S&P joins the Nasdaq in correction territory today - the Nasdaq had entered correction territory last week:
Wall Street tumbles to its first ‘correction’ since 2023 amid Trump’s escalating trade war
Economy Mar 13, 2025
NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street’s sell-off hit a new low Thursday after President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war dragged the S&P 500 more than 10 percent below its record, which was set just last month.

Over the past two months, the United States has confronted a bitter truth: President Trump has taken a blowtorch to our country and wielded chaos like a weapon.
Most Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, have caved to his every whim. The Grand Old Party has devolved into a crowd of Trump sycophants and MAGA radicals who seem to want to burn everything to the ground.
As I have said many times, there are no winners in a government shutdown. But there are certainly victims. This week Democrats offered a way out: Fund the government for another month to give appropriators more time to do their jobs. Republicans rejected this proposal.
That leads Democrats to a difficult decision: Either proceed with the bill before us or risk Mr. Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown. This, in my view, is no choice at all.
For sure, the Republican bill is a terrible option. It is deeply partisan. It doesn’t address this country’s needs. But even if the White House says differently, Mr. Trump and Elon Musk want a shutdown. We should not give them one. The risk of allowing the president to take even more power via a government shutdown is a much worse path.
To be clear: No one on my side of the aisle wants a government shutdown. Members who support this continuing resolution do not want that. Members who oppose it do not want that. As bad as passing the continuing resolution would be, I believe a government shutdown is far worse.
First, a shutdown would give Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk permission to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now. Under a shutdown, the Trump administration would have wide-ranging authority to deem whole agencies, programs and personnel nonessential, furloughing staff members with no promise they would ever be rehired.
Second, In a protracted shutdown, House and Senate Republicans could bring bills to the floor to reopen only their favored departments and agencies while leaving other vital services that they don’t like to languish.
Third, shutdowns mean real pain for American families. For example, a shutdown could cause regional Veterans Affairs offices to reduce even more of their staffs, further delay benefits processing and curtail mental health services — abandoning veterans who earned, and depend on, those resources.
A shutdown could continue to slash the administrative staffs at Social Security offices — delaying applications and benefit adjustments and forcing seniors to wait even longer for their benefits.
A shutdown could further stall federal court cases and furlough critical staff members — denying victims and defendants alike their day in court, dragging out appeals and clogging the justice system for months or years.
Finally, a shutdown would be the best distraction Donald Trump could ask for from his awful agenda. Right now, Mr. Trump owns the chaos in the government. He owns the chaos in the stock market. He owns the damage happening to our economy. The stock market is falling, and consumer confidence is plummeting.
In a shutdown, we would be busy fighting with Republicans over which agencies to reopen and which to keep closed instead of debating the damage Mr. Trump’s agenda is causing.
I believe it is my job to make the best choice for the country, to minimize the harms to the American people. Therefore, I will vote to keep the government open.

Junk bonds are finally unraveling. Also YTD cash as in SNAXX is handily besting bank loan funds - the stars of the past couple years. Bank loan funds hold below investment grade debt. Cash is also besting the CLO ETFs both the higher rated ones such as JAAA with the lower rated ones such as JBBB which is negative on the year. JBBB had seen mid teen double digit gains in each of the past two years. Something is certainly afoot.

In a flurry of news releases, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the agency will roll back some of President Joe Biden’s most consequential climate and environmental regulations. He specifically cited rules aimed at speeding the nation’s shift to electric vehicles, slashing planet-warming emissions from power plants and safeguarding waterways from harmful pollution.
Taken together, the announcements herald a seismic shift in U.S. environmental policy, one that could ease restrictions on nearly every sector of the economy. Yet rewriting many of the rules could take the agency months or even years.
“Today is the most consequential day of deregulation in American history,” Zeldin wrote in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. “We are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age.”
Zeldin confirmed in the piece that the Trump administration will repeal a scientific finding underpinning much of the federal government’s push to combat climate change. The Washington Post first reported last month that the administration will target the “endangerment finding,” which cleared the way for regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act by concluding that the planet-warming gases pose a threat to public health and welfare.
Environmentalists criticized the EPA’s actions Wednesday: “Corporate polluters are celebrating today because Trump’s EPA just handed them a free pass to spew unlimited climate pollution, consequences be damned,” Charles Harper, the power sector senior policy lead at the climate advocacy group Evergreen Action, said in a statement.
Business groups cheered the moves, with coal advocates specifically praising the reconsideration of the power plant rules, which would have pushed all coal plants by 2039 to either capture their carbon dioxide emissions or shut down.
“The standard is so extreme that it’s virtually impossible to comply with,” Ernie Thrasher, CEO of the coal supplier XCoal Energy and Resources, said in an interview. “It’s the consumers who have been strangled with regulation.”

Eggs are not "eggs". They come in many grades and varieties. One store that we visit each week has at least six different types of eggs, varying on size, color, and feeding/living conditions of the laying chickens. The prices range from approximately $5 to $12 per dozen. This particular store happens to be in a Northern California agricultural area which has been an egg and chicken producing center for at least 100 years, so the store has local access to many types of available eggs..

https://www.thestreet.com/automotive/uaw-president-offers-straight-talk-to-workers-on-tariffs
the labor leader said that the country's labor force has been in crisis mode since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed and that there is "no other issue "that has affected our economy and working-class people.
"We’re in a triage situation," Fain said on the program. "Tariffs are an attempt to stop the bleeding from the hemorrhaging of jobs in America for the last 33 years.

@WABAC,
The cat is out of the bag.
Peter Navarro is on TV right now. He said "Tariffs equal to Tax cuts." If any one was waiting for it to be spelled out, now they have it.