I don't think there are any repugs not perfectly willing to trade ALL of their principlEs for even a little more principAl. (Presuming they had any "E" to begin with.)
Just now at the pharmacy I was accosted by some old racist who didn't care for my "Stop Killing Black People" t-shirt. (Or more likely, my right to wear it.)
And when I tried to explain that white people kill each other at higher rates, he started screaming for me to "STEP BACK!"
By this evening he almost certainly have defended himself from 20 armed trans Democrats. (But I didn't see anyone else even concerned enough about my actions to even take out their phones, and security was no more interested.)
That made me wonder how long I'll be legally allowed to even wear my own clothing.
The most applicable line of dialogue from Groucho is from his ditty in Duck Soup: If you think the country's bad off now,/Just wait till I get through with it."
Unfortunately what we’re left with is a Malevolently Uninformed and incompetent president who operates always on the assumptions that he is smarter than everyone else and knows more than everyone else
The '70's were kind of a mixed bag, but we took a really wrong turn in 1980. That was really the beginning of this long dark tunnel we find ourselves in now.
James Garner said he was incompetent as pres. of the screen actors guild. He did nothing, and took all the credit for everyone else's work. And that Reagan was very stupid.
No no. He is acting on advices from his billionaires and corrupt foreign supporters. Putin and MBS. They will profit a lot from von trump decisions. And this imbecile will still believe he is a universal genius, because… all his corrupt surrounding close supporters never stop repeating that he is the greatest of all. How sad. Lock him up! Cut his mike and dick if you can find it. Lol
The big question regarding Warsh--or whatever tool Trump appoints as Fed Chair next year--is what exactly happens when the Prime is slashed, and how the markets will respond.
Presumably, with borrowing costs reduced, economic activity will tick upwards. But so will inflation. But how much of either might we get? And if the current incoming wave of Trump tariff inflation is high, how much higher will a Trumpy Fed drive it? Economists of America, place your bets!
A lot of this presumes that the current level of spending will continue and people will be willing to purchase stuff for 30 - 50% more tomorrow than yesterday. It also presumes that all the people being fired from the Federal Government find new jobs that allow them to continue to spend. And then, there are all the people in the Healthcare System who could find themselves on the streets. And what of all the working poor (brown people) if many of them 'self-deport' the economy is in for some big hits. God forfend that Social Security explodes.
The MAGA crowd has been told that the government workers being canned are useless. The administration is putting pressure on every entity (like New York and Maryland governments) that is trying to hire them to keep these people unemployed. Maryland is trying to reeducate them as teachers. My crystal ball is in the shop, but I think the former government workers will not be spending as they did before.
That’s Argentina’s experience with Milei. It’s very unfortunate US voters don’t pay more attention to the results of experimentation in other countries.
A big question indeed. Incoherent economic policies rarely translate to coherence in the marketplace. It seems to me that bold macroeconomic experiments with tariffs, interest rates and global liquidity (bond markets) with the largest economy on the planet, which anchors global wealth may expose heretofore unknown economic principles... or simply chaos and massive wealth restructuring.
Do the Village People count as disco? MAGA sure seems receptive to rehashing the ‘70s in its entirety.
I’ll never understand why young males swung to a party that is an annoying time capsule of the worst Boomer cultural fads. It’s surprising Project 2025 didn’t include reviving mining agates so Gen Alpha can enjoy Pet Rocks. Considering younger generations chronic complaints about Boomers, manosphere algorithms should not have overridden their antipathy to “the olds”.
I agree with Krugman that Trump is not a TACO (Trump always chickens out) guy.
Instead, Trump is having a wonderful time with his cockamamie tariffs. Arbitrarily they are launched with no clear rhyme or reason. Blackmail, humiliation, sky high figures, pauses, then such total irrelevance as 50% tariffs for Brazil (where we have a trade surplus) because Trump is pissed over treatment of an ex-president.
Trump loves the power and the headlines. I predict that this will continue indefinitely, as Trump revels in various countries ‘groveling’ over his back-of-the-envelope demands.
I haven’t a clue whether Trump really believes that his tariff blitzkrieg will spark a massive surge of manufacturing in the United States. This, of course, is sheer nonsense, but this has never restrained Trump.
BUCKLE YOUR SEAT BELT FOR TRUMP’S SUSTAINED TARIFF ROLLER COASTER.
