Williams ups his inflation and unemployment forecasts.
Uncertain Over Uncertainty
John Williams gave a good speech today on Uncertain Times
To start, I’ll say that the economy entered the year on firm footing. This was a result of strong growth fueled by robust gains in the labor force and productivity. After a period of cooling, a wide range of labor market indicators, including the unemployment rate, have stabilized at levels consistent with a solid labor market.
On the inflation front, the disinflationary process has been on a path toward the FOMC’s longer-run inflation goal of 2 percent. Based on the 12-month change in the personal consumption expenditures price index, inflation was 2-1/2 percent in February, reflecting a broad-based deceleration over the past few years. This is tremendous progress given that in mid-2022, inflation reached a 40-year high of over 7 percent. But we are still not at our 2 percent goal, and I remain committed to bringing inflation back to that goal on a sustained basis.
Understanding Uncertainty
Despite this strong start, the future is highly uncertain. I am not alone in saying this. In fact, “uncertainty” was the overwhelming theme in the latest Federal Reserve Beige Book, a report about economic conditions across the 12 Federal Reserve Districts. Measures of policy uncertainty have increased sharply in recent months. For example, between October of last year and this March, the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index has nearly tripled, reaching the highest level recorded over the past 40 years, outside of 2020. Unsurprisingly, the Trade Policy Uncertainty Index has skyrocketed to levels never before seen in data going back 65 years.
Shifts in sentiment can occur for a multitude of reasons, so understanding their source is key. While uncertainty about the economic outlook reflects many factors, the effects of tariffs and trade policy on the economy are certainly at the top of the list. For example, my business and financial market contacts highlighted that this has made it more difficult to plan for investments and hiring.
This gives us insight into the reality that businesses and consumers are faced with, many of whom speak of taking a wait-and-see approach. It’s a concept economists call the “option value of waiting.” At times of great uncertainty, consumers may put off making big decisions like buying a home or car, and businesses may delay investing until they have a better sense of what the future holds. And when households and businesses cut back on spending, economic growth slows.
Inflation Expectations
In addition to the effects of uncertainty and trade policy on sentiment, we are seeing increasing signs of effects on near-term expectations of inflation. For example, market-based measures of inflation expectations—which reflect what investors are willing to pay to be protected against inflation—have risen at shorter horizons but have remained stable at longer horizons. New York Fed surveys indicate that Second District businesses expect higher cost increases, particularly among manufacturing firms and businesses that rely heavily on imported goods and products. While year-ahead inflation expectations of firms also moved up, their longer-term expectations remained stable.
During times of turbulence and uncertainty such as these, well-anchored longer-run inflation expectations are critically important for ensuring sustained price stability.
Monetary Policy Amid High Uncertainty
Considering the high degree of uncertainty about what the future holds, another question often asked is what this means for monetary policy.
The answer is that the current modestly restrictive stance of monetary policy is entirely appropriate given the solid labor market and inflation still above our 2 percent goal. Importantly, it gives us the opportunity to assess incoming data and developments, and ultimately positions us well to adjust to changing circumstances that affect the achievement of our dual mandate goals.
The Economic Outlook
It’s hard to know with any precision how the economy will evolve. Given the uncertain effects of recently announced tariffs and other policy changes, there is an unusually wide range of outcomes that could transpire. That said, the broad contours of the outlook are becoming a bit clearer.
Given the combination of the slowdown in labor force growth due to reduced immigration and the combined effects of uncertainty and tariffs, I now expect real GDP growth will slow considerably from last year’s pace, likely to somewhat below 1 percent. With this downshift in the pace of growth, I expect the unemployment rate to rise from its current level of 4.2 percent to between 4-1/2 and 5 percent over the next year. I expect increased tariffs to boost inflation this year to somewhere between 3-1/2 and 4 percent.
Inflation Expectation Nonsense
The Fed’s own studies show Inflation expectations are proven nonsense, primarily because most purchases are inelastic.
