SunSeeker
SunSeeker's JournalThe Simple Explanation for This Week's Treasury Market Mayhem
The immediate suspects include somewhat plausible ideas revolving around complex trading strategies employed by hedge funds to conspiracy theories focused on nefarious dealings by foreign governments.
But the answer might be far simpler: U.S. government debt is doing badly because, well, investors don’t want to buy it.At the moment, they still don’t. While the S&P 500 closed the week up 5.7% on the back of President Trump’s announcement of a 90-day tariff pause, long-term U.S. government debt hasn’t recovered. The yields on 10-year and 30-year debt hovered around 4.5% and 4.9% Friday, respectively.
An aversion to buying Treasurys at the moment is actually pretty easy to understand. The Trump administration’s erratic tariff policies have created so much uncertainty that investors have been reluctant to make any directional guesses about where the U.S. economy would be in 10 years. Higher-conviction moves, which have involved pricing in a possible recession and tariff-induced inflation, have concentrated on short-term bonds.
https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/the-simple-explanation-for-this-weeks-treasury-market-mayhem-9351f339?mod=mhp
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. falsely claims measles vaccine protection 'wanes very quickly'
Source: NBC News
In an interview Wednesday with CBS News, Kennedy said the Trump administration was focused on finding ways to treat people who choose not to get vaccinated. However, there are no approved treatments for measles, which kills almost 3 out of every 1,000 people diagnosed.
Kennedy also suggested that measles cases are inevitable in the United States because of ebbing immunity from vaccines — a notion doctors say is false. “We’re always going to have measles, no matter what happens, as the vaccine wanes very quickly,” Kennedy said.
Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine offer lifelong protection. That’s because the vaccine stimulates the production of memory cells, he said, which can recognize the virus over a lifetime.
“We eliminated measles from this country. That could never happen if immunity waned,” said Offit, who serves on an independent vaccine advisory committee for the FDA.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/health-secretary-rfk-jr-measles-vaccine-falsely-claims-wanes-rcna200636
The U.S. formally eliminated measles in 2000 thanks to widespread vaccination, but public health experts fear the current growing outbreak of the disease may allow it to reclaim its hold.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/measles-outbreak-in-u-s-may-undo-formal-elimination-status/
There have been 3 deaths (2 children and 1 adult) already from the current outbreak. Plus, there is potentially lifelong complications among the unvaccinated who contracted measles and managed to survive, like deafness and brain damage. What JFK Jr. is doing is unconscionable.
A 'disaster': Gretchen Whitmer's talk on tariffs and meeting with Trump anger fellow Democrats
The Michigan governor tried to play nice with Trump. Instead, there’s a sense in the party that she got played when the president used her as a bipartisan Oval Office prop. First, in a policy speech outlining a “consistent national strategy,” Whitmer staked out common ground with President Donald Trump. And though Whitmer criticized Trump’s sweeping, roller-coaster rollout of — and subsequent retreat from — tariffs, she said she was not against tariffs “outright” and expressed understanding of Trump’s “motivation” behind deploying them. That drew a social media rebuke from Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis.
“Tariffs are bad outright because they lead to higher prices and destroy American manufacturing,” Polis, another potential 2028 contender who has also sought ways to find common cause with Trump, wrote on X. “Trade is inherently good because both parties emerge better off from a consensual transaction.”
Then, later Wednesday, Whitmer joined Trump in the Oval Office. She was scheduled to meet privately with him and discuss Michigan issues. That wasn’t how it ultimately played out. Instead, she stood by as he signed several executive orders, including two calling for Justice Department probes of officials who served in his first administration and called him out for falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen. He made the false claims about the election’s being “rigged” again Wednesday.
Whitmer was invited into the Oval Office alongside Michigan state House Speaker Matt Hall, a Republican, as Trump held court with reporters and signed the executive orders. Photos showed Whitmer standing uncomfortably against a door as the cameras rolled.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/disaster-gretchen-whitmers-talk-tariffs-meeting-trump-anger-fellow-dem-rcna200530
Sharp US bond selloff revives flashbacks of COVID-era 'dash-for-cash'
Source: Reuters
The $29-trillion Treasury market had surged in recent weeks as investors dumped stocks for the safety of government bonds in a tariff-fueled risk-off shift. But on Monday, even as equities stayed under pressure, Treasuries were hit by a wave of selling that sent benchmark yields soaring by 17 basis points on the day, while trading within a yield range of about 35 basis points, one of the wildest trading swings for 10-year yields in two decades.
The selloff picked up pace on Tuesday and into Wednesday, pushing benchmark 10-year yields above 4.425%, 16 basis points higher on the day. Some market participants said they believed based on the dramatic Treasury market moves and sharp tightening of swap spreads that investors including hedge funds have been selling liquid assets such as U.S. government bonds to meet margin calls due to portfolio losses across asset classes. Some hedge funds have offloaded stocks as the market plunge forces them to curtail trading using borrowed cash.
Besides the sharp increase in yields, several analysts also pointed to changes in the price differential between Treasuries and interest rate swaps as evidence of specific selling of Treasuries, as opposed to a broader move reflecting, for instance, changes in monetary policy expectations.
An executive catering for hedge fund clients at a large bank, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investors have been looking for alternatives to U.S. assets amid market volatility, including alternatives to U.S. Treasuries.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/markets/rates-bonds/global-markets-tariffs-treasuries-analysis-2025-04-09/
The US Treasury bond selloff and Goldman Sachs this morning announcing a 65% chance of recession was what made Trump issue the 90 day pause on the 30% tariffs (albeit keeping the 10% baseline on 70 countries, as well as 125% tariffs on China). That bond selloff means interest rates will rise, and the dollar loses value, making imports even more expensive for Americans.