And don't forget insider trading. Trumpkopf and friends have made out like bandits buying and selling with suspiciously perfect timing. Just look at how much Marjorie Taylor Greenbacks raked in.
I think it was Greenspan who claimed that he never discussed economy even at private parties because he realized that anything he said could influence the U.S. economy. Whoever Trump appoints is likely to tweet on a daily basis...
Volker, too. The architect of the Nixon Shock in the early 1970s, which contributed mightily to the stagflation that afflicted the country until he became Fed chair. At which point he choked the economy unconscious in the early 1980s to fix the problem he helped create.
The high cost of healthcare is due to being run as a for profit enterprise. Use the Sherlock Holmes method - look for motivation first. Optimizing profit is the primary motivation - not quality of care. That's just a desirable side effect of all the profiteering.
It is my feeling that if/when Donald gets a compliant FED, it will be bad for Donald in the long run. Donald thinks (or claims to think) that he is smarter than anyone else, but he only feels comfortable with incompetents and sycophants in the jobs around him.
A sycophantic yes man at the FED could do a lot of damage to the economy. That would be bad for Donald, but unfortunately, bad also for the rest of the country. Donald's salvation will probably be right wing media such as FOX, Sinclair, and so forth who basically do PR for Donald.
Regardless of how bad the economy might become, the media will trumpet how wonderful it is and what a genius Donald is. About 40 % of the population will believe it.
I think that countries sometimes become overwhelmed by a desire to commit suicide, and they go into terminal decline. That is the situation in which America is now. No matter how bad things get with Donald, America is going to stick with him.
The future (for the foreseeable future) is in Europe, China, and other countries outside of the United States.
The recent flood in Texas demonstrates something which I think is bizarre about some parts of America. It appeared to me that the floods and the after affects showed wall to wall incompetence and mismanagement from government entities -- from local government levels on up through the federal government. Many volunteers and individuals did and are doing tremendous work. But I venture to think that not one thing will change. Texas will continue with "business as usual" as will the feds.
What Texas gets excited about is the culture war issues.
I read today that the Governor of Texas is calling a special session of the legislature. Not to deal with anything relating to public safety or the recent flood. No, the special session will deal with harsher penalties for abortion and tougher laws against transgender people.
"long run" are two words that don't exist together in Trumps vocabulary. He is reacting to some perceived sleight in the past or some recent market reaction but never something that might happen a year, a month or even a week from now. Anything past the current news cycle is uninteresting for him.
No, the effects will take several years to spool up. The next President will have to deal with the fallout (just like Carter had to deal with the fallout from Nixon's manipulations).
The Fed is a collegial body: not a dictatorship. The last time the Chair and the FOMC were at loggerheads, the Chair (Volcker) felt compelled to resign. Most of the Governors and all the Presidents are not corrupt.
That's what I was thinking too Ziggy. There must be some semblance of a democratic process at the Fed. Who would sign on as a governor if there were no governance?
Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly. About everything ❤️🩹🤍💙
Use/share this spreadsheet as a resource to call/email/write members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Reach out to those in your own state, and those in a committee that fits your topic.
I can’t see how Fakenomics — cooking CPI numbers to encourage (if not demand) Fed rate cuts — can have much of a shelf life. First off, there’s how bond traders react. Then there’s how retail banks respond to an upsurge in demand for free money. And finally there’s kitchen table discussions about the lived experience of higher prices and higher borrowing costs. There’s a rough parallel here with climate change. Sure, politicians can pretend it’s not happening, but the insurance industry knows better: they’re the ones paying claims, rating risks and setting premiums. Let it not be forgotten that financial institutions can speak softly and carry a really big stick.
I read Krugman on economics and I read my wife's subustack on women's health. They both perpetually point to the lack of serious people making policy or about to make policy on important topics. I can't help but extrapolate from those two points and think about every other area of the U.S. Federal government and think, this country is truly fucked.
Paul: I completely agree we do not want a Trump sycophant for Fed Chair—or in any of the Fed board positions. So, educate me. What about the other members of the Fed Board? Their terms will expire, some during Trump’s presidency and some after it ends. Can’t they resist the Chairman’s policy whims? How many could Trump replace before he leaves office?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Board_of_Governors. Only one of the seven governors is term-expired during DonnyJon's term as President (even Powell remains a governor after his term as chair expires). Unfortunately, DonnyJon can remove any of the governors "for cause." The thing I find interesting here is that the chair is supposed to be appointed from the current governors. Neither Warsh nor Hassett are governors of the Fed.
