#US 10-year Treasury notes

[morninkim]

[ wip, workin on colors ehehe ]

timeskip zero gang!!

(check my "sv timeskip" tag for more info on them :3)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Nick Visser at HuffPost:

A top adviser to President-elect Donald Trump allegedly tried to profit from his relationship with the new administration, asking potential appointees for large retainer fees in exchange for promoting them to get plum jobs, according to multiple reports on Monday. An internal investigation by Trump’s own attorneys concluded Boris Epshteyn — a longtime aide who coordinated Trump’s criminal defenses in recent years — had asked at least two people for the monthly payments. One of those people was Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager who was recently tapped to be the next treasury secretary.

The Washington Post notes Epshteyn invited Bessent to lunch at a Palm Beach hotel in February, where he asked him to pay a monthly stipend of at least $30,000 to promote his reputation around Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Bessent, who was gunning for the Treasury Department job, declined, but Epshteyn later asked him to invest $10 million in a basketball league. Bessent also declined that overture.

Later, Bessent told Trump’s attorneys he believed he was being criticized to those in the president-elect’s orbit after the November election. Epshteyn, The New York Times reports, told the billionaire it was “too late” for him to be hired for a cabinet position while allegedly calling himself “Boris Fucking Epshteyn.” The pair also had a heated confrontation in the lobby at Mar-a-Lago last week, CNN added.

Epshteyn has denied the allegations. “I am honored to work for President Trump and with his team,” he said in a statement to media outlets. “These fake claims are false and defamatory and will not distract us from Making America Great Again.”

Corrupt sleaze Boris Epshteyn asked for payments from at least two people for large retainer fees in exchange for promoting them to get plum jobs, one of which is potential treasury secretary Scott Bessent.

[misfitwashere]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

FEB 10

On Friday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order “protecting Second Amendment rights.” The order calls for Attorney General Pam Bondi to examine all gun regulations in the U.S. to make sure they don’t infringe on any citizen’s right to bear arms. The executive order says that the Second Amendment “is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans.”

In fact, it is the right to vote for the lawmakers who make up our government that is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans.

The United States Constitution that establishes the framework for our democratic government sets out how the American people will write the laws that govern us. We elect members to a Congress, which consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate. That congress of our representatives holds “all legislative powers”; that is, Congress alone has the right to make laws. It alone has the power to levy taxes on the American people, borrow money, regulate commerce, coin money, declare war, “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper.”

After Congress writes, debates, and passes a measure, the Constitution establishes that it goes to the president, who is also elected, through “electors,” by the people. The president can either sign a measure into law or veto it, returning it to Congress where members can either repass it over his veto or rewrite it. But once a law is on the books, the president must enforce it. The men who framed the Constitution wrote that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” When President Richard Nixon tried to alter laws passed by Congress by withholding the funding Congress had appropriated to put them into effect, Congress shut that down quickly, passing a law explicitly making such “impoundment” illegal.

Since the Supreme Court’s 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision, the federal courts have taken on the duty of “judicial review,” the process of determining whether a law falls within the rules of the Constitution.

Right now, the Republicans hold control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court. They have the power to change any laws they want to change according to the formula Americans have used since 1789 when the Constitution went into effect.

But they are not doing that. Instead, officials in the Trump administration, as well as billionaire Elon Musk— who put $290 million into electing Trump and Republicans, and whose actual role in the government remains unclear— are making unilateral changes to programs established by Congress. Through executive orders and announcements from Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” they have sidelined Congress, and Republicans are largely mum about the seizure of their power.

Now MAGA Republicans are trying to neuter the judiciary.

After yet another federal judge stopped the Musk/Trump onslaught by temporarily blocking Musk and his team from accessing Americans’ records from Treasury Department computers, MAGA Republicans attacked judges. “Outrageous,” Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) posted, spreading the lie that the judge barred the Secretary of the Treasury from accessing the information, although in fact he temporarily barred Treasury Secretary Bessent from granting access to others. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) said the decision had “the feel of…a judicial” coup. Right-wing legal scholar Adrian Vermeule called it “[j]udicial interference with legitimate acts of state.”

Vice President J.D. Vance, who would take over the office of the presidency if the 78-year-old Trump can no longer perform the duties of the office, posted: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

As legal scholar Steve Vladeck noted: “Just to say the quiet part out loud, the point of having unelected judges in a democracy is so that *whether* acts of state are ‘legitimate’ can be decided by someone other than the people who are undertaking them. Vermeule knows this, of course. So does Vance.” Of Vance’s statement, Aaron Rupar of Public Notice added: “this is the sort of thing you post when you’re ramping up to defying lawful court orders.”

The Republicans have the power to make the changes they want through the exercise of their constitutional power, but they are not doing so. This seems in part because Trump and his MAGA supporters want to establish the idea that the president cannot be checked. And this dovetails with the fact they are fully aware that most Americans oppose their plans. Voters were so opposed to the plan outlined in Project 2025—the plan now in operation—that Trump ran from it during the campaign. Popular support for Musk’s participation in the government has plummeted as well. A poll from The Economist/YouGov released February 5 says that only 13% of adult Americans want him to have “a lot” of influence, while 96% of respondents said that jobs and the economy were important to them and 41% said they thought the economy was getting worse.

Trump’s MAGA Republicans know they cannot get the extreme changes they wanted through Congress, so they are, instead, dictating them. And Musk began his focus at the Treasury, establishing control over the payment system that manages the money American taxpayers pay to our government.

Musk and MAGA officials claim they are combating waste and fraud, but in fact, when Judge Carl Nichols stopped Trump from shutting down USAID, he specifically said that government lawyers had offered no support for that argument in court. Indeed, the U.S. government already has the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent, nonpartisan agency that audits, evaluates and investigates government programs for Congress. In 2023 the GAO returned about $84 for every $1 invested in it, in addition to suggesting improvements across the government.

Until Trump fired 18 of them when he took office, major departments also had their own independent inspectors general, charged with preventing and detecting fraud, waste, abuse, misconduct, and mismanagement in the government and promoting economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in government operations and programs.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation also investigates corruption, including that committed by healthcare providers.

According to Musk’s own Grok artificial intelligence tool on X, the investigative departments of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as well as USAID, have all launched investigations into the practices and violations of Elon Musk’s companies.

But Trump has been gutting congressional oversight, apparently wanting to make sure that no one can oversee the president. Rather than rooting out waste and corruption in the government, Musk and his ilk have launched a hostile takeover to turn the United States of America into a business that will return huge profits to those leaders who, in the process of moving fast and breaking things, are placing themselves at the center of the lives of 332 million people. Breaking into the U.S. Treasury payment system puts Musk and his DOGE team at the head of the country’s nerve center.

The vision they are enacting rips predictability, as well as economic security, away from farmers, who are already protesting the loss of their markets with the attempted destruction of USAID. It hurts the states—especially Republican-dominated states—that depend on funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Education. Their vision excludes consumers, who are set to lose the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as well as protections put in place by President Joe Biden. Their vision takes away protections for racial, ethnic, religious, and gender minorities, as well as from women, and kills funding for the programs that protect all of us, such as cancer research and hospitals.

