In Biblical contexts, War, Death, Pestilence and Famine. Well, with the Trump administration, check, check, check, and check!
War? Trump set the stage for capitulation in Afghanistan, and is ready to do his own Manchurian Candidate imitation for Ukraine.
Source: ISW, 13 March 2025.
Death? See below (remembering “bleach” and Mr. Trump’s approach to the covid pandemic).
Figure 1: Current hospitalizations (blue, left scale), 7 days moving average of deaths (brown). Source: Covid Tracking Project, accessed 11/6/2020, author’s calculations.
Pestilence. At least measles, if not bird flu.
Famine? Cutting off USAID funding is definitely going to cause starvation in developing countries.
Source: CRS.
Anyone else notice that the dollar is no longer the darling of the FX market? Early to mid-January appears to be the turning point. Of course, that’s what one would expect when asset prices and interest rates – realized and expected – begin to fall and uncertainty begins to rise. Both he safe-haven value and investment return of the dollar are off a bit these days.
One exception is the C$. Canada and the U.S. are so entangled that their mutual exchange rate is in a world of its own.
For now, the inflationary implications aren’t great. Keep reducing investors’ appetite for U.S. assets, though, and the dollar could add considerably to inflation.
Uh, Oh. Credit markets are beginning to show signs of stress. This will add to the effect of uncertainty in slowing investment. And while there is so far no evidence of structural breakdown, this is how it would start.
A handful of planned corporate bond sales were canceled last week:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/credit-traders-jolted-awake-wall-230839837.html
The reason for the cancelation is obvious – credit spreads have blown out, beginning in the final week of February:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1EBlV
One virtuous development, though not a sign of health, is that mergers and acquisitions have slowed dramatically:
https://www.thewrap.com/media-mergers-down-40-percent-trump-speed-bump/
Spreads are also widening in Europe, though not to the same extent:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1EBmN
And there’s this from S&P Global:
-Rating actions surged, with downgrades accounting for two thirds of total actions.
-Speculative-grade issuers dominated downgrades, which were broad-based by sector.
-U.S.-based issuers made up the majority of upgrades and downgrades.
There is also reporting on a cash crunch in Asia, though without much in the way of useful metrics:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2025/03/10/markets/trinity-conundrum-cash-asia/
So Putin expended 900,000 causalities, 75% of his military equipment, most of the Russian wealth fund and destroyed Russian domestic economy and killing ??? many civilians and Ukrainians for a devastated land bridge to his vacation palace in Crimea. And this is what Trump/Republicans and the oligarchs want to ally with and segment from our nearest most important allies Canada and Mexico.
Some insightful analysts are starting to see the hard data weaken – pull back in capex plans, slowdown in airline bookings, consumers more worried about job prospects – https://go2.apollo.com/e/1047283/eUSEconomyMarch-15-2025-v2-pdf/2gdjn/218447413/h/nSQIiKOvQ9leNRBf_843pI3MZKlkD05l4oeJdytyKQA
I say we have not seen anything yet – let’s see what happens to some local economies when the GOP pulls away the floor when they cut public benefits to poorer, rural communities.
Also – things that would have been generating constant banner headlines by oligarch controlled media during the Biden admin like the ongoing measles outbreak is hard to find.
But climate change/reality doesn’t care that there is anti-science dingbat Trump admin – and we are seeing a record sea surface temperature https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08674-z
When Snopes says you’re stretching for something negative, you’ve got a credibility problem.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-inject-bleach-covid-19/
Measles was declared eliminated from the US in 2000, but for some inexplicable reason made a roaring comeback from 2021-24 in places like west Texas and New York City.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6474820/
Poor USAID gets blaimed for wasting money and then pushed under control of the State Department. What will the Serbians do?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/02/at-usaid-waste-and-abuse-runs-deep/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/usaid-merged-into-state-department/
Ukraine? Well, peace efforts are just a waste of soldiers and money, so Trump should just send money and weapons and shut up.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/03/1160846
Bruce Hall Wrong on so many counts. First of all, the Snopes take is utterly wrong. Here’s a transcript of what Trump actually said regarding a study by William Bryan, who was acting undersecretary for science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security: “Then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So, it’d be interesting to check that.”
