on social media.