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Comment by TheAlchemist | Hacker News Reader

This is the week when "Tech and Finance bro" start turning against Trump, unless he does something quickly.

Bessent, the only sane member of Trump's cabinet, sounded really worried and stressed last days. This kind of damage, cannot be undone just by saying 'Hey, it was art of the deal'. Confidence in US government is destroyed. Sure there will announcements about 100s or 1000s of Billions that will be invested, but it's just words. Just like DOGE saved how much already ? 1 Trillion $ ? And still not a single person was charged with fraud...

S&P is down 2.5% on 1Y, and up 80% on 5Y, and valuations are at insane, Dot-com bubble levels. If he keeps the tariffs though, the damage can become much much more substantial that this relatively small decline in the markets.

"When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king, the palace becomes a circus" Turkish Proverb.

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Bessent had repeatedly been saying that he wanted to drive down the yield on the 10 year treasury. The stock market sell-off has been somewhat effective in doing this, with the 10 year's yield having been driven down over 50 basis points in the last two months, although I doubt this precipitous selloff is really what he had in mind.

The 10Y is well above its September lows, even before accounting for whatever deficit increasing tax cuts the Republicans will come up with.

Yeah, I saw that. I was just looking at a chart of the yield over the last year. The yield has dropped below where it was for most of the last 12 months, besides a less than three month period from late July to early October last year. If Bessent is listening to people like Dalio though, he may be wanting the yield to go down below 3%, which is what I think Dalio said was necessary to avoid a debt spiral.

I’m sure Trump announcing that he’s considering defaulting on the debt and the 10Y up to its yield from last Monday is all part of the plan too.

Acting like investors won’t reprice treasures as “not the risk free rate” if it’s being transparently manipulated by the government is bad analysis.

I'm not making any attempt at analysis, just casual speculation as to the reasoning behind other peoples' actions. You're mistaking my guess-work of others' analysis for my own.

My key point is the people involved aren’t doing analysis. They are NPCs just like the worst ideologues on the left; it’s just that their brain worms are that goods trade deficits are bad and some sort of theft. You’re coming to wrong theories about what their intent is because you’re assuming they’re reasoning.

>Confidence in US government is destroyed.

That has long been a Republican goal. They want to tear it apart and sell the pieces.

It's their goal, but rather than the typical approach of 'starving the beast' they're just shooting the beast in broad daylight on 5th street. Which I think makes it much harder to ignore the person holding the gun. Outside of the full cult sycophants.

For what gain ?

Profit opportunities for them and their supporters. Buying the pieces at discounted prices. Selling the public the services the government used to provide. Converting costs to externalities. And some believe axiomatically governments are inefficient and businesses are efficient.

Well then they will live in a shittier place with (maybe) a little more money in the bank, which will likely be worth less than it was before the dismantling.

I thought Bessent was one of the architects of this tariff plan?

He was supposed to be. But he was clearly left out of the loop - look for interviews with him from the Liberation Day. He cleary had no clue what just happend and was very nervous.

He clearly is an outsider. He seldom has any idea what is going on and seems panicked. Even Lutnick, despite being used in an unending series of cable news soundbites saying incredibly out of touch, stupid thing, clearly is just a bystander.

Trade policy is being set by Trump, Navarro (you know, the guy who made up a trade expert to launder his own idiotic ideas) and that vile goblin Stephen Miller. An idiot council.

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