With US trade policy left to the whims of an ignorant 78-year-old hopped up on Adderall, there is no certainty in US investments. Investors need certainty to invest, so there will be much less investment in US businesses/hiring, thus stalling growth.
If the world no longer sees US Treasury bonds as the gold standard safe haven, we are truly fucked. What we pay in interest for our $36 Trillion national debt will skyrocket and stagflation (low growth + high inflation) will torture Americans for the foreseeable future.
Exclusive: Wall Street Sours On Trump
A new Forbes survey of Wall Street heavyweights shows many who supported Trump’s economic promises have abandoned him – and a vast majority disapprove of the President’s economic policies. http://on.forbes.com/6185FgHic More than two months into Donald Trump's term, with details of his “Liberation Day” regimen revealed this week, Forbes reached out to 50 top Wall Street leaders, including billionaire investors, major institutional asset managers and the nation's largest wealth advisors, to gauge their support for the president’s economic strategies.
The 50 respondents, chosen for their outsized influence, reinforced the recent market tumult. Among these Wall Street heavyweights – more than half of whom supported Trump’s economic policies as he reentered the White House in January – 72% say the Trump team’s economic plan has been ineffective, and 66% did not support his economic policies. Among those who were Trump supporters as recently as a few weeks ago, more than one-third now no longer back his economic policies, and a majority of them—54%—say he is failing in the execution of his plan.
Forbes also polled these Wall Street bigs about specific aspects of Trump’s approach to various economic policies asking them to rank them on a scale of 1 to 5, with five being the most favorable.
Their grades are largely awful. On tariffs, Trump rated a 1.86 out of 5, with 27 respondents assigning the lowest rating possible. On the stock market, a similarly lousy 1.96 (with 25 respondents assigned him a 1 out of 5), and a near equally bad 2.10 for his executive orders aimed at law firms – a direct shot at the rule of law that underpins America’s free enterprise system. Ratings on cryptocurrencies (2.0) and inflation (2.16) offered no solace.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2025/04/04/exclusive-wall-street-sours-on-trump/?utm_source=FBPAGE&utm_medium=social&utm_content=16601849366&utm_campaign=sprinklrForbesMainFB
Jon Stewart Destroys Conservatives With A Page Out Of Trump's Book
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jon-stewart-daily-show-trump-tariffs_n_67f49520e4b007ee85d7492d
Trump's Rationales For His Tariffs Are Incoherent And Contradict Each Other
Bring back manufacturing? Raise revenue? Negotiate with every country in the world? Trump can’t have his cake and eat it too.
“I think tariffs are a means to an end, and that end is bringing the manufacturing base back to the U.S.,” Bessent said on Fox Business in February. This is, quite plainly, the point of tariffs. A country imposes a levy on imports as protection for the domestic market. This disincentives imports while incentivizing domestic production, especially if paired with an industrial policy that subsidizes or promotes domestic industry.
That is what the Biden administration did with its combination of tariffs and industrial policy enacted through the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS & Science Act. Those two laws provided subsidies to build domestic production of microchips, electric vehicles, batteries and various other products for the clean energy sector. To protect these infant industries, Biden imposed tariffs, largely on goods from China where the industry is more developed. The most stringent of these was a 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles.That was a targeted and strategic pairing of tariff policy and industrial policy aimed at reshoring jobs and building entirely new manufacturing industries. This is not what Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs look like. Rather than strategically designed tariffs on countries with known unfair trade practices or targeting China’s unbalanced export economy, Trump’s tariffs hit almost every country in the world, including those that export products to the U.S. that cannot be manufactured or acquired here. No one can grow bananas in the United States nor do we have vast diamond mines.
At the same time, Trump is doing nothing to promote domestic industries or protect American workers. He is trying to unilaterally gut or not implement the Inflation Reduction Act’s subsidies meant to build domestic manufacturing capacity in the clean energy sector, and he’s called for Congress to repeal the CHIPS & Science Act. He is also actively working to undermine workers through National Labor Relations Board rulemakings and other anti-union and worker practices.Still, there’s a reason this is the main rationale the administration promotes: It makes sense to the public and has public support. But it makes no sense when you look at the other explanations.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-tariff-rationales_n_67f43312e4b09643222ccc46
The 8 worst days EVER for the Dow -- all of them under Donald Trump:
-2,997.10 - March 16, 2020
-2,352.60 - March 12, 2020
-2,231.07 - TODAY
-2,013.76 - March 9, 2020
-1,861.82 - June 11, 2020
-1,679.39 - YESTERDAY
-1,464.94 - March 11, 2020
-1,338.46 - March 18, 2020
March was the third highest month for layoffs in American history.
More than 275,000 layoffs were announced last month, reaching a level not seen since the pandemic, according to a new report published Thursday.
The biggest culprit was one particular employer: The federal government.
The federal government announced plans to axe 216,215 jobs, accounting for nearly 80% of the 275,240 layoffs announcements made by US employers in March, according to Challenger Gray & Christmas’ latest report. It’s the third-highest monthly total behind April 2020 (671,129) and May 2020 (397,016).
The Department of Government Efficiency has run roughshod on the federal government, slashing funding, scrapping contracts and laying off droves of federal workers.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/03/economy/us-jobs-report-preview-march-doge-layoffs/index.html
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayHome country: USA
Current location: Southern California
Member since: Sun Mar 20, 2011, 12:05 PM
Number of posts: 56,128