4 minutes ago, BLMFem said:

The US economy is doing really great. Those that complain about affordability and prices don't know what they're talking about. How do I know this?

Well, Maria has talked to a lot of CEOs and they say it's so!🤣

Indeed many companies in the US are doing extremely well. It's all about perspective. Look at Lebron James, he just signed a huge contract. He's doing allright. And he's black!

5 minutes ago, BLMFem said:

The US economy is doing really great. Those that complain about affordability and prices don't know what they're talking about. How do I know this?

Well, Maria has talked to a lot of CEOs and they say it's so!🤣

Can you remind me who was in charge of the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch during the period when prices increased by 21.4 percent over four years?

4 hours ago, gargamon said:

Trump 1 before covid was riding on the coattails of Obama's ”longest period of economic expansion” in US history. Nothing to do with Trump. He did kill it effectively though with his mishandling of covid.

It's unrealistic to expect the USA to escape an economic slowdown when the entire world faced a shutdown due to COVID.

On 8/9/2026 at 9:19 AM, Wingate said:

I remember during the campaign when Trump promised to "bring prices down".

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest Trump never studied calculus. He has no clue what a first derivative is.

Trump equates a reduction in inflation with lower prices. Inflation is merely the rate of change in prices, or a first derivative.

If inflation falls from 5% to 3.5%, that just means prices are rising less quickly. It does not mean prices are falling.

Anyway, inflation is still higher today than it was in December 2024, so Trump hasn't even dealt with the derivative.

Then Trump has his mouthpiece Bessent claiming wages are rising. Relative to inflation? No. If wages rise 2% but inflation is 3.5%, consumers are less well off.

Now the elite are doing better. No doubt about that. Bessent tried to argue the K shaped economy is not happening, when the reality is worker % of GDP is at an all time low. Corporate profits---especially on data center hyperscalers who changed their depreciation schedule on chips to juice earnings GAAP legally but wrongly---are on the rise (the upper leg of the K), while wage earners % of GDP is falling (the lower leg of the K).

There's so much feel good fantasy in the markets, too. How lovely is it that private equity can loan upwards of $1 trillion to data center hyperscalers (a private bond), but because it isn't exchange traded, private equity firms like Blackrock can mark it to whatever price they choose. (Think of the part of the movie The Big Short when the Michael Burry character chastises the DB and Goldman characters for not making CDS's to a proper value, because the CDSs were not exchange traded.)

Blackrock had a loan (bond) it valued at par one day, and the next day at $0. Failure to service that debt did not happen in a second, but Blackrock was allowed to recognize the loss at their leisure.

Jamie Dimon has warned about this fraud, but despite the fact he's a conservative, few are listening to him.

The market is rising on bank lending to private equity, who is loaning it to hyperscalers, who are using it to buy equity in firms that are part of their data center, like Amazon "investing" in OpenAI with money banks loaned to private equity who holds a non-exchange traded bond with a hyperscaler. It's a Daisy Chain.

It all works until it doesn't, just like the CDO world of 2008. Back then, the canary in the coal mine was the Bear Stearns hedge fund that went belly up a few months before the bottom fell out. Maybe this time it was Leopold Aschenbrenner, who lost 67% of his $45 billion hedge fund in a few days. The harbinger of what's coming.

Absent the AI data center buildout, 2nd Quarter GDP would have been negative. The equity market is now something like 45% the AI trade. Great if we build another few thousand data centers and nobody goes for the cheaper (but superior, according to the Hugging Face CEO) Chinese versions, whose companies are valued at about 8% of what OpenAi and Anthropic are supposedly valued.

You do realise that Trump is a man who brags about things falling in value by more than 100%?

You don’t need to study calculus to know that’s impossible.

It will be interesting to see who gets fired over these numbers. It’s happened before when numbers get released that are unflattering to he who must be flattered

22 hours ago, Cameroni said:

It's perfectly normal for job figures to go down in summer, especially in this post World Cup August, when the hotel and leisure industries are going through the post World Cup hangover.

Perfectly normal.

Post World Cup?

