Tag: Economic Collapse

Let’s Look At The Tariffs (Again)

I still do not know how any person breathing can think that these tariffs are a good thing…..brain damage is the best I can come up with……

According to Donny the US has raised billions in tariff cash….The U.S. collected $195 billion in tariff revenue in the 2025 fiscal year, which ended in September. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget noted that the total was a 150 percent increase from 2024.

Let’s look at what these tariffs are doing for the average person…..

The Trump administration’s tariffs are on track to cost the typical household an average of $2,400 per year, according to the Yale Budget Lab. Moreover, the typical small business that imports products already faced more than $90,000 in tariff costs from April 2025 to July 2025 alone; they are also reporting revenue losses of about 13 percent, which will annualize to $100,000 if tariff costs continue to mount at this rate. These costs are only the beginning of the toll that Trump’s turbulence will take on businesses and consumers in the months to come.

…

Businesses and consumers crave predictability. From frequent and inconsistent announcements on tariff policy to trying to politicize historically independent institutions such as the Federal Reserve and the BLS, the Trump administration has made turbulence and uncertainty the drivers of its economic agenda. This chaos is imposing real costs across the economy, and it will threaten the nation’s long-term economic growth if the administration does not change course soon.

All that cash that has been raised is basically being paid by the American consumer in higher prices.

It is that simple.

WE cannot cover tariffs without writing about what the economy as a whole is doing under these restrictive policies….

Deploying the same methodology that Republicans used to track cost increases under former President Joe Biden, JEC Democrats found that the average US family is spending roughly $700 more per month on basic items since Trump took office in January, pledging to bring prices “way down.”

“While President Trump claimed that he would bring down prices, the reality is that Americans have seen their costs soar even higher since he took office,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), the JEC’s ranking member. “As families across the country spend more to pay their bills and put food on the table, Democrats and Republicans should be working together to lower costs. Instead, President Trump is pushing ahead with reckless tariffs that continue to fuel inflation and drive prices up even higher.”

In some states—including Alaska, California, and Colorado—average families are spending over $1,000 more per month to maintain their living standards as costs continue to rise, in part due to Trump’s erratic tariff regime.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/inflation-under-donald-trump

So the economy sucks and job growth sucks as well and those were a couple of the selling points on tariffs that would improve the economy.

But yet Uncle Don tells the American  people that he has solved the inflation problem.

President Donald Trump announced in September that, despite ample evidence to the contrary, “We have almost no inflation anymore.”

The president explained that he has “already solved inflation” for America, and that is evidenced by the fact that “costs are down.” GOBankingRates breaks down the reality of the situation and what that means for your wallet.

The data (and the everyday costs they reflect) tell a different story. As reported by CNN, the annual inflation rate is at its highest level (2.9%) since January 2025, and that consumer prices continue to raise.

What does that mean for you? Essentially, it means that you’ll continue paying more at checkout for the time being.

https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/economy/trump-says-solved-inflation-what-it-means-for-you/

So far there has been no good news on the tariffs front…..and yet there are those that continue to believe that they will improve their station in life…..and that just illustrates how ignorant the American people are on the subject of tariffs and the economy.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Repent! The End Is Near!

I thought I would move away from the depressing news of war on many fronts….and move to the depressing news at this end of another year to the total collapse that awaits this planet.

We already know that the way we have been living for the last century is not sustainable for our planet. Beyond climate ruin, however, is another threat to our society: Economic Collapse. Predicted back in 1970, experts have reviewed this information and our prospects are not looking good. This is what you need to know.

In 1972, a team of MIT scientists predicted that our industrial civilization would collapse in the future if corporations and governments kept pushing for continued economic growth no matter the consequences. They predicted 12 possible future scenarios, all of which predicted that natural resources would eventually become scarce, halting economic growth entirely. This would result in complete economic collapse and the breakdown of personal welfare. (1)

The most famous scenario in the report, known as the Business As Usual scenario, or BAU, forecasted that economic growth would peak in 2040. After that point, everything will start crashing: Availability of food and natural resources, as well as the global population. No, humans won’t be wiped off of the planet, but our standard of living will be. They predicted that this collapse will take decades to recover from.

Harvard grad student Gaya Herrington decided to look into this when she began her post-graduate studies last year. She discovered that currently, nearly half a century later, we are well aligned with two of the projected scenarios. 

