Today's Belle et al

• Huge debt - and getting huger
• The deficit is growing
• Shrinkflation is accelerating
• Job growth sucks
• Mortgage foreclosures are rising
• Personal bankruptcy is rising
• Farm failures are rising
• Consumer Confidence is in the shitter
• and
• and
• and

But hey - The Epstein Class is doing just fine, so who cares about those workin' slob losers in the "middle class"? Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

How the hell do I short this market?

During a "shutdown", what essential services are cut, and what is kept up and running?

• The hotlines for reporting things like fraud and ID theft are taken down, but the office that handles corporate mergers and acquisitions is on the job
• Air traffic control operations for private jets may be impacted, but the commercial traffic has to be limited

40% of the gains in the stock markets is due to speculation on AI.

What Now?

They need us to be sick, broke and scared.

Today's Rich

Immigrants - people here legally are otherwise - are better for the US economy than Republicans.

And always remember, there was a workable proposal for real Immigration Reform on the table ready for Congress to take it up, haggle it out, and vote it into law in the summer of 2024, but Trump jumped in and told the dog-ass Republicans to throw it out so he'd have an issue to run on.

First, we got "They're eating the dogs - they're eating the cats."

And now we've got roving gangs of masked thugs raiding daycare centers and hanging out in Home Depot parking lots, hunting down anyone who looks a bit too brown - and killing people who pose absolutely no threat to anyone.

None of us should trust any politician too much, but damn - you can trust Republicans about as far as you can spit a bowling ball.

The Cato study:

Cato Study: Immigrants Reduced Deficits by $14.5 Trillion Since 1994

Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets

Today, the Cato Institute published “Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023,” a study on the fiscal effects of immigrants—legal and illegal—that builds upon the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) fiscal effects model. The paper, which I coauthored with Michael Howard and Julián Salazar, is the first to analyze three decades of federal, state, and local government budgets to determine how immigrants affected the total US government debt and deficit.

In this paper, we wanted to accomplish two main things:

1) Provide the first-ever assessment of the total net fiscal effect of all immigrants from 1994 to 2023, rather than a one-year snapshot or forward-looking projection like many other studies. We wanted a sufficiently long period to assess claims like those by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, asserting that immigrants have already sucked us dry.

2) Provide the clearest explanation for the mechanisms driving the fiscal effects of immigration on government budgets.

Immigrants Have Reduced the Deficit Every Year

Every year since 1994, when data collection began, immigrants have paid more in taxes than they received in benefits from the federal, state, and local governments. The fiscal benefits have continued to rise, reaching their highest level ever in 2023.

The fiscal surplus from all immigrants from 1994 to 2023 was $14.5 trillion, compared with a deficit of $48 trillion without immigrants. That means that immigrants cut deficits by nearly a third in real terms over the last three decades.

Why the Average Person Is Fiscally Positive

How can immigrants be so fiscally beneficial when the country overall is running such extreme deficits? The answer is that a big part of the US budget is pure public goods—primarily the military and interest payments on past debt accrued before the immigrants came—which don’t scale with population growth. These are essentially fixed costs or sunk obligations that the United States will have to cover whether immigrants come or not.

The figure below shows how, in most years, tax revenue exceeds the costs of providing benefits—that is, everything that requires scaling with population growth. Thus, immigrants will be fiscally positive so long as they are at least average in their revenue creation and benefits received. In fact, immigrants are significantly better than average in both aspects of the fiscal equation.

Immigrants Pay More Taxes, Receive Fewer Benefits

Immigrants pay more in taxes than the average person. This is counterintuitive because they have lower hourly wages, but because they work at much higher rates (the blue line), they end up with higher per capita incomes (the gray line) and pay more in taxes than their share of the population predicts (the dotted line). Thus, immigrants have been better at generating revenue for the government than the average person.

Are their tax revenues overwhelmed by the costs they impose? Here’s everything the federal, state, and local governments spent money on over the last 30 years in per capita dollar amounts. Immigrants did not create significantly higher costs for any items and saved the government enormously in two areas: old-age benefits and education costs.

Immigrants cost less as retirees: First, the savings on old-age benefits are not because immigrants are significantly less likely to retire. Instead, it is because they are far less likely to receive a government pension, since they were less likely to have government jobs and thus less likely to receive expensive government pensions. The main reason, though, is that they were simply barred from applying for Social Security and Medicare because they either arrived too late in life to earn the necessary qualifying work history, or they are here illegally or in a temporary status and ineligible for that reason.

Immigrants cost schools less: Immigrants arrive in the United States at the average age of about 25, meaning that the United States gets workers without having to pay to educate them. Even though they are more costly when in school—due to bilingual education needs—they are much less costly overall because they are so much less likely to be in school. The result is that immigrants cost the US education system about half as much as the US-born population.

