Two primary differences between Trump and Marie Antoinette:

1. Marie Antoinette had taste.
2. Marie Antoinette wore less makeup.

I would shorten this statement: “You have to wonder about traders."

Iran War Live Updates: Iran’s Military Says It Has Reimposed ‘Strict Control’ of Strait of Hormuz

We have achieved the triple-dog reverse blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04...

ICE Reports 15th Detained Death of 2026 at Miami Correctional Center in Indiana Tuan Van Bui, the son of a U.S. soldier in Vietnam, died in detention on April 1. He is the second person to die at Miami CC this year and continues the morbid pattern of one ICE death every 6.0 days.

Still on pace: one death roughly every six days in ICE custody.

Reminder: gov't thugs are plucking innocent migrants -- often legal ones! -- off the street, kidnapping them, putting them in concentration camps, & allowing many of them to die.

On our watch, in our names, with our money.

It's like a Doomsday machine, but for destroying hydrocarbon-man.

There is power in the union.

Failsons, as the kids say.

"It seems to be true that it is on the whole the more active, intelligent, and original men among the intellectuals who most frequently incline toward socialism, while its opponents are often of an inferior caliber."

- Friedrich Hayek, 1949

Ask not what your forest can do for you, ask what your forest can do for Trump and his cronies.

Hey Kevin, you can't cubic smooth the Strait of Hormuz.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Picked a heck of a week to stop sniffing glue.

www.bls.gov/news.release...

#Numbersday #econsky #inflation #CPI

More telling to look at production non-supervisory earnings than the average for all workers.

I guess god never got behind the Trump-Hegseth war crime after all. Who could have guessed? 🤷‍♂️

The single factoral terms of gasoline... #EconSky
econbrowser.com/archives/202...

White House Secures Foreign Steel for Ballroom Project

It was never about protecting American jobs or strengthening US industry. It was always about accruing all power unto Trump. Big slap in the face to US manufacturing workers: White House Secures Foreign Steel for Ballroom Project

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/u...

We're on strike! Don't visit propublica.org on April 8

We’re on strike today! Support our fight for a fair contract by NOT visiting the @propublica.org website or engaging with ProPublica stories today.

Tell ProPublica’s management you won’t cross the picket line: actionnetwork.org/petitions/te...

Who would Jesus bomb off the face of the Earth?

And Democrats are polling worse.

Remarkable indeed.

Low-wage workers faced worsening affordability in 2025 as wage growth stalled Low-wage workers saw their real (inflation-adjusted) wages decline in 2025, a sharp reversal from the historically fast real wage growth they had experienced over the previous five years. Middle- and ...

Slowing nominal wage growth for production and nonsupervisory workers is consistent with the outright real wage losses we've seen for lower-wage workers through 2025. www.epi.org/blog/low-wag...

Wage growth has been slowing for the last few months, particularly driven by slower growth for production and nonsupervisory workers, roughly the lower 82% of the workforce.
#NumbersDay #EconSky

As people fawn at today's announcement of 178k jobs added in March, keep in mind that monthly moves in this data are noisy. Over the first 3 months of 2026, job growth has average just 17k/month. Bad by any standard.

Today's jobs report came in stronger than expected with an increase of 178,000 to payroll employment. However, much of the gain was a bounce back to February declines (now a loss of 133,000 jobs). As a result, average monthly growth the last two months was only 22,500 jobs.

#NumbersDay #EconSky

A screenshot with a block of text: Minister: The US is now a revisionist power. For 80 years, the US was the underwriter for a system of globalisation based on UN Charter principles, multilateralism, territorial integrity, sovereign equality. It actually heralded an unprecedented and unique period of global prosperity and peace. Of course there were exceptions. And of course, the Cold War was still in effect for at least half of the last 80 years. But generally, for those of us who were non-communists, who ran open economies, who provided first world infrastructure, together with a hardworking disciplined people, we had unprecedented opportunities. The story of Singapore, with a per capita GDP of 500 US dollars in 1965. Now, lit is| somewhere between 80,000 to 90,000 US dollars. It would not have happened if it had not been for this unprecedented period, basically Pax Americana and then turbocharged by the reform and opening of China for decades. It has been unprecedented. It has been great for many of us. In fact, I will say, for all of us, if you look back 80 years. But now, whether you like it or not, objectively, this period has ended. There is no point trying to assign blame or pejorative adjectives. That is not helpful. Basically, the underwriter of this world order has now become a revisionist power, and some people would even say a disruptor. But the larger point is that the erosion of norms, processes, and institutions that underpinned a remarkable period of peace and prosperity; that foundation has gone. What you are seeing now, whether you watch the war in Ukraine, in the Middle East or elsewhere, including in Asia, to me these are symptoms of the underlying tectonic rupture. Big powers and even lesser powers have a more narrow definition of national interest.

This is quite something from Singapore's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vivian Balakrishnan, in an interview with Reuters. The end of the post-war order, diagnosed in technocratic language. www.mfa.gov.sg/newsroom/pre...

A chart showing that Trump’s economy has underperformed Biden across a range of employment categories. Total Employment Private Sector Construction Manufacturing Coal Mining Gas and Oil Extraction High School & <High School 1/25-2/26 0.1% 0.3% 0.5% -0.8% -3.2% -3.0% -3.1% 11/23-12/24 1.0% 0.8% 2.3% -1.3% -2.8% 0.2% -0.5%

As we await the March jobs report, worth remembering on this day-after-Liberation Day anniversary just how poorly the Trump jobs market is performing.

Most striking? The nearly 1.4 million fewer people with high school diplomas or less are employed today.

#econsky #jobsday #numbersday

Chinese EV giant BYD faces ‘forced labor’ investigation at Hungary factory - The World from PRX The Chinese car manufacturer BYD overtook Tesla as the world’s top EV seller this year. The company has rapidly expanded its operations across the globe, including in Europe. But one plant in Hungary ...

A US-based non-profit has uncovered brutal, coercive labor conditions at BYD’s new factory in Hungary. These mainly affect Chinese migrant laborers flown in from rural China on temporary visas to construct the plant at a fraction of the cost of Hungary’s minimum wage.

theworld.org/stories/2026...

New in the American Economic Review: migration doesn't hollow out the home economy — it builds it up.

More than 75% of the long-run income gains from migration are domestic. The home economy itself grows.

Here's what we found: 🧵

致富光荣