mredmond88.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Israel (17%) getting a higher tariff rate than Iran (10%) is why there’s an inter-agency coordination process for major U.S. government decisions. The DOGE mentality of making do with the bare minimum of thought and analysis leads to costly policy mistakes

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Canada chapter of the USTR report on foreign trade barriers looks benign, with just a few complaints about cheese standards, plastic packaging and the like. So if Canada gets hit with any significant “reciprocal tariff” number, it’s a sign the whole exercise is a farce ustr.gov/sites/defaul...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

My Kia dealership was very fired up about the election result favoring DJT in December; might be interesting to ask if that level of enthusiasm has been sustained through March

submitted 8 days ago • 2 comments

lol yes, scolding companies for price increases worked so well for Biden www.wsj.com/business/aut...

submitted 10 days ago • 57 comments

This chart of hard vs. soft components in the NFIB survey on small business confidence says so much about politics and society in America today. Business owners may soon realize they actually didn't have it so bad in the Biden era!

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

Folks. The tariffs, the chaos, and the federal government layoffs are all bad for the economy. And we may be in for a recession since it seems like all of the above will continue. BUT, this isn't economic collapse-level stuff. Just want to set expectations appropriately here.

submitted 26 days ago • 26 comments

The economic analysis from Charlie Kirk’s (comically elitist) essay calling on people to shut up about egg prices calls for several policies that will be inflationary even as he described them as lowering prices. Trump’s team is on track to learn some harsh macroeconomic lessons

submitted 29 days ago • 1 comment

The problem was there was an unusual surge in gold imports (due to tariff threats), and the underlying data wasn't released until later. GDPNow will adjust at the next release. GDPnow is an excellent GDP tracker and will likely turn positive at the next release on March 17th but still be very low

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

Great interview @jasonfurman.bsky.social - Biden tried to fix the social and economic crises he inherited by running the economy hot, but the resulting inflation and interest rate spikes doomed good intentions to fail. An important lesson! open.substack.com/pub/kathleen...

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

MAGA media is already floating conspiracy theories to explain away any economic damages from Trump’s policies, including the NBER covering up a recession since there were two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth in 2022…which has actually been revised away 😆 x.com/bannons_warr...

submitted 37 days ago • 0 comments

What happens if costs for all Chinese imports rise by 20 percentage points? PCE prices are estimated to rise by 0.5 pp. Tariffs on final goods lead to a one-time increase in prices. Tariffs on intermediate goods lead to more persistent effects www.federalreserve.gov/econres/note...

submitted 38 days ago • 6 comments

Good podcast here on how the enemies of the CFPB picked precisely the wrong example of government overreach to trumpet given clear evidence of predatory practices at SoLo. Credit to the National Review for calling foul on “their side” open.spotify.com/episode/5jNY...

submitted 41 days ago • 0 comments

Trump is no Herb Brooks with the motivational speeches, and America’s best player in the game was Austan Matthews, who was just smirking the whole time www.instagram.com/reel/DGUKsor...

submitted 45 days ago • 0 comments

Stimmies! Let’s see how that goes, especially now that the output gap is already positive rather than just headed that way

submitted 47 days ago • 1 comment

Ah, turns out the possibility of cybertrucks for the State Department was something the Biden administration had been exploring, not an attempt by Musk to profit from his role. Important to get the facts straight these days! www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...

submitted 48 days ago • 0 comments

Good point @mattyglesias.bsky.social that a (carefully thought out) government efficiency drive would have been both good politics under Biden and good policy in an overheated economy. Heterodox economists consumed valuable time by focusing attention on price gouging rather than restraining demand

submitted 50 days ago • 0 comments

It’s amazing how poorly Wall Street understands DC. A prominent commentator recently described DOGE as deploying AI on an old, stodgy bureaucracy, but we’re only getting the misinformation and not the efficiency from AI

submitted 50 days ago • 0 comments

Sad to see the anti-America rhetoric focused on US trade policy in Canada today rather than on the epic hockey game that’s coming tonight

submitted 51 days ago • 0 comments

Would be awkward if tariff reciprocity was actually the plan, and the U.S. had to lower tariffs to match the Chinese rate 😆

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

This is such an important point on government efficiency. It was efficient to keep Treasury and the SBA under-staffed in Trump 1.0 until the pandemic hit, and overworked staff couldn’t properly vet emergency payments, resulting in $200bn+ of PPP fraud www.sba.gov/document/rep...

submitted 53 days ago • 0 comments

Will be interesting to see whether industry ends up favoring more policy certainty over the deregulatory push. HousingWire’s update was not keen on the CFPB turmoil. The mortgage ecosystem has developed within CFPB’s confines, and state regulators may fill the breach open.spotify.com/episode/1HJp...

submitted 54 days ago • 0 comments

Every administration pushes its policy wonks to provide a positive spin in their analysis (e.g., "transitory" inflation), but the loyalty screening is so intense now that the analysis is completely detached from reality www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECnj...

submitted 55 days ago • 1 comment

Interesting how different the responses to the election have been between the UMich and NY Fed measures of inflation expectations. Perhaps the NY Fed’s panel encourages people to learn more about inflation, so those respondents know that Trump didn’t actually raise tariffs by 25% on Canada+Mexico?

submitted 56 days ago • 0 comments

Good points from Energy Aspects colleagues here that it’s much easier to say Drill, Baby, Drill than it is to actually boost US oil drilling

submitted 56 days ago • 0 comments

If economists convince people that prices will surge because of tariffs, and they only rise moderately more than normal, it will strike a blow against expert credibility. Better to focus on long-run costs and the opportunities tariffs create for political favoritism

submitted 59 days ago • 1 comment

Pretty funny that the new administration's input into the Treasury staff report on the state of the economic to its borrowing advisory committee (TBAC) is so apparent that they even have a different size of spacing in the document home.treasury.gov/news/press-r...

submitted 60 days ago • 0 comments

Both political parties have tended run the macro economy hot recently, with Trump pushing for tax cuts and Biden for essentially tax rebates when the labor market was either tight or on track to be tight. Fed Vice Chair Jefferson explains why the focus should be more on sustainability than heat

submitted 61 days ago • 1 comment

I don’t think there is a single person in the world right now who knows where this is going to lead , even in the near term, even including, maybe especially including DOGE. Are they actually cutting payments? Are they actually going to cut 50% of leases? 70% of OPM etc

submitted 61 days ago • 0 comments

El Salvador has the one type of comparative advantage in free trade that President Trump appreciates - jailing migrants

submitted 62 days ago • 0 comments

Trump will surely raise tariffs eventually and probably imprudently, but economists should react more skeptically. See it signed and enacted; then model it. If normies think tariffs were massively hiked but little changed in their lives, it will (unfairly) be another blow to expert credibility

submitted 63 days ago • 0 comments

NEW: Sources tell my office that Treasury Secretary Bessent has granted DOGE full access to this system. Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk's own companies. All of it.

submitted 65 days ago • 6132 comments

Considering how fired up Republicans got about the theoretical possibility that the Fed would use a central bank digital currency to monitor the transactions of Americans, the silence to Musk’s people actually doing it through Treasury is deafening

submitted 66 days ago • 0 comments

I'M LOSING JUICE ON TARIFF THREATS.

submitted 66 days ago • 1 comment