Immigrants aren’t big welfare users. The savings on education aren’t lost in the welfare state. Immigrants are much more likely to be in poverty but use roughly an average amount of what we call “needs-based” assistance. That includes traditional welfare, food assistance, Medicaid, refundable tax credits, and unemployment insurance. The entire reason for this disconnect between poverty rates and welfare use rates is that many immigrants are here illegally and so are ineligible to apply for welfare in most states. This conclusion, that immigrants use welfare at the same rate as the US-born population, matches the Trump administration’s conclusion in 2018.

Here is the full picture of spending and taxes for immigrants from 1994 to 2023. Immigrants—legal and illegal—paid more in taxes every single year than they received in benefits, broadly defined, and the gap has grown over time.

Immigrants Don’t Cause Deficits

Here’s another way to look at our main conclusion. Immigrants accounted for 14 percent of tax revenue and 7 percent of government spending from 1994 to 2023. Even if the government had not spent a dollar on immigrants, while somehow still getting all their tax revenue, the US government at all levels would still have run a $20 trillion deficit. Immigrants are not to blame for government deficits. Indeed, they reduced the deficit by about $14.5 trillion.

We use the highest-quality data available for this report and the best methods for this type of analysis. Although there are undoubtedly methodological finer points that can be debated, these broad conclusions are inescapable:

1. The average additional person is fiscally positive because pure public goods are such a big portion of the budget.

2. Immigrants generate more tax revenue. Immigrants’ employment rates are well documented. The correlation between income and taxes is well established.

3. Immigrants use fewer benefits. The effects of status-based limits on welfare and entitlements are clearly apparent in numerous data sources. The savings from education are indisputable, as immigrants are less likely to be enrolled in school.

Since these effects are not driven by the absence of immigrant retirees, we shouldn’t expect our conclusion to reverse after tracking a specific cohort of immigrants over time. Indeed, when we do follow the cohort that entered from 1990 to 1993, we find that after three decades, the cohort was still paying far more in taxes than they received in benefits, and that the fiscal gains had grown over time. In total, this cohort reduced the deficit by $1.7 trillion.

Our paper also concludes:

• Without the contributions of immigrants, public debt at all levels would already be above 200 percent of US GDP—nearly twice the 2023 level and a threshold some analysts believe would trigger a debt crisis.
• Even low-skilled immigrants—those without bachelor’s degrees—reduced the debt by $2.8 trillion.
• Immigrants in all categories of educational attainment, including high school dropouts, lowered the ratio of deficit to gross domestic product (GDP) during the 30-year period.
• Illegal immigrants likely reduced the deficit by at least $1.7 trillion.
• Even including the second generation, who are mostly still children who will become taxpayers soon, the fiscal effect of immigration was positive every year, reducing the debt by $7.9 trillion.

Table: Fiscal flows and GDP effect by citizenship and education, cumulative, 1994–2023 

Concluding Thoughts

Overall, the main conclusion of our paper is that there is nothing systematically wrong with US immigration policy regarding the fiscal effects of immigrants. There is nothing unsustainable about the US immigration system. We could have scaled immigration as it existed without burdening government budgets. For years, nativists in Congress and the administration have wrongly claimed that immigrants are behind the growth in debt and that the US immigration system allows foreigners to take advantage of Americans’ generosity. Our data completely repudiates this view. Immigrants are subsidizing the US government.

The best way to balance the budget is to reduce spending—particularly on wealthy retirees—but rather than hinder our efforts to control deficits, immigrants are helping.

You can read the entire study here: Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023

Today's Belle

Conference Board Consumer Confidence numbers are pretty bad - again.

All 5 categories are down - the lowest they've been since 2014.

Overall confidence has been under 80 for a full year, with only 15.6% of the people expecting the economy to improve in the next 6 months.

Latest Press Release
Updated: Tuesday, January 27, 2026

Confidence collapsed to lowest point since 2014, surpassing pandemic depths

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index® fell by 9.7 points in January to 84.5 (1985=100), from an upwardly revised 94.2 in December. A 5.1-point upward revision to December’s reading of the Index resulted in a slight increase last month, reversing the initially reported decline. However, January’s preliminary results showed confidence resumed declining after a one-month uptick.

The Present Situation Index—based on consumers’ assessment of current business and labor market conditions—dropped by 9.9 points to 113.7 in January. The Expectations Index—based on consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business, and labor market conditions—fell by 9.5 points to 65.1, well below the threshold of 80 that usually signals a recession ahead. The cutoff for preliminary results was January 16, 2026.