We did see some tariff avoidance maneuvers, but that results in a self-correcting inventory build that can even backfire.
Williams Playing Politics?
What’s with “I’ll say that the economy entered the year on firm footing.”
One might construe that as accurate, a blast at Trump, or door number 3 which is “Don’t blame the Fed”.
The Case for Wait and See
No one can say with any degree of certainty what Trump will so. He could usher in a deflationary crash or a massive dose of stagflation.
Those are not equally likely, but it does mean there’s a good case for a policy of wait and see (presuming there is a Fed).
However, the Fed is a serial bubble blower and we should get rid of it in a responsible manner, not by letting Trump or any other politician set policy. The one thing worse than an independent Fed is a Fed controlled by politicians.
For now, we are stuck with a Fed. And the more uncertain one is, the more it makes sense to wait for what Trump does, then assess the damage.
Expect Higher Prices
On February 10, 2025 I commented Trump to Impose 25 Percent Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum, Expect Higher Prices
All US consumers of steel and aluminum will pay higher prices, especially the automakers.
The reinstitution of aluminum and steel tariffs across the board is in direct violation of Trump’s loudly bragged USMCA “Best Trade Deal in History”.
Michigan’s Economy Will Be the First Big Loser of Tariff Madness
On April 6, I noted Michigan’s Economy Will Be the First Big Loser of Tariff Madness
Nearly 20 Percent of Michigan’s economy is directly or indirectly related to autos.
April 11, 2025: Tariff-Related Auto Price Increases Have Arrived, Will Get Much Worse
New Car Prices Are Ticking Up. Sales “Hangover” is Likely as Trade Wars Heat Up.
For more on inflation expectations, please see Consumer Sentiment Dives to Lowest Level Since 2022 as Inflation Expectations Jump
It’s a good thing inflation expectations don’t matter.
If someone wants to do a public service announcement, they could dust off Mish’s definition of inflation (it’s a good one) and post how tariffs, being a tax, are deflationary because the government is taking money out of the economic system. Yes, some prices will rise, but the overall effect is deflationary.
Seems that every media outlet and financial journalist is hyping that tariffs are inflationary. Looks like this repetition has entered Fed groupthink. If they are looking at something that is deflationary as inflation they are gonna make a policy error.
Agreed, there aren’t enough folks trying to understand the dynamic processes that are unfolding before our eyes. Americans…for that matter, everyone, everywhere, is used to things happening behind closed doors with no cameras or microphones so now that the Trump Administration is being transparent, the hobgoblin chasers are like a Roomba stuck between obstacles…bouncing all around but making no difference to any intended goal. Rather than paying attention to the real-world as it changes, they just bounce between their comfortable parameters of what would happen in a vacuum…as if every day was a brand new event with no connection to any past day’s events. It is a ridiculous state of the world…and I’m loving it. As an old guy this is one of the first interesting things that has happened in decades.
The TPU Index is calculated by counting the frequency of joint occurrences of trade policy and uncertainty terms across major newspapers. So these four guys are gleaning inflation uncertainty from newspapers, earnings conference calls & “aggregate tariff data”.
Boy howdy, if the TPU chart is anywhere near indicative of how bad inflation could get, we may be looking at 3X June 2022 or 27% inflation. I need to reach out to these guys directly to find out how bad things are going to get.
Oops! Then I woke up. Yikes!
This Williams guy, who stoked the mother of all inflation in property prices is talking about inflation caused by tariffs. Another big mouth, who doesn’t know the inflation if it hit him in the rear.
More make-up-as-you-go reversals: laptops, I-Phones and TV’s now excluded … Americans would go off the reservation with 145% import tariffs on their essentials not produced in America … Now let’s see if China comes up with a escalating 45% export tariff on these items … still 100% less than the proposed import tariff .. what a deal for the strapped American consumer…
Speaking of inflation…how about the comments section lately….en fuego papi
Where is Papa Dave? Counting his money from those can’t lose oil trades he was loading up on? Seems as though it does make a difference who is president..
