What is this insanity? From CNBC early this morning:
That’s a real quote from a real article. For proof, click here.
The more dumb decisions I hear out of the administration, the more I am convinced I should be 100% in cash, instead of 28% at present.
Here’s my latest favorite Dumb Decision, as reported by NBC News:
Among the major issues, especially as the Trump administration works to slash spending throughout the government, is the cost. Taking detained immigrants to Guantánamo means flying them there, and the administration has sometimes chosen to use military planes that are expensive to operate. On Tuesday of last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was on hand at Guantánamo when a military C-130 carrying nine immigrants landed at the base. The Defense Department calculates the cost per flight hour to operate a C-130 at $20,756, so for a trip of five to six hours, it cost the Pentagon $207,000 to $249,000 round trip, or $23,000 to $27,000 per detainee.
The Trump administration has now removed all the migrants who were being held at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba and flown them back to the United States, a Defense Department official said Wednesday. The 40 men have been transported to Louisiana, where there is a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Alexandria. It comes two weeks after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent another group of 48 migrants back to the same city from Guantánamo.
The article dovetailed with a related report from The Wall Street Journal that noted there are still hundreds of U.S. troops guarding an empty and unused tent city, although they’ll soon be redeployed. The Journal added, “The operation has so far cost at least $16 million, according to lawmakers who recently toured the naval base.”
An open-air tent facility was rising on a field near the base’s Marine barracks, housing for foreign laborers and crude sanitary stations. The edge of the base’s airfield can be seen in the distance.
You can read more about this administration fiasco in a New York Times piece called “A Tent City Is Rising at Guantánamo Bay“– click here.
Wait, there’s more
From last Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal:
The U.S. might have put itself in a better position in this week’s Ukraine negotiations. It might have taken advantage of Vladimir Putin’s early confusion to bigfoot his failed war—by imposing a no-fly zone or by escrowing Russia’s energy revenues until Moscow agreed to a cease-fire.
The U.S. might long ago have announced funding for a multiyear buildup of Ukraine’s military to NATO standards rather than doling out one-off, piecemeal aid packages. Washington might have strongly supported Kyiv’s efforts to bring the war to Russian soil with long-range strikes.
As Donald Trump might put it, we don’t have these cards now in the talks that will begin with Ukraine’s provisional acceptance on Tuesday of a U.S. cease-fire proposal.
An ugly deal was always coming, short of Russian forces turning 180 degrees and marching on Moscow to remove the Putin regime (as the Prigozhin mutineers for a time threatened). If Mr. Trump weren’t president, somebody else would still have to solve two puzzles. Make sure Ukraine isn’t dictating the terms of our participation given its domestic politics, which naturally find a deal with Russia hard to swallow.
And make sure, at the same time, Mr. Putin knows the war would continue and not in the direction of his ultimate victory.
All this was in the cards whoever was elected on Nov. 5, as Mr. Trump might say.
To resolve one debating point, Mr. Trump isn’t playing three-dimensional chess. Like any president, he’s ad-hocking his way through complex circumstances not of his creation. These include a war in Ukraine, a threatening China, a domestic electorate divided by woke ideology, and a new forcing function: the rapidly rising interest burden on the federal debt.
A few short weeks have seen Mr. Trump, to continue his favorite metaphor, scattering his best card to the winds. The U.S. has been the best-functioning, most innovative economy in the world at a time when its rivals and partners are all struggling for different reasons.
He’s throwing it away with his tariff policy.
Canada was about to elect a more Trump-minded government until Mr. Trump revived its Liberals with his trade warfare. Germany just elected its most promising government in a generation, yet Mr. Trump is attacking Europe and NATO’s joint prosperity at the very moment Europe is becoming a partner worth having again.
Mr. Trump’s program of noisy, chaotic gestures has always raised the question: Is there anything coherent behind it?
You can read the full Wall Street Journal article. Click here.
Here’s a little history on Russia
My biggest fears
A friend wrote me:
It’s amazing that so many business people believed that the U.S. economy and stock market would flourish under a serial bankruptee and felon convicted of 34 financial crimes.
My big fears stem from Trump’s unwillingness to study the issues — he famously doesn’t read Briefing Papers (if he even gets them any longer). He shoots from the hip without preparation — tariffs, immigration, abandoning our long-time allies (including Australia, where I was born), love for Russia..and on and on the insanity goes. Forget the constant lies — e.g. how much aid he claims we gave Ukraine.
Consumer sentiment is plummeting….viz less travel, less spending….
And now…Brown University’s administration has advised foreign students, ahead of spring break, to “consider postponing or delaying personal travel outside the United States until more information is available from the U.S. Department of State.”
Meantime, the Trump Administration has deported an eminent kidney doctor
Read the entire gruesome story here.
Our Constitutional Crisis
The Executive branch of our government is meant to be bound by our courts. That’s called checks and balances.
No more. The Trump Administration is increasingly doing what it wants in complete defiance of what the courts order.
This is called a constitutional crisis. And this is what we now have.
Trump and Administration can basically do whatever they want, with no oversight from anybody or anything.
This is not going to end well.
So where now?
CNBC writes this morning:
Slowdown or recession? It’s still not clear. And that’s what’s got the market on edge.
For you and me? Cash? Treasuries? Overseas equities? This chart does not show the full extent of the recent damage to U.S. — especially popular ones which you and I hold, e.g. the Mag Seven.
Or go short?
Personally, I’ll be loosening up more cash and looking at a little shorting.
A final thought
This is not how I wanted to live my old age.
Tennis is more fun.
See you very shortly. — Harry Newton
