Donald Trump claims America is "the hottest country anywhere in the world". On Wall Street, there are plenty of signs that this is true.
Brooke Rollins on slashing 15,000 USDA jobs: "We are deconstructing the Washington administrative state."
-- Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) Aug 5, 2025 at 9:26 AM
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#10: In their dotage, I hope these two useful idiots don't need Medicaid, SNAP, Medicare, VA treatment, or nearby rural hospitals/grocery stores: www.washingtonpost.com
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Redneck Recession Hits Working-class the Hardest
Recessions usually do; and felt first by the lower quintiles.
Wall Street and Silicon Valley are booming ...
Not quite accurate. It only looks like it because "rising tide lifts all/most boats" and the way the market indexes and passive investment funds work.
Mag Seven now account for 35.4% of S&P 500. That's almost 3x in 2015, when they were 12.3% of SPX - near concentration in financial sector in 2006-7, before 2008 GFC.
62% own stocks. Top 10% own 93% of the value. Top 1% own 50% of the value.
blogs.cfainstitute.org - Myth-Busting: The Economy Drives the Stock Market
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"Manufacturing is in recession. Construction is in a deep recession. Transportation and distribution is in recession. Wholesaling is in recession. Retail is holding on by its thumbs..."
This is not a new information. This has been true - and I've been pointing it out here all through the election season - since Biden's $1.3T "Inflation Reduction Act" and "Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act" passed. Remember elections, when most people said that economy was #1 issue... in addition to "culture war" issues unfavorable to Dems?
news.gallup.com - 2024 October Gallup poll
Reduced to single "compound average" numbers, the 'GDP growth,' 'unemployment' and 'inflation' have been misleading and sending false signals for a long time, because stocks went up on AI investment spigot and top quintiles kept spending, putting money back into economy. Some people here (who no longer post) were sure about Dems' win because "US economy is the envy of the world" and good official NUMBERS 'under Biden'... apparently ignoring or not seeing the distribution and "personal economy" of majority of voters.
www.bloomberg.com - The Mighty American Consumer Is Powered by Higher Earners - Oct 15, 2024
www.vice.com - Rich People Are Powering the Economy - No One Else Has Money - 2025-02-25
|------- The top 10% of earners are responsible for 49.7% of all spending in the United States. ... in 1995, the top 10% of earners made up 36% of all spending. -------|
What is true is that Trump's stupid antics (aka "negotiation style") and mish-mash of economic goals (can't call any of this "policies" when they contradict each other and can be turned on a dime) has rapidly accelerated deceleration or "real" economy, when even top quintile and largest businesses are now being negatively affected, e.g. see Amazon's latest Q report; shares of delivery companies like UPS are down from 2021 peaks.
"Bring manufacturing home!" is a slogan, not a policy; it make no sense when the US manufacturing sector accounts for the same economic share of GDP but with the fraction of people employed at the peak in 70s, and that manufacturing sector is already in need of some 400,000 jobs "with appropriate skills" that employers can't fill. Is it parties' bright idea to mandate a shift from high value-add to low value-add "manufacturing" jobs?
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He believes that as much as a third of the US economy is already effectively in recession.
That's why government's view of "economy" has been so different from most people's for years.
Hard economic data has been sus since at least April, soft data shows overall economy is now decelerating faster.
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#4 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-08-07 06:04 PM
Are corporations using their new tax cuts to buy back their stock, raising the stock price?
There were no significant "new" corporate tax rate cuts or increases in One Big Bloody Budget-Busting Bill - it mostly stopped the tax rate set in 2017's TCJA from expiring at the end of 2025, making it "permanent"... unless and until Congress changes them. It was the same 2017 rate throughout the "great economy" and deficits of both Trump and Dark Brandon. There are some accelerated deductions and amortizations for R&D and other expenses but these are not "new tax cuts" that would materially affect corporations decisions to "buy back their stock."
Also, I don't know why "stock buybacks" would be considered "evil" or such a sore issue for anyone.
They aren't necessarily "raising the stock price" - many public/listed corporations routinely buy back stock to account for dilution, i.e., issuance of new stock as compensation to its employees, including directors, executives, pension and 401(k) plans, stock mergers/buyouts, outside contractors etc.
It's also a tax-preferred way of returning some value to the stock owners, as opposed to direct dividends, which usually drop the price of stock ex-dividend and are taxable, unless in tax-deferred or tax-free accounts.
For example, "Oracle of Omaha" Warren Buffett's Berkshire-Hathaway ($1T market cap) doesn't pay dividends and has often used buybacks, especially during NZIRP times, when he didn't see a better opportunity to invest somewhere else and excess cash from profits didn't yield much in safe deposit accounts.
Buyback is a responsible way for the boards, CEOs and CFOs to manage corporate cash. Large buybacks are often presented to stockholders for a vote.
www.investopedia.com - Buyback
Here's Buffett dropping some wisdom:
www.fool.com -- Warren Buffett Just Issued a Stark Warning to President Trump About the Impact of Tariffs. Buffett calls tariffs "an act of war..." - 2025-03-08
www.fool.com - Warren Buffett's Warning to Wall Street on President Donald Trump's Tariffs Is Deafening - 2025-08-09
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