What Williams is really saying is that he expects to pump a lot more inflation into the markets to keep up the cronies unearned ascendance.
Higher inflation is not the biggest problem resulting from Trump’s Great Tariff Stupidity (GTS). If anything, with US public debt out of control, a higher inflation tax will actually act as a stabilizer (until the 10-year yield term premium and mortgage rates increase). The problem is Trump’s GTS is destroying the trust in America’s financial system that was built over the last 80 years. We are on the way to become a typical Latin American economy like Argentina and Brazil.
What trust????
Please try to explain why foreigners own large chunks of the US equity and credit assets. Please try to explain why the US dollar is used from Argentina to Uzbekistan to keep savings safe.
Busy dumping my $ for £. Your currency is heading south as trust is eroded.
Because the US is still the world’s largest military power, because the USD has more dollars offshore than onshore, and its markets are relatively liquidm deep and transparent. Read a book. Or use the Google Machine. Its not based on an abstraction called “trust”.
“You f*^*ed up. You trusted us.”
I think you mean “trust that was destroyed over the past 80 years”
…final chapter unfolding before your eyes
You seem to live on a different planet.
Because it is not a planet found up his …
After failing to effect change in the conflict between Russia and the Ukraine and failing to subjugate trade partners through tariffs, there’s only one option left to distract the masses from such pathetic failures: war, the Usonian presidential way. Which country that cannot shoot back would it be this time?
First, there was RussiaGate. Ukraine followed, and an impeachment. Hunter’s laptop was fake…. It’s a long, long list, of which most are left-driven propaganda based on lies.
In fact, it got to be a joke. Whatever happened, it was always Trump’s doing. Remember the Afghanistan retreat? The ‘buck stops with Trump. EVERY GODDAMN TIME! Even when there’s a moron in the White House, the DOJ is corrupt, fraud and waste dominate government, doctors desex kids, education is corrupted crap, illegal immigrants swamp the border, inflation runs out of control, COVID kills millions, planes crash, trains crash, fires rage in LA, hurricanes…. it’s always Trump’s fault.
And still most people fall for the spin. You’d think we’d learn not to trust anyone from the US government, or Wall Street, or mass media…
So, my opinion. Trump is not Presidential. He’s a carnival barker for the conservative masses.
But the alternative was Kamala! My made-in-China salad spinner is smarter.
Yet, after the Donald and the Joe, Usonians tripled down on gerontocracy again.
It’s all good, he’s wimping out on China too. https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDHSCBP/bulletins/3db9e55
Gotta pander to the oligarchs pulling the strings!
and I expect inflation will boost tariffs.
Inflation will inflate away the federal debt, per the plan.
and the plan will inflate away the depression I think I saw this movie. Did it star Franklin Delano Roosevelt?
I mean the movie released in 1913.
Hot Wheels?
Breaking News (from FOX NEWS): Trump says illegals can stay on farms and hotels!
Just as I predicted, the summer travel and harvest seasons is coming upon us and now Trump says all the illegals can stay. Lol. What did I freaking tell you folks?
It was all a dog and pony show and when the rubber meets the road, it’s de ja vu all over again.
https://www.reddit.com/r/thescoop/comments/1jwwjjg/trump_now_says_illegal_immigrants_who_work_on/
ROFLMAO!!!!!
Um, another interpretation is commonsense rules. In a similar way, enacting fines on illegal immigrants to encourage self-deportation is commonsense.
Either way, the result so far is infinitely better than anything Biden did regarding illegal immigration. Kamala’s strategy, of course is mere conjecture.
Muh…someone needs to pick the strawberries and clean the toilets…Americans can’t do this type of work…too busy posting on internet forums
Donald Trump Is Raising Your Taxes, and Republicans Won’t Stop Him The President’s partial tariff retreat still leaves his biggest import taxes in place, and the Congressional Republican tax cut plans won’t offset them. https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/04/11/donald-trump-is-raising-your-taxes-and-republicans-wont-stop-him/
The system is destabilized. A tip into recession can be next, secondary to a buyer strike from all the uncertainty. How can all this cacophony create confidence?