As to measles, the outbreaks are because of anti-vaxers who won’t vaccinate their kids. A long time ago that used to be a left-wing thing, but over the last 20 years it’s become a far-right thing, except for an ultra conservative Jewish sect that is responsible for it in NYC…usually after coming back from visits to Israel. But Menzie’s point wasn’t about the spread of measles, it was about Trump cutting funding for the CDC and NIH. Trump is not responsible for the moronic choices people make to not get vaccinated, but he is responsible for cutting the very agencies that would prevent isolated cases from becoming another pandemic.
If you believe Putin is interested in a peace settlement that leaves Ukraine intact, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Whether or not Ukraine believes its fight is worth the cost in blood and lives is Ukraine’s call, not yours and not Trump’s. Putin has already broken over 20 peace settlements since 2014. So yes, Trump should just send money and weapons and shut up.
Bruce hall is simply trying to justify his defense of an indefensible and immoral trump.
Bruce, let me note that no Christian can support trump and remain in the good graces of Jesus Christ. Trumps actions, and not words, contradict everything Jesus taught us. If you continue to promote this ideology, you know what the good book says will happen. You don’t need to argue with me. You will need to persuade an irritated St Peter at the gate. Can you pull a fast one on Jesus? And would you even want to try? Cause that is where you and millions of others are at right now.
Ukraine intact, some nuances are observed
2slugbaits,
Snopes didn’t contest the brief question from Trump; they simply put it in the larger context of the discussion:
Trump then clarified his own remarks, adding: “It wouldn’t be through injection. We’re talking about through almost a cleaning, sterilization of an area. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work. But it certainly has a big effect if it’s on a stationary object.”
At no point in the media briefing did the then-president recommend that people inject bleach or other disinfectants into their bodies. He merely asked experts whether disinfectants could be injected to tackle COVID-19; a stance he later rowed back on when pressed by a journalist.
So, you are correct, but you are wrong.
Most reports do not explicitly say who was infected, but it is likely that some were people who were not vaccinated against the measles virus. However…
International Importations of Measles Virus into the United States during the Post-Elimination Era, 2001–2016
Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Apr 19.
Abstract
Background
Although measles was declared eliminated from the United States in 2000, measles cases and outbreaks continue to occur, resulting from importations of the disease from countries where it remains endemic.
So, you are correct, but you are wrong.
“If you believe Putin is interested in a peace settlement that leaves Ukraine intact, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.”
I would say the same thing about the 2014 (Obama) annexation of Crimea. War often changes national boundaries. That’s not the issue here unless you believe that Ukraine can push Russia out of its eastern territories. The likelihood is that the longer the war goes on, the more territory Ukraine will lose along with a devastated male population and an inability to recover economically without something similar to the Marshall Plan.
So, you are correct, but you are wrong.
Bruce Hall Trump was talking in circles. He had just seen William Bryan’s stuff on sterilizing equipment. That was on his mind. He then saw Bryan in the briefing room and started ruminating out loud about injecting bleach into humans. That’s what he meant by “injecting inside.” Then with the reporter’s question Trump jumped back to what Bryan was showing him, which was the effectiveness of sterilizing equipment. Trump’s brain just jumps all over the place, and we saw it here.
As to measles, I am correct. Menzie’s comment wasn’t about Trump being responsible for the importation of measles, his comment referred to Trump’s idiotic hiring of RFK, Jr and gutting the CDC and NIH, which are responsible for containing measles. And hiring an anti-vax guy like RFK, Jr isn’t a good way to encourage MMR vaccines.