Herrington measured the current state of our world using 10 different variables. These included fertility rates, pollution levels, population, food production, and industry output. She found that we are aligned with two possible outcomes: The BAU and another known as Comprehensive Technology (CT). CT is a scenario in which technological advancements help improve pollution levels and food supplies in spite of natural resources dwindling away. This still leads us to a point of sudden economic collapse – it will just be a bit more drawn out.

“[The BAU] and CT scenarios show a halt in growth within a decade or so from now,” Herrington wrote in her study. “Both scenarios thus indicate that continuing business as usual, that is, pursuing continuous growth, is not possible.”

How Close Is Total Social and Economic Collapse? | Opinion

Sorry to be a bummer and pee on everybody’s parade but we are close to a total meltdown as we close out another year.

The end is nearer than most anticipate….when you have people the hate for a living the end cannot be far behind.

Will anyone be bothered to try a stop this decline?

My guess would be no for they are more worried about the new guy that Taylor Swift is thumping than to worry about the end of the good thing we have had for decades.

Not to worry we have another year to kick this can down that road…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Come August

Closing Thought–03Aug20

Kinda reminds of a tune by Earth, Wind and Fire…..but sadly this date is some dire predictions for the economy…..

There’s a chance that the worst of the damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic hasn’t happened yet. According to a troubling BuzzFeed News op-ed, the real economic and societal collapse could arrive in August.

Part of the problem, according to BuzzFeed’s argument, is that many of the measures put in place by the U.S. government to mitigate the coronavirus’s impact will expire in August — while the actual pandemic will likely continue to rage. The result is that unemployed Americans could once more be vulnerable to evictions, right when federal employment payments helping keep them afloat stop coming.

Back in April, when the limited federal aid offered by the U.S. government started to arrive, American households began to save, on average, 33 percent of their income out of fears of an impending economic crash, according to the op-ed.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/economy-collapse-august

Of course the White House or maybe the Congress will offer up some stim money to head off this possibility….but will it work?

The problem is that a significant portion of the money is being funneled directly into capital buffers, leading to an increase in precautionary balances. The situation is akin to the “liquidity trap” that so worried John Maynard Keynes during the Great Depression.

Today’s stimulus measures have understandably been rolled out in haste – almost in panic – to contain the economic fallout from the pandemic. And while this fire-hose approach was neither targeted nor precise, many commentators would argue that it was the only option at the time. Without a massive injection of emergency liquidity, there probably would have been widespread bankruptcies, losses of organizational capital, and an even steeper path to recovery.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stimulus-policies-must-benefit-real-economy-not-financial-speculation-by-joseph-e-stiglitz-and-hamid-rashid-2020-06

The problem is the oligarchs always want money thrown at them and they will fix the economy…..they have not done so in 200 years and yet their wealth keeps going up….and problems still exist.

Does that tell you want these stim plans are really doing?

But not to worry….the markets are up….and yet you are still trying to find the cash to buy food or pay the rent…..how did all that stim money help you?

That brings me to a question I have asking for a very long time…..

We’ve said it before: The stock market is not the economy.

Usually, this simply means that fluctuations in the markets may have little to no real bearing on the underlying realities we think of as making up the economy. Or that there are many important structural factors that make the markets’ outlook different from how ordinary citizens view the country’s overall economic health.

But now, those usual bromides risk wildly understating the disconnect. In the time of COVID-19, the stock market couldn’t be more divorced from the United States’ broader economic situation. Although the S&P 500 tumbled sharply in March, as the coronavirus shut down large swaths of the economy, it had made back almost all of its losses by the first week of June — before dipping again and then quickly rebounding yet again.

The Economy Is A Mess. So Why Isn’t The Stock Market?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

That “Free Market” Illusion

We hear a lot about “free markets” and “free trade” these days…well for many decades…..it has been the clarion call of conservs….

Let’s look at the term “free markets”…..

A free market economy is a type of economy that promotes the production and sale of goods and services, with little to no control or involvement from any central government agency. The economic system is primarily based on supply and demand. Order and power in a free market are decentralized, with individuals making all of their own voluntary economic choices.

In a free-market economy, firms and households act in their own self-interest to determine how resources get allocated, what goods get produced, and who buys the goods. A free market economy functions in the opposite manner as a command economy works, where the central government gets to keep the profits and choose how to use them.

Read More….https://www.intelligenteconomist.com/free-market/

That is what a free market world would look like if it were truly a free system…..it is not.

Let’s be honest……A pure market economy has no barriers to economic exchange: you can sell anything to anyone else for any price. In reality, this form of economics is rare. Sales taxes, tariffs on imports and exports, and legal prohibitions—such as the age restriction on liquor consumption—are all impediments to a truly free market exchange.