Someone needs to ask the global south just how they are taking advantage of the US in the trade of agricultures.
Egg prices have dropped down to the normal range. Thank you President Trump!
https://eggprices.org/national-data
That site’s data doesn’t even agree with itself, it’s fake, as anyone who does the grocery shopping could tell you.
https://apnews.com/article/egg-prices-bird-flu-cpi-b0ded420e9f7c0a707277c9c63396a76
US egg prices increase to record high, dashing hopes of cheap eggs by Easter
The Easter Bunny will be traveling with 2 Brinks Security vans this year.
California has legalized recreational Easter Grass.. can Oregon be far behind?
What did Trump do to lower the price of eggs?
Don’t take his post at face value, the site he links to is bogus. Do you do the grocery shopping in your household? If so you should know it’s fake already.
He took a crack at it…
eggs. bwaaaahhhh. thanks for the chuckle. it’s a funny cult to watch.
How many eggs are these people eating? At a dozen a week, you’re looking at 200 bucks a year over the old price, and some serious sulphur butt.
Not a damn peep about the cost of housing, which is 2 orders of magnitude more significant.
Our nation is overrun by hysterical fools.
correct. the trade war and 2 trillion deficit on top of 37trillion debt plus idiot wars of bombing and trade are gonna be nasty. we are all gonna pay for that. no escaping no matter how cunning you might think you are
Janet Yellen, worst Fed Head and Treasury Sec w/ Anderson Cooper, gay Vanderbilt fortune trust fund deep state propagandist, both espousing religious zealotry of mammon, Wall Street’s god. We are over financialized, consume too much, produce too little and globalization was sounding the death knell of the United States. This is not rocket science.
The economy was on a strong footing as recently as February. I wonder what could have happened since then?
Something stupid this way came.
Mish has been looking at recessionary stats for over a year. Ah, but you must be a better statistician and economist with long years of practical experience than he, right?
I was working, drawing a steady wage, and my wealth increasing, as in previous decades. The system absolutely was working for me, unless I let some fantasist tell some wild mythical tale of doom. This proclamation of doom, like the unbelievably cynical and fake “emergency” tariff justification, are lots of baseless dramatizing. The system may be unsustainable, but hitting it like a pinata with a baseball bat would be far from a reasonable solution.
The message resonates with losers… it’s not for you, obviously.
They like hearing how much they are going to win, through no effort of their own.
Yeah, inflation over the last several years, driven by absurd fiscal deficit spending in the wake of globally fragile supply chains in the pandemic, says that your wealth was not increasing. Unless of course your wage was purely speculative based on asset inflation.
Again, the retail therapy session is over.
The bills have come due.
Trump sped up the inevitable outcome of
our debtor nation.
Now that our nakedness has been exposed, we Americans individually need to say NO to debt. It is our only hope.
Slowly then Suddenly.
Lol @ pivot from “tariffs are a good idea” to “this crash was always going to happen anyway”
Recalling a quote (allegedly) from a Vietnam soldier: “we had to destroy the village to save it.”
No, that was Hillary Clinton.
There are many other strategies possible for the issues we face. “Our only hope” — baloney.
Read the thread, more repetition of Orange Man Bad hysteria. The usual suspects. Two metaphors for the health of this economy. The first is Mr. Creosote from the Monty Python skit. A little less severe, Ozempic world. Both of course are deflationary. Now, come at me.
“It’s only wafer-thin”
Nonsense sir, we would never skimp on your portions, simply because you prefer it served eskimo style all combined in a single bucket.
You and Orange Man try to reduce the world to TV metaphors and lurid dramas. He is succeeding, unfortunately. You are not.
surely, yet more hysteria will help…
Be afraid! All the cool kids are doing it!
