Month: April 2025

Trump’s Tariffs: ‘The Most Profound, Harmful and Unnecessary Economic Error in the Modern Era’

Buck Banks

“If you failed to spot America being ‘looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far’ or it being cruelly denied a ‘turn to prosper’, then congratulations: you have a firmer grip on reality than the president of the United States. … It’s hard to know which is more unsettling: that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel about its most successful and admired economy. Or the fact that on April 2nd, spurred on by his delusions, Donald Trump announced the biggest break in America’s trade policy in over a century—and committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era.”

— The Economist

U.S. Layoffs Hit Rise 205% in March

Buck Banks

205%

Layoffs across the U.S. surged 205% in March when compared with a year earlier, with last month’s 275,240 job cuts fueled by widespread firings engineered by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. reports CBS. March’s layoffs represent the third-highest monthly total ever recorded, Challenger said. The two previous highest monthly totals were recorded in April 2020 and May 2020, when more than 671,000 and 397,000 job cuts, respectively, were recorded, due to the pandemic shuttering the U.S. economy, according to its data.

World’s List of Billionaires Tops 3,000

Buck Banks

3,028

The ranks of the monocle-wearing class are growing: Forbes has found there are now 3,028 billionaires on the planet. That’s a whole lot more than the 140 the magazine located when it started keeping a list in 1987. Twenty years later, there were 1,000 in total, and by 2017, the roll of the richest had reached 2,000. As of last year, there were 2,781. And it’s not just that there are more billionaires, it’s also that those in the rarest air are even richer than in years past—as of March 7, the world’s billionaires boasted a combined worth of $16.1 trillion, which is almost $2 trillion more than a year ago.

Mike Waltz Had at Least 20 Sensitive Signal Chats

Buck Banks

20

“National security adviser Mike Waltz’s team regularly set up chats on Signal to coordinate official work on issues including Ukraine, China, Gaza, Middle East policy, Africa and Europe, according to four people who have been personally added to Signal chats,” Politico reports. “Two of the people said they were in or have direct knowledge of at least 20 such chats. All four said they saw instances of sensitive information being discussed.”