- more -

GOLDEN AGE MY ASS

Jessica

• Trump's tariffs have cost every American household $1,100.00
• Wage-earners are getting a smaller portion of GDP than they have since 1947, when we first started tracking it
• Under Trump - for 8 straight months since his tariffs started - we've lost manufacturing jobs - every fucking month
• In 2025, a total of 584,000 new jobs have been added (the lowest since the Great Recession), which is almost a million jobs below what we need to stay even
• 94% of the costs of Trump tariffs have been paid by American companies, who are passing that shit on to us - have you checked your shrinkflation lately?
• US food prices are up 19% since 2022
• Energy prices are going up for normal people, but not for the big data centers

Today's Rich

K-Shaped Vibe-cession

The good old 401k and IRA are rollin' along singin' a song.

And that alone would generally tell us things are OK, but we've learned over the last several years that good-looking markets for stocks and bonds aren't really a solidly accurate gauge for how most people are actually doing.

If you had some money to get into the markets in the first place, then it's not so bad, but the picture is pretty bleak for practically anybody pulling down less than $100-200K, which is about 80% of the American workforce.

Home-sellers outnumber home-buyers by a margin that's either bigger than ever, or bigger than it's been in 30 or 40 years.

And all of this controversy and argument over what numbers are more accurate can be laid directly at the feet of "President" Trump.

Nothing is as it seems - except of course that Trump is lying to us.

GDP 'Nowhere Near' 4.3%: Rosenberg Dismisses Q3 Report As 'Fugazi,' Pegs Real Growth At 0.8%

While the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported a robust 4.3% annual increase in third-quarter real gross domestic product (GDP) on Tuesday, economist David Rosenberg is calling the headline number a “fugazi.”

The ‘Fugazi’ Factor

The president of Rosenberg Research argues that underlying economic weakness is being masked by government spending and depleted savings, calculating “true” growth at a meager 0.8%.

The official BEA release shows widespread gains, with real GDP accelerating from 3.8% in the second quarter to 4.3% in the third. The increase was driven primarily by consumer spending, exports, and government spending.

However, Rosenberg contends these figures are misleading. “If you think the CPI data was manipulated, so was today's GDP report,” Rosenberg stated on X.

He argues that once government spending, shifting import data, and a “sharp drawdown” in the personal savings rate are stripped away, the economy is barely expanding. He specifically points to “flat personal disposable income growth” as a critical red flag contradicting the apparent consumption boom.

Clash Of Narratives: Weakness Vs. Overheating

The report has sparked fierce debate among analysts interpreting the same data through vastly different lenses. While Rosenberg sees a hollow economy propped up by unsustainable spending, Gordon Johnson of GLJ Research sees a terrifying nominal boom.

Johnson highlights that nominal GDP (growth before adjusting for inflation) surged 8.2%, accompanied by a GDP price index reading of 3.8%—far hotter than the Fed’s target.

“Nominal growth in the U.S. is >8%… yet 10yr yields are AT JUST 4.17%?” Johnson questioned, arguing that the Federal Reserve's current easing cycle is “encouraging EVEN MORE inflation” in an economy that is overheating, not cooling.

Inside The Q3 GDP Numbers

The official data support elements of both bearish views. The BEA confirmed that imports, which subtract from GDP, decreased, artificially boosting the headline number.

Meanwhile, the price index for gross domestic purchases accelerated to 3.4%, up from 2.0% in the previous quarter, lending credence to Johnson's inflation fears.

As markets digest the report, investors are left with a stark choice: believe the headline strength, Rosenberg's “fugazi” weakness, or Johnson's inflationary fire.

Food Is Life

20,000 independent American farmers will go broke this year - and that probably won't change next year. Or the next.

Hawk

This is not winning.

Think Outloud

Operative Concept:

MAGA voters are willing to go down with the ship as long as they're convinced someone they don't like is going to drown faster and harder.

People keep telling me not to take it out on the MAGA voters, but I'm not hearing a good explanation for how these people continue to buy into the bullshit when better information and - you know, factual reality - are both in their faces every fucking day.

Year-To-Date, AI accounts for 40% of GDP growth, and 80% of the stock market rise.

Expertise is not Elitism

Education is not Brainwashing

Warnings are not Fear Tactics

Today's Belle

• Revenue dollars are up
• Unit volumes are down
• 12,000 people laid off in the last 5 weeks in Shipping, Warehousing, and Manufacturing

We're buying less, it's costing us more, and fewer people are working.

Pretty sure this is what the Analysts and Business Insiders call

"Heading in the wrong fucking direction"

On The Farm

It's always good news and bad news.

• If the harvest yield is high, then the prices are low
• If the prices are high, then the harvest yield is low

BTW, Trump has changed the rules, so the big players can get busy squeezing out the little guys.

Today's Belle

Gaslighting is all they've got now.

Notice how the Trump gang dismisses the ranchers' complaints, telling them they should be grateful their product is selling at a high price, and that they should be helping consumers by lowering their prices.

Classic abuser.

How It's Going

It's been going on for a few years.

IMO it was kept going because CEOs discovered they could blame COVID, and Biden, and supply chain problems, etc, and never adjust their prices back down to reflect lower costs once the upward pressure caused by the crisis du jour began to ease.