So free market is total BS.

Now comes the term “free trade”…..Free trade is a largely theoretical policy under which governments impose absolutely no tariffs, taxes, or duties on imports, or quotas on exports. In this sense, free trade is the opposite of protectionism, a defensive trade policy intended to eliminate the possibility of foreign competition.  

Free Trade has an ugly side…..

  • It causes job loss through outsourcing: Tariffs tend to prevent job outsourcing by keeping product pricing at competitive levels. Free of tariffs, products imported from foreign countries with lower wages cost less. While this may be seemingly good for consumers, it makes it hard for local companies to compete, forcing them to reduce their workforce. Indeed, one of the main objections to NAFTA was that it outsourced American jobs to Mexico.
  • It encourages theft of intellectual property: Many foreign governments, especially those in developing countries, often fail to take intellectual property rights seriously. Without the protection of patent laws, companies often have their innovations and new technologies stolen, forcing them to compete with lower-priced domestically-made fake products.
  • It allows for poor working conditions: Similarly, governments in developing countries rarely have laws to regulate and ensure safe and fair working conditions. Because free trade is partially dependent on a lack of government restrictions, women and children are often forced to work in factories doing heavy labor under slave-like working conditions.
  • It can harm the environment: Emerging countries have few, if any environmental protection laws. Since many free trade opportunities involve the exporting of natural resources like lumber or iron ore, clear-cutting of forests and un-reclaimed strip mining often decimate local environments.
  • It reduces revenues: Due to the high level of competition spurred by unrestricted free trade, the businesses involved ultimately suffer reduced revenues. Smaller businesses in smaller countries are the most vulnerable to this effect.

(thoughtco.com)

There you have it “Free Markets” is an illusion….”Free Trade” is an illusion……all made up benefits to make it more appealing to the workers which are continuously scorched by the lies of the oligarchs.

We have come to a point in our nation’s public discourse where there is a widespread realization that many of the economic policies pursued and promoted by our political, business and media elites have failed us in multiple ways. We have heard our trade policies called “Free Trade” and “Free Market”, but those statements were often dishonest.

When crafting these agreements, our elites have been responding to incentives which are beneficial to their institutions but detrimental to the well-being of American citizens.

Traditional conservatives have been observing and asking about these policy failures for some time and have been met with name-calling and general denigration. During this current pandemic crisis, the magnitude of the failure of these misguided agreements and policies has become unavoidably obvious.

The Illusion of ‘Free Markets’ and ‘Free Trade’

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

And Join a Union and fight for your rights and your life….being a passive spectator will NEVER give you the end that you seek.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Pandemic And Economic Collapse

WE have a raging virus ripping through the country and world and our economy is a yo yo…..one day up two days down then one up, etc.

This thing could be a society killer…..

As of March 2020, the entire world is affected by an evil with which it is incapable of dealing effectively and regarding whose duration no one can make any serious predictions. The economic repercussions of the novel coronavirus pandemic must not be understood as an ordinary problem that macroeconomics can solve or alleviate. Rather, the world could be witnessing a fundamental shift in the very nature of the global economy.

The immediate crisis is one of both supply and demand. Supply is falling because companies are closing down or reducing their workloads to protect workers from contracting COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. Lower interest rates can’t make up the shortfall from workers who are not going to work—just as, if a factory were bombed in a war, a lower interest rate would not conjure up lost supply the following day, week, or month.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2020-03-19/real-pandemic-danger-social-collapse

The Fed is trying desperately to curb a recession/depression and the government is also trying to prop up businesses in this time of need……but will it be enough?

As the Covid-19 pandemic worsens, it’s hard to decide which are scarier: the conversations I’m having with epidemiologists or the conversations I’m having with economists.

“This is an economic tsunami,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told me. Social distancing is economic distancing. We are telling people to cease going to stores, to restaurants, to workplaces. We are insisting they stop supplying their labor, making their goods. To slow a pandemic, we are forcing a recession, perhaps a depression.

It was common, in 2008, to hear economists say that nothing had changed in the real economy. The US still had just as many workers, factories, and machines. We hadn’t lost any land or knowledge. There was no physical reason the economy was in crisis. The collapse in credit markets had changed economic behavior — businesses were afraid to invest and hire, and families were afraid or unable to spend.

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/23/21188900/coronavirus-stock-market-recession-depression-trump-jobs-unemployment

Will collapse be in the cards as a result of this virus and the lack of adequate response by the government?

