NewsFlash

Keep the news coming Nan, I like your summaries. In June last year my wife decided to cash in her Roth IRA and buy 2 houses to let over here, which we have duly done, in our subdivision. Even without predicting the Trump win and possible wrecking of the economy it was a good move by her to diversify into a different class of assets and currency.

60% of US oil comes from Mexico and Canada so that is a big stick they carry. Mark Carney (Canadian PM next month?) says that the oil Canada sells to the USA is well below market price so maybe they will put up the price. I’d like to see Canada impose 100% tariffs on Tesla cars. Hit the oligarchs where it hurts.

Will do. It's helping me stay sane. (I'm glad I learned to plagiarize so well, when in uni!)

Oh yeah on fuel. It will bite. As will the fact that  25% tariff on car parts, most of which are manufactured in Mexico or Canada, will potentially, eventually put USA production lines into a gear-lock if it goes on for any lengthy period of time. Which will cause layoffs.  Which will hit a LOT of people hard who are dependent on that industry and it's supply chain, and then on the downside of the spending chain. Stores, mortgages, discretionary spending....  "Econ 101 book - how to destroy an economy, see appendix 1."  [The advice I've gotten from gearheads is to get the parts for any car work soon if I will need them in the next few years - which I will - and replace my car battery if it's within sight of it's end-of-life. The prices on them are going to skyrocket.]

One running theory on why China only got hit with 10% instead of the standard 25% - guess where all the Tesla parts are made, and in whose ginormous factory there?

I was at our local farm stand this morning (I braved 18F for fresh lettuce for the guinea pig and getting some fresh seed packets) and thank the stars I know how to garden and have a place to do it. And how to dehydrate and can food to preserve it for out-of-season. Most of the produce in there was labeled as coming from Mexico, Peru, and California. Between the tariffs, fuel costs for transportation, and problems with the climate in California (and the lack of field-hands), prices will shoot up. The cost of trucking lettuce 4,000 miles is going to start biting soon. I can't imagine that flying it in from Peru would be any cheaper if aviation fuel spikes up.  Prices in the stores are already rising - I wonder how the Orange One is going to pin THAT on DEI? [Speaking of orange - the Florida citrus crop shows signs of collapsing from both disease and weather. That means imported oranges/juice. From one of those "darkie" countries down south - gasp!    ]

Worse news - H5N9 has been detected in a duck flock in California. That is bad, very bad. (Sorry to be dramatic, but it seems to indicate reassortment, a term that no scientist I've ever heard doesn't flinch when mentioning  in relation to influenza.) They don't know yet how widespread it is. The Orange One and cronies have gutted the CDC and thrown academic scientific research into chaos by freezing funding for salaries and all related expenses (including publishing and travel to conferences, etc.). So nobody actually knows how bad it is - other than nobody will have immunity to it, really.

I have a decent pot of cash saved up. Not huge, but a cushion against unforeseen disasters. I had been feeling bad for not having bought a house when we first got back to the States. Now I'm thinking it may have been a blessing in disguise, as I'm not tied down.  I haven't looked at the 403b part of my savings in a couple of weeks and am not going to for a while, as my stomach is just starting to calm back down and there's nothing I can do about it anyway. I wasn't planning to pull money out of there for another decade, but might have borrowed from it for a home down payment. Since I'm now reasonably sure we'll be moving on, once I can sort out where (and how - see other post), it's best I just leave what's there in there and hope it'll perk back up over time.

The deja vu here is just overwhelming at times. 

We seem to have bombed Somalia. WTF?  Wonder what the local administration had to do to get Trump to order that on their behalf (which is the official story)?

https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-says-he-ordered-airstrikes-islamic-state-somalia-2025-02-01/

EEEEEEK! Oh. My. Gawds.    Have a backup plan in case your social security or government pension doesn't show up as it should.


"Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency full access to the federal payment system late on Friday, according to three people familiar with the change, handing Elon Musk and the team he is leading a powerful tool to monitor and potentially limit government spending.