Musk and Trump appear to be concentrating the extraordinary wealth of the American people, along with the power that wealth brings, into their own hands, for their own ends. Trump has championed further tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, while Musk seems to want to make sure his companies, especially SpaceX, win as many government contracts as possible to fund his plan to colonize Mars.

But the mission of the United States of America is not, and has never been, to return huge profits to a few leaders.

The mission of the United States of America is stated in the Constitution. It is a government designed by “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Far from being designed to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a single man, it was formed to do the opposite: spread wealth and power throughout the country’s citizenry and enable them to protect their rights by voting for those who would represent them in Congress and the presidency, then holding them accountable at the ballot box.

The people who think that bearing arms is central to maintaining American rights are the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election by storming the United States Capitol because they do not command the votes to put their policies in place through the exercise of law outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

—

[phoenixyfriend]

Ko-Fi prompt from Isabelo:

Hi! I'm new to the workforce and now that I have some money I'm worried it's losing its value to inflation just sitting in my bank. I wanted to ask if you have ideas on how to counteract inflation, maybe through investing?

I've been putting this off for a long time because...

I am not a finance person. I am not an investments person. I actually kinda turned and ran from that whole sector of the business world, at first because I didn't understand it, and then once I did understand it, because I disagreed with much of it on a fundamental level.

But... I can describe some factors and options, and hope to get you started.

I AM NOT LEGALLY QUALIFIED TO GIVE FINANCIAL ADVICE. THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE.

What is inflation, and what impacts it?

Inflation is the rate at which money loses value over time. It's the reason something that cost 50 cents in the 1840s costs $50 now.

A lot of things do impact inflation, like housing costs and wage increases and supply chains, but the big one that is relevant here is federal interest rates. The short version: if you borrow money from the government, you have to pay it back. The higher the interest rates on those loans, the lower inflation is. This is for... a lot of reasons that are complicated. The reason I bring it up is less so:

The government offers investments:

So yeah, the feds can impact inflation, but they also offer investment opportunities. There are three common types available to the average person: Bonds, Bills, and Notes. I'll link to an article on Investopedia again, but the summary is as follows: You buy a bill, bond, or note from the government. You have loaned them money, as if you are the bank. Then, they give it back, with interest.

Treasury Bills: shortest timeframe (four weeks to a year), and lowest return on investment. You buy it at a discount (let's say $475), and then the government returns the "full value" that the bond is, nominally (let's say $500). You don't earn twice-yearly interest, but you did earn $25 on the basis of Loaning The Government Some Cash.

Treasury Notes: 2-10 year timeframe. Very popular, very stable. Banks watch it to see how they should plan the interest rates for mortgages and other large loans. Also pretty high liquidity, which means you can sell it to someone else if you suddenly need the cash before your ten-year waiting period is up. You get interest payments twice a year.

Treasury Bonds: 20-30 years. This is like... the inverse of a house mortgage. It takes forever, but it does have the highest yield. You get interest payments twice a year.

Why invest money into the US Treasury department, whether through the above or a different government paper? (Savings bonds aren't on sold the set schedule that treasury bonds are, but they only come in 30-year terms.)

It is very, very low risk. It is pretty much the lowest risk investment a person can make, at least in the US. (I'm afraid I don't know if you're American, but if you're not, your country probably has something similar.)

Interest rates do change, often in reaction or in relation to inflation. If your primary concern is inflation, not getting a high return on investment, I would look into government papers as a way to ensure your money is not losing value on you.

This is the website that tells you the government's own data for current yield and sales, etc. You can find a schedule for upcoming auctions, as well.

High-yield bank accounts:

Savings accounts can come with a pretty unremarkable but steady return on investment; you just need to make sure you find one that suits you. Some of the higher-yield accounts require a minimum balance or a yearly fee... but if you've got a good enough chunk of cash to start with, that might be worth it for you.

They are almost as reliable as government bonds, and are insured by the government up to $250,000. Right now, they come with a lower ROI than most bonds/bills/notes (federal interest rates are pretty high at the moment, to combat inflation). Unlike government papers, though, you can deposit and withdraw money from a savings account pretty much any time.

Certificates of Deposit:

Okay, imagine you are loaning money to your bank, with the fixed term of "I will get this money back with interest, but only in ten years when the contract is up" like the Treasury Notes.

That's what this is.

Also, Investopedia updates near-daily with the highest rates of the moment, which is pretty cool.

Property:

Honestly, if you're coming to me for advice, you almost definitely cannot afford to treat real estate as an investment thing. You would be going to an actual financial professional. As such... IDK, people definitely do it, and it's a standby for a reason, but it's not... you don't want to be a victim of the housing bubble, you know? And me giving advice would probably make you one. So. Talk to a professional if this is the route you want to take.

Retirement accounts:

Pension accounts are a kind of savings account. You've heard of a 401(k)? It's that. Basically, you put your money in a savings account with a company that specializes in pensions, and they invest it in a variety of different fields and markets (you can generally choose some of this) in order to ensure that the money grows enough that you can hopefully retire on it in fifty years. The ROI is usually higher than inflation.

These kinds of accounts have a higher potential for returns than bonds or treasury notes, buuuuut they're less reliable and more sensitive to market fluctuations.

However, your employer may pay into it, matching your contribution. If they agree to match up to 4%, and you pay 4% of your paycheck into an pension fund, then they will pay that same amount and you are functionally getting 8% of your paycheck put into retirement while only paying for half of it yourself.

Mutual Funds:

I've definitely linked this article before, but the short version is:

An investment company buys 100 shares of stock: 10 shares each in 10 different "general" companies. You, who cannot afford a share of each of these companies, buy 1 singular share of that investment company. That share is then treated as one-tenth of a share of each of those 10 "general" companies. You are one of 100 people who has each bought "one stock" that is actually one tenth of ten different stocks.

Most retirement funds are actually a form of mutual fund that includes employer contributions.

Pros: It's more stable than investing directly in the stock market, because you can diversify without having to pay the full price of a share in each company you invest in.

Cons: The investment company does get a cut, and they are... often not great influences on the economy at large. Mutual funds are technically supposed to be more regulated than hedge funds (which are, you know, often venture capital/private equity), but a lot of mutual funds like insurance companies and pension funds will invest a portion of their own money into hedge funds, which is... technically their job. But, you know, capitalism.

Directly investing in the stock market:

Follow people who actually know what they're doing and are not Evil Finance Bros who only care about the bottom line. I haven't watched more than a few videos yet, but The Financial Diet has had good energy on this topic from what I've seen so far, and I enjoy the very general trends I hear about on Morning Brew.

That said, we are not talking about speculative capital gains. We are talking about making sure inflation doesn't screw with you.

DIVIDENDS are profit that the company shares to investors every quarter. Did the company make $2 billion after paying its mortgages, employees, energy bill, etc? Great, that $2 billion will be shared out among the hundreds of thousands of stocks. You'll probably only get a few cents back per stock (e.g. Walmart has been trading at $50-$60 for the past six months, and their dividends have been 57 cents and then 20.75 cents), but it adds up... sort of. The Walmart example is listed as having dividends that are lower than inflation, so you're actually losing money. It's part of why people rely on capital gains so much, rather than dividends, when it comes to building wealth.