Yes, war often changes national boundaries. That doesn’t mean we should accept it or encourage it. Aggressors should pay a price. Obama should have reacted stronger in 2014, which might have further emboldened Putin to attack Ukraine in 2022. And Biden should have gone a lot further and a lot faster in arming Ukraine. But none of those past failures justify or excuse Trump’s embrace of Putin’s aggression. The likelihood of the war going Ukraine’s way depends upon how much military aid we and Europe provide to Ukraine. Ukraine’s army is not in great shape, but neither is Putin’s. And the longer Ukraine fights Russia the weaker Russia becomes, which is a strategic victory for NATO. And don’t forget that the longer the war goes on the more likely it becomes that Putin faces an “et tu Brute” moment himself. But even if Ukraine decides to give up the lost territories, that wouldn’t remove the threat that Putin would invade again and just take the rest. Afterall, he’s promised to do exactly that. So if we want to prevent that there will have to be a robust peacekeeping force along the border.
There’s also a bigger issue here that doesn’t get a lot of attention. If Ukraine falls, then every country in the world is going to get the message that the way to deter aggression is to have nuclear weapons. Poland hasn’t made a secret of the fact that they will be going down that path if the US proves to be an unreliable ally. And you should expect Taiwan, Japan and South Korea to start nuke programs of their own, which wouldn’t take them very long to complete given their technological sophistication. Now, do you really believe it’s a good idea for 40 or 50 countries to have nukes?
The Jeddah agreement, the U.S. side talking to itself, seems to be “30 day ceasefire as quid pro quo for negotiations”.
The other side may see that as horse behind cart.
Putin’s observation of “nuanced” peace should be meditated upon.
This is Brucey’s new thing. He imagines some itty-bitty possibility of mitigating the felon-in-chief’s bad behavior, and links to an article which may (but often does not) suggest that the felon isn’t soooo bad. The felon-in-chief did a rotten job of handling Covid. He is so in the habit of pretending – that immigrants are often criminals, that tariffs are good for the economy… – that when Covid came around, his natural reaction was to pretend it away. Bleach. No masking. If it hadn’t been for two now Nobel-prize-winning biologists, he’d have had nothing. As it is, his undermining of good practices probably cost 400,000 people their lives. Brucey wants one assessment of one version of one criticism to erase the failure of his favorite felon. Nothing can erase that failure.
Brucey wants bleach to be the issue on which we judge the rapist-in-chief’s Covid response. Why? Because if we are distracted by bleach, we might forget that the rapist’s policy failure cost over 400,000 lives:
https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/excess-deaths/103566/
Those unnecessary dead seem more important than quibbling over whether the rapist said something profoundly stupid and then took it back, or just said something profoundly stupid.
That acting Commissioner of the Social Security on the state of affairs under the felon-in-chief:
https://www.propublica.org/article/recording-reveals-leland-dudek-thoughts-trump-doge-social-security
Seems like the excrement has hit the air-conditioner.
Okay, this is a new one. Trump has decided to pause the negotiations on water sharing of the Columbia River between the US and Canada. If Trump thinks he can use this as trade leverage, he’s nuts. The Columbia River originates upstream in Canada. The US is downstream. Canada has dams that can just turn off the water any time they like. There’s a saying in water law “I’d rather be upstream with a shovel than downstream with a water right.” Is there nobody in the administration who understands this? Is he looking for a cause of war?
Remember Trump saying “We don’t need anything that Canada has.” He’s an idiot and his entire cabinet are idiots.
The Columbia River provides 40% of all the hydro power produced in the US, is used for irrigation for billions of dollars of crops and carries millions of tons of commercial cargo.
Canadians might be able to shut off water flow for awhile, but eventually they will have to restore it or face a situation similar to this:
5. What are the impacts to British Columbia from the Columbia River Treaty?
Although the four dams [Duncan, Mica, Arrow (Hugh Keenleyside), Libby] improved flood control and power
production, the resulting reservoirs in Canada flooded 60,000 hectares (231 square miles) of valley bottom land.
Flooding impacted traditional First Nations’ sites, agricultural and forestry areas, displaced a dozen
communities, including approximately 2,300 people, and impacted fish and wildlife habitat.
The rise and fall of reservoir levels continue to affect the surrounding ecosystems, cultural and recreation
interests. In recognition of the long term impacts in the region as a result of the Columbia River
Treaty and the Columbia River Treaty dams, Columbia Basin Trust (a Crown corporation) was created
in 1995 to support social, economic and environmental well-being in the Columbia River Basin.
https://engage.gov.bc.ca/app/uploads/sites/6/2017/01/crt-faq.pdf
Canada can shut the water flow through its dams, but the water will just flow around them into the surrounding areas causing widespread flooding. Sort of cutting of the nose to spite the face.
