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Home » Open thread 4/5/2025

Open thread 4/5/2025

The New Neo Posted on by

The video I chose for today has embedding disabled. It’s about how people used to preserve food before refrigerators. That may not sound all that interesting to you, but I found it quite fascinating. So if you want to watch it, click here.

Comments

Open thread 4/5/2025 — 20 Comments

  1. I remember my Grandmother’s meat safe. A cool cupboard with tiny wire mesh across it. She still used it in the sixties until my mum bought her a fridge.

  2. David– All the houses in my neighborhood, built in the 1930s, had those. My parents called it a “cooler” and my dad put a piece of plywood over it because it let dust filter into the cabinet from outside. We had a refrigerator, so its original purpose was not needed.

  3. I hate linking to things from Instapundit because I assume most here have already read. But just in case you missed it, I think this is pretty good from Bill Ackman.

    https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1908329277033979993

    The market is simply responding to Trump’s shock and awe negotiating strategy and factoring in some probability that it will fail or otherwise lead to an extended period of uncertainty that will sink us into a recession.

    The market decline has been compounded by losses incurred at so-called pod shops and other highly levered market participants that have been forced to liquidate positions as markets have declined.

    Read the whole thing as they say. The quotes above are part of a much bigger point he is making. Ackman is on the list of people I always pay attention to. Doesn’t mean I think he’s always right, but his good-points-to-words-written ratio is particularly high.

    By the way, I have no idea what a pod shop is. I assume it’s a typo.

  5. Thanks. Suppose I should have googled. I assumed he meant “prop shop”, which is short for proprietary trading.

  6. Kate,
    Do you have any more information on the North Carolina appellate court decision re: Judge Griffin? Jeff Childers covered it in today’s Coffee and Covid post but did not say whether or not it invalidated the election result. Also, not quite clear if the appellate court decision can be appealed to the State Supreme Court.

  8. Molly Brown, it is expected the Appeals Court ruling will be appealed to the NC Supreme Court. However, that court is currently 5-2 Republican, so my guess is the ruling will stand. (The plaintiff, Griffin, serves on the Appeals Court currently and recused himself.) The ruling, if implemented, will not immediately invalidate the election result. The voters whose ballots are in question had incomplete registration information or lacked photo ID. The ruling would allow those voters fifteen days to provide the missing information or ID for their votes to be counted. Since these were mail-in ballots or provisionals, they can be found and the invalid votes can be removed from totals.

    There is no guarantee this will change the total in Griffin’s favor, but Republicans think it may. So do Democrats, which is why they are fighting this so hard. If Riggs, the Democrat, wins, it will be easier for Dems to try to get control of the SC before the 2030 redistricting. If Griffin wins, the Court will be 6-1 Republican and likely to stay in Republican control for a long time.

    https://www.carolinajournal.com/appeals-court-orders-new-vote-calculations-in-nc-supreme-court-election-dispute/

  9. Mike Plaiss, I think that Bill Ackman X link describes what Trump is doing correctly. For those without X:

    .
    @VDHanson
    makes a compelling case for the
    @realDonaldTrump
    tariff strategy, but gets one issue incorrect. He describes the Trump tariffs as reciprocal and proportional to those other nations have assessed on us.

    In actuality, the Trump tariffs were set at levels substantially above, and in many cases, at a multiple of the counterparty country’s tariff levels.

    Initially, the market responded favorably, up more than one percent when Trump referred to ‘reciprocal tariffs’ in his Rose Garden speech. It was only when he put up a chart showing the actual tariffs that the markets plunged.

    We can divine from this response that market participants are supportive of the administration using tariffs as a tool to lower the asymmetrical tariffs of our trading partners, but are highly concerned with tariff levels set well in excess of a corresponding country’s levels.

    So why did Trump take this approach?

    The answer goes back to ‘The Art of the Deal.’ Trump’s negotiating style is to ask for the moon and then settle somewhere in between. It has worked well for him in the past so he is using the same approach here.

    The market’s response is due to the fear that if this strategy fails and the tariffs stay in place, they will plunge our economy into a recession. And we don’t need to wait for failure as it doesn’t take long for a high degree of uncertainty to cause economic activity to slow.

    Press reports today have said that all deals are now on hold. This is not surprising. Capitalism is a confidence game. Uncertainty is the enemy of business confidence.

    The good news is that a number of countries have already approached the negotiating table to make tariff deals, which suggests that Trump’s strategy is beginning to work. Whether this is enough to settle markets next week is unknowable, but we will find out soon.

