Re: Trump wants Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal
Posted: Wed May 07, 2025 9:35 pm
Canadian Political Discussions
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Cifu had tweeted at the user about being a “51st state anti-semite loser” and saying “Israel now and forever” when prodded about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Cifu has been Panthers majority owner Vincent Viola’s right-hand man since buying the team in 2013. He also serves as CEO of Virtu Financial and is a business partner alongside Viola.
Add these together and if everything blows at the same time, then it’s 2008 all over again. Except in 2008 the Dollar was still the most stable, revered and valuable commodity on earth.
When the financial markets crashed and the dollar lost value, the yield on the ten year treasury went down. The lower the yield on the ten year treasury the greater the confidence in the U.S. economy. So even though it was our reckless behavior that nearly brought down the global economic system in ‘08 and ‘09, everyone believed that we would figure it out. In the short term people were banking on Fed intervention, something referred to as the “Fed put.” Basically, a bailout. In the long-term, the world bet that we would diagnose the problem, fix it and regulate it going forward.
So when the dollar fell and the ten year treasury yield went up last month it signaled both a weakening in our actual economy and everyone’s faith in it. That brings us to Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve and the tools at its disposal.
They can raise or lower interest rates. Trump would like them to lower them immediately, that’s why he was threatening to get rid of Powell, which caused another market meltdown. But the Fed typically uses interest rates to spur or slow the economy. Conventional wisdom holds that lower interest rates boost the economy through refinancing and new borrowing to spur investments. But this eventually contributes to inflation because it heats things up. Since Trump just guaranteed an increase to inflation through his tariffs, that’s kind of off the table as a useful tool. Not to mention, credit is going to be so tight it almost doesn’t matter how low rates go—banks aren’t about to loosen up their standards when everyone is predicting a tariff driven recession.