Exactly, Jared. And it should chill every one of us. Trump inherited a fortress — and he dismantled it piece by piece, auctioning our future to global predators hiding behind dark money and corporate veils. What we’re living through now isn’t a collapse — it’s a controlled demolition. Zones of control are already mapped. Power has metastasized into private hands, beyond the reach of governments or laws. We thought we were watching incompetence. We were watching conquest. And if we don’t wake up now — if we don’t fight now — there may be nothing left to reclaim.
Joyce, you articulate my biggest concern, and it DOES chill me.
The breakup of the USSR involved a process like the auction you describe. The result was the creation of the asteroid belt of oligarchs that orbit around the Kremlin and Putin today.
The most obvious example of this process being already underway here in the USA is the push to privatize the National Weather Service. This goes far beyond Trump’s Sharpie stick revision of a hurricane forecast map. It gains financial mass when you think of number of media outlets and individual households paying ‘subscription’ fees that had hitherto been free.
Paying to whom?
Paying to the ‘bros’ who managed to secure a franchise for part of NOAA’s current work and work in progress. The scope of this work, of NOAA’s basic research, is mostly invisible to business leaders, to politicians, and to us folks who simply wonder if today’s game will be rained out.
This work is particularly vulnerable to DOGE- like audits.
Justifying the audit is simple using a user-funded argument.
‘Let the people who use this information pay for it.’
The ‘solution’ is to privatize the work-products that could generate a positive cash flow and throw away the rest, thereby saving all that wasteful basic research money.
And therein lies the rub!
The work-products that generate positive cash flow today would not exist if it were not for ‘wasteful basic research’ spending in years and decades passed.
Basically it is like we are killing the goose that laid golden eggs … but not just one goose.
We have gone genocidal on these valuable creatures.
So I see the threat to the NWS extending to all of NOAA.
Similarly I see withholding funding to universities as an existential threat to the ‘wasteful basic research’ carried out at those universities.
And I see a long line of transaction-oriented ‘bros’ waiting inside the beltway for a feast of roast goose.
Thank you for your analysis, you’ve made it easy for people to read and understand. I appreciate efforts to get these extremely important facts out to the public!
Combine this with “Trump is a Virus” (Paul Krugman, 4/24) and Torsten Slok’s ‘Daily Spark’ 4/25 and you get the toil-and-trouble of this gathering storm.
Government bonds’ yields aren’t just market data points; in some circumstances they became tools of discipline. Markets have the power to force the hand of entire governments. They don’t just react; they call for clear and sustainable actions. It doesn’t matter how large a country’s GDP was, how modern its institutions, how strong its military, or how charismatic its leadership. If the market’s confidence is lost, the consequences are immediate and brutal.
The October 2022 gilt episode was not just a moment of poor judgment. It was a hinge in the perception of UK macro-policy. A reminder that even in mature, developed markets, institutional capital is conditional. The credibility that took decades to build can, under the wrong conditions, begin to fray in days. And once the veil of reliability is pierced, it is exceedingly difficult to stitch back together.
If interested, i recently wrote a piece about that:
I suspect the media induced vibes around Trump winding back tariffs and thus the more general Trade War (exactly the stuff Keynes, et alios, tried to guard against) are just that - vibes.
China and Japan, our 2 biggest creditors, have been given an opportunity to renegotiate their terms of trade with the US. This renegotiation will occur as the US tries to auction $133B of debt a month (assuming a $1.6T deficit, which, BTW, seems like a low ball estimate, not just because of the inability to sell debt in Q1 2025 - current daily Treasury data suggests at least a $282B increase in this year's deficit).
Like Britain, we will discover the best Trade deal was the one we had.
Will we have to pay NATO extra to rejoin post Trump?
The Substacks I access, whether paid or unpaid, have proven to be indispensable sources of information in a time when Trump and his crime syndicate can never be believed and media outlets such as the NY Times work overtime to normalize/sanewash Trump and the radical gang of incompetent clowns and buffoons surrounding him.
When does the great Orange Diaper Don say the words to Peter Navarro, "I'm glad that you went to Club Fed for me for January 6th but YOU'RE FIRED!!!!!!!!!
You didn't include the measurable macro effect of the net loss of undocumented workers leaving, being deported, and fewer immigrating in the first quarter. Would you estimate at least 300.000 less workers plus their dependents in the first quarter? That loss of off the books workers will show up as a negative in consumption data but a positive in official employment. How will that change your calculations?
What would later forecasts look like if tariffs return to their punitive status? Exceptions for electronics just means less bling for the bu, but (imported) medicine might mean choosing between eating and surviving. According to one expert, pharmaceuticals could be revised sharply upwards https://www.apricitas.io/p/the-clues-to-trumps-future-tariffs which suggests smuggling of previously legit medicine (not just abortificansts) would rise harming quality and health.
Thanks for laying this out so clearly. It’s wild (but not surprising) how quickly confidence can evaporate when leadership starts undermining stability at every turn. It really drives home how fragile economic momentum is—especially when so much of it depends on trust, both domestically and internationally.
Exactly, Jared. And it should chill every one of us. Trump inherited a fortress — and he dismantled it piece by piece, auctioning our future to global predators hiding behind dark money and corporate veils. What we’re living through now isn’t a collapse — it’s a controlled demolition. Zones of control are already mapped. Power has metastasized into private hands, beyond the reach of governments or laws. We thought we were watching incompetence. We were watching conquest. And if we don’t wake up now — if we don’t fight now — there may be nothing left to reclaim.