    The idea that Wall Street and investors are opposed to the President’s efforts to bring back our industrial base by leveling the tariff playing field is false. Our trading partners have taken advantage of us for decades after tariffs were no longer needed to help them rebuild their economies after WWII.

    The market is simply responding to Trump’s shock and awe negotiating strategy and factoring in some probability that it will fail or otherwise lead to an extended period of uncertainty that will sink us into a recession.

    The market decline has been compounded by losses incurred at so-called pod shops and other highly levered market participants that have been forced to liquidate positions as markets have declined.

    Stocks of even the best companies are now trading at the cheapest valuations we have seen since Covid. If the President makes continued progress on tariff deals, uncertainty will be reduced, and the market will begin to recover.

    As more countries come to the table, those that have held out or have reciprocated with higher tariffs will have growing concerns about being left behind. This should cause more countries to negotiate deals until we reach a tipping point where it is clear that the strategy will succeed. When this occurs, stocks will soar.

    Trump’s strategy is not without risk, but I wouldn’t bet against him. The more that markets support the President and his strategy, the higher the probability that he succeeds, so a stable hand on the trading wheel is a patriotic one.

    An important characteristic of a great leader is a willingness to change course when the facts change or when the initial strategy is not working. We have seen Trump do this before. Two days in, however, it is much too early to form a view about his tariff strategy.

    Trump cares enormously about our economy and the stock market as a measure of his performance. If the current strategy works, he will continue to execute on it. If it needs to be tweaked or changed, I expect he will make the necessary changes. Based on the early read, his strategy appears to be working.

    Let’s help him succeed. It’s the least we can do.

  11. Can someone recommend a good website and/or blog for economic and market news? I mean, a site I could bookmark and make a part of my daily browsing routine.

    Also: how can I embed a picture/avatar image next to my name in the comments section?

    Thanks to all.

  12. The talk today is the losses of Market Cap. When stocks go back up, the press will not talk about the gains in Market Cap.
    Some of those that lost money were not stable to begin with, I imagine.
    My Grandmother canned a lot of things. Granddad built a small building for the food. It kept them cool in Summer and Warm in Winter.

  13. IrishOtter49:

    I did mine by:

    * Go to https://gravatar.com/
    * Click “Get Started Now” button in upper-right.

    It will ask you to set up an account, then you send it your avatar image with which sites it will be used.

    As I recall it’s pretty straightforward.

  16. We take technology like when your refrigerator fails and food becomes unsafe to eat (i found out that lesson the hard way) refrigeration and air condition is quintessential to the modern life style

  17. And here’s the latest delusional/incendiary insanity from the James “WEASEL” Carville Show…

    “…Those cooperating with Trump admin may be treated like Nazi collaborators after WWII”—
    https://nypost.com/2025/04/05/us-news/james-carville-compares-powerful-groups-helping-trump-to-nazi-collaborators/

    Key weasalities:

    … Carville singled out influential Americans and institutions aiding the Trump administration.

    “I’m not saying that these people should be placed in pajamas and have their head shaved, marched down Pennsylvania Avenue and spit on. I’m not saying that, but I’m saying that [it] did happen”

    Speculating about the future, he wondered, “Do you know… what the country is going to feel toward collaborators with this regime?”….

  18. Before refrigeration there were “seasonal” foods. If you look at cookbooks from the 19th century the better ones will tell you what months different foods should be consumed in, and they also give tips for avoiding meat spoilage.

    One of the reasons poor people in Victorian London were so poor is that few of them had any way to store or prepare food, and so had to buy ready-to-eat food and consume it immediately. Which wasn’t cheap then any more than it is now.

    Lots of younger people don’t know how to cook. I’ve made sure my children do.

  19. And you guessed it: there’s far more to that FDA-head firing story than has been reported by the Loyal Keepers Of The Narrative(TM)…

    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/follow-science-why-peter-marks-was-asked-leave-fda

    Key blurb:
    “Peter Marks is not a hero of the resistance but instead has been subverting the scientific process at FDA for years.”

    ALWAYS Remember: when the Corrupt Media tells you something, simply deduce the opposite (or at least understand that if they’re—somehow—NOT subverting the whole story then they’re misrepresenting it by not telling you all the context / background / details…).

  20. From time to time, in old books, there will be a mention of a minor part of life made necessary by issues like…preserving and preserved meat. Lack of sufficient drinking water (castor oil for kids). Not a “hey, look here,” but a morning routine and thence off to school.
    Thank heaven that’s no longer needed.

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