Mr. Williams is Wall Street’s little poodle and says what is scripted for him.
first principles. 1. the nyfed, is owned by the nyc banks. they don’t care about anything else, but keeping them solvent, at any cost. see countless examples of bailouts of aforementioned banks. 2. trump is a 200 proof nihist narcissist and cares about only one thing in life. being in the headlines. all other things are not of his concern. including wars and depressions……and of course people besides himself.
Inflation will be a problem, deflation will be a problem, tariffs are a problem but the biggest problem of them all dwarfs everything else and can be distilled down to one word: TRUST.
No government around the world, no business leader big or small, no individual can TRUST that Trump (and by proxy the US) will keep their word on anything. Trump has already reneged on his own greatetst deals and there will be absoutely nothing to stop him from reneging on any deal he makes, nothing.
Trump is a temper tantrum toddler and while the toddler can be calmed down with a colorful toy, it doesn’t guarantee the toddler won’t through another tantrum.
What mom and dad (Congress) needs to do with toddler is remove the tariff power from the child’s hands. The best way will be to give the toddler a shiny new toy to distract him from losing the tariff toy.
What the world needs to do is avoid the toddler, hang out with other adults until mom & dad can fix this or just wait till the toddler goes away in 2029, he won’t ever be coming back. That’s 1378 days for those counting them down.
The midterms could drastically change the situation much sooner than that.
if only dems weren’t such useless cowards maybe.
The dems are a cadre of codgers getting dunked on by AOC and Crockett. They are obsessed with ‘whose turn it is’. It’s absolutely pathetic.
and the Dodgers could really go all the way this year….
Absolutely correct! The ‘adults’ have done a wonderful job for the last four decades (supervising the decline of the US).
A reminder is in order: The alternate was Kamala.
aka Cankles jr. such a happy lady, always laughing insanely like a bad batman v joker movie….
Can’t be happy anymore… having lost to that.
Don’t tell her, she thinks she won…The nitrous tank is full and she’s happy..
Kamala would have seemed like Alexander the Great compared to this clown school. For starters her cabinet wouldn’t look like a bunch of randos pulled out of line at the Country Buffet.
Kamala would have seemed like Alexander the Great compared to this moron. For starters her cabinet wouldn’t look like a bunch of randos pulled out of line at the Country Buffet.
you can say that again. oh wait,, you already did. I prefer amateur politician to professional ones. They usually inflict less pain, and are more fun to watch. The democrats are a serious as a heart attack and about as much fun..
The rest of the world is not only cheesed off with the tariffs. It’s also the way the President has insulted and bullied his allies and enemies alike. The disrespect he shows those with opposing views. The attacks on freedom of speech, trying to silence critics by firing dissenters and those that disagree with him. He’s acting like a dictator with no controlling backstop.
Forgive me if you’ve already posted this theory, uh, no, this is an uneducated guess.. ..
I guess it’s just a guess.
Potus orange messiah looked at the covid bailout from the fed and figured he’d be a virus that would flood the oligarchs and the poor working class with printed money, inflation be damned…
Unlike the GFC which only printed money for too big to fail, the virus bailed out even you and me, regularly poor folk.
Teflon Don thinks he’d get a hockey stick type rebound and mid terms cement repugs rule.
I know, this is simpleton thinking but donny has BK’d more than once so he, she, they, them, Oops, wrong thought train, tranny, oops, only two and one half genders, no, wait, never mind.
Big bad donny be good forgot about the united states of America being the safest rock solid investment in the short history of mankind?!
That super cool super gay treasury secretary, what did I just type?
Secretary and GAY? I’m all in!!
Just to watch, first…
Calm down, I’ve got gay in my blood and in my heart, just not in my behind.
Casino BK Atlantic casino Don the greatest show man on earth is going to play the fed to print unlimited funds to bail out and bring back ZIRP!