Joyce, you articulate my biggest concern, and it DOES chill me.
The breakup of the USSR involved a process like the auction you describe. The result was the creation of the asteroid belt of oligarchs that orbit around the Kremlin and Putin today.
The most obvious example of this process being already underway here in the USA is the push to privatize the National Weather Service. This goes far beyond Trump’s Sharpie stick revision of a hurricane forecast map. It gains financial mass when you think of number of media outlets and individual households paying ‘subscription’ fees that had hitherto been free.
Paying to whom?
Paying to the ‘bros’ who managed to secure a franchise for part of NOAA’s current work and work in progress. The scope of this work, of NOAA’s basic research, is mostly invisible to business leaders, to politicians, and to us folks who simply wonder if today’s game will be rained out.
This work is particularly vulnerable to DOGE- like audits.
Justifying the audit is simple using a user-funded argument.
‘Let the people who use this information pay for it.’
The ‘solution’ is to privatize the work-products that could generate a positive cash flow and throw away the rest, thereby saving all that wasteful basic research money.
And therein lies the rub!
The work-products that generate positive cash flow today would not exist if it were not for ‘wasteful basic research’ spending in years and decades passed.
Basically it is like we are killing the goose that laid golden eggs … but not just one goose.
We have gone genocidal on these valuable creatures.
So I see the threat to the NWS extending to all of NOAA.
Similarly I see withholding funding to universities as an existential threat to the ‘wasteful basic research’ carried out at those universities.
And I see a long line of transaction-oriented ‘bros’ waiting inside the beltway for a feast of roast goose.
And this gives me chills.
Robert, exactly.
This is the collapse of stewardship.
Short-term raiders are looting the very systems that made prosperity possible — basic research, public data, universities.
They don’t build for the future. They extract until there’s nothing left.
Infinite games require patience, vision, and care — but these “bros” are stuck playing a finite game of quarterly profits.
And if we don’t stop them, they’ll burn through everything our ancestors built — and leave us with nothing but ashes and bills.
Define fight.
JosephZeigler.substack.com
Thank you for your analysis, you’ve made it easy for people to read and understand. I appreciate efforts to get these extremely important facts out to the public!
Combine this with “Trump is a Virus” (Paul Krugman, 4/24) and Torsten Slok’s ‘Daily Spark’ 4/25 and you get the toil-and-trouble of this gathering storm.
What might soften the GDP growth rate declines is the rush to buy things before the tariffs have been fully implemented.
I suspect that effect will be significant.
Government bonds’ yields aren’t just market data points; in some circumstances they became tools of discipline. Markets have the power to force the hand of entire governments. They don’t just react; they call for clear and sustainable actions. It doesn’t matter how large a country’s GDP was, how modern its institutions, how strong its military, or how charismatic its leadership. If the market’s confidence is lost, the consequences are immediate and brutal.
As Liz Truss quicky learned!!!!
Super!!
The October 2022 gilt episode was not just a moment of poor judgment. It was a hinge in the perception of UK macro-policy. A reminder that even in mature, developed markets, institutional capital is conditional. The credibility that took decades to build can, under the wrong conditions, begin to fray in days. And once the veil of reliability is pierced, it is exceedingly difficult to stitch back together.
If interested, i recently wrote a piece about that:
https://open.substack.com/pub/marketszoon/p/sero-sapiunt-fhriges?r=58uzcq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
I suspect the media induced vibes around Trump winding back tariffs and thus the more general Trade War (exactly the stuff Keynes, et alios, tried to guard against) are just that - vibes.
China and Japan, our 2 biggest creditors, have been given an opportunity to renegotiate their terms of trade with the US. This renegotiation will occur as the US tries to auction $133B of debt a month (assuming a $1.6T deficit, which, BTW, seems like a low ball estimate, not just because of the inability to sell debt in Q1 2025 - current daily Treasury data suggests at least a $282B increase in this year's deficit).
Like Britain, we will discover the best Trade deal was the one we had.
Will we have to pay NATO extra to rejoin post Trump?
To wit: https://www.ft.com/content/08a57b8f-2965-41c9-b39e-3cdb9723786c
The Substacks I access, whether paid or unpaid, have proven to be indispensable sources of information in a time when Trump and his crime syndicate can never be believed and media outlets such as the NY Times work overtime to normalize/sanewash Trump and the radical gang of incompetent clowns and buffoons surrounding him.
Mad king destroys world economy.
When does the great Orange Diaper Don say the words to Peter Navarro, "I'm glad that you went to Club Fed for me for January 6th but YOU'RE FIRED!!!!!!!!!
Dear Jared Bernstein,
You didn't include the measurable macro effect of the net loss of undocumented workers leaving, being deported, and fewer immigrating in the first quarter. Would you estimate at least 300.000 less workers plus their dependents in the first quarter? That loss of off the books workers will show up as a negative in consumption data but a positive in official employment. How will that change your calculations?
What would later forecasts look like if tariffs return to their punitive status? Exceptions for electronics just means less bling for the bu, but (imported) medicine might mean choosing between eating and surviving. According to one expert, pharmaceuticals could be revised sharply upwards https://www.apricitas.io/p/the-clues-to-trumps-future-tariffs which suggests smuggling of previously legit medicine (not just abortificansts) would rise harming quality and health.
Thanks for laying this out so clearly. It’s wild (but not surprising) how quickly confidence can evaporate when leadership starts undermining stability at every turn. It really drives home how fragile economic momentum is—especially when so much of it depends on trust, both domestically and internationally.