These numbers are for when the World Cup was ramping up and then actually being held. They aren’t for the past week. Note the word July in the original post. I watched quite a few World Cup games in that month. Maybe you missed them

'US suffers unexpected job losses in July, markets dial back rate hike expectations'

Edited August 10Aug 10 by wensiensheng

On 8/8/2026 at 2:28 AM, BLMFem said:

So, apparently the economists expected a net gain of 80,000+ jobs in July. But instead the market lost 23,000.

Tired of winning yet?

'US suffers unexpected job losses in July, markets dial back rate hike expectations'

https://www.reuters.com/business/us-nonfarm-payrolls-fall-july-unemployment-rate-eases-41-2026-08-07/

"The U.S. economy unexpectedly shed jobs in July and previously reported job gains for the prior two months were revised sharply lower, tempering financial market expectations for an interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve next month.

While the Labor Department's closely watched employment report on Friday showed the unemployment rate falling to 4.1% last month from 4.2% in June, that was because another 264,000 people left the labor force, pushing the participation rate to a near ‌5-1/2-year low of 61.4%, and hampering hiring.

The big revisions to previously reported changes in the US employment level came back into focus in July, a year after a historically large revision to earlier employment estimates resulted in President Donald Trump firing the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner and accusing her, without evidence, of tampering with the figures."

This should serve as a lesson about the reliability of economic projections. You should read Nate Silver's book "The Signal and the Noise"; check out chapter six.

49 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

Very harsh, Trump after all did his best to bring the two Slavic warring parties to the table. He tried hard to end it, but you can't force a horse to drink water. I don't think you can pin this on Trump, he tried to end it and quite seriously.

He wrote 'The Art of the Deal',
Said he’d end the war on day one,
He claimed he held all the cards.
Now it’s 'you can’t force a horse to drink'?
Did the horse eat the book and the deck?

58 minutes ago, temuFarang said:

It's unrealistic to expect the USA to escape an economic slowdown when the entire world faced a shutdown due to COVID.

You must be MAGA. You missed the point entirely

51 minutes ago, LosLobo said:

He wrote 'The Art of the Deal',
Said he’d end the war on day one,
He claimed he held all the cards.
Now it’s 'you can’t force a horse to drink'?
Did the horse eat the book and the deck?

You're going to castigate a would be peacemaker for trying to make peace, when the fighting parties refused, okay. Well, that's not really just, he tried his best to make peace but they refused. It's on Zelensky mostly. Not Trump.

Trump does hold the best cards, but a deal can only be made when the other parties are reasonable. Ukraine clearly is not.

1 hour ago, gargamon said:

You must be MAGA. You missed the point entirely

It seems like you align with the left wing cult.

I am so tired of winning I need a break....and if prices get any cheaper they will be paying you to take products off the shelves. And Iran is so terrified that they will likely start giving away oil for free and erect a golden statue of dear don...Greenland and Canada are ready to raise the America/Trump flag any day now.....as for judge after judge after judge ruling against trump every single week on most every bs case he brings I guess they just didn't get the trump memo about how much he is winning.

But much of Maga somehow has managed to be convinced once more by the con man in chief that he and they are somehow "winning". Sure. And that 22 y.o. hot thai babe really does love smelly falangs with no $$.

9 hours ago, temuFarang said:

Can you remind me who was in charge of the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch during the period when prices increased by 21.4 percent over four years?

Can you remind me of who was and is in charge of the executive branch when 28% of our national debt has been accrued in less than 6 years???and just what have we gained from it???

4 minutes ago, Tug said:

Can you remind me of who was and is in charge of the executive branch when 28% of our national debt has been accrued in less than 6 years???and just what have we gained from it???

Were you this animated when Obama added $9.5 trillion? I bet you never gave it a passing thought.

1 minute ago, temuFarang said:

Were you this animated when Obama added $9.5 trillion? I bet you never gave it a passing thought.

We got something for our taxes there’s a difference.

7 hours ago, Tug said:

We got something for our taxes there’s a difference.

So this is why the lefties really oppose Trump, they're not getting enough out of government anymore.

Thanks for clarifying.

7 hours ago, temuFarang said:

Were you this animated when Obama added $9.5 trillion? I bet you never gave it a passing thought.

You mean when President Obama saved the US economy? Thanks for the reminder, but also a reminder that the US once had a capable, impressive and respected president.

So the total opposite of the trash that currently befouls the WH.

7 hours ago, temuFarang said:

Were you this animated when Obama added $9.5 trillion? I bet you never gave it a passing thought.