And you think you’ve made an argument that washes away the stupidity of Trump’s action?
Discussions of Columbia River water sharing aren’t some Trump-style all-or-nothing threat-fest. Canada hasn’t threatened to stop the flow of water, so once again, your “evidence” doesn’t really have anything to do with the issue at hand.
Water-sharing discussions are meant to assure the greatest mutual benefit. Your favorite felon seems to have no appreciation of mutual benefit. Your defense of the felon’s idiot claim seems likewise to miss the point of the talks.
Let’s imagine that Canada isn’t full of people who understand the situation as poorly as you do. Let’s imagine that they simply decide to manage the Columbia River for their own benefit. No flooding of Canadian River basins. No shortage of water for Canada. As much flow through their own hydroelectric dams as is optimal for Canada. And the U.S. gets however much water Canada doesn’t need or want. Sometimes, that would be too much water, sometimes too little. The optimal flow of water would be a mere accident, happenstance.
The silly notion that Canada would harm Canadians to spite the U.S. is something the felon-in-chief might do, but Canada isn’t governed by fools.
You know, Bruce, it’s not as simple as you suggest. If it were simple, then there would be no need for the agreements in the water treaty that has stood for more than 60 years. Turning off the faucet is just a euphemism for water management — that’s not the way it is actually done. What the water agreement does is manage the flow of water throughout the seasons in order to optimize hydro power, irrigation, shipping and things like salmon runs so that you have the proper amount of flow for the needs when they are needed.
Trump thinks he can just tear up treaties and then demand whatever he wants. He’s sadly mistaken. Canada controls the source. There are lots of competing interests for that flow throughout the year. Intelligent management means throttling storage and release throughout the year and varies from year to year depending on weather and climate. Coordination between Canada and the US is essential and Canada holds all the cards.
Now, if Trump is intentionally trying to provoke an national security crisis, this would be a way to do it. It seems to be a pattern for Trump, invoking national security as means of bypassing Congress and accruing dictatorial powers to himself. He’s done it for trade, he’s done it for immigration, and he could do the same for water management.
What he said.
And if you don’t think Trump is serious about invading Canada, here is what he said about California.
“I invaded Los Angeles. I sent the army in to turn on the water.”
This is all absurd, but that won’t stop Trump from trying. First of all, he didn’t invade Los Angeles. He “invaded” the Terminus Dam 100 miles north of Bakersfield. And he didn’t send in the army. He sent two of Musk’s “super-high IQ” DOGE boys to a dam operated by the Army Corp of Engineers. Now these two “super-high IQ” DOGE boys apparently had no idea where the water they were releasing was going. It wasn’t going to Los Angeles. It went to the central valley where it was wasted. This is water that the farmers in the valley store in the winter and depend on in the summer for their crops. It seems the “super-high IQ” boys are actually pretty stupid.
Don’t think for a moment that Trump would not do the unthinkable and gin up a national security crisis to send troops to Canada to control the Columbia River flow. We’ve already seen that the days of what is “unthinkable” are over. He has already said that he wants to tear up the 49th parallel boundary treaty. He wants to tear up the water treaties. He wants to tear up the trade treaties. So what is left but invasion?
The man who has been a narcissistic psychopath his entire life is now entering an even more dangerous and demented stage of Alzheimers. And there is nobody in his Cabinet of sycophants to rein him in, quite different from his first term.
And as a prime example:
“The White House said it ignored a court order to turn around two planeloads of alleged Venezuelan gang members because the flights were over international waters and therefore the ruling did not apply.”
The court order applies to the defendant (Trump), not where the activity occurred. Otherwise anyone could go offshore and commit a crime, even murder, and then return home and say the court has no jurisdiction.
So now Trump claims the right to just ignore court orders. Do you think the Supreme Court will do anything about it? Is there anything they can do?
