Image is of Trump's initial set of reciprocal tariffs. Source is CNN and Reuters.
It's difficult to keep up with the news around the tariffs; they get instated, then dropped, then reinstated... for example, on Friday, Trump said that certain electronics like smartphones would be exempt, causing markets to rally a great deal, but now the Commerce Secretary has said that they might not be exempt? The state of play right now, if you haven't been keeping up this week, is that the US recently announced a 90-day global pause on implementing the tariffs he had planned (that is, 25% on certain Canadian and Mexican goods, and at least 10% on every other nation) but nonetheless increased tariffs on China to 145%.
Meanwhile, China has been - quite remarkably - standing their ground, increasing tariffs on the US to 125%, and putting restrictions on rare earths. Xi Jinping has been in Vietnam and has made statements against a tariff war there, saying that it would have no winners. Meanwhile, a Chinese spokesperson has essentially said that China can endure the tariff war due to the increasing demand from its domestic market in combination with its growing economic ties with other countries.
Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Is anyone here who is good at economic bullshit? Lots of companies ran by private equity have gone bankrupt recently and I'm sure more will go bankrupt now because of the tariffs (and because bankrupting companies is their entire business model). So when does that start effecting the underlying securities, like CLOs - securities that contain these toxic loans and were mostly bought up by ETFs and big pension funds everywhere? When the real estate market started weakening in 2007, it took over a year for the banks to start revaluing the underlying securities.
You picked a good day to ask that question:
https://www.ft.com/content/42a7bacb-05f3-4c04-80eb-c29b9f720d8d
https://archive.is/T3fSr
One thing to note here is that CLOs are usually made up of senior secured loans, meaning they are at the top of the capital stack