Blue Chip Stocks: These are old, stable companies that you can expect to return on your investment at a steady rate. You probably aren't going to see your share jump from $5 to $50 in a year, but you also probably won't see it do the reverse. You will most likely get reliable, if not amazing, dividends.

Preferred Stocks: These are stock shares that have more reliable dividends, but no voting rights. Since you are, presumably, not a billionaire that can theoretically gain a controlling share, I can't imagine the voting rights in a given company are all that important anyway.

Anyway, hope this much-delayed Intro To Investing was, if not worth the wait, at least, a bit longer than you expected.

Hey! You got interest on the word count! It's topical! Ish.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich:: GOP strategy in its totality

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 18, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 19, 2024

Today, at a White House reception in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, President Joe Biden said: "We don't demonize immigrants. We don't single them out for attacks. We don't believe they're poisoning the blood of the country. We're a nation of immigrants, and that's why we're so damn strong."

Biden’s celebration of the country’s heritage might have doubled as a celebration of the success of his approach to piloting the economy out of the ravages of the pandemic. Today the Fed cut interest rates a half a point, a dramatic cut indicating that it considers inflation to be under control. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has maintained that it would be possible to slow inflation without causing a recession—a so-called soft landing—and she appears to have been vindicated.

Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell said: “The labor market is in solid condition, and our intention with our policy move today is to keep it there. You can say that about the whole economy: The US economy is in good shape. It’s growing at a solid pace, inflation is coming down. The labor market is at a strong pace. We want to keep it there. That’s what we’re doing.”

Powell, whom Trump first appointed to his position, said, “We do our work to serve all Americans. We’re not serving any politician, any political figure, any cause, any issue, nothing. It’s just maximum employment and price stability on behalf of all Americans.”

Powell was anticipating accusations from Trump that his cutting of rates was an attempt to benefit Harris before the election. Indeed, Jeff Stein of the Washington Post reported that Trump advisor Steven Moore called the move “jaw-dropping. There's no reason they couldn't do 25 now and 25 right after the election. Why not wait till then?” Moore added, "I'm not saying [the] reduction isn't justified—it may well be and they have more data than I do. But i just think, 'why now?’” Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville called the cut “shamelessly political.” 

The New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch noted that “Trump has been begging officials worldwide not to do the right thing for years to help rig the election for him—no deal in Gaza, no defense of Ukraine, no Kremlin hostages release, no border deal, no continuing resolution, no interest rate cuts etc—just sabotage & subterfuge.”

That impulse to focus on regaining power rather than serving the country was at least part of what was behind Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s lie about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. That story has gotten even darker as it turns out Vance and Trump received definitive assurances on September 9 that the rumor was false, but Trump ran with it in the presidential debate of September 10 anyway. Now, although it has been made very clear—including by Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine—that the Haitian immigrants in Springfield are there legally, Vance told a reporter today that he personally considers the programs under which they came illegal, so he is still “going to call [a Haitian migrant] an illegal alien.”

The lies about those immigrants have so derailed the Springfield community with bomb threats and public safety concerns that when the Trump campaign suggested Trump was planning a visit there, the city’s Republican mayor, Rob Rue, backed by DeWine, threw cold water on the idea. “It would be an extreme strain on our resources. So it’d be fine with me if they decided not to make that visit,” Rue said. Nonetheless, tonight, Trump told a crowd in Long Island, New York, that he will go to Springfield within the next two weeks. 

The false allegation against Haitian immigrants has sparked outrage, but it has accomplished one thing for the campaign, anyway: it has gotten Trump at least to speak about immigration—which was the issue they planned to campaign on—rather than Hannibal Lecter, electric boats, and sharks, although he continues to insist that “everyone is agreeing that I won the Debate with Kamala.” Trump, Vance, and Republican lawmakers are now talking more about policies.

In the presidential debate of September 10, Trump admitted that after nine years of promising he would release a new and better healthcare plan than the Affordable Care Act in just a few weeks, all he really had were “concepts of a plan.” Vance has begun to explain to audiences that he intends to separate people into different insurance pools according to their health conditions and risk levels. That business model meant that insurers could refuse to insure people with pre-existing conditions, and overturning it was a key driver of the ACA.

Senate and House Republicans told Peter Sullivan of Axios that if they regain control of the government, they will work to get rid of the provision in the Inflation Reduction Act that permits the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices. Negotiations on the first ten drugs, completed in August, will lower the cost of those drugs enough to save taxpayers $6 billion a year, while those enrolled in Medicare will save $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket expenses. 

Yesterday Trump promised New Yorkers that he would restore the state and local tax deduction (SALT) that he himself capped at $10,000 in his 2017 tax cuts. In part, the cap was designed to punish Democratic states that had high taxes and higher government services, but now he wants to appeal to voters in those same states. On CNBC, host Joe Kernan pointed out that this would blow up the deficit, but House speaker Mike Johnson said that the party would nonetheless consider such a measure because it would continue to stand behind less regulation and lower taxes.

In a conversation with Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former press secretary, Trump delivered another stream of consciousness commentary in which he appeared to suggest that he would lower food prices by cutting imports. Economics professor Justin Wolfers noted: “I'm exhausted even saying it, but blocking supply won't reduce prices, and it's not even close.” Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark added, “Tell me more about why you have to vote for Trump because of his ‘policies.’”

Trump has said he supports in vitro fertilization, or IVF, as have a number of Republican lawmakers, but today, 44 Republican senators once again blocked the Senate from passing a measure protecting it. The procedure is in danger from state laws establishing “fetal personhood,” which give a fertilized egg all the rights of a human being as established by the Fourteenth Amendment. That concept is in the 2024 Republican Party platform.

Trump has also demanded that Republicans in Congress shut down the government unless a continuing resolution to fund the government contains the so-called SAVE Act requiring people to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Speaker Johnson continues to suggest that undocumented immigrants vote in elections, but it is illegal for even documented noncitizens to do so, and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the nonprofit American Immigration Council notes that even the right-wing Heritage Foundation has found only 12 cases of such illegal voting in the past 40 years.

Johnson brought the continuing resolution bill with the SAVE Act up for a vote today. It failed by a vote of 202 to 220. If the House and then the Senate don’t pass a funding bill, the government will shut down on October 1.

Republican endorsements of the Harris-Walz ticket continue to pile up. On Monday, six-term representative Bob Inglis (R-SC) told the Charleston City Paper that “Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to the republic” and said he would vote for Harris. “If Donald Trump loses, that would be a good thing for the Republican Party,” Inglis said. “Because then we could have a Republican rethink and get a correction.” 