Trump and the Congress are trying hard to avoid the collapse….but will it be worth it?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

29 October In History

The year is 539 BC……Persian king Cyrus the Great conquers Babylon and frees the Hebrew slaves and allows them to return to their homeland……but that is not important for we hate Iran (Persia)…..

But what happened here in the good old U.S. of A.?

Does anyone know what happen 90 years ago today?  (Of course you don’t for it does not concern you)……

……..I will wait while the Google machine gets a work out…….

It was called “Black Tuesday”….does that help?

The great Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the beginning of what would be called the “Great Depression”….a time that changed much here in the US.

On October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday hit Wall Street as investors traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression (1929-39), the deepest and longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world up to that time.

https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/1929-stock-market-crash

Let us look closely at what happened that caused this “crash”?

The stock market crash of 1929 – considered the worst economic event in world history – began on Thursday, October 24, 1929, with skittish investors trading a record 12.9 million shares. On October 28, dubbed “Black Monday,” the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged nearly 13 percent. The market fell another 12 percent the next day, “Black Tuesday.” While the crisis send shock waves across the financial world, there were numerous signs that a stock market crash was coming. What exactly caused the crash – and could it have been prevented?

https://www.history.com/news/what-caused-the-stock-market-crash-of-1929

Now we know what happened so the question now is could it happen again?

Few people are alive anymore who remember living through the stock market crash of 1929. But plenty of people still view that fateful plunge as a worst-case scenario for what might befall investors.

The roughly 20% decline for large stocks in October 1929 actually wasn’t the market’s worst month ever, but the drop incited nearly three years of relentless selling and helped to usher in the Great Depression. Could a 1929-style market setback happen again?

Yes, it could.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/economy/2019/10/13/stock-market-crash-october-1929-great-depression-economic-downturn/3910471002/

More thoughts on the possibility of the Crash happening again…..https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/detail/the-crash-of-1929-could-it-happen-again

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

Class Dismissed!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Closing Thought–06Sep19

Lots of talk these days about an approaching recession….the markets yo-yo sessions….up one day down the next 2….just feeds this predictions.

Do you remember the crash of 2008?

The markets bottomed out and billions of wealth was lost….especially the Baby Boomers…their savings was wiped out for the most part.

I bring this up because if and when we have another recession the group that will be destroyed monetarily are Millennials….

Why?

Most are already have massive debt and an recession would wipe out any economic progress they have made……

The trade war is dragging on. The yield curve is inverting. Investors are fleeing to safety. Global growth is slowing. The stock market is dipping. The Millennials are screwed.

Recessions are never good for anyone. A sputtering economy means miserable financial, emotional, and physical-health consequences for everyone from infants to retirees. But the next one—if it happens, when it starts happening—stands to hit this much-maligned generation particularly hard. For adults between the ages of 22 and 38, after all, the last recession never really ended.

Millennials got bodied in the downturn, have struggled in the recovery, and are now left more vulnerable than other, older age cohorts. As they pitch toward middle age, they are failing to make it to the middle class, and are likely to be the first generation in modern economic history to end up worse off than their parents. The next downturn might make sure of it, stalling their careers and sucking away their wages right as the Millennials enter their prime earning years.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/millennials-are-screwed-recession/596728/

This group will suffer more problems than the “Boomers” did…..they cannot prepare for this possibility if there is no savings to help lessen any blow from a recession.

Poverty will increase and bankruptcies will increase and financial ruin will be the only option for many.

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

Corporate Death Penalty

Think back to the 2008 collapse of the economic structure….it was the banks that lead the way and yet they were not punished for killing so many pensions….at best there was a slap on wrist and they promise not to do it again…..and if you will notice they are doing it again,

It is time for the government to bring the pain to these lousy players in our economy.

Bring back a corporate death penalty……

Let’s begin with a SCOTUS dissenting opinion from 1935…..

“The prevalence of the corporation in America has led men of this generation to act, at times, as if the privilege of doing business in corporate form were inherent in the citizen, and has led them to accept the evils attendant upon the free and unrestricted use of the corporate mechanism as if these evils were the inescapable price of civilized life, and, hence to be borne with resignation.

“Throughout the greater part of our history, a different view prevailed.

“Although the value of this instrumentality in commerce and industry was fully recognized, incorporation for business was commonly denied long after it had been freely granted for religious, educational, and charitable purposes.