And now we've got people turning to GoFundMe and Payday Loans to make their rent and buy groceries.

GoFundMe CEO says more people seeking help with basic needs like groceries, rent

Platform CEO notes trend spans multiple countries despite easing inflation in recent years.
Jaqueline Benitez, who depends on California's SNAP benefits to help pay for food, shops for groceries at a supermarket

More people are turning to the popular fundraising website GoFundMe for help with basic necessities like groceries, rent and utility bills, according to the platform's CEO.

Tim Cadogan said Monday on the Opening Bid Unfiltered podcast that users are increasingly seeking assistance for essential needs including car payments and other bills.

"We're seeing that more and more," Cadogan said.

The trend extends beyond the United States to many Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, which include much of North America, Western Europe and East Asia, according to Cadogan.

This pattern has increased over the last three years, even as inflation figures have eased in the U.S. during that time, Cadogan said.

The consumer price index shows costs for the ordinary American increased 2.9% in the 12-month period ending in August. September figures have been delayed due to the ongoing government shutdown.

However, in the four years since August 2021, prices for goods and services in the U.S. increased 18%.

Cadogan noted that in 2024, there was a 6% increase in the amount of money raised by GoFundMe for campaigns. The overall number of donors actually declined during that period.

With potential cuts in government programs, Cadogan sees an opportunity for services like GoFundMe to help fill gaps in assistance.

"As you see this shift in maybe governments doing less, we think there's a real opportunity to help increase that percentage, specifically in the U.S.," Cadogan said.

Today's Belle

The Trumplefucks refuse to tell us the numbers on the American economy - because they know it's practically nothing but bad news.

But business has to have those numbers in order to make their plans. So they gather the basic data themselves, and it's getting ugly.

In the first half of 2025, GDP growth was 0.1%, and without the AI bubble to drive things, it'd probably be way lower.

Everything Trump touches turns to shit.

Housing Trouble

It's not 100% of course, but a slow-down in building permits generally portends a recession.

A major drop in permits, plus both inflation and unemployment ticking up, plus the Buffett Indicator being over 200% - taken together, how we stay out of a bad hole is difficult to figure.

US single-family housing starts near 2-1/2-year lows as inventory bloat weighs

• Single-family housing starts drop 7.0% in August
• Permits for future single-family home building fall 2.2%
• Fed's rate cuts may not revive housing market amid job concerns

WASHINGTON, Sept 17 (Reuters) - U.S. single-family homebuilding plunged to a near 2-1/2-year low in August amid a glut of unsold new houses, suggesting the housing market could remain an economic headwind this quarter.

The report from the Commerce Department on Wednesday also showed permits for future single-family home construction dropped last month to the lowest level in more than two years. Some economists said the decline was necessary to manage new housing inventory, currently near levels last seen in late 2007.

"Builders have been plagued with excessive new home inventories for going on about 18 months now," said Stephen Stanley, chief U.S. economist at Santander U.S. Capital Markets.
"They have made a few half-hearted and ineffective stabs at slowing construction activity, but persistent hopes that homebuyer demand would perk up have been repeatedly dashed. It is past time that builders bite the bullet and cut back on the number of homes they are starting to get inventories under control."

Single-family housing starts, which account for the bulk of homebuilding, fell 7.0% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 890,000 units last month, the Commerce Department's Census Bureau said. That was the lowest level since April 2023.

Groundbreaking for single-family housing projects tumbled 17.0% in the densely populated South, where economists said most of the over-building had occurred amid a labor market boom. But the region has experienced a significant decline in job openings this year. Homebuilding rose in the Northeast, Midwest and West.

Starts for housing projects with five units or more decreased 11.0% to a rate of 403,000 units. This multifamily housing segment is extremely volatile. Overall housing starts dropped 8.5% to a rate of 1.307 million units.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast housing starts falling to a rate of 1.365 million units. Economists hoped a recent sharp decline in mortgage rates in anticipation of the Federal Reserve resuming its interest rate cutting cycle would revive the housing market.
Governor Andrew Bailey was blunt, we're not out of the woods yet.

The U.S. central bank cut its benchmark overnight interest rate by a quarter-percentage-point to a 4.00%-4.25% range on Wednesday and projected a steady pace of reductions for the rest of 2025 to help the struggling labor market. The Fed paused its policy easing cycle in January because of uncertainty over the inflationary impact of President Donald Trump's import tariffs.

THE HOUSING MARKET IS IN A SLUMP

The housing market has been in a prolonged slump following the Fed's aggressive rate hikes to combat inflation. The relief from easing mortgage rates is, however, likely to be limited by tepid job gains and rising unemployment as companies hold off on hiring because of an uncertain economic outlook.

Falling new house prices and shortages of construction workers as the Trump administration rounds up undocumented immigrants could also constrain homebuilding.