George W. Bush’s attorney general Alberto Gonzales, conservative columnist George Will, more than 230 former officials for presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and 17 former staff members for Ronald Reagan have all recently added their names to the list of those supporting Harris. Today more than 100 Republican former members of Congress and national security officials who served in Republican administrations endorsed Harris, saying they “firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump.” They cited his chaotic governance, his praising of enemies and undermining allies, his politicizing the military and disparaging veterans, his susceptibility to manipulation by Russian president Vladimir Putin, and his attempt to overthrow democracy. They praised Harris for her consistent championing of “the rule of law, democracy, and our constitutional principles.” 

Yesterday, singer-songwriters Billie Eilish, who has 119 million followers on Instagram, and Finneas, who has 4.2 million, asked people to register and to vote for Harris and Walz. “Vote like your life depends on it,” Eilish said, “because it does.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[follow-up-news]

Mortgage rates topped 7% this week, a key psychological threshold, in a sign of the US housing market’s unrelenting affordability challenges. The average rate on a standard, 30-year fixed mortgage was 7.04% in the week ending January 16, according to a survey of lenders released Thursday by Freddie Mac. It’s the fifth consecutive weekly increase and the highest level since May. Mortgage rates this week were nearly a full percentage point higher than in late September, when the Federal Reserve began to cut interest rates. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury note, which influences mortgage rates, ratcheted higher over the past several weeks on signs of stubborn inflation, but tumbled Wednesday after the latest Consumer Price Index showed progress is back on track. The Fed has signaled only two rate cuts this year, which may not come until later in the year, according to Wall Street’s expectations. In addition to elevated borrowing costs, homebuyers are also contending with home prices that are hovering around all-time highs; and in some regions, surging home insurance premiums. Buyers could be stuck waiting a while for any meaningful relief: Economists do not expect the housing market to improve much this year as mortgage rates will likely remain above 6% through 2026.

[techverse1]

Tech Stocks Plunge as DeepSeek Disrupts AI Landscape

Market Reaction: Nvidia, Broadcom, Microsoft, and Google Take a Hit On January 27, the Nasdaq Composite, heavily weighted with tech stocks, tumbled 3.1%, largely due to the steep decline of Nvidia, which plummeted 17%—its worst single-day drop on record. Broadcom followed suit, falling 17.4%, while ChatGPT backer Microsoft dipped 2.1%, and Google parent Alphabet lost 4.2%, according to Reuters.

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index suffered a significant blow, plunging 9.2%—its largest percentage decline since March 2020. Marvell Technology experienced the steepest drop on Nasdaq, sinking 19.1%.

The selloff extended beyond the US, rippling through Asian and European markets. Japan's SoftBank Group closed down 8.3%, while Europe’s largest semiconductor firm, ASML, fell 7%.

Among other stocks hit hard, data center infrastructure provider Vertiv Holdings plunged 29.9%, while energy companies Vistra, Constellation Energy, and NRG Energy saw losses of 28.3%, 20.8%, and 13.2%, respectively. These declines were driven by investor concerns that AI-driven power demand might not be as substantial as previously expected.

Does DeepSeek Challenge the 'Magnificent Seven' Dominance? DeepSeek’s disruptive entrance has sparked debate over the future of the AI industry, particularly regarding cost efficiency and computing power. Despite the dramatic market reaction, analysts believe the ‘Magnificent Seven’—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla—will maintain their dominant position.

Jefferies analysts noted that DeepSeek’s open-source language model (LLM) rivals GPT-4o’s performance while using significantly fewer resources. Their report, titled ‘The Fear Created by China's DeepSeek’, highlighted that the model was trained at a cost of just $5.6 million—10% less than Meta’s Llama. DeepSeek claims its V3 model surpasses Llama 3.1 and matches GPT-4o in capability.

“DeepSeek’s open-source model, available on Hugging Face, could enable other AI developers to create applications at a fraction of the cost,” the report stated. However, the company remains focused on research rather than commercialization.

Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management, told Reuters that if DeepSeek’s claims hold true, it could fundamentally alter the AI market. “This could mean lower demand for advanced chips, less need for extensive power infrastructure, and reduced large-scale data center investments,” he said.

Despite concerns, a Bloomberg Markets Live Pulse survey of 260 investors found that 88% believe DeepSeek’s emergence will have minimal impact on the Magnificent Seven’s stock performance in the coming weeks.

“Dethroning the Magnificent Seven won’t be easy,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers LLC. “These companies have built strong competitive advantages, though the selloff served as a reminder that even market leaders can be disrupted.”

Investor Shift: Flight to Safe-Haven Assets As tech stocks tumbled, investors moved funds into safer assets. US Treasury yields fell, with the benchmark 10-year yield declining to 4.53%. Meanwhile, safe-haven currencies like the Japanese Yen and Swiss Franc gained against the US dollar.

According to Bloomberg, investors rotated into value stocks, including financial, healthcare, and industrial sectors. The Vanguard S&P 500 Value Index Fund ETF—home to companies like Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, and Coca-Cola—saw a significant boost.

“The volatility in tech stocks will prompt banks to reevaluate their risk exposure, likely leading to more cautious positioning,” a trading executive told Reuters.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman Responds to DeepSeek’s Rise OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged DeepSeek’s rapid ascent, describing it as “invigorating” competition. In a post on X, he praised DeepSeek’s cost-effective AI model but reaffirmed OpenAI’s commitment to cutting-edge research.

“DeepSeek’s R1 is impressive, particularly given its cost-efficiency. We will obviously deliver much better models, and competition is exciting!” Altman wrote. He hinted at upcoming OpenAI releases, stating, “We are focused on our research roadmap and believe

[dwellordream]

“Southern women zealously supported the southern cause of independence. A Georgia woman wrote her local newspaper, ‘I feel a new life within me, and my ambition aims at nothing higher than to become an ingenious, economical, industrious housekeeper, and an independent Southern woman.’ Throughout the South, women urged their menfolk to enlist in the Confederate military. A Selma, Alabama, woman even broke off her engagement when her fiance failed to enlist. She sent him a skirt and pantaloons with a note attached: ‘Wear these or volunteer.’

Up North, women also showed passionate support--for the Union. Shortly after the war began, Louisa May Alcott, who later wrote the novel Little Women, confided in her diary, ‘I long to be a man; but as I can’t fight, I will content myself with working for those who can.’ Harriet Beecher Stowe called the Union effort a ‘cause to die for,’ and a woman in New York declared, ‘It seems as if we never were alive till now; never had a country till now.’ As their husbands and sons drilled and marched and prepared for battle in opposing armies, women of the North and South swung into action.

…Women also took over the work of men who had gone off to fight. Across the North and South, women took charge of family farms and plantations as their men battled in Antietam or Chancellorsville or Gettysburg--or lay languishing in makeshift army hospitals or military prisons. Some women despaired at the enormous responsibilities of planting, plowing, and running a farm, but other women met the challenge head on--and discovered new strengths and abilities in the process. Sarah Morgan of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, marveled at how much she accomplished in one day--’empty a dirty hearth, dust, move heavy weights, make myself generally useful and dirty, and all this thanks to the Yankees.’

Throughout the North, scores of women worked in government offices for the first time to replace male clerks who had enlisted in the Union army. They worked as clerks and copyists, copying speeches and documents for government records. They also became postal employees and worked in the Treasury Department cutting apart long sheets of paper money and counting currency. Salaries ranged from $500 to $900 a year by 1865. Although this was more than what most female employees made at the time, women still earned half of what men earned for the same work.

