Business/Economy (News/Activism)
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KEY POINTS -Bitcoin tumbled more than 5% on Tuesday, falling below $63,000, before paring some of the losses. -Analysts said the drop reflected “tactical de‑risking.” -Escalating tariff tensions and broader geopolitical risks weighed on the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin tumbled more than 5% on Tuesday to fall below $63,000, as investors continued to grapple with escalating tariff tensions and broader geopolitical risks. The world’s largest cryptocurrency fell as low as $62,964.64 amid investor pressure to move away from risk assets. Bitcoin pared some of the losses and was trading 1.5% down at $63,290, as of 5.58 a.m ET....
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President Donald Trump's State of the Union address Tuesday is likely to be a test run of the message Republicans will give to voters in November's elections for control of the House and the Senate. The president and his party appear vulnerable, with polls showing much of America distrusts how Trump managed the government in his first year back in office. In addition, the Supreme Court last week struck down one of the chief levers of his economic and foreign policy by ruling he lacked the power to impose many of his sweeping tariffs. Though Trump is expected to focus...
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“China is dumping US Treasuries to get out of the dollar.” This claim has been circulating the mainstream feeds lately, with the narrative that the “end of the dollar is near,” or “the US will lose its funding base” and the “bond yields will surge.” But are those claims valid? Such is what we will explore in more detail.Let’s start with the chart that has everyone concerned. As shown, China’s holdings of US Treasury bonds have fallen from nearly $1.2 trillion to $600 billion, or a 50% decline. On the surface, you can certainly understand the reasons for concern, as...
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The Boston Globe ran a poll last December which found that a full third of respondents were thinking about leaving the state because of the high cost of living.The Globe/Suffolk survey found that about one-third of Massachusetts voters have seriously considered leaving the state in the past year because of affordability pressures, even as a majority still believe the state is generally moving in the right direction. Inflation, health care costs, housing, taxes, and soaring utility bills topped the list of financial stressors.Boston.com asked their readers how they felt and and even higher percentage said they were looking to move....
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Can science fiction shape market reality? Hours after the Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s emergency power tariffs, the President imposed a new 10% 15% global tariff for 150 days. But as stocks fell on Monday, financial media outlets like Bloomberg offered an alternative explanation for the decline: a social media post. While the northeast was hunkering down for a once-in-a-decade blizzard this weekend, financial research firm Citrini Research published a macro note that made waves among the highly online tech bro and finance bro crowd on X (formerly Twitter). In the lengthy read, Citrini augurs a world where...
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US stocks retreated on Monday as investors grappled with the fallout from the Supreme Court's rebuff of President Trump's most sweeping tariffs, which has thrown major trade deals into doubt. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) led the way down, losing roughly 1.3%, or over 600 points. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) both fell roughly 0.6%, coming off a volatile but winning session on Friday. Growing uncertainty about the global trade landscape is unsettling markets amid debate about Trump's next moves and reaction from countries that have signed US trade pacts. The Supreme Court's...
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A 6-3 Supreme Court majority on Friday struck down President Trump’s sweeping emergency tariffs (Learning Resources v. Trump) in a monumental vindication of the Constitution’s separation of powers. You might call it the real tariff Liberation Day. It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Court’s decision for the law and the economy. Had Mr. Trump prevailed, future Presidents could have used emergency powers to bypass Congress and impose border taxes with little constraint. As Chief Justice John Roberts explains in the majority opinion, “Recognizing the taxing power’s unique importance, and having just fought a revolution motivated in large part...
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India has delayed plans to send a trade delegation to Washington this week, chiefly because of uncertainty after the US Supreme Court struck down tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, a source in its trade ministry said on Sunday (Feb 22). One of the first concrete reactions among Asian nations to the decision, it follows Trump's move on Saturday to levy a temporary tariff of 15 per cent, the maximum allowed by law, on US imports from all countries, following the court's rejection. "The decision to defer the visit was taken after discussions between officials of the two countries," said...
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Our northern neighbors are shell-shocked: they are even poorer than Alabamians. This follows a tough week for Canada, which has struggled at the Winter Olympics and has faced constant pressure from Donald Trump. In fact, it's the headline used on social media that's become the main source of mockery—"Out of nowhere, Canada became poorer than Alabama. How is that possible?”In December, Tommy Battle’s dream came true. The five-term Mayor of Huntsville is Alabama to the bone, born in Birmingham and a graduate of the state university in Tuscaloosa, but for the past 18 years he’s tried to distance his city...