The rate on the popular 30-year mortgage has dropped to an 11-month low of 6.35% last week from around 7.04% in mid-January, data from mortgage finance agency Freddie Mac showed.
Permits for future single-family homebuilding decreased 2.2% to a rate of 856,000 units, the lowest level since March 2023. Single-family building permits dropped in the South, Northeast and West. They rose in the Midwest.

A National Association of Home Builders survey on Tuesday showed sentiment among homebuilders remained subdued in September, though expectations for higher sales over the next six months improved. Builders are increasingly cutting prices and offering other incentives to reduce the inventory bloat.

The number of single-family houses approved for construction that were yet to be started slipped 1.5% to 133,000 units. The completions rate for that housing segment surged 6.7% to 1.090 million. The inventory of single-family housing under construction fell 2.1% to a rate of 611,000 units, the lowest level since January 2021.

Building permits for multi-family housing units plunged 6.7% to a rate of 403,000 units. Overall building permits decreased 3.7% to a rate of 1.312 million units, the lowest level since May 2020. Residential construction contracted in the first half of the year and is expected to again subtract from gross domestic product in the third quarter.

"Consumers' low confidence and heightened concerns about job security represent ongoing headwinds to demand," said Samuel Tombs, chief U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. "We expect residential investment to remain a drag on GDP growth at least until mid-2026."

The Hammer Is Falling

There's a substantial reckoning coming our way. And I think it'll be the result of a combination of a shitty Stagflation-type economy, and a very fractured political structure, which gives us a population knowing they need to fight somebody for something, but unable to figure out how to get together, much less who they should be trying to get together to fight - and what they're supposed to be fighting for.

It's a clusterfuck, stuck inside a FUBAR, trapped in a burning dumpster, rolling downhill towards a cliff - with the lid welded shut.

Credit scores drop at fastest pace since the Great Recession

A growing share of borrowers are falling behind on car loans, credit cards and personal loans, according to a recent survey.

The national average FICO score dropped by two points this year, the most since 2009, according to data released Tuesday by the analytics company.

Although credit scores remain significantly higher than during the Great Recession, they are down for the second year in a row. FICO found a growing share of borrowers are falling behind on car loans, credit cards and personal loans.

Younger Americans, exposed to the double whammy of high student debt and low entry-level hiring, are under even more financial pressure.

Gen Z borrowers experienced an average credit score drop of three points — the biggest decline of any age group since 2020 during the pandemic, according to FICO.

The findings underscore the growing disconnect between the euphoria on Wall Street and pessimism on Main Street. While US stocks continue to shatter record highs, a significant chunk of Americans say they are hurting.

“We’ve seen a K-shaped economy where those with wealth tied to stock market portfolios and rising home values are doing well and others are struggling with high rates and affordability problems,” Tommy Lee, senior director at FICO, told CNN.

Mounting financial stress

Average credit scores fell sharply after the 2008 financial crisis, as unemployment skyrocketed and millions of Americans could not make their mortgage payments and defaulted on their auto loans.

Credit scores increased each year from 2013 to 2024, when they dropped by a single point, according to FICO.

But FICO found that delinquency rates on auto loans, credit cards and personal loans are at or near their highest levels since 2009.

These delinquency rates are “more consistent with an economy in recession than one still in expansion,” FICO said, adding that mortgage and home equity loan delinquency rates are still near historic lows.

FICO found that 14% of Gen Zers have had a large credit score decline of 50 points or more in the past year — more than any other year and double the decline of 2021.

Student debt hobbles Gen Z

At least some of this pressure on younger Americans is linked to student debt.

Following a Covid-era pause, student loan delinquencies were not reported on credit files until February. The Department of Education restarted collecting federal student loans in default in May.

This shift disproportionately impacts Gen Zers because about one in three (34%) of them have open student loans, double the national at large, according to FICO.

Between February and April, 6.1 million consumers had a student loan delinquency added to their credit file, according to FICO. That means the student loan delinquency rate has climbed to a record high of 29% among the 21 million borrowers with a student debt payment due.

Another 1.9 million consumers haven’t had a delinquency reported even though they have student debt payments due and haven’t made payments.

The impact of these late student debt payments is amplified by the fact that Gen Zers often don’t have the long history of making credit payments that feed into credit scores. That makes their credit scores vulnerable to more volatility, both up and down.

‘Drastic hit’ to credit score

Another problem: Younger Americans are also contending with the most difficult job market in years for new college graduates.

Dimitri Tsolakis, 22, said he applied to hundreds of jobs after graduating from American University in 2024 with a degree in international relations.

It took Tsolakis 14 months to finally land a full-time job, or at least one that wasn’t a scam. But the job he did get, as a secretary at a law firm in Orlando, called for a dramatic cut to his income relative to his prior work as a server.

“My credit score took a drastic hit because I had to compromise and take a job where I’m severely underpaid,” Tsolakis told CNN in a phone interview.