…As the Union armies advanced deeper into the South, capturing Confederate territory and liberating slaves in the process, hundreds of black and white women, mostly in their 20s, followed closely behind to teach the former slaves, many of whom were illiterate. Women risked danger and hardship--and sometimes their families’ disapproval--to venture South. They went under the auspices of American Missionary Society, the Pennsylvania Freedmen’s Relief Association, and other agencies that recruited teachers and paid their monthly wages of $10 to $12.

Teachers admired their students’ eagerness to learn. ‘It is a great happiness to teach them,’ Charlotte Forten, a black woman who taught in the Sea Islands off of South Carolina, wrote a friend in November 1862. ‘I wish some of those persons at the North who say the race is hopelessly and naturally inferior, could see the readiness with which these children, so long oppressed and deprived of every privilege, learn and understand.’ Adult ex-slaves, too, were willing students. Of one of her grown-up students, Forten remarked, ‘I never saw anyone so determined to learn.’

…About 400 women disguised themselves as Union or Confederate soldiers and fought in the war. With the proper attire, some could easily pass for being a man. Women enlisted for a variety of reasons--some believed in the cause so deeply that they would not let being a woman stop them from fighting as soldiers. Others craved adventure or could not bear to be apart from husbands or other loved ones who had joined the army. No doubt some women were killed in battle and went to their graves with their true identities concealed.

Other women soldiers were forced to reveal their secret when they were wounded. A female Union soldier, wounded in the battle of Chickamauga in Tennessee, was captured by Confederate troops and returned to the Union side with a note: ‘As the Confederates do not use women in the war, this woman, wounded in battle, is returned to you.’ When a Union nurse asked her why she had joined the army, she replied, ‘I thought I’d like camp life, and I did.’

…In 1863, women in New York City went on a rampage. In the South, women had rioted for food; in New York, they joined men, mostly Irish, who were protesting against a federal provision that allowed draftees to hire substitutes. The protest quickly erupted into a riot against the city’s blacks. The protestors, who feared competition from black workers, resented being drafted to fight a war for the slave’s freedom. Even more so, they resented upper-class Yankee Protestants who could afford to pay substitutes $300 to fight in their places.

Over four days, rioters looted stores and beat innocent blacks. Angry mobs lynched about six blacks, destroyed the dwellings where blacks lived, and burned down the Colored Orphan Asylum. They also set fire to several businesses that employed blacks and destroyed the homes of prominent Republicans and abolitionists. Women took part in the plunder, venting their rage at a government and a war that sacrificed their men and impoverished their lives.”

- Harriet Sigerman, “‘I Am Needed Here’: Women at War.” in An Unfinished Battle: American Women, 1848-1865

[blueiscoool]

700+ Civil War-Era Gold Coins Found Buried in Kentucky

A man unearthed a huge hoard of Civil War-era gold and silver coins on his Kentucky farm.

A Kentucky man got the surprise of his life while digging in his field earlier this year: a cache of over 700 coins from the American Civil War era.

The "Great Kentucky Hoard" includes hundreds of U.S. gold pieces dating to between 1840 and 1863, in addition to a handful of silver coins. In a short video, the man who discovered the hoard — whose identity and specific location have not been revealed to the public — says, "This is the most insane thing ever: Those are all $1 gold coins, $20 gold coins, $10 gold coins," as he aims his camera at the artifacts tumbling out of the dirt.

According to the Numismatic Guaranty Co. (NGC), which certified the coins' authenticity, and GovMint, where the coins were sold, 95% of the hoard is composed of gold dollars, along with 20 $10 Liberty coins and eight $20 Liberty coins. The rarest is the 1863-P $20 1-ounce gold Liberty coin. Just one of these coins can go for six figures at auction, and the Great Kentucky Hoard boasts 18 of them. NGC's website notes that the $20 Liberty coin, which circulated from 1850 to 1907, was minted by the Treasury Department after gold was discovered in California. The $20 Liberty coins in the hoard are even rarer because they do not include "In God We Trust," which was added in 1866 after the end of the Civil War.

Potentially more important, though, is what the hoard can tell us about America's history during an extremely tumultuous period.

Ryan McNutt, a conflict archaeologist at Georgia Southern University who has heard about but not seen the hoard, said in an email that "given the time period and the location in Kentucky, which was neutral at the time, it is entirely possible this was buried in advance of Confederate John Hunt Morgan's June to July 1863 raid."

Many wealthy Kentuckians are rumored to have buried huge sums of money to prevent it from being stolen by the Confederacy. James Langstaff left a letter saying he had buried $20,000 in coins on his property in Paducah, William Pettit buried $80,000 worth of gold coins near Lexington, and Confederate soldiers quarantined for measles reportedly stole payroll and hid it in a cave in Cumberland Gap. None of these caches has ever been recovered.

Considering the hoard coins are federal currency, McNutt said, it may be the result of a Kentuckian's dealings with the federal government — "dealings that it would be wise to conceal from a Confederate raiding party." Many Americans affected by the Civil War "became experienced with hiding goods and valuables," he said.

Most concentrations of historical artifacts found on private land end up going to market or being collected without archaeological consultation, according to McNutt. "As a conflict archaeologist, I find this loss of information particularly frustrating," he said. Hoards have an incredible amount of information about the person who collected the objects, offering archaeologists insight into a brief window in time.

Historical finds like these on private land in the U.S. do not need to be reported to an archaeologist. But McNutt, who has developed close relationships with landowners, believes that education and outreach are key to learning more about these rare coin caches.

"It is entirely up to the landowner," McNutt said, but not engaging with an archaeologist means "it's a snapshot of the past, lost forever."

By Kristina Killgrove.

[head-post]

US election: Trump claims victory

Republican Donald Trump claimed victory in the 2024 presidential contest after Fox News Channel reported that he defeated Democrat Kamala Harris, which would complete his stunning political comeback four years after leaving the White House.

Trump said on Wednesday before a roaring crowd of supporters at the Palm Beach County Convention Centre:

America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.

According to Edison Research, other news outlets have yet to call the results of the race in Trump’s favour, but he appears to be on the verge of victory, having captured the states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia and holding a lead in the other four.

Trump gave a victory speech in Florida, thanking all those who voted for him. His wife Melania and son Barron were by his side at the time. He said:

Thank you Americans for your votes! Let’s make America great again! My result is a political victory that the history of the United States has never known before.

Harris did not address her supporters, who gathered at her alma mater, Howard University. Her campaign co-chairman Cedric Richmond briefly addressed the crowd after midnight, saying Harris would speak publicly Wednesday. He said:

We still have votes to count.

Harris needs more than 270 electoral votes to win the election. The former US president has crossed that threshold with 277 already. Now the counting of votes continues, but the necessary threshold for victory Trump has already overcome.

Trump showed strength in wide swathes of the country, improving his 2020 performance everywhere from rural areas to urban centres.