And NPR reported this afternoon that two important things happened here. 1) DonnyJon caucused with several Republicrats who opined that he can't fire Powell, and 2) the market went down when he started talking about taking over the Fed.
There will be a point while Trump is still in office that it is all going to come to a head. He has opened the door to cyber crime, opened the door to massive gun sales, pardoned more criminals than any president and is working hard to collapse the economy all the while taken a huge share for himself and the GOP is happy to help him do it. Most Republicans I know have never liked our government and were all Reagan fans, something I never understood. Of course most of them also think tha tbeing a Republican gets you into Heaven, I guess they got that from Pat Robertson. But to understand that the wars we've been in during our life time has been caused by Republicans, the crashes in the economy again Republicans, pretty much every failure that has happened to us has been because Americans were stupid and fool enough to believe anything a Republican has told them. I can't explain this but History proves it true. Most of my family looks at me as if their problems are my fault because I'm not a Republican or a Trumputian. Somehow trying to help the poor get healthcare is sacralige. I really don't understand how people that are in Church every Sunday morning learning about Jesus can hate so much.
Lapdog? Warsh? I think the more accurate term would be "operative". The simplest explanation is that he actively seeks monetary policy that harms Democrat prospects at the ballot box and helps Republican prospects. And it isn't because he's an ambitious self seeking lapdog. It is because he is a true believer in Republicans holding power, for whatever reason that may be. The better word is operative.
Tariffs raise prices. So they're inflationary on that side of things. And they raise money, lowering the deficit. Of course, they're really a tax -- and a regressive one -- so they're fundamentally deflationary, and depressive of demand. So that evens out ... except that more of the burden is placed on the lower end of the income scale. (They like that.)
Of course, with demand depressed, it's an opportunity to lower interest rates. While that cushions things a little bit, the ones who really make out are the same folks who make out from a ZIR environment all the time. Hint: it ain't the folks whose consumer credit decreases from twenty-odd percent to twenty-odd percent minus one or two.
Illegitimi carborundum (yes, I know it's not legit Latin, but the times require it)
Perhaps Grucho Marx would be the perfect fit: "Those are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others."
I don't think there are any repugs not perfectly willing to trade ALL of their principlEs for even a little more principAl. (Presuming they had any "E" to begin with.)
But that's not so new...
Right. Their "E" is to acquire as much "A" as possible, by any and all means possible - and hope nobody notices.
No one has so far.
(Or at least no one with enough "A" to matter.)
Ah, but >we< have! And Bernie's been spreading the word. I'm not ready to give up all hope just yet.
Just now at the pharmacy I was accosted by some old racist who didn't care for my "Stop Killing Black People" t-shirt. (Or more likely, my right to wear it.)
And when I tried to explain that white people kill each other at higher rates, he started screaming for me to "STEP BACK!"
By this evening he almost certainly have defended himself from 20 armed trans Democrats. (But I didn't see anyone else even concerned enough about my actions to even take out their phones, and security was no more interested.)
That made me wonder how long I'll be legally allowed to even wear my own clothing.
Stories like this make me really grateful to be in NYC. Wow.
🤬🤬🤬Damned spam bot. Reported.🤬🤬🤬
"Out, Spam bot!"
Lady Macbeth - "Macbeth"
Clever!
Thank you, Diane.
The most applicable line of dialogue from Groucho is from his ditty in Duck Soup: If you think the country's bad off now,/Just wait till I get through with it."
Karl Marx is also be a good fit: revolution.
Karl the long lost Marx bro.
He wrote an analysis of capitalism. Nothing more, nothing less.
When did we start calling it "the capitalism". In my day it was just "capitalism".
Marx wrote that "the capitalism" would collapse into its own contradictions and spark "the revolution".
Nothing less.
Spam bot reported, again.
A cosplaying Fed Chair for a cosplaying Government seems quite fitting.
And I thought the 70s were grim (yep, I'm that old).
Unfortunately what we’re left with is a Malevolently Uninformed and incompetent president who operates always on the assumptions that he is smarter than everyone else and knows more than everyone else
The '70's were kind of a mixed bag, but we took a really wrong turn in 1980. That was really the beginning of this long dark tunnel we find ourselves in now.
