President-elect Donald Trump’s former trade chief and those close to him are preparing to aggressively sell their plans for massive new tariffs on imports that will go far beyond anything seen in Trump’s first term.     – Politico Magazine, 11/12/24 Hence the coming trade war. The rest of the world won’t passively accept Chinese surpluses on that scale. The “China shock” of the 2000s taught us that whatever the (real) virtues of free trade, a huge

America is an economic coiled spring. We should be growing at least 4% annually and ideally 6-8%+. Growth has been brutally suppressed since before I was born. But there is so much to build. And the payoff for all Americans will be incredible.     – Marc Andreessen, 11/8/24, via X US economic growth has been ”brutally suppressed” by an economic model that subjugated the US middle and working classes (and by extension, US growth and the

A plantation by any other name is just a farm, but it does roll off the tongue a little sweeter.     -“Sweet Home Alabama”, 2002 If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.     -English colloquialism The substantial Fed balance sheet expansion from Covid remains partially in place today; as the Fed continues to reduce its balance sheet, there is risk that market resiliency could