“It was denied because of fear. Fear of encroachment upon the liberties and opportunities of the individual. Fear of the subjection of labor to capital. Fear of monopoly. Fear that the absorption of capital by corporations, and their perpetual life, might bring evils similar to those which attended mortmain [immortality]. There was a sense of some insidious menace inherent in large aggregations of capital, particularly when held by corporations.”

—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, 1933 dissent in Liggett v. Lee

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/01/08/its-time-bring-back-corporate-death-penalty

The limp wrist attempt to make corporations, especially the banks, was quickly pushed aside as soon as another corporate titan comes to power….time to make any penalties permanent…..time for the government to work for the people and not just the corporations.

This may be wishful thinking but I do feel the country is starting to realize just how bad corporations are acting and want accountability for their CRIMES.

2020 could be the beginning of the revolution to get the greed and corruption out of our society, especially from the corporations.

But first we must VOTE!

The Markets Made Me Do It!

Christmas is in the rear view mirror…..shopping has replaced religious thoughts with the dreams of “deals”….so what has this world wrought?

In case you were too busy trying to decide what to buy for Uncle Cletus…..the financial markets have taken a beaten…..down 1600+ points just last week….and the news does not look any better for this week….

So much for the Santa rally on Wall Street. The stock market tanked again Monday in a short trading day, making for one of its worst Christmas Eves on record, per the Washington Post. The Dow fell 653, or 2.9%, to 21,792; the S&P 500 fell 65, or 2.7%, to 2,351; and the NASDAQ fell 140, or 2.2%, to 6,192. The day’s selloff worsened after President Trump took to Twitter to blast the Fed as “the only problem our economy has,” notes the Wall Street Journal. The bleak numbers also came after Treasury chief Steven Mnuchin tried to soothe the markets before they opened, but his reassurance might have backfired.

Our dynamite Sec Treasury….that Mnuchin dude tried to soothe the savage economic beast by calling around…..

Treasury chief Steven Mnuchin made an unusual move over the weekend in an attempt to soothe rattled financial markets. But based on the stock market’s open, it appears that Mnuchin’s call to the CEO of the six largest US banks didn’t help. In fact, one financial analyst tells CNN that the call—meant to reassure the banks that all was well—might have actually spooked markets even more. Whatever the reason, the Dow plunged more than 400 points in the first hour of trading, threatening to dip below 22,000. As of 10:20am, the Dow was down 332, or 1.5%, and the S&P 500 (1.5%) and Nasdaq (1.1%) were similarly in the red. (The market woes reportedly have President Trump wondering about firing the Fed chief.)

It appears that the blame is Fed Chair and now the Sec Treas Trump is ranting that these people are to blame…..

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin could become the latest White House official to get the boot. President Donald Trump has been souring on Mnuchin for some time now and the continued decline in the stock markets could be the final straw, reports Bloomberg. One source told Bloomberg that the president has considered firing Mnuchin while another said that whether he stays on or not will depend in large part on what happens to the markets.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/12/trump-is-reportedly-considering-firing-mnuchin-over-stock-market-declines.html

Mnuchin is not someone that I would ever support but in this case this toad is NOT to blame…..it is the disgusting economic policies of a person that tells everyone he is a genius…..and the markets do not trust him either……his attempt to calm things cost the markets another 600 points.

And if that does not work then he is considering firing the Fed Chair…..another person that did not create a terrible market atmosphere…..

I love when egocentric slugs blame people around him for the problems the fool created…..

The markets will be a telling story….

How fast can Mr. Trump tap dance?

Nothing Learned In A Decade

A decade ago one of the worse financial crisis hit the world…..a crisis that could have been avoided….a sadly nothing has been learned from this collapse…

Ten years ago this month, the French bank BNP Paribas decided to limit investors’ access to the money they had deposited in three funds. It was the first loud signal of the financial stress that would, a year later, send the global economy into a tailspin. Yet the massive economic and financial dislocations that would come to a boil in late 2008 and continue through early 2009 – which brought the world to the brink of a devastating multi-year depression – took policymakers in advanced economies completely by surprise. They had clearly not paid enough attention to the lessons of crises in the emerging world.

Anyone who has experienced or studied developing-country financial crises will be painfully aware of their defining features. For starters, as the late Rüdiger Dornbusch argued, financial crises can take a long time to develop, but once they erupt, they tend to spread rapidly, widely, violently, and (seemingly) indiscriminately.

Source: The Lost Lesson of the Financial Crisis by Mohamed A. El-Erian – Project Syndicate

With no lesson learned then this will repeat itself…..only a matter of time.