Tsolakis owes $35,000 in student debt but has had to pause repayments to focus on making his car payments and paying for other living expenses.

He’s hardly alone in skipping payments.

About one in five (19%) of consumers say they paid less or skipped bills to get by in the past year, according to a July survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. That’s up from 17% a year earlier.

Even more consumers (47%) said they cut discretionary spending in the past year, while 23% said they reduced essential spending.

FICO found that 64% of Gen Z and 61% of Millennials with student loans rely on credit cards, buy-now-pay-later loans or personal loans to bridge financial gaps.

Taking on a second job

Sue Murphy, a nurse in Philadelphia, took a parent-PLUS loan to help fund her daughter’s college education. The $70,000 in student debt requires monthly payments of just over $500.

To make ends meet, Murphy took on a second job, making her schedule 12 days on and one day off.

“It almost feels like it doesn’t pay to be an honest hardworking citizen in this country anymore,” Murphy said.

The plan had been to make 10 years of payments and then have the balance of the student debt forgiven because Murphy works at Temple Health in Philadelphia, a nonprofit medical system that qualifies for public service loan forgiveness.

However, Murphy now fears the student debt won’t qualify for forgiveness because of rule changes proposed by the Trump administration.

At the order of the White House, the Education Department has proposed amending the definition of employers that qualify for loan forgiveness by excluding employers involved in “illegal activities.”

“The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program exists to serve American heroes like teachers, police officers, and firefighters — not individuals or employers engaged in illegal activities that harm Americans,” Ellen Keast, deputy press secretary at the Education Department, said in a statement to CNN. “The Department has no business subsidizing the employees who work for organizations that break the law by mutilating and maiming healthy children or aiding and abetting illegal immigration and terrorism.”

Murphy said she makes her payments on time so her credit score hasn’t gone down drastically but her high debt-to-income ratio doesn’t help matters.

“I will go into retirement with student debt,” Murphy said.

Mr Hartman

caveat:

I still don't fully trust Thom Hartman. He spent a little too much time on Putin's payroll, and his rehab isn't quite there yet.

But when I think he's on point, I listen.

“America's Comeback” Is Nothing but a Con Job

The recycled lies of trickle-down economics, designed to crush workers, women, and minorities alike…

When Charlie Kirk was assassinated, he was sitting under a tent that had “America Comeback Tour” printed in huge letters across all four sides. It was the theme of his tour of college campuses, a tour run by his Turning Point organization that was, according to NBC News, early-funded by ten morbidly rich rightwingers.

The question is “America Comeback” to what?

In 1981, when Ronald Reagan was sworn into office:

• Fully two-thirds of Americans were in the middle class,
• College was so cheap you could pay your tuition with a weekend job,
• Healthcare was inexpensive and widely available,
• Women and minorities had achieved legal (albeit not yet actual) parity with white men,
• And school and mass shootings were largely unknown because weapons of war were mostly outlawed from our streets.

Today, however, as a result of the Reagan Revolution:

• Only around half of us are in the middle class,
• College debt has crushed two generations to the point where they can’t start a family or buy a house,
• A half-million families end up homeless or bankrupt every year because somebody got sick,
• The GOP is leading an effort to make it harder for women and minorities to vote or maintain employment,
• And, with more guns than people, mass shootings are an almost-daily occurrence.

It's easy to see why an appealing pitch to the nation’s young people would be “comeback” or “Make America Great Again.” But what caused that “greatness” that we need to “come back to” and what wrecked it?

The American middle class is a relatively recent phenomenon. In 1900, only about 17 percent of us were in it; by the time of the Republican Great Depression it was about a quarter of us.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt was sworn into office in 1933, he embarked on a radical new campaign to create the world’s first widespread, more-than-half-of-us middle class. It had three main long-term components.

First, he passed the Wagner Act in 1935 that legalized labor unions and forbade employers from bringing in scab workers or refusing to recognize a union. That gave workers democracy in the workplace, and they used that power to demand that as their productivity increased, so would their pay and benefits.

Second, he established a minimum wage to make sure that people who worked full time would never end up in poverty.

Third, he raised the top income tax rate to 90% for the morbidly rich and 52% for corporations.

That high top tax rate on the rich meant that the average CEO took only about 30 times what the average worker did (because he’d be paying 90% or 74% after taking the first few millions), leaving far more money in the company to give raises and benefits to workers.

Corporations could get around their top tax rate by investing in their business. Research and development, new product roll-outs, advertising and marketing, and increasing pay and benefits were all tax-deductible, and that high tax rate incentivized them to do these things that built a strong and resilient manufacturing economy (stock buybacks were considered illegal stock manipulation until 1983).