Reagan had not been a good governor. He was not any better as president.
That's putting it charitably.
James Garner said he was incompetent as pres. of the screen actors guild. He did nothing, and took all the credit for everyone else's work. And that Reagan was very stupid.
👏🏽💯
No no. He is acting on advices from his billionaires and corrupt foreign supporters. Putin and MBS. They will profit a lot from von trump decisions. And this imbecile will still believe he is a universal genius, because… all his corrupt surrounding close supporters never stop repeating that he is the greatest of all. How sad. Lock him up! Cut his mike and dick if you can find it. Lol
Wird is his main advisor is melania.
Dunning Kruger effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV!
Thank you. Spot on.
In Trump's primitive, "dotardic" mentally irregular mind, it's his world and we're all just living in it.
Maybe P2025 are setting him up to go, be 'abdicated', and the Crown Prince to move in via Epstein?
The big question regarding Warsh--or whatever tool Trump appoints as Fed Chair next year--is what exactly happens when the Prime is slashed, and how the markets will respond.
Presumably, with borrowing costs reduced, economic activity will tick upwards. But so will inflation. But how much of either might we get? And if the current incoming wave of Trump tariff inflation is high, how much higher will a Trumpy Fed drive it? Economists of America, place your bets!
A lot of this presumes that the current level of spending will continue and people will be willing to purchase stuff for 30 - 50% more tomorrow than yesterday. It also presumes that all the people being fired from the Federal Government find new jobs that allow them to continue to spend. And then, there are all the people in the Healthcare System who could find themselves on the streets. And what of all the working poor (brown people) if many of them 'self-deport' the economy is in for some big hits. God forfend that Social Security explodes.
I wish you were not right, but I have a sinking feeling that you are. "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." -Herbert Stein
The MAGA crowd has been told that the government workers being canned are useless. The administration is putting pressure on every entity (like New York and Maryland governments) that is trying to hire them to keep these people unemployed. Maryland is trying to reeducate them as teachers. My crystal ball is in the shop, but I think the former government workers will not be spending as they did before.
Bingo!
Willing and >able< to purchase stuff for 30 - 50% more. With a Trumpkopf economy, methinks it's a safe bet that there will be an explosion of poverty.
That’s Argentina’s experience with Milei. It’s very unfortunate US voters don’t pay more attention to the results of experimentation in other countries.
A big question indeed. Incoherent economic policies rarely translate to coherence in the marketplace. It seems to me that bold macroeconomic experiments with tariffs, interest rates and global liquidity (bond markets) with the largest economy on the planet, which anchors global wealth may expose heretofore unknown economic principles... or simply chaos and massive wealth restructuring.
Been reading that Trump got fixated on tariffs decades ago, although apparently without any clear understanding of how they work and who pays them.
I don't care to play Russian Roulette.
At least disco hasn’t made a comeback
I'm not religious, but I'll thank God for that.
Yeah, but they're bringing big hair, which Donny doesn't have, so disco could be next.
God help us!
Do the Village People count as disco? MAGA sure seems receptive to rehashing the ‘70s in its entirety.
I’ll never understand why young males swung to a party that is an annoying time capsule of the worst Boomer cultural fads. It’s surprising Project 2025 didn’t include reviving mining agates so Gen Alpha can enjoy Pet Rocks. Considering younger generations chronic complaints about Boomers, manosphere algorithms should not have overridden their antipathy to “the olds”.
Simple, misogyny.
We absolutely have a Jennifer Aniston cosplayer in charge of Hair & Makeup.
Notice the "Friends" likness in the three AI "paintings" offered to her stans for selection as children drowned?
I remember them too.
TRUMP’S TARIFF ‘FUN’ WILL CONTINUE INDEFINITELY
I agree with Krugman that Trump is not a TACO (Trump always chickens out) guy.
Instead, Trump is having a wonderful time with his cockamamie tariffs. Arbitrarily they are launched with no clear rhyme or reason. Blackmail, humiliation, sky high figures, pauses, then such total irrelevance as 50% tariffs for Brazil (where we have a trade surplus) because Trump is pissed over treatment of an ex-president.
Trump loves the power and the headlines. I predict that this will continue indefinitely, as Trump revels in various countries ‘groveling’ over his back-of-the-envelope demands.
I haven’t a clue whether Trump really believes that his tariff blitzkrieg will spark a massive surge of manufacturing in the United States. This, of course, is sheer nonsense, but this has never restrained Trump.