Republicans won a majority in the US Senate after picking up seats from Democrats in West Virginia and Ohio. In the battle for control of the House of Representatives, where Republicans currently hold a narrow majority, neither side had an advantage.

On Election Day, Trump’s chances of regaining the White House were 50/50, a surprising turnaround from January 6, 2021, when many pundits declared his political career over. On that day, a mob of his supporters stormed Congress in a furious attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Exit polls data

According to Edison exit polls, Trump gained more support among Hispanics, traditionally Democratic voters, and low-income households, who have felt the price hikes acutely since the last 2020 presidential election.

Trump received 45 percent of the Hispanic vote nationwide, behind Harris with 53 percent, but up 13 percentage points from 2020.

About 31 percent of voters cited the economy as their top issue, and they voted for Trump by a margin of 79 percent to 20 percent, according to exit polls. About 45 percent of voters nationwide said their family’s financial situation is worse today than it was four years ago, and they favoured Trump 80 percent to 17 percent.

On Tuesday, global investors were increasingly leaning towards Trump winning. US stock futures and the dollar rose, Treasury bond yields rose and bitcoin rose in price – all of which analysts and investors noted as trades favourable to a Trump victory.

By 12:30 p.m., officials had nearly finished counting ballots in more than 1,600 counties – about half the country – and Trump’s share was up about two percentage points from 2020, reflecting a broad, though not particularly deep, shift in Americans’ support for the president they ousted four years ago.

He improved in suburban counties, rural areas and even some big cities that have historically been bastions of Democratic support; in high- and low-income districts; in places where unemployment was relatively high and in places where it is now at record lows.

Harris was counting on a large margin among urban and suburban voters, but her support in those places is well behind President Joe Biden’s support in the 2020 election.

Trump’s campaign promises

The main point of Trump’s economic programme was to impose tariffs of 10-20% on all imported goods, and up to 60% if they are of Chinese origin. According to the new president, this step will contribute to the development of American industry and force manufacturers to move their factories to the US.

He also advocated lowering the tax rate for corporations that produce their goods in the US from 21% to 15%, abolishing taxes on tips and social security benefits, and doing away with double taxation for US citizens living abroad.

Trump intends to fight high housing prices. To this end, he proposes to expel immigrants who live in the country illegally.

In this election race, Trump also promised to end the conflict in Ukraine within 24 hours in case of victory. However, the former president later decided that he would need more time to resolve the situation. He stated that he would resolve the issue before his inauguration, which will take place on January 20, 2025.

Read more HERE

[starseedfxofficial]

Why Seasonal Inflation Rates Are the Secret Weapon You Didn't Know You Needed in Forex   Picture this: You’re sipping coffee, staring at your trading screen like it’s a stubborn puzzle. You check inflation data, swap charts, and just when you think you’ve nailed it—bam! The market pulls a disappearing act on your profits faster than socks in a washing machine. Sound familiar? But what if I told you there’s a hidden lever pulling those price strings—one that most traders overlook? Enter the world of Seasonal Inflation Rates. It’s not just economist jargon; it’s the backdoor key to predicting market shifts like a Forex ninja. The Market Moves with the Weather (Seriously) You might laugh, but inflation rates have a seasonal flavor. Just like your uncle Bob only remembers the gym exists every January, inflation data loves its own yearly cycles. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, prices for energy spike in summer, while retail costs dance upward around the holidays source. This seemingly boring data can help you front-run market sentiment before it even wakes up. Hidden Pattern: The Inflation Heatmap Hack Every year, we see a dance: - Q1: Post-holiday demand cools. Inflation softens. Currencies like the USD often stabilize. - Q2: Energy costs heat up. Inflation jumps. Watch oil-heavy currencies like CAD and NOK. - Q3: Summer spending peaks. Tourism-driven currencies (EUR, AUD) get lively. - Q4: Retail surges. Inflation ticks up. USD often strengthens. Forex veterans like Kathy Lien, Managing Director at BK Asset Management, noted, “Seasonality is one of the most underappreciated tools in a trader’s arsenal” source. Missing these cycles is like trying to grill steaks during a blizzard—wrong time, wrong tools. Why Most Traders Faceplant Here (And How You Won’t) Myth Busted: “Inflation is Random” Reality check: Inflation is about as random as your aunt's Facebook conspiracy posts—it follows patterns. A 2023 report by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) found that inflation trends show recurring seasonal effects across developed economies source. Yet, only 12% of retail traders factor this into their analysis. Translation? 88% are flying blind. The “Summer Oil Trap” Case Study Take July 2023—oil prices jumped 16% in a month. Traders glued to candlestick patterns were blindsided, but those tracking inflation seasonality knew it was coming. CAD rallied 3% against the USD. Knowing this, you could’ve snapped up CAD longs before everyone else. The Under-the-Radar Strategy: Inflation Timing Matrix Here’s the ninja blueprint to stay two steps ahead: - Mark Seasonal Inflation Peaks: Track energy, food, and retail price patterns over the last 5 years from sources like Trading Economics (tradingeconomics.com). - Match Currency Sensitivity: - Energy Spike? CAD, NOK, RUB. - Food Inflation? ZAR, BRL, NZD. - Retail Boom? USD, EUR, GBP. - Front-Run the Data: - When energy prices rise in May, CAD longs often outperform. - Before holiday retail surges in November, USD positions gain momentum. - Blend with Inflation Reports: Cross-check with Consumer Price Index (CPI) releases. The U.S. CPI is released monthly (bls.gov). Advanced Ninja Tactics: What Pros Aren’t Telling You 1. Front-Running Inflation Reports Like a Pro Most traders react after CPI data. You? You’ll position yourself before it hits: - Track commodity price changes 30 days before CPI reports. - Use the Bloomberg Commodity Index (BCOM) as an early inflation signal. - If oil spikes 10% in June, expect higher CPI in July. Long CAD or short JPY a week before the report. 2. Sneaky Sentiment: Inflation-Linked Bonds Traders like Paul Tudor Jones monitor Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS). Rising yields often hint at upcoming inflation. Compare TIPS yields against traditional bonds using U.S. Treasury data. 3. Seasonal Hedging: The Summer-Winter Shield Hedge pairs like this: - Summer: Long CAD/JPY (oil strength, risk-on mood). - Winter: Long USD/CHF (defensive play, lower inflation). Data That Makes You Look Like a Fortune Teller - Energy prices rise 10-15% between May and August annually, per the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) source. - Retail sales spike by 5-8% in November-December, boosting USD demand (National Retail Federation) source. - Food prices historically peak in Q3, impacting emerging market currencies (FAO) source. Your Next Move: Stop Guessing, Start Planning If you’re tired of playing CPI roulette, here’s how to level up: - Bookmark the latest Economic Indicators and Forex News here. - Sharpen your skills with Free Forex Courses here. - Join elite traders for real-time insights in the StarseedFX Community here. Key Takeaways (Elite Tactics You Can’t Ignore): - Inflation isn’t random. Seasonality holds clues to future price moves. - Q2 oil spikes? Long CAD. Holiday retail surge? Favor USD. - Track commodity prices 30 days before CPI releases. - Watch TIPS yields for inflation clues. - Hedge seasonally: CAD/JPY in summer, USD/CHF in winter.   —————– Image Credits: Cover image at the top is AI-generated Read the full article