Your number is incorrect. Obama left office with total National Dent at about $19.5 trillion. He did not enter when it was $10 trillion. Your comment is spurious.

I shudder to think what would have happened if Trump was President when the Great Recession began. The entire world's financial system was mere days away from collapse. The insurance industry almost shut down.

Obama backstopped insurance. He forced banks to both sell new equity and work down leverage, selling off bad debt. Yes, he bailed banks out, but that avoided a run on banks. H also saved the US auto industry.

Trump would have issued meme coins, sold autographed Bibles, and blamed Bill Clinton.

3 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

So this is why the lefties really oppose Trump, they're not getting enough out of government anymore.

That is very true, because when you pay taxes you want the government to spend your hard earned dollars wisely, not totally screw things up through DOGE idiocy, moronic tariff policies, in-your-face corruption, protect pedophiles, embarrassing TACOs, starting a war you promptly lose, turn your country into the world's biggest laughing stock, etc, etc, etc.

2 minutes ago, BLMFem said:

That is very true, because when you pay taxes you want the government to spend your hard earned dollars wisely, not totally screw things up through DOGE idiocy, moronic tariff policies, in-your-face corruption, protect pedophiles, embarrassing TACOs, starting a war you promptly lose, turn your country into the world's biggest laughing stock, etc, etc, etc.

The whole rationale of DOGE of course was precisely to spend tax money wisely. DOGE did save billions of dollars for the taxpayer.

The tariffs, likewise, brought in billions for the US, about 283 billions.

As for corruption, protecting pedophiles, TACOs and so on, nobody with any sense is buying that.

Nor is it possible for the US to lose the war against Iran, at most it would lack the will to follow through, as in Vietnam. But it is hardly a loss.

In essence, Trump has reframed the world economic order in America's favour. He has shown the US is not afraid to use its military. Europeans are falling over themselves to placate Trump, one can only conclude Trump has increased respect for America worldwide.

4 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

The whole rationale of DOGE of course was precisely to spend tax money wisely. DOGE did save billions of dollars for the taxpayer.

The tariffs, likewise, brought in billions for the US, about 283 billions.

As for corruption, protecting pedophiles, TACOs and so on, nobody with any sense is buying that.

Nor is it possible for the US to lose the war against Iran, at most it would lack the will to follow through, as in Vietnam. But it is hardly a loss.

In essence, Trump has reframed the world economic order in America's favour. He has shown the US is not afraid to use its military. Europeans are falling over themselves to placate Trump, one can only conclude Trump has increased respect for America worldwide.

Well done, you got me. High level trolling, indeed.

1 hour ago, Cameroni said:

The whole rationale of DOGE of course was precisely to spend tax money wisely. DOGE did save billions of dollars for the taxpayer.

The tariffs, likewise, brought in billions for the US, about 283 billions.

As for corruption, protecting pedophiles, TACOs and so on, nobody with any sense is buying that.

Nor is it possible for the US to lose the war against Iran, at most it would lack the will to follow through, as in Vietnam. But it is hardly a loss.

In essence, Trump has reframed the world economic order in America's favour. He has shown the US is not afraid to use its military. Europeans are falling over themselves to placate Trump, one can only conclude Trump has increased respect for America worldwide.

What a load of utter tosh.

Almost every statement you made is nonsense.

5 hours ago, JBChiangRai said:

What a load of utter tosh.

Almost every statement you made is nonsense.

amazing that anyone would think that "tariffs brought into usa 283 billion"....EVERY PENNY OF IT was paid by the companies or people IN THE USA who paid the tariffs...most all of which was illegal to begin with and part of the reason that a refund of tariffs to companies who actually paid it when declared illegal by supreme court and now being refunded to the companies who paid it...american companies while of course most will just keep the money that was paid to them by US citizens.... ignorance or "people are saying" BS

On 8/10/2026 at 3:39 PM, gargamon said:

Trump 1 before covid was riding on the coattails of Obama's ”longest period of economic expansion” in US history. Nothing to do with Trump. He did kill it effectively though with his mishandling of covid.

That is a myth propagated by Liberals. Obama destroyed healthcare in America and now folks who are retired will be screwed. Stop with the lies about that man. He was an awful president and a race hustler.