Reagan undid all of that, lowering the top tax rate on the morbidly rich from 74% to 27% (it’s since gone up to 34%), cutting the top corporate tax rate to 34%, and legalizing stock buybacks, so now CEOs are taking literally hundreds of billions out of their companies (Musk is set to make a trillion) and wages for workers have been mostly flat even since 1981.

In similar fashion, Reagan declared war on labor unions so effectively that that one-third of us protected by unions in 1981 has collapsed. Today private sector union membership rates are only 5.9%, with some states even lower (North Carolina 2.4%, South Dakota 2.7%, and South Carolina 2.8%.

Regarding college, 80% of the cost of an education in state-run colleges and universities was paid by government when Reagan came into office, leaving about 20% of the cost to be covered by tuition. The Reagan Revolution changed all that, so that today tuition covers the largest percentage and the state is only covering around 20%-40% (it varies from state to state).

Healthcare was inexpensive when Reagan came into office because most states required both insurance companies and hospitals to run as nonprofits. There weren’t any billionaire insurance industry executives like Dollar Bill McGuire until Republicans changed the rules of the game, letting insurance companies and hospitals run as profit-making operations at the expense of the American public.

Great strides had also been made in opportunity for minorities and women by 1981; just a decade earlier women had gained the right to have a credit card or sign a mortgage without a husband, brother, or father’s signature. Affirmative Action programs were pulling racial and religious minorities into the mainstream of the American economy, kicking off a widespread Black middle class.

So, if Charlie Kirk was all about an “American Comeback,” what were his positions on the issues that created that broad, widespread middle class that Republicans and Trump promise us they’ll restore when they “make America great again”?

On taxes, Kirk wants to replace the progressive income tax with a 10% flat tax, so even the poorest person is paying income taxes on their meager income while the morbidly rich get a massive tax break.

He called unions “cartels” and celebrated teachers losing the right to unionize.

On college tuition, he opposed any plan to reduce student debt or increase federal or state funding to higher education, calling free college a “bribe.”

And on healthcare, Kirk opposed the kind of universal healthcare every other developed country in the world has, calling the VA an example of failed “government-run” healthcare.

With regard to the rights of women and minorities Charlie was also outspoken, most notably saying about prominent Black women (including Joy Reid, Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee, and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whom he labeled “affirmative action picks”):

“You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”

He added: “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s.”

Finally, with regard to guns, even though 87% of Americans want reasonable gun control, Kirk was all-in with the firearms industry, arguing that “some gun deaths every single year” are worth the cost of Scalia’s interpretation of the Second Amendment. How do we protect our kids? Kirk said, quite simply, more guns was the solution:

“If our money and our sporting events and our airplanes have armed guards, why don’t our children?”

So, the question: How does doubling down on low taxes for the morbidly rich, keeping our healthcare for-profit, withholding higher education funding, gutting unions, increasing the number of guns, and trash-talking women and minorities make America “comeback”?

Republicans and their well-paid hustlers (Kirk took in hundreds of millions) have been promoting these positions for forty-four years and the result has been the gutting of the American middle class, now leading to anger, resentment, and political violence.

It’s way past time for America to return to the policies and positions that history proves (both in America and around the world) produce and build a strong middle class, the essential foundation for economic and political stability.

Hey, MAGA

... when do you think you might start getting tired of being played for suckers all the fuckin' time?

U.S. employers added 911,000 fewer jobs than first reported, new BLS data shows

The change from April 2024 to March 2025 was the biggest revision on record. President Donald Trump fired the BLS commissioner last month over an earlier updated report.

The U.S. labor market was far weaker during much of 2024 and early 2025 than data initially showed, a new government report indicated Tuesday — injecting more uncertainty into the economy and fueling a raging debate over the figures that analysts use to understand it.

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In the largest preliminary revision to jobs data on record, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said employers had created 911,000 fewer positions from April 2024 to March 2025 than previously reported. That’s less than half as many as the agency had initially indicated. The data will be revised again and finalized early next year. Economists say that report could be less negative.

But the revision adds more evidence that the economy was already slowing even before President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs and immigration policies squeezed costs for many businesses.

And it landed just a month after Trump fired the BLS commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, over weak jobs data, accusing her without evidence of overseeing government figures that were “rigged” for political purposes, including to help Democrats in the presidential election that Trump won.

The White House said the new report showed that the BLS is “broken” and that the economy was suffering under President Joe Biden.

“This makes it very clear that President Trump inherited a much worse economy by the Biden administration than ever reported,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday. “And it also proves that the Federal Reserve is holding our monetary policy far too restrictive. Interest rates are too high. The Fed needs to cut the rates because of the mess that we inherited from the Biden administration.”

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said in a separate statement that the American people had “even more reason to doubt the integrity of [BLS] data” and condemned the agency’s leaders, who she said had “failed to improve their practices during the Biden administration.”

Many economists and policymakers across the political spectrum stress that there is no reason to question the quality of the data.

