WallStreetJackass

The idiots that rule us.

I still think Trump is funny, but I have to admit I'm pretty over it too by now. And only 88% of his presidency to go. , 

It is a mistake to read too much into Mr Trump’s actions. They are usually hidden in plain sight.

This week’s revelations about Donald Trump Jr are a case in point. For the first time since Mr Trump took office, the word “treason” has entered the currency. But its connotations are too Machiavellian. People who commit treason against their country are usually seduced by ideology or inducement.

Either way, they are aware of the sacred boundary they crossed. What if your family is your country? What if your kin are your religion? To a neutral observer, Mr Trump Jr’s emails make clear that he solicited damaging information about Hillary Clinton from the Kremlin. To his father, they show a son’s loyalty. To the Russians, they proved that the Trump family was ready to do business. To US prosecutors it is “smoking gun” evidence of collusion with a foreign power.

Had any non-blood related campaign aide met the Russian lawyer, Mr Trump could simply fire them. But Donald Trump cannot distance himself from an underling called Donald Trump.

[...]

Those who are not inside the circle are doing what it takes to protect themselves. The latest leaks, like those before them, came from multiple sources in the White House. Could Stephen Bannon, Mr Trump’s chief strategist, be involved? As the chief architect of Mr Trump’s “America first” campaign, Mr Bannon is also the closest aide to the president not in the Trump family. He and Mr Kushner are rivals. As a self-professed Leninist, Mr Bannon’s chief aim is to blow up the administrative state.

If your goal is to disable the US government, now is the time to strike. Whether you are president of Russia, emir of some oil-rich kingdom or a nihilist working from the inside, Mr Trump offers an unparalleled opportunity. Trump is America and America is Trump. While he is president, the US republic is highly vulnerable.

feat Mencken

“Our county voted for President Trump, so I’m not sure they quite understand what is going to happen. I don’t think people realize how much we rely on these services. I don’t think people are making the connection between cutting the HUD funds and paving our streets or building new affordable housing.” NYT

LARC provided to roughly 5,200 low-income Granite Staters in 2016 alone, is now under threat. The Trump administration’s budget plan proposes to eliminate the Legal Services Corp. – the federal dollars that fund about 70 percent of LARC’s work. “I honestly don’t know how LARC would survive at all if that money went away,” Executive Director Breckie Hayes-Snow said. And Bilodeau – who voted for Trump – doesn’t want that to happen. She said she elected her president precisely because she thought he would help the poor people of America who need services like LARC. AP

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

In honor of International Woman's Day...

I'd like to point out something really stupid a woman wrote in an international newspaper. 

Quelle horreur! 

Why can Buffett get away with saying something like that? Well firstly it barely passes as sexist... this is a sexist joke. Secondly he was using the joke as a metaphor for something else entirely. Lastly, he has given/is giving away $100 billion to charities that include a ton of specific organizations that help women. I think we can cut him a little slack on telling a joke he heard in the 1950's. 

Tough week for PwC.

“The individual defendants, aided by PwC, knowingly cause Caterpillar to engage in an improper, illegal and possibly criminal course of conduct spanning more than a dozen years.”   According to the complaint, one PwC employee discussing the alleged scheme over email with a manager said they would need to “do some dancing” to defend the transaction to tax authorities, but the manager replied that they would both “be retired” before the IRS would conduct an audit.

Lots of training needed all around. 

well, yes.

In his prepared remarks, Trump mentioned jobs 14 times, immigration 9 times and safety 8 times.

The overall theme was big solutions to big problems. The problem is that most of the problems Trump described aren’t real. By any measure, the economy has been growing for years, net illegal immigration is low, violent crime is down significantly and terrorism kills almost no one. Political Wire

All the best problems to solve are those ones that have already been fixed. 

slowly dawning yet?

Because nothing says “blue collar champion” like a wife twirling jewels like she’s eating spaghetti.

Trump's new year resolution

should be to thank Obama every morning for dealing him such a good hand... 

 

deep thoughts on the election.

my vote is meaningless in New York, so I'll just be trying to get Weld and Johnson up in the polls. 

not bad, for an Aussi

catastrophism

a good point from Barcap, 

I admit to him that I remain afraid of the downside risks given that the world feels very vulnerable. His comeback is reassuring. He reminds me that the world never feels safe, that when you feel safe it’s a mirage, that in mid-2001 folks felt safest in decades and it was right before the worst terrorist attack in American history. He reminds me of our youth where we had regular fall-out shelter drills in case of nuclear attacks. He reminds me of Sputnik and Bay of Pigs and the shock Americans felt after Pearl Harbor. That folks in the U.S. felt isolated from the world’s problems and safe in 1940 until the end of 1941. That in 1987 markets crashed, that in the early 1990s the S&L crisis threatened all financial institutions and drove us into recession, that Mexico almost dragged us down in 1994, that Long-Term Capital Management almost demolished the entire financial system in 1998 and that in 1999 folks predicted the end of the world with Y2K. The year 2001 brought the end

of the tech bubble and in the fall of 2008 we were close to heading into financial catastrophe.