Justin Wolfers

Tillis is spot on. The Senate can't confirm a Trump toady to succeed Powell at the Fed. The rest of the game is now out in the open, and it doesn't end well.

Some perspective: The S&P opened down -1.3% on Trump's Greenland saber-rattling. That's $750 billion of wealth destroyed -- roughly equal to estimates of the value of Greenland.

And so ~in dollar terms~ his shenanigans have already cost the US one Greenland, and we've got nothing to show for it.

Just want to share with my American friends how the Australians respond to a shooting tragedy. Action, rather than thoughts and prayers.

Demolishing the East Wing of the White House before finalizing plans for what will be built above its ruins is a near-perfect metaphor for Trump's approach to economic policy. The only difference is the wrecking crew doesn’t claim the rubble is evidence of unprecedented growth.

Things are not okay.

A tariff “refund” mostly goes to whoever wrote the tariff check: the importer of record. That’s not the same person who paid more at the register. So refunds -- if they're offered -- might sound like consumer relief, but in reality, they're corporate windfalls.

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Kevin Warsh just lost me. He argues he's going to be an independent Fed Chair, but refuses to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 election. If you can't state simple facts when you're in the political spotlight, you aren't independent. You're a coward.

Critical part of the President's new $100,000 charge for H1-B visas: The Administration can also offer a $100,000 discount to any person, company, or industry that it wants. Replacing rules with arbitrary discretion.

Want visas? You know who to call and who to flatter.

What can history teach us about what happens when a populist strongman with an idiosyncratic taste for low interest rates undermines central bank independence?

Wait until he hears that Reagan didn't trust the Russians.

In what world is it okay for the Defense Secretary to make multi-million dollar investments in defense companies:
a) Ever;
b) In the run-up to starting a war in the Middle East

FT has the scoop: www.ft.com/content/744e...

In a functional democracy, he would offer his resignation tonight.

New tariff just dropped.

Americans set to pay an additional 10% tax on all goods from Germany, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland.

It starts in two weeks, rising to 25% by June.

(Aside: A trade war with one EU country is a trade war with the entire EU).

"Mate, I can't do anything but tell it to you straight. This Canada thing is literally the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The Canadians ran an advertisement showing Ronald Reagan being against tariffs. Guess what? Ronald Reagan was against tariffs."

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Trump's tariffs are hurting us in two ways:

First, the obvious: Higher costs → either lower profits or higher prices.

Second, more subtle (perhaps bigger): We’ve signaled we’re an unreliable partner, so allies are reorganizing supply chains to avoid us. That's hard to unwind.

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This is not good.

This is what happens when you ask me to help sanewash the Trump tariffs.

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Firing the BLS Commissioner — the wonk in charge of the statisticians who track economic reality — is an authoritarian four alarm fire.

It will also backfire: You can't bend economic reality, but you can break the trust of markets. And biased data yields worse policy.

American institutions don't crumble. But they can be destroyed.

You can see pretty clearly when the President decided to reassure a worried nation.

Trump says Lisa Cook is unfit to be a Fed governor because she claimed two different properties as her primary residence on her mortgage applications. (Cook denies this.)

Trump did the exact same thing on mortgage applications submitted a mere 7 weeks apart.

www.propublica.org/article/trum...

I just want to tip my hat to the crack team of White House economists who were able to discover--in just a few short days--that the U.S. is dependent on China for smartphones, computers and semiconductors.

It's a revealing moment...

J.D. Vance welcomes a two-legged robot helping on the job site. But if that helper is a person named Jose, he calls it a threat. Same tasks, same productivity boost.

The inconsistency reveals this isn’t about economics.

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The Dow was at 43,488 when Trump took office. It just hit 50,000.

So if you had invested $43,488 in the US, you would now have $50,000. But if you had invested the same amount in the rest of the world, you would now be worth $60,000.

Lemme do a expla-youtube-nation
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYL5...

"Dow 50,000" Sound Nice. Until Justin Wolfers Shows You That U.S. Markets Are Coming 21st Out of 23.

What does “Dow 50,000” actually tell you—anything about the economy, or just that a number got bigger? Dow 50,000 is a milestone, not a measurement. The level of the Dow is basically arbitrary: it’s…

"No one's going to build a factory based on a tariff that's on on Monday, off on... Tuesday, the president's changed his mind by Wednesday, he gets hormonal by Thursday and someone says something nasty in the middle school cafeteria on Friday and they're back on again."

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