Forecasters said they had expected a large revision this year due in part to slowing business growth, shifting immigration levels, declining response rates to government surveys and an apparent downward shift in the broader economy.

“These revisions don’t really change my perspective about the labor market, which was already reasonably pessimistic,” said Guy Berger, director of economic research at the Burning Glass Institute. “We knew the labor market was cooling over this period. A lot of other indicators came down. And in the process of that happening, we added less jobs.”

The three major stock indexes sank Tuesday morning on news of the massive downward revisions. But they rallied by midday, and all closed up slightly, as investors look ahead to rate cuts widely expected at next week’s Federal Reserve meeting.

The new annual revisions provide a more accurate snapshot of the labor market before new economic forces began to take hold — including higher tariffs and stronger immigration enforcement from the Trump administration.

Those forces have lately weighed on the labor market, which could be heading for a downturn. Monthly jobs data published last week revealed a rising unemployment rate and weaker-than-expected job creation of just 22,000 new positions in August. Even more concerning: The data showed the labor market shed jobs in June, the first such losses since the coronavirus pandemic.

The Trump administration shrugged off last week’s report as temporary, saying it expects a resurgence of new jobs and advanced manufacturing as a result of the president’s trade and immigration policies.

Most of the revisions announced Tuesday reflect the labor market under Biden. The report does not change estimates of job gains since March.

The closely watched monthly jobs reports are based on surveys of about 121,000 businesses and government agencies — a small share of the millions of U.S. employers. So the figures become more accurate when they are later calibrated with data from state unemployment offices. When the economy is rapidly growing or shrinking — as it did during the pandemic, or as it can at the start of a recession — large changes can result, because it is harder for surveys to capture how many businesses are opening or shutting down.

The preliminary revisions announced this week bring the average monthly pace of job gains during the year ending in March to just over 70,000, down from 147,000. Tuesday’s report does not indicate when the revisions took place over the 12-month period; that information will be released when the data is finalized early next year.

The annual revisions removed about 0.6 percent of all U.S. employment, the largest percentage fix since 2009.

The changes affected many sectors but especially leisure and hospitality. The report downgraded job gains in that industry, which includes hotels and restaurants, by 176,000 positions. Retail and wholesale trade also took a hit. And the information sector, which includes media, tech and telecoms, lost the largest share of jobs, about 67,000 positions, or 2.3 percent of its total employment.

Some economists argue that the labor market is still solid. The unemployment rate remains relatively low, at 4.3 percent, as do layoffs. Lower levels of immigration could mean that fewer new jobs are needed to support the population, compared with recent years, to keep the unemployment rate stable.

Last year, the preliminary revisions to jobs data drew an uproar. BLS reported that the economy created 818,000 fewer jobs in the year ending in March 2024, which at the time was the biggest fix to federal jobs data in 15 years. Trump jumped on the revisions to accuse Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Biden of “fraudulently manipulating job statistics” for political purposes. The final revisions published early this year ended up showing a smaller change, a downgrade of roughly 598,000 fewer jobs.

Economist Michael Strain of the right-of-center American Enterprise Institute said that he believes this week’s news will “unfortunately contribute to the narrative that there’s something fishy going on at BLS. It’s possible that we’ll see an even more aggressive response from the president.”

He added: “I think there is not a shred of evidence to believe that there’s any political bias in the data and there’s not a shred of evidence to believe the data are being manipulated in any way for any reason. In addition, I think there’s lots of scope to improve the data, and that’s something that I think would require money.”

Since firing McEntarfer in early August, Trump has nominated BLS critic and Heritage Foundation chief economist E.J. Antoni to lead the agency. Antoni is facing scrutiny from policymakers and economists for his pro-MAGA partisanship, relative lack of experience and what critics have called a misunderstanding of economic data, which could threaten his confirmation hearing in the coming weeks. Antoni has said he is interested in improving the accuracy of BLS data, and the White House has said that Trump tapped Antoni to solve those problems.

Erica Groshen, who led the BLS under President Barack Obama, said the large revisions announced this week also reflected lower participation in government surveys. Only about 35 percent of employers agreed to participate in voluntary jobs surveys, according to data from April, down from 74 percent a decade ago.

Berger, of the Burning Glass Institute, said he has been giving less credence to monthly job creation data in recent years, which has been highly distorted by recent shifts in labor supply, including the surge and subsequent crackdown in immigration.

Instead, Berger and many analysts and policymakers have been paying closer attention to the unemployment rate, hiring and layoff levels, and employment ratios, which have revealed periods of weakness over the past year. For example, the unemployment rate climbed last summer, contributing to the Federal Reserve’s decision to lower interest rates in September 2024.

“If your perspective has been ‘Wow, these job numbers are good, so the labor market is strong,’ you probably should have changed your mind on that a long time ago,” Berger said.

Today's Rich

No president has ever been able to outrun the economy.