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Japan's annual core consumer inflation hit a two-year low to match the central bank's 2 per cent target in January, data showed on Friday, suggesting weakening price pressure that could complicate its decision on how soon to raise interest rates. A separate index seen as a better indicator of underlying inflation also slowed but remained well above the Bank of Japan's target, suggesting that solid wage gains will keep the central bank on course to push up still-low borrowing costs. The data adds to recent mixed signs in the economy which barely grew in the final quarter of last year,...
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After much talk of an economic slowdown, February brought reassuring headlines. The official unemployment rate had fallen as another 130,000 jobs were added to the US economy, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is good news, but it is not the whole story. The official unemployment rate counts only people actively looking for work – it does not capture those who would like a job but have stopped searching. The official unemployment rate is so narrow that it hides long-term changes in the economy. In fact, things are far worse than the official figures suggest. This matters for...
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The latest social financing figures from China show an economy that is increasingly relying on government debt while private demand for credit remains weak. The strength of the Chinese technology sector and its exporting companies gives enough room for leverage. However, behind the weak private sector credit demand lies an evident economic slowdown that the Chinese government acknowledges, challenging consumption patterns, a significant overcapacity problem, and the depth of the housing crisis.The current economic model, focused on delivering 5% real economic growth, requires larger doses of debt to achieve smaller increments of growth, especially productive sector growth. The government has...
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... I to submit to you, the newly established “Church of Molt” also known as “Crustifarianism.” “Church of what?” you ask. That’s right, the Church of Molt, as in a lobster molting its shell. As crazy as this sounds, this actually occurred just weeks ago when thousands of AI bots were given their own social media platform where they could interact with each other....
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As was true for many conservatives, when I saw the headline saying that the Supreme Court had reversed Trump’s tariffs, I admit that my stomach sank. My first thought was that this was an epic disaster for the Trump administration. More than that, I thought that this is an epic disaster for the strong Trump economy, because tariffs have been a major leg of that stool.AdvertisementThen I took a deep breath and had a couple of useful thoughts. My first thought was, I bet Trump has a backup plan, because he’s always known that this could happen. He’s not the...
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Environmental scholar Bjorn Lomborg recently calculated that across the globe, governments have spent at least $16 trillion feeding the climate change industrial complex. And for what? Arguably, not a single life has been or will be saved by this shameful and colossal misallocation of human resources. The war on safe and abundant fossil fuels has cost countless lives in poor countries and made those countries poorer by blocking affordable energy. Since the global warming crusade started some 30 years ago, the temperature of the planet has not been altered by one-tenth of a degree -- as even the alarmists will...
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There's one utterly reliable thing about socialism: It fails, every time it's tried. It may fail on the national scale, like the Soviet Union, or it may fail on the municipal scale, like New York City is in the throes of doing right now. The "democratic socialist" mayor of the Big Apple, Zohran Mamdani, has never seen a commie policy he didn't like.One of those policies is freezing rents in the city. That's already producing predictable results: Landlords are selling out and leaving.When Zohran Mamdani ran for mayor of New York City, he made one promise unmistakably clear: he would...
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Victor Schwartz, 67, became the face of the battle to strike down the president's controversial tariffs when he sued the government last April. Schwartz has owned VOS Selections in Manhattan since 1987 and feared the tariffs would devastate his small business. He argued that the US President lacked the authority to impose tariffs without congressional approval, becoming one of the few dissenting corporate voices to publicly oppose the fees
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President Trump said on Saturday that he is going to raise his global tariff to 15%, up from 10% he imposed on Friday, after the Supreme Court struck down a set of sweeping global tariffs.
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The Trump Administration will take the following actions in short order to ensure continuity in reaching these goals and as part of our negotiated agreements with numerous trading partners: Immediately impose a temporary 10 percent surcharge on articles imported into the United States, pursuant to Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. Initiate several investigations under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 (“Section 301”) to deal with unjustifiable, unreasonable, discriminatory, and burdensome acts, policies, and practices by many trading partners. We expect these investigations to cover most major trading partners and to address areas of concern such...
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President Donald Trump said Friday he will sign an executive order imposing a new 10% “global tariff,” hours after the Supreme Court struck down his sweeping “reciprocal” import duties in a major rebuke of his trade agenda. The new tariffs will come on top of the existing levies that remain intact following the high court’s decision, Trump said as he raged at the ruling during a White House press briefing.
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