State of the Discussion

No disagreement from me on the big strategic picture.

But I still think it's worth making a stink about the bonfire we're throwing ourselves on with Trump in hopes that maybe he in all his fickleness pulls back some; maybe some credibility is salvaged for the day after he's gone. Because as much as I agree with you on the desirability of a responsible altering of course Trump may do enough damage to make that impossible for a generation. There's no 'oops just kidding' anymore, now that we've put him in charge twice.

Given that the majority of these new buildings turn out to be "apartment complexes built out to the lot lines behind the original dumpy two-bed-one-bath ranch house in a way that's very clearly an exploitation of regulatory loopholes", I think Bass's move makes sense.

Oh, I'm not trying to excuse Trump as much as I see him as God's Punishment.

(Of course I agree that we should have bilateral 0 industrial tariffs with Europe.)

TL;DR: Bass signs an executive order making it easier to build "100% affordable" (i.e. price-controlled to a level affordable to households at 80% of AMI) housing, but provides no funding. Without all the red tape, this is actually profitable, even with the price controls, so builders go nuts. Then Bass starts adding additional regulations to shut it down.

Sure but none of that excuses Trump from doing an objectively crappy job at whatever it is he's aiming for (assuming he's aiming at anything at all). The Europeans apparently already offered a bilateral 0 industrial tariffs deal that he's thumbed his nose at. Now we all know Europe is hardly the cause of the decline of the post industrial Midwest but it's a small win that doesn't threaten anyone, and probably helps some of our own exporters, yet he won't take it because he's an idiot. At what point does it become fair to judge him on his own performance?

If only there was a deliberative body outlined in the Constitution that could handle a considered response to foreign tariffs! One that was leery about ceding its authority even.

It's all a question of what your goals are. We sold the American consumer market way short to China in the 90s. There's a (IMO good) case to be made for a correction and tariffs may well be part of it. What there isn't a good case for is cutting off our own supply chains in the Western hemisphere, risking our access to other developed economies with whom America is more than capable of competing fairly, or punishing a bunch of undeveloped African countries who sell us raw materials, plus some already marginalized colonies of photogenic flightless birds.

Noble and public spirited is giving them too much credit.

They have a base that lionizes things like factory work and coal mining because it is “tough” and “manly” work done by real, tough men (TM). This is a base that doesn’t want retraining to careers that they think code as feminine like being a nurse or home health aide

The Supremes love injecting themselves into our politics when they know the administraiton will follow their decision even if they grumble. When the administration won't follow or it is Republican, they demure.

This probably explains at least some of my outdated thinking. I'm operating with a 13 or 14 year old 54" flat screen which still works so well I can't rationally justify replacing it, no matter how tempted I am every time I see all the shiny new ones in Costco.

Seriously, imagine saying this with a straight face: The majority also said detainees under the act “must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.” The majority emphasized that it wasn’t ruling on the government’s interpretation of the act itself.

In other words, what is happening is not legal, the government must allow people to seek habeas relief before removal, but we're going to remove the TRO currently stopping the government from continuing its actions of removing people without habeas relief. But they better not do that anymore!

What the utter hell are the conservatives on the court smoking? How is this even slightly supposed to be credible?

Wall Street deluded itself about Trump: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/opinion/trump-stock-market-wall-street.html

"People in finance, said Berezin, are more likely to be punished for being too cautious and pessimistic than for being too hopeful and aggressive. Last year, for instance, a famed strategist named Marko Kolanovic left JPMorgan Chase abruptly when his gloomy predictions about 2023 and 2024 turned out to be wrong, or least premature. Mike Wilson, also known for his bearishness, stepped down from his post as chair of Morgan Stanley’s Global Investment Committee, though he stayed with the company. “You don’t get fired for being bullish, but you do get fired for being bearish on Wall Street,” said Berezin.....

Some investors also felt a cultural affinity with the new administration that further clouded their judgment. When wokeness was ascendant, plenty of people in tech and finance quietly seethed at being guilt-tripped and forced to feign concern about social justice. “When the opportunity came to jettison all that, they were happy to do it,” said Berezin. “And Trump enabled them to do it.”

I am reminded of some social accounts that pop up from time to time glamorizing subsistence farming. There is nothing glamorous about subsistence farming. Essentially all of human history is an effort to get to do things other than subsistence farming.

So too with the factory job. It might be better than subsistence farming, but not all that much. The glamorizing of this, based I think on fiction and some sort of romantic notion that this kind of work is noble and public-spirited, is sort of missing the entire point: whether it's noble or public-spirited, working that sort of job would SUCK. Hollywood imbues the factory worker with nobility because he SUFFERS to provide for his family.

If I had any money, I might invest it in Ubisoft. It broke under the 10-Euros barrier and there is going to be a stockholder revolt. It's fallen to a 12 year low and Tencent is going to push a hardcore back-to-basics gameplan for the company.

Or, of course, it could tailspin and we should panic because we're all going to die.

(The above is not investment advice.)

Also curious to see that Gold is dropping too -- although, it had already reached $3.2k from $2k over the past year -- so people riding the wave?

Bitcoin is also down... I mean, if you can't flee to safety in imaginary currents of electric, where *can* you flee to safety?

Eigen's got a good thread.

He talks about a couple of the headlines at the WaPo: "Trump calls tariff plans 'a very beautiful thing'" and "As the markets dropped, the president putted".

He points out that it's easy to imagine the editor thinking "that'll show him" as this was posted.

He also points out that after several decades of this sort of thing, "from an evolutionary game theoretical standpoint it's also selecting for an opposition that is just completely indifferent to ambient social pressure".

And... yeah. That's one thing that seems to be borne out by looking at the demographics of the voters of 2024. This is what happens when people start being sufficiently indifferent to ambient social pressure.

I don't know, I have doubts. This is the whole legacy media system writ large. The distribution pipe this is all going through is rotting through- not rotted through yet but not being renewed. It's all running on theaters that were established on economic theories that no longer apply. I suspect/fear the whole thing is just going to vanish in time. At least in journalism the new things (social media mostly) still depends on the legacy zombie journalism media for stuff to steal so some degree of money pumping into Reuters and actual news gathering has to somehow occur. I am not sure the streaming model needs theaters at all. Movie making will just shift to making movies for streamers on TV rather than theaters.