[morninkim]

SV Timeskip Zero Gang designs!!

feel free to shoot any questions my way if you're curious about them, but lil notes on post-timeskip stuff under the cut:

10 years after game events (Scarlet + HToAZ, specifically)

Arven's 27 and a part time chef at Treasury Eatery

Nemona's 26 and Top Champion (Rika takes over League Chairman duties)

Penny's starting a tech security company

Florian's an adventurer and amateur paleontologist

extra notes:

Arven and Nemona are engaged but still call each other my wife (Arven's been agender butch lesbianified) - they're also trying to figure out regulations to allow for safe use of Paradox Pokémon in league battles

Florian's been in an LDR with Kieran for a while now

Penny has an on/off deal with Carmine she doesn't really talk about much

10 years after it shut down thanks to the efforts of the Zero Gang and Koraidon, the time machine has mysteriously turned back on and is bringing more Paradox Pokémon to the present. However, these new Paradox Pokémon are robotic - not at all like the Ancient Pokémon Sada had studied - and seem to resemble several creatures described in issues of Occulture Magazine.

The team's gotta come back together and get help from some friends to figure out what's happened in Area Zero and who's behind it!

[yourreddancer]

Heather Cox Richardson

February 9, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Feb 10

On Friday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order “protecting Second Amendment rights.” The order calls for Attorney General Pam Bondi to examine all gun regulations in the U.S. to make sure they don’t infringe on any citizen’s right to bear arms. The executive order says that the Second Amendment “is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans.”

In fact, it is the right to vote for the lawmakers who make up our government that is foundational to maintaining all other rights held by Americans.

The United States Constitution that establishes the framework for our democratic government sets out how the American people will write the laws that govern us. We elect members to a Congress, which consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate. That congress of our representatives holds “all legislative powers”; that is, Congress alone has the right to make laws. It alone has the power to levy taxes on the American people, borrow money, regulate commerce, coin money, declare war, “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper.”

After Congress writes, debates, and passes a measure, the Constitution establishes that it goes to the president, who is also elected, through “electors,” by the people. The president can either sign a measure into law or veto it, returning it to Congress where members can either repass it over his veto or rewrite it. But once a law is on the books, the president must enforce it. The men who framed the Constitution wrote that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” When President Richard Nixon tried to alter laws passed by Congress by withholding the funding Congress had appropriated to put them into effect, Congress shut that down quickly, passing a law explicitly making such “impoundment” illegal.

Since the Supreme Court’s 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision, the federal courts have taken on the duty of “judicial review,” the process of determining whether a law falls within the rules of the Constitution.

Right now, the Republicans hold control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court. They have the power to change any laws they want to change according to the formula Americans have used since 1789 when the Constitution went into effect.

But they are not doing that.

Instead, officials in the Trump administration, as well as billionaire Elon Musk— who put $290 million into electing Trump and Republicans, and whose actual role in the government remains unclear— are making unilateral changes to programs established by Congress. Through executive orders and announcements from Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” they have sidelined Congress, and Republicans are largely mum about the seizure of their power.

Now MAGA Republicans are trying to neuter the judiciary.

After yet another federal judge stopped the Musk/Trump onslaught by temporarily blocking Musk and his team from accessing Americans’ records from Treasury Department computers, MAGA Republicans attacked judges. “Outrageous,” Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) posted, spreading the lie that the judge barred the Secretary of the Treasury from accessing the information, although in fact he temporarily barred Treasury Secretary Bessent from granting access to others. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) said the decision had “the feel of…a judicial” coup. Right-wing legal scholar Adrian Vermeule called it “[j]udicial interference with legitimate acts of state.”

Vice President J.D. Vance, who would take over the office of the presidency if the 78-year-old Trump can no longer perform the duties of the office, posted: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

As legal scholar Steve Vladeck noted: “Just to say the quiet part out loud, the point of having unelected judges in a democracy is so that *whether* acts of state are ‘legitimate’ can be decided by someone other than the people who are undertaking them. Vermeule knows this, of course. So does Vance.” Of Vance’s statement, Aaron Rupar of Public Notice added: “this is the sort of thing you post when you’re ramping up to defying lawful court orders.”

The Republicans have the power to make the changes they want through the exercise of their constitutional power, but they are not doing so. This seems in part because Trump and his MAGA supporters want to establish the idea that the president cannot be checked. And this dovetails with the fact they are fully aware that most Americans oppose their plans.

Voters were so opposed to the plan outlined in Project 2025—the plan now in operation—that Trump ran from it during the campaign. Popular support for Musk’s participation in the government has plummeted as well. A poll from The Economist/YouGov released February 5 says that only 13% of adult Americans want him to have “a lot” of influence, while 96% of respondents said that jobs and the economy were important to them and 41% said they thought the economy was getting worse.

Trump’s MAGA Republicans know they cannot get the extreme changes they wanted through Congress, so they are, instead, dictating them. And Musk began his focus at the Treasury, establishing control over the payment system that manages the money American taxpayers pay to our government.

Musk and MAGA officials claim they are combating waste and fraud, but in fact, when Judge Carl Nichols stopped Trump from shutting down USAID, he specifically said that government lawyers had offered no support for that argument in court.

Indeed, the U.S. government already has the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent, nonpartisan agency that audits, evaluates and investigates government programs for Congress. In 2023 the GAO returned about $84 for every $1 invested in it, in addition to suggesting improvements across the government.

Until Trump fired 18 of them when he took office, major departments also had their own independent inspectors general, charged with preventing and detecting fraud, waste, abuse, misconduct, and mismanagement in the government and promoting economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in government operations and programs.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation also investigates corruption, including that committed by healthcare providers.

According to Musk’s own Grok artificial intelligence tool on X, the investigative departments of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as well as USAID, have all launched investigations into the practices and violations of Elon Musk’s companies.

But Trump has been gutting congressional oversight, apparently wanting to make sure that no one can oversee the president. Rather than rooting out waste and corruption in the government, Musk and his ilk have launched a hostile takeover to turn the United States of America into a business that will return huge profits to those leaders who, in the process of moving fast and breaking things, are placing themselves at the center of the lives of 332 million people. Breaking into the U.S. Treasury payment system puts Musk and his DOGE team at the head of the country’s nerve center.

The vision they are enacting rips predictability, as well as economic security, away from farmers, who are already protesting the loss of their markets with the attempted destruction of USAID. It hurts the states—especially Republican-dominated states—that depend on funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Education. Their vision excludes consumers, who are set to lose the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as well as protections put in place by President Joe Biden. Their vision takes away protections for racial, ethnic, religious, and gender minorities, as well as from women, and kills funding for the programs that protect all of us, such as cancer research and hospitals.

Musk and Trump appear to be concentrating the extraordinary wealth of the American people, along with the power that wealth brings, into their own hands, for their own ends. Trump has championed further tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, while Musk seems to want to make sure his companies, especially SpaceX, win as many government contracts as possible to fund his plan to colonize Mars.

