James

Roonil Wazlib is my nickname. My friends call me that.

[James @jamesss226]

First night in Atlanta and I was just mistaken for Elijah Wood

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

Today's newsletter: AMERICA'S HEALTH CRAZE ISN'T ENTIRELY HEALTHY

Diet, exercise, and discipline are virtues. Longer lives are good. But today's craze of health-maximization has an antisocial streak. At its extremes, it verges on a cult of self enhancement, which pulls us into ourselves and away from other people.

[Greg Ip @greg_ip]

One reason oil futures aren't higher: speculators are wary of building long positions that get blown out by a Trump tweet. An example of how Trump has successfully bent markets, including rates, FX, in his direction, tho without clear economic benefit. https://t.co/lDbYsssVW6

[The Wall Street Journal @WSJ]

AI can sometimes talk people out of conspiracy theories. Humans can learn something from how that works. https://t.co/aNMaH1wZl7

[High Yield Harry @HighyieldHarry]

I actually think we should tax old people and do more to encourage household formation among 22-35 year olds instead.

[Conor Sen @conorsen]

@sidprabhu Inflation and interest rates are higher, consumer confidence is lower, wealth seems more concentrated at the top, we didn’t avoid wars of choice, corruption is worse than ever, manufacturing is being hollowed out again. Where did it deliver?

[Greg Ip @greg_ip]

But look where our public resources are going. This chart from Melissa Kearney and Luke Pardue of @AspenEcon says it all: the feds spend 5X as much on a 65+ than an 18 & under: https://t.co/Vwvza5DEaP

[Rory McCarthy @roryisconfused]

No one ever does “Iris” by Goo Goo Dolls at Karaoke. You can’t be ironic about it, and the level of emotional intensity it would bring is simply too much to be contained within the social remit of Karaoke. It has a sort of holiness about it which people know not to transgress

[Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart]

I’d say my trajectory has been the exact opposite. I used to not grasp why economists tended to be sanguine about trade deficits. To me what was helpful is understanding that the surplus country is burdened with the real cost of time and resources.

[Joey Politano 🏳️‍🌈 @JosephPolitano]

this $8 Trillion in investments secured number is really funny for how ridiculous it is. Total annual investment in the US—every house built, every road paved, every bit of research and development—is like ~$5T total. $8T is just obviously made up.

[John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch]

Striking stat from @KellyCNBC on this:

The rise in treasury yields since Trump’s tariffs were announced leads to an increase in US debt interest payments that is larger than all the DOGE savings.

[Cullen Roche @cullenroche]

Crazy thing about waiting on unemployment is that it won't show up meaningfully in the data for months, maybe quarters. But there's a hugely destructive multiplier effect every day they remain in place until the lagging data becomes obvious.

[Conor Sen @conorsen]

Seems like they want markets to maintain optimism that there will be deals while deep down hoping they don't have to do deals, and they're just trying to buy time.

[James @jamesss226]

@belsasser84 @stevemagness Because the gains are used to fund not-for-profit activities like education and research

[Adam Butler @GestaltU]

An interesting complication in the current environment is that many companies have pulled demand forward to front run tariffs, so real-time and lagging hard data (not surveys) will look very strong, and then fall off a cliff. Huge data headfake.

[Adam Butler @GestaltU]

This is the true threat to global economic growth in the intermediate term. How can capital and resource allocators make decisions in the current environment? They won’t. That means frozen hiring, investment, spending, etc.

[Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart]

The pullback from the brink may stem the market tailspin.

But still the big question to me is what did the last several weeks do to business investment, hiring etc.

+ We now have tariffs on everyone. Gigantic tariffs on China. And another ~90 days of other uncertainty.

[Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart]

Just a major blow to the housing market. Not only are yields rising across the board on government bonds, but the extra spread on mortgage backed securities is surging.

[Conor Sen @conorsen]

I’m not sure who the person to do it would be, but it’d be useful if a pro-Trump voice would explain why they believe the Biden manufacturing efforts didn’t work rather than just pretending we’re doing the 2017 manufacturing debates again. Stuff happened! Was it good/bad/why?

[Conor Sen @conorsen]

The bottom is when GOP primary voters are more worried about recession than they are loyal to Trump. Nobody knows what level/time/moment that will be but that’s what we’re waiting for.

[Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart]

I’ve seen some people say that it’s fine if markets crash, so long as it means that manufacturing jobs come back.

What’s the theory for why there will be a manufacturing expansion in these conditions?