BUCKLE YOUR SEAT BELT FOR TRUMP’S SUSTAINED TARIFF ROLLER COASTER.
And don't forget insider trading. Trumpkopf and friends have made out like bandits buying and selling with suspiciously perfect timing. Just look at how much Marjorie Taylor Greenbacks raked in.
I liked when he tariffed an island with nothing but penguins on it.
I think it was Greenspan who claimed that he never discussed economy even at private parties because he realized that anything he said could influence the U.S. economy. Whoever Trump appoints is likely to tweet on a daily basis...
Arthur,
Perhaps we need a new acronym...
"FNB" for "feature, not bug". (Or am I already a generation behind...again?)
I think that was trademarked by IBM in the '70s.
LOL!
Just what hedge funds love ... market volatility. Bring on the VIX!
Ah yes, the index of doom.
And what Greenspan did was criminal.
Volker, too. The architect of the Nixon Shock in the early 1970s, which contributed mightily to the stagflation that afflicted the country until he became Fed chair. At which point he choked the economy unconscious in the early 1980s to fix the problem he helped create.
He admitted mistakes after he retired.
He also admitted much of it was intentional.
One more day of insanity with a dash of cruelty.
One wonders when the firehose of change will slow. It is mentally exhausting to deal with day in and day out.
My solution: recognize what you can and can not do.
1. July 17 GOOD TROUBLE ,out in the streets.
2. Relenlessly call your reps in congress and give them hell if they are part of the problem
3. Financially support organizations who are fighting for democracy and the rule of law.
I am tired like all of you, I did this in the '70's and later. Still got to do it again.
I’m making a new sign for tomorrow’s protest next!
More than a dash.
The high cost of healthcare is due to being run as a for profit enterprise. Use the Sherlock Holmes method - look for motivation first. Optimizing profit is the primary motivation - not quality of care. That's just a desirable side effect of all the profiteering.
a side effect which may or may not happen and which the HC "Industry" does not care about above a certain baseline.
trump is selling the country for parts. You'd think private equity had taken over.
Yeah, kinda.
Almost like it was a feature, and not a plug...BUG! (Sorry, but I get stuck thinking about that nasty mess on Trump's headbone.)
orange ferret
Roadkill.
It did that back in 1980.
It is my feeling that if/when Donald gets a compliant FED, it will be bad for Donald in the long run. Donald thinks (or claims to think) that he is smarter than anyone else, but he only feels comfortable with incompetents and sycophants in the jobs around him.
A sycophantic yes man at the FED could do a lot of damage to the economy. That would be bad for Donald, but unfortunately, bad also for the rest of the country. Donald's salvation will probably be right wing media such as FOX, Sinclair, and so forth who basically do PR for Donald.
Regardless of how bad the economy might become, the media will trumpet how wonderful it is and what a genius Donald is. About 40 % of the population will believe it.
I think that countries sometimes become overwhelmed by a desire to commit suicide, and they go into terminal decline. That is the situation in which America is now. No matter how bad things get with Donald, America is going to stick with him.
The future (for the foreseeable future) is in Europe, China, and other countries outside of the United States.
The recent flood in Texas demonstrates something which I think is bizarre about some parts of America. It appeared to me that the floods and the after affects showed wall to wall incompetence and mismanagement from government entities -- from local government levels on up through the federal government. Many volunteers and individuals did and are doing tremendous work. But I venture to think that not one thing will change. Texas will continue with "business as usual" as will the feds.
What Texas gets excited about is the culture war issues.
I read today that the Governor of Texas is calling a special session of the legislature. Not to deal with anything relating to public safety or the recent flood. No, the special session will deal with harsher penalties for abortion and tougher laws against transgender people.
Yes the fundies pay him well for performative nonsense. He's a cruel, incompetent man.
I don’t see Texans protesting.
"long run" are two words that don't exist together in Trumps vocabulary. He is reacting to some perceived sleight in the past or some recent market reaction but never something that might happen a year, a month or even a week from now. Anything past the current news cycle is uninteresting for him.
He’s like a toddler that way.
Let's see if this Epstein business has any lasting effect on Trump's ability to tread water with bone spurs.
No, the effects will take several years to spool up. The next President will have to deal with the fallout (just like Carter had to deal with the fallout from Nixon's manipulations).