But the mission of the United States of America is not, and has never been, to return huge profits to a few leaders.

The mission of the United States of America is stated in the Constitution. It is a government designed by “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Far from being designed to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a single man, it was formed to do the opposite: spread wealth and power throughout the country’s citizenry and enable them to protect their rights by voting for those who would represent them in Congress and the presidency, then holding them accountable at the ballot box.

The people who think that bearing arms is central to maintaining American rights are the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election by storming the United States Capitol because they do not command the votes to put their policies in place through the exercise of law outlined in the U.S. Constitution.

[the-firebird69]

Trump is trying to get our stuff they're using cheesy things tbwd on our son and retired of it you need them out. Elon musk is not part of the government and hasn't been appointed or elected and they're trying to get him sensitive information and more he needs to take a break and pretty long one and something used to leave office.

Everybody is going to make a point it's coming up we are too. It's way too much energy on this idiot

This guy Trump he has been to David's house in Egypt many many times in the past 3 years everybody is going after him right now they're also learning that the Mac proper were following him and it's on he's getting very small right now he's 0.25% in the general population with duplicates and that number is going down rapidly his people are shrinking in the general population from 3.9% a couple weeks ago to 3.2% and they do evacuate and they go to battle but they're also getting killed and out of that 0.7% 0.4% were killed in the general areas that's a big number and it's going down soon the whole bunch will be depowered and people will be living a little bit more normally out of the insane asylum and what a nightmare that guy is.

We have a few more comments

-our son finally slept he went to bed around 10:00 p.m. it's 8:00 a.m. probably lost an hour for getting up and stuff but that's not too bad and he needed it I need Trump's always bothering sleep and he's they're losing sleep like madness now it really deserves it. There's a lot of them who are very evil towards our son and they're disappearing by force because they use their own people to survive and it's disgusting. Right now we have reports that are numbers are dwindling so fast it's very dangerous and here we can hear John remillard saying this is what I was waiting for and he is up sending the orders trying to make things happen globally armies are mobilizing to put out every single one of his little fires and extinguish all of those involved today we've been waiting for it it might slow down again but it's going to pick up again pretty quick and we'll be forced to do the job a lot of other people are actually doing the job as well and his time is over soon. Along with that phenomena which is picking up speed still and growth is the fact that he is ordering them to go places out of that 3.2% and 0.25% about 1% were just told to go to the new Parker system to defend it from Tommy F who attacked last night it with only 0.2% and he's checking see what it is. And he didn't breach the bunkers but he learned a lot and saw what they're doing and learned why so he's moving out cuz he has to have some presents there and he is going to crush it he says and he 12 bunkers in the midwest have fallen it's the same for the middle areas 12 Trump has three amazingly enough and the upper Midwest and upper middle areas globally are being attacked but they're in the midwest they are the upper Midwest they are attacking for out of the 10 they're not very huge but they have a lot of special and it's because of the area of commerce for the back morlock and they're going to cut themselves down this time Tommy f is going to build up for an attack and Trump is building up his defenses 1% from the general areas and another percent from the cities are down to about 4.5% and shrinking and due to infighting and other groups are attacking we think in just a few days they'll have nobody in the general population not many to speak of and will lose control of the finance centers fully and in separatist cities they will be cut in half if not more and it will only have the island and it'll be small there pretty soon within days and trouble fall out of office. A lot of people are feeling strange about that movie where he's showing dead on the video and is in that room making notes and it's a strange scene but that's really what it's going to happen our son and daughter make a note it's kind of the same scenery as ghosts can't do it movie. And it's true it's that dark scenery but you can see the furniture clearly it's really odd that's what it means a little bit so people looking at that movie a lot more closely and they're finding out that he might get shot in the movie doesn't care Trump doesn't care if it's a movie that's the problem and more shortly

Thor Freya

Well that's a mouthful I mean this is a lot of stuff happening right now

Hera

It certainly is and it's finally here but we have to get to work and we have to move out and do a lot of work this guy Trump is insane and he needs to be cut down

Lobo and

You certainly are in that case Trump a nutcase and you're wrong and we're going to make sure people see that you are

Proxima Midnight

So who's asking should I leave the and between us and I think so this guy Trump is a complete nut and we need him out he's a washout and we need him away from our son right now so we're going to test and see if we can and we're going to do it regularly

Lobo

I need him out of my face I don't want to think of this weird loser weekling it's gross. His character is discussing and he's a sleaze so I'm going to put some effort into it

Proxima Midnight

We are too I'm calling my children I'm sick of this guy he needs out and my husband called them last night and it looks like they cleared out a bunch

Hera

We didn't clear out all of them but we started clearing out tons and now they're up and they're on fire they're going to go out and then go back on fire a few times that they will be gone

Savage

I can't believe it we are sitting here working our butts off and still are not asked to say stuff and our father and mother say there's a lot of people saying stuff but okay and we're going to start things up and get things going we need to meeting we're going to initiate the idiot plan being on fire and things like that from now on

Oppress

Thank God the two say and others and yeah we're going to do that and we're going to watch it and make sure we know what it is everybody will start doing it and we need to be in control

Darth maul

Yeah you don't care I mean you're such a jerk you're stupid and you're just a lousy actor and right now there is a wave of radiation coming through and it is pretty nasty in the sun says it tastes kind of different and it should it's a little thicker and it is about 37 rad and that's not too much higher than recently it's a bit thicker because 10 of it is coming from the Charlotte harbor caverns. And it works out to about a 12 if all day and it will be it's going to increase throughout the day and it is going to go to 40 it is because the two large ones to the North and South in the ocean are beginning to sizzle more and it will increase daily and it will go to the maximum on most likely Thursday morning I do appreciate being able to speak and it is an honor and we should do it more often that he's asking but he is asking about the canal and it's going to open fairly soon we have reports that the small crabs have gone in advance to 50 miles from shore and today the ocean is supposed to clear out in the Gulf to 50 miles they're going to be right on the edge of it hopefully in it and we will see it's going to be very close

Darth talon

And a war has picked up out there but not in the rivers and they are not capable of getting there to blow out the mock and people try. We think that one more day in these crabs are going to move in March on their areas smaller like 390 Miles by 415 miles and the little ones are right offshore at 50 miles and yeah it's going to be clear in moments to 50 miles about a few hours and we think they're going to be in it cuz they're still moving they can smell it's different and the density of the is much lower than it was so they think they went through it and they're calling back that it's not as dense and many of them are getting out he's made a discovery we know about it it's a solid discovery so we're going to let the two talk about it

Thor Freya

Olympus

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Gold price waver as Fed delivers hawkish hold

Federal Reserve’s hawkish hold omits specific inflation terms, hinting at rate pause, affecting gold markets. U.S. Treasury yields rise, 10-year note at 4.581%; dollar strengthens to 108.29 on DXY, up 0.22%. Gold traders incur moderate losses, awaiting further details from Fed Chair Powell’s press conference. Gold prices slumped as the US Federal Reserve (Fed) delivered a hawkish hold. The Fed…