The new authority follows a standoff this week with a top Treasury official who had resisted allowing Mr. Musk’s lieutenants into the department’s payment system, which sends out money on behalf of the entire federal government. The official, a career civil servant named David Lebryk, was put on leave and then suddenly retired on Friday after the dispute, according to people familiar with his exit...."

[snip]

"Mr. Lebryk, the career Treasury official who retired on Friday, had resisted requests from members of Mr. Trump’s transition team for access to the data last month. After Mr. Trump took office, the White House indicated that he should be removed from the job and, according to a person familiar with the matter, Mr. Bessent suggested putting him on leave.

Democrats raised alarm this week that the Trump administration and Mr. Bessent, who was just confirmed by the Senate this week, were compromising the federal government’s payments system.

“To put it bluntly, these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy,” Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote in a letter to Mr. Bessent on Friday. “I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/us/politics/elon-musk-doge-federal-payments-system.html

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/31/politics/doge-treasury-department-federal-spending/index.html

"Top advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are asking the agency’s acting director to explain the abrupt removal of information and data from CDC websites, and say when it will be restored.  In a sharply worded letter sent Saturday, the group asked Acting Director Susan Monarez what the rationale was for removing the data, if the consequences and legal authority of such a decision were considered, what was being done to safeguard the data sets that were removed, and when access to them would return. The letter asks for answers by Feb. 7 and also requests that Monarez convene the advisory committee as soon as possible, to discuss what it called “these unusual developments.”

“Silence is not an option right now,” said one advisory board member, Daniel Dawes, a health policy expert and the author of “The Political Determinants of Health.” “I try to use the term unprecedented sparingly, but I believe this is an unprecedented moment. There will be dire consequences if they do not restore this information and it may not come back if we do not speak out.” The CDC’s advisory board was created by Congress and includes 12 physicians and public health researchers. Nine of those members signed the letter. Some were overseas or could not be reached, Dawes said.

[snip]

The CDC on Friday began to remove websites and data sets “that inculcate or promote gender ideology,” in order to comply with a 5 p.m. deadline set by President Trump. Gone were pages related to transgender issues and medicine — a particular target of this administration.  Also gone were pages dealing with HIV surveillance, a social vulnerability index that measures how well counties might respond to disasters, survey results from the Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System, long Covid data, and the agency’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

Assessing and monitoring population health status is the CDC’s “essential public health service,” said the letter, adding “without warning, explanation, or justification from CDC, major datasets developed for this very purpose became inaccessible on the CDCs website.” The letter specifically called for the restoration of the Atlas of HIV, Hepatitis, TB, and Social Determinants of Health Data; the Social Vulnerability Index; the Environmental Justice Index; and the Youth Risk Factor Behavioral Surveillance System. It called these resources “tools that allow people all across the country to understand the health of their communities.”  “People might think ‘It’s just a data set,” said Dawes. “It’s more than a data set, it’s years and years of collecting data, analyzing data, and putting it into a format that communities can use, literally, to extend their lives.”

[snip]

The CDC’s action Friday led to a flurry of scientists attempting to archive data sets themselves and advising others to do so. Some were turning to the Wayback Machine, which has nearly 50 million government pages archived. Concern about the removal of federal websites and access to government data extended beyond the CDC advisory group. The Sierra Club called the deletion of websites and climate information “a modern day book burning” and said it could harm American families who rely on such taxpayer-funded data to stay safe during disasters.

The board of the Association of Health Care Journalists sent a letter to the acting heads of the CDC and Department of Health and Human Services urging access to health data be restored so journalists could “give the public essential and timely health information.” According to its charter, the advisory board is authorized by Congress to make recommendations to the director on how to prioritize activities, improve performance, develop the agency’s strategic plan, provide advice on grants and contracts, and create subcommittees.  The group’s work and even existence has been subject to politics in the past. It was disbanded by Trump-appointed CDC director Robert Redfield in 2019 and reformulated by President Biden’s CDC director Rochelle Walensky in 2021.