OH, holy crap!
WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT NO BODY including the rest of the world
WANTS TO BUY OUR EYE OH YOU’S?!!!!
Doug sez INDIA!!! Buy INDIA!
I’m sitting on a ginormous pile of dry powder. To buy the bail out.
If it comes to needing a bunker with months/years of Meals ready to eat?
DEFINITELY NOT PREPARED!
DON’T LET ME DOWN ORANGE CLOWN!!!
love your hip/anti-hip mid vocabulary thats hides any attempt at reasoning or analysis, just pedal to the metal hysteria. all day/all night forever…
Unless Trump reverses the tariff idiocy, the effect will I think be very deflationary, because all large American retailers will go out of business, and the economy will crash, so consumers with no jobs won’t be buying much anyway except food, wihich will go up in price.
I have some connections with large retail, and they are telling me off the record they have about, in general, 2 months of stock on hand, after which the shelves will be empty, and the doors will be closing. Think Apple, Wal-Mart, Costco, Amazon, Home Depot, Lowes etc etc who get most everything but food from China.Shipping companies are looking at bankruptcy, ports and railroads, the same.
Those Dollar Stores, will be $10 Stores, or shut down.Importers are cancelling orders left and right, exporters in China are cancelling orders left and right, exporters from the USA (farmers, oil etc) are seeing orders drop off a cliff.
Trump is an economic genius, I tell you. That “big beautiful market” and “big beautiful economy” will be small and ugly, soon.
His only option now is to go to China and beg for mercy, which he probably wont do, so stock up now on anything from overseas, you won’t be seeing it anymore, or if it is available the price will be much much higher
word on the street is solid. those are some numbers. thanks for the insight
The problem could be eased, if Trump blinks, but his advisors are telling him “We got China on the ropes!”, which is, I’m afrad, the exact opposite of the real situation.
Go to a retailer, and count what is made in China (probably 80% of the stock), and imagine those shelves empty. Can they keep operating on the margins on the sales of the other 20%? Probably not.
I was just reading Townhall, a pro-Trump prpaganda organ (lol) where they are asserting China needs the USA so badly, because the vast majority of Chinese exports go the USA, that if they don’t agree to Trumps demands the Chinese economy will crash and the government fall. A completely delusional take, really.
When other countries are threatened by America, they rally together behind the government, they don’t overthrow it so as to be able to bow to America, this is just basic psychology.
In reality, from my readings today, China exports to the USA amount to 5% of GDP at best, if you include side exports through Vietnam and Mexico, some say it ls less than that. So 5% of GDP is a big hit, but they will take it and move on, its a matter of national prode now. And that 5% is not totally lost, those goods will be sold to someone, somehwere, eventually, or consumed in China by their own, it may take a while, but they won’t care. China has been there for 5,000 years, they take the long view.
And you can apply that logic to the rest of the world too, no one likes to be bullied, people will take a hit out of anger. Trump will find negotiating on his terms much harder than he thinks.
Yes and perhaps America will take a hit on services now as well. Plus the rest of the world would probably now prefer to buy Chinese goods than American. Can you imagine. What an utter mess.
Poor Donald, waiting by the phone for Xi to call….
I’ve lived more than half my life in a world without any of the store names you mentioned, but ah feel your pain.
apparently the world will end if the mall closes… most of these comments read like a very bad movie script written by a 7 year old who spends all day on the internet and thinks its reality.
Cheap Chinese crap from WalMart is what placates the moron masses. It’s damn important.
til it isn’t…
He’s already begging Xi to call him.
he could just write his phone number on a missile and launch it into the forbidden city..
Mike, Forget the tariffs for a moment, I’ve not heard you or anyone else comment of the effect of the collapsing dollar effect on all of this. With the dollar down approximately 10% against nearly all major currencies in the past 90 days, that alone has already put a 10% tariff on imported goods, but making our products 10% cheaper to foreign buyers. Would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.
Certainly a two-edged sword but also think inflation.
