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Is The Damage Done?
"The damage is done."
I keep hearing that vis-à-vis Donald Trump's botched "Liberation Day" unveil
With the Supreme Court giving him immunity from prosecution while in office, on what grounds could the Congress impeach him? Sincerely asking.
Part of the SC’s finding in favor of presidential immunity is that impeachment exists as the primary mechanism to hold presidents accountable. As such, nothing has changed from the perspective of things congress can use to justify impeachment.
See pretty much everything he has done since he’s taken office. The list of impeachable offenses is unbelievably long.
I made a comment on Meltdown article that would have been better suited here. Thanks, as always, for your insights and commentary. How about something else ‘lighthearted’ about the stupidity (ignoring that the stupidity in question is burning a lot of good things to the ground along with whatever real grievances they may be accidentally addressing):
More evidence that the tariff framework was written by ChatGPT: the locales named, famously including some islands full of penguins and nothing else or a US/UK military base, happens to coincide with top level internet domains. So much for applying rigor or even understanding how to fact check your own work! If it wasn’t all so horrifying, we could be entertained by their ineptitude.
I do hope he doesn’t wait until -30% or -50% down to walk this back. As you noted before, -900k / -30% down on a 3m retirement account would be extremely hard to stomach for people nearing retirement.
A distracting war will solve everything!
Not that this means anything to a man who is sure the rule of law doesn’t apply to him, even a distracting war requires money. When Congress has had enough it can shut down the defense budget.
Recall that monthly-pay closed end funds are widely used by Americas retirees; the CEF structure is literally tailored for them. Here’s a list of what some of the top 10 most popular CEFs in America did to retirees on a day when the SPY was down a mere 5.8%:
PDI: -9.94%
UTG: -9.59%
PTY – 9.85% (I could list another two dozen large CEFs with corporate debt exposure; the high-yield space has been utterly decimated in the last week; in fact, much more than decimated if you’re using the milquetoast historical definition.)
EXG: -7.23%
CSQ: -8.6%
GOF: -9.41%
GDV: -7.49%
KYN: -9.88%
JPC: – 6.3%
etc. The brief list above includes CEFs from various asset classes: hi-yield, equity, utility/infra, MLPs, preferred, and equity/options. And heaven help you if you’re in CLOs, senior loans, or various other CEFs with private credit exposure.
What I’m saying is that the damage trump caused equity investors yesterday, you can pretty much multiply by two to arrive at the damage done to many of America’s retirees. Long memories, there.
How does any company logically move forward after the cartoonish tariffs unveiled this week? Where can I now source my raw materials, and where can I ship my finished goods and still remain profitable? All you can do is wait and hope that a calamitous stock market forces a quick rethink of everything first. What a plan. Let’s say some countries do decide to eliminate their tariffs, while others decide to match ours, while still others decide to rewire their trade in order to avoid the US all together. What does our economy even look like after that? Did they honestly expect every country to cave? Sheer lunacy.
We’re about 4 weeks from Q1 earnings releases. I’m assuming call after call of lowering guidance. The last two days are just a preview of earnings week. The damage isn’t done after you get the bad diagnosis. Surgery and chemo to follow
The Great Penguin Trade War will never get old. Future presidents should maintain that tariff as a reminder of the economic livelihoods sacrificed to fend back the penguin aggressors.
The more I watch Trump though, the more I think his greatest strength is deftly alternating between grifting and stupidity. It’s the yin and yang of his persona that allows him to make himself appear genuine to the MAGA faithful while giving the wealthy backers the wink-wink, nod-nod so they know he’ll wet their beak.
My goodness though, the incompetence is staggering. We aren’t even 3 months in and the potential downside scenarios are limitless. Laura Loomer, Pete Hegseth, Elon Musk, Mike Waltz, and the rest of this cast of clowns making national security decisions? I hope that helps everyone sleep better at night. If we do end up in a hot war, China will shut down our electric grid and computer systems so fast…
In my view, the ‘Trump put’—or market circuit breaker—is more likely to be triggered by shifts in approval ratings than by a specific percentage decline in the S&P 500.
I have a bridge to sell if his approval ratings hold up after all this chaos and commotion – even his rusted-on MAGAtts must be dizzy, and not in a good way.
This all rhymes with BREXIT. Crazy “conservative” isolationism. Let’s call it exitUS.
Great piece!! So many salient points.
I’m expecting markets to stabilize in the near term, but the damage is done. The USD and equities don’t correlate downward unless the economy is turning.
Global demand destruction for US goods will be material as global consumers boycott.
Economies don’t break overnight, but we’ll be in a recession some time between late Q3 and Q2 2026. Only question is if it’s a depression level event. Once the everything bubble starts to unwind, it won’t matter what anyone does until the S&P 500 bottoms between 2600-1500.
And I believe Trump will be impeached Jan 7, 2027. That’s been my call since late Nov after processing the insanity of the Republican successes last election. So far, he’s still on track.
Our very big brained leader actually initially posted to “Hank Tough,” who I suppose is a good friend of Ron Vara.
We are getting to the point where lampooning is becoming impossible. We may never again see something like Dr. Strangelove, Veep or Idiocracy, or if we do, they will be categorized as documentaries rather than spoofs.