Dawes said the advisory board members were fully aware of the politics swirling around them and the agency they have advised and that the letter they sent Saturday may be their final act.  “We all discussed that,” he said. “We expect to be fired.”



https://www.statnews.com/2025/02/01/cdc-data-websites-removed-advisers-ask-acting-director-explain-resotre/

I wonder what February will bring.

I hate to think about it, really.   

There's this....



https://bsky.app/profile/genmhayden.bsky.social/post/3lh6a65lgx226

And this


"Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada laid out more than $100 billion in retaliatory tariffs against the United States late Saturday, in a forceful response to President Trump’s decision to impose levies on a range of Canadian goods. But he made clear that Canada was doing so reluctantly.
“We don’t want to be here,” Mr. Trudeau said in a somber televised address from Ottawa that evoked the deep bonds between the two neighbors and close trading partners. “We didn’t ask for this.”

[snip]


Part of Mr. Trudeau’s speech addressed Mr. Trump’s claim that Canada is responsible for a major influx of fentanyl and irregular migrants into the United States. In response, Mr. Trudeau presented recent data showing that only about 1 percent of fentanyl in the United States originates in Canada. He also said that about the same percentage of irregular crossings into the U.S. occur at the northern border.

But he also focused on the historically close ties between Canada and the U.S., including military cooperation in two world wars as well as the Korean War and the war in Afghanistan. “From the beaches of Normandy to the mountains of the Korean Peninsula, from the fields of Flanders to the streets of Kandahar, we have fought and died alongside you during your darkest hours,” he said."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/us/politics/canada-trump-tariffs.html
https://toronto.citynews.ca/2025/02/01/trudeau-announces-25-per-cent-retailiatory-tariffs-on-u-s-goods-starting-tuesday/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4z23kndlyo



So they are fracturing us away from our allies. I assume NATO will be next.

I feel literally nauseous.

So they are fracturing us away from our allies. I assume NATO will be next.

He may well pull out of the NATO alliance and may target some NATO countries with tariffs, and in particular he has said the EU could be next. (The EU trades as a block and the USA and has a trade deficit with the EU in that the US imports more than it exports). The UK trades with the US outside of the EU and the US has a trade surplus with the UK in that the US  exports more to the UK than it imports so it is unlikely that the US will impose tariffs on countries with which it has a trade surplus. This fentanyl reason is just a smoke screen for wanting to lower the trade deficits that the US has with many countries.

The UK, along with The Netherlands, Germany and China, also has Tesla factories which may also affect any tariff considerations (given the business interests of Trump's chief financial adviser.)

An hour ago Trump just posted the real reason for tariffs on Canada.

We pay hundreds of Billions of Dollars to SUBSIDIZE Canada. Why? There is no reason. We don’t need anything they have. We have unlimited Energy, should make our own Cars, and have more Lumber than we can ever use. Without this massive subsidy, Canada ceases to exist as a viable Country. Harsh but true! Therefore, Canada should become our Cherished 51st State. Much lower taxes, and far better military protection for the people of Canada — AND NO TARIFFS!

60% of US imports of oil come from Canada, the USA is a long way from being energy independent, plus 30 States receive some of their actual electricity directly from power lines running to Canada.

Yup.

And here's an "I F'ING TOLD YOU SO. THE EXPERTS ALL TOLD YOU SO, BUT DID YOU LISTEN?  NOOOOOOO" for the morning before I go take another roofie and sign off for the day.



On the frontline against bird flu, egg farmers fear they're losing the battle
February 2, 20255:00 AM ET
From Michigan Public
By
Kate Wells

Greg Herbruck knew 6.5 million of his birds needed to die, and fast. But the CEO of Herbruck's Poultry Ranch wasn't sure how the third-generation family egg producer (one of the largest in the US) was going to get through this round of avian flu, financially or emotionally. One staffer broke down in Herbruck's office in tears. "The mental toll on our team of dealing with that many dead chickens is just, I mean, you can't imagine it," Herbruck said. "I didn't sleep. Our team didn't sleep." The stress of watching tens of thousands of sick birds die of avian flu each day, while millions of others wait to be euthanized, kept everyone awake.