Tariff retaliations by other countries will minimize export advantage.
I have talked about this in posts about conflicting goals of Trump
Foreign buyers are pissed off, they will happpily pay a higher price to not buy from America. Anger is a very powerful emotion.
If I were a factory owner abroad, I’d make sure that none of my suppliers were or sourced from the US. I’d be willing to have a slightly higher cost in favor of reliable suppliers. Likewise, I’d make sure to be competitive in diversified markets to hedge US instability.
If I were a factory owner abroad, I’d buy one of those cool robots and dress it up in a fancy tuxedo and make it carry me around whenever I wanted to leave the house…
The Canadians aren’t at Costco and Trader Joes anymore, and frankly I don’t miss them. Nice folks… who drive 7 miles an hour everywhere.
Forex > bond market > stock market
US Customs Delays Tariff Collection Until ‘Glitch’ is Resolved I have wondered for sometime who is going to run this new behemoth of bureaucracy let me guess AI ? lmao https://www.pymnts.com/shipping/2025/us-customs-delays-tariff-collection-until-glitch-is-resolved/
Nah 125% tariffs will never raise inflation.
You might be onto something… at some point people just flat won’t pay it, and demand will collapse.
All this guy is saying is that Trump screwed up a perfectly balanced economy. With this admission, I wonder how long he will have a job. .
3 years and 8 months more or less…
Found this – https://x.com/tmtlongshort/status/1909491586641047713?s=61&t=pyhhtZKIGK8dEKvl3zs93A
This guy has no idea what Trump wants
Neither does Trump
Not to worry… there are plenty of people around him itching to tell him what he wants.
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. Tariffs – it seems to me – are a transitory factor. That’s not to say they’re benign, just that they’re dwarfed in importance by deficits and credit expansion.
Normally, I believe, that is true. But these are not normal times…Trump appears to want zero trade with China.
if we have zero trade with china, where are we gonna buy those “Made in USA” stickers from?
Household budgets won’t change. People will spend the same amount. When I look at what people buy I am amused because I live hermit style and am perfectly happy. Chances are people will decide they don’t “need” a lot of things that keep Chinese and European peasants fed.
People with no job and no income dont’t spend. The only thing they need is food, and they will be eateing Ramen, 3 meals a day.
per Mazlo’s Pyramid, they need X-Box, subscriptions,water, shoes,cellphone,Instragram,Telegram,cocaine gram, Reddit,seddit,fedit,bank of america,chewing gum,ADHD meds, rainbow hair dye, netflix and chil, face masks for democrat party demonstrations and voting, torches, gasoline,bricks for democrat party demonstrations and voting, (but no voter id), Easter bunnies, and Easter Grass, blunts, shunts and runts. also 17 roomates in an overpriced flat in Portland. A cardboard box under a freeway overpass (summer home) a prideful sense of indignation that the world is not the same as their parents world, and 27 self diagnosed mental illnesses preventing employment.
You had me at “New York Fed”
EVERYONE is getting their ‘wagons’ in a circle The wealthy are loading up on cash, gold and family trusts during market turmoilhttps://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/10/wealthy-load-up-on-cash-gold-family-trusts-during-market-turmoil-.html
I personally have a metric ton of fentanyl in a water proof container at the bottom of a lake, as I think it will be easier to barter,trade and access than either gold or dollars. Plus it was only 317$ on craigslist, not counting the waterproof container from Fentanyl-r-us.com
tariff anger will hit when the tariffs appear on the shelves–much of rural American relies on a web of 40,000 “dollar” stores where the great majority of products are made in China. A billion packages that are sent directly from China via Temu will result in a blizzard of post-it notes on doors, holding delivery for payment of tariffs. UPS. FedEx, USPS will be stacked to the roof with undelivered and undeliverable merchandise.
Pure genius!
Good enough for government work.
I do sense a smidgen of sarcasm there.
Now, he’s back to the print button.