The Fed is a collegial body: not a dictatorship. The last time the Chair and the FOMC were at loggerheads, the Chair (Volcker) felt compelled to resign. Most of the Governors and all the Presidents are not corrupt.
That's what I was thinking too Ziggy. There must be some semblance of a democratic process at the Fed. Who would sign on as a governor if there were no governance?
Until - unfortunately - our current president.
We hope.
Unfortunately, it appears unlikely to stay that way.
Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly. About everything ❤️🩹🤍💙
Use/share this spreadsheet as a resource to call/email/write members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Reach out to those in your own state, and those in a committee that fits your topic.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13lYafj0P-6owAJcH-5_xcpcRvMUZI7rkBPW-Ma9e7hw/edit?usp=drivesdk
Thank you for the spreadsheet for congress. You inspire me!
You’re welcome! Thanks for speaking up right now!
I can’t see how Fakenomics — cooking CPI numbers to encourage (if not demand) Fed rate cuts — can have much of a shelf life. First off, there’s how bond traders react. Then there’s how retail banks respond to an upsurge in demand for free money. And finally there’s kitchen table discussions about the lived experience of higher prices and higher borrowing costs. There’s a rough parallel here with climate change. Sure, politicians can pretend it’s not happening, but the insurance industry knows better: they’re the ones paying claims, rating risks and setting premiums. Let it not be forgotten that financial institutions can speak softly and carry a really big stick.
I read Krugman on economics and I read my wife's subustack on women's health. They both perpetually point to the lack of serious people making policy or about to make policy on important topics. I can't help but extrapolate from those two points and think about every other area of the U.S. Federal government and think, this country is truly fucked.
Paul: I completely agree we do not want a Trump sycophant for Fed Chair—or in any of the Fed board positions. So, educate me. What about the other members of the Fed Board? Their terms will expire, some during Trump’s presidency and some after it ends. Can’t they resist the Chairman’s policy whims? How many could Trump replace before he leaves office?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Board_of_Governors. Only one of the seven governors is term-expired during DonnyJon's term as President (even Powell remains a governor after his term as chair expires). Unfortunately, DonnyJon can remove any of the governors "for cause." The thing I find interesting here is that the chair is supposed to be appointed from the current governors. Neither Warsh nor Hassett are governors of the Fed.
And NPR reported this afternoon that two important things happened here. 1) DonnyJon caucused with several Republicrats who opined that he can't fire Powell, and 2) the market went down when he started talking about taking over the Fed.
So far, this is off the table.
There will be a point while Trump is still in office that it is all going to come to a head. He has opened the door to cyber crime, opened the door to massive gun sales, pardoned more criminals than any president and is working hard to collapse the economy all the while taken a huge share for himself and the GOP is happy to help him do it. Most Republicans I know have never liked our government and were all Reagan fans, something I never understood. Of course most of them also think tha tbeing a Republican gets you into Heaven, I guess they got that from Pat Robertson. But to understand that the wars we've been in during our life time has been caused by Republicans, the crashes in the economy again Republicans, pretty much every failure that has happened to us has been because Americans were stupid and fool enough to believe anything a Republican has told them. I can't explain this but History proves it true. Most of my family looks at me as if their problems are my fault because I'm not a Republican or a Trumputian. Somehow trying to help the poor get healthcare is sacralige. I really don't understand how people that are in Church every Sunday morning learning about Jesus can hate so much.
Lapdog? Warsh? I think the more accurate term would be "operative". The simplest explanation is that he actively seeks monetary policy that harms Democrat prospects at the ballot box and helps Republican prospects. And it isn't because he's an ambitious self seeking lapdog. It is because he is a true believer in Republicans holding power, for whatever reason that may be. The better word is operative.
Tariffs raise prices. So they're inflationary on that side of things. And they raise money, lowering the deficit. Of course, they're really a tax -- and a regressive one -- so they're fundamentally deflationary, and depressive of demand. So that evens out ... except that more of the burden is placed on the lower end of the income scale. (They like that.)
Of course, with demand depressed, it's an opportunity to lower interest rates. While that cushions things a little bit, the ones who really make out are the same folks who make out from a ZIR environment all the time. Hint: it ain't the folks whose consumer credit decreases from twenty-odd percent to twenty-odd percent minus one or two.
Illegitimi carborundum (yes, I know it's not legit Latin, but the times require it)