In April 2024, as his first hens tested positive for Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1, Herbruck turned to the tried and true USDA playbook, the "stamping out" strategy that helped end the 2014-2015 bird flu outbreak, which was the largest in the US until now. Within 24-48 hours of the first detection of the virus, state and federal animal health officials work with farms to cull infected flocks to reduce the risk of transmission. That's followed by extensive disinfection and months of surveillance and testing to make sure the virus isn't still lurking somewhere on site. Since then, egg farms have had to invest millions of dollars into biosecurity. Employees shower in and shower out, before they start working and after their shifts ends to prevent spreading the virus. A sign outside Herbruck’s Poultry Ranch in Saranac, Michigan, one of the largest egg producers in the US. Since the last bird flu outbreak in 2015, farms have invested millions of dollars into biosecurity.  But none of that has been enough to contain the outbreak that started three years ago.

This time, the risk to human health is only growing, experts say. Sixty-six of the 68 total human cases in the United States have been just since March, including the first human death in this country earlier this month. "The last six months have accelerated my concern, which was already high," said Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious diseases physician and the founding director of Boston University's Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases. Controlling this virus has become more challenging, precisely because it's so entrenched in the global environment, spilling into mammals such as dairy cows, and affecting 147 million birds in commercial and backyard flocks in the US.

Because laying hens are so susceptible to the H5N1 virus, which can wipe out entire flocks within days of the first infection, egg producers have been on the frontline in the fight against various bird flu strains for years now. But this moment feels different. Egg producers and the American Egg Board are begging for a new approach. Many infectious disease experts agree that the risks to human health of continuing current protocols is unsustainable, because of the strain of bird flu driving this outbreak.

"The one we're battling today is unique," said David Swayne, the former lab director of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory (SEPRL) and a leading national expert in avian influenza.  "It's not saying for sure there's gonna be a pandemic" of H5N1, Swayne said, "but it's saying the more human infections, the spreading into multiple mammal species is concerning."


uh huh.

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/02/02/nx-s1-5282389/avian-bird-flu-eggs-prices-cull-usda-michigan-poultry-influenza-farmer-vaccination-h5n1

An hour ago Trump just posted the real reason for tariffs on Canada.

60% of US imports of oil come from Canada, the USA is a long way from being energy independent, plus 30 States receive some of their actual electricity directly from power lines running to Canada.

He's gone completely bat-crackers. 

[Oh, and that 60% figure is how much of the imported oil comes from Canada, not how much oil is used in the USA. In recent years the US has exported more than it's imported. Which is bizarre, as why the hell would we import oil only to export it again? Probably for a profit.  NY State gets electricity from Canada, so yep, I'm aware of the rest of it.]

[Oh, and that 60% figure is how much of the imported oil comes from Canada, not how much oil is used in the USA. In recent years the US has exported more than it's imported. Which is bizarre, as why the hell would we import oil only to export it again? Probably for a profit.  NY State gets electricity from Canada, so yep, I'm aware of the rest of it.]

I think I said exactly that - 60% of imports

It is probably to do with the value and quality of the oil as to what is consumed and what is exported. If you can extract much more valuable oil ( “sweet crude”?) than it costs you to import then you may well sell the good stuff and keep the cheap stuff if it is only going to be used for fuel oil and gasoline. The good stuff may well be    better suited for making plastics and the like if it has fewer impurities

Yes you did. I need more caffeine and more sleep at the same time!


And now he's gone after those poor Venezuelan refugees.... 

And now he's gone after those poor Venezuelan refugees.... 

I’ve not seen that, but am hardly surprised.