Math is Hard

 "These countries around the world have had 70 years to do the right thing by the American people and they have chosen not to. They have ripped off American workers. They have taken our jobs overseas. The president is putting an end to that yesterday."   - Karoline Leavitt. https://trt.global/world/article/a91f07174f64

This got me because I will turn 70 this year, so the math was pretty simple.  70 years ago is 1955, and not sure what countries she is talking about - most countries were still recovering from WWII.  China, Japan and Germany were pretty messed up and England and France were just getting their act together.  If anything they were all still buying stuff from the US, and but we were pretty happy just building stuff for the growing baby-boom generation.  

What she might have said was about 50 years ago, when Nixon opened up relationships with China - but we still were not doing much about trade then.

She could have said it was around 40 years ago when Reagan and the Republicans started changing the tax laws to benefit corporations, and companies started to move production overseas to increase profits.  Had to keep those new 401K plans growing somehow....

She could have said 30 years ago, when the Democrats wanted to use targeted tariffs against China and were shot down by the Republicans.  

I am also trying to find where countries like Vietnam ripped off American workers when the companies exporting from there are American companies who left China in the last 20 years.  We thought then that was a good thing.  Least we could do for a country we bombed that is still digging up explosives today.

The reason the stock market is down is that it is not China, or other countries that are necessarily the problem, when Apple, Tesla and GM all built factories over there to take advantage of the Chinese market and of course pass some savings on to US customers, but also the fact that if these sales drop, then the profit that would have come back to America is also cut off…..

Anyway, this just goes to prove that Karoline does not have a good grasp of math…

"Blimey! This redistribution of wealth Is trickier than I thought!"  Dennis Moore - Monty Python

originally posted to my Facebook account 4/5/2025

Is this a shell game?

 Okay - A prediction - or maybe some homework.

In a perfect world you buy a stock and it goes up.  You sell the stock to someone and it goes up again.  They sell the stock and again it goes up.  In this “staircase” model, no one loses, it is just a function of time.  

Now when a stock goes down, two things could have happened.  First, the person bought at a lower price and they have lost value but not principal.  However, for the price to have gone up, someone must have bought at that price - they are losing money.  There are winners and losers.  Now, if you have the ability to hang on to the stock and not be forced to sell, IF the stock goes back up, you could regain those losses and maybe even make money, or at least minimize the losses.  But if you are drawing on that money, say to fund your retirement, they are definite losses.

So here is the homework.  When these people sell at a loss, who is buying?  I see two possible choices.  Before we look into them, these people have to have spare money.  Buying on margin in this situation can be a dangerous gamble.  So we assume the people (or companies) are well funded.  I think this leaves two entities.  First the companies themselves, buying back their own stock.  Second will be large capital investment companies, or wealthy individuals who can afford to take a loss, or use it as a write off.  Thus I see wealth being consolidated from the general population (mostly 401Ks) back to a smaller group of individuals and companies.  Watch who buys.

That and giving them a potential tax break, will actually do just the opposite of the proposed result of the tariffs.  It will not bring jobs back to the US, it will hurt many people’s retirement funding (the immediate sacrifice) yet continue to expand the national debt, resulting in even more pain for our children and our grandchildren….. 

Two sides of the same coin.