This is Brucey’s new thing. He imagines some itty-bitty possibility of mitigating the felon-in-chief’s bad behavior, and links to an article which may (but often does not) suggest that the felon isn’t soooo bad. The felon-in-chief did a rotten job of handling Covid. He is so in the habit of pretending – that immigrants are often criminals, that tariffs are good for the economy… – that when Covid came around, his natural reaction was to pretend it away. Bleach. No masking. If it hadn’t been for two now Nobel-prize-winning biologists, he’d have had nothing. As it is, his undermining of good practices probably cost 400,000 people their lives. Brucey wants one assessment of one version of one criticism to erase the failure of his favorite felon. Nothing can erase that failure.
The Tax Foundation is out with estimates of the economic impact of tariffs proposed by the felon-in-chief:
https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs-trade-war/
Among the highlights:
• We estimate that the IEEPA and Section 232 tariffs will reduce US GDP by 0.4 percent and hours worked by 309,000 full-time equivalent jobs, before accounting for foreign retaliation.
Note these losses are “before accounting for foreign retaliation”, so the actual economic cost of proposed tariffs would be higher. Let’s keep in mind that these proposed tariffs may well be illegal. They have not been imposed after the legally-required process of evaluation. They certainly violate U.S. obligations under the WTO. The economic costs we are likely to suffer are merely the whim of a convicted felon and serial bankrupt.
It is also worth considering that the steady-state loss of 0.4% of GDP and 309,000 jobs may not be arrived at smoothly. The path to this new, crappier equilibrium could run through recession.
Macroduck: “Let’s keep in mind that these proposed tariffs may well be illegal.”
It doesn’t matter. Trump has ginned up a national security crisis (fentanyl, terrorist immigrants) as justification to bypass Congress. He has ginned up national security as an excuse to deport legal green card holders. He has defied federal judge restraining orders and the right-wing Supreme Court is in no hurry to intervene.
These are times like no other. The guardrails are down. Checks and balances are just a fiction from grade school civics.
Dealing with Musk:
https://crookedtimber.org/2025/02/25/dispensing-with-the-tech-bros/
John Quiggen has a dangerous mind. He is recommending that nations which support Ukraine ban Musk products if Ukraine is shut off from Starlink. No TwiXter, no Starlink. Quiggen broadens his recommendation to a weakening of protection for U.S. intellectual property as a response to the felon-in-chief’s trade antics. (I assume readers have some grasp of the damage to the wealth and income of U.S. tech richies and shareholders implied by such an action.) Quiggen doesn’t go into this detail, but let’s remember that Musk has large liabilities, secured by his own assets. His loans could be called if his collateral loses enough value – no more “world’s richest man”.
I know of at least one analogous episode, precedent for doing as Quiggen suggests. Many years ago, in far-away Hoosierland, a banking exec was on loan to the state government as an economic policy advisor. The exec wanted a personal legacy, so he proposed a new research institute, funded by a new tax to be imposed on a single industry. The governor at the time, Robert Orr, was not a great economic thinker (nor very familiar with the inside of books, truth be told), thought this was a cool idea.
My old daddy was in the State Legislature, and thought that, what with there being several public research universities capable of doing the intended research and what with the unfairness of singling out one industry for taxation, this was not a cool idea, and wanted to derail it. But how?
So he called up the companies which would pay this new tax, and recommended that they withdraw all of their money from the banking exec’s employer, and maybe suggest that they could find someplace else to borrow. They all made the call the very next day.
Job done. No shiny new research institute, no new tax, and the exec was called back to the bank where he could be kept out of trouble. I think similar results could be expected, including sending Musk scurrying from the White House, if Quiggen’s idea is put to work.
Macroduck: “Quiggen broadens his recommendation to a weakening of protection for U.S. intellectual property as a response to the felon-in-chief’s trade antics. (I assume readers have some grasp of the damage to the wealth and income of U.S. tech richies and shareholders implied by such an action.)”
That’s what I have been suggesting. Tariffs on goods mostly hit blue-collar workers. Intellectual property hits the techbros where it hurts. Intellectual property protectionism is monopoly rents enforced by law. They should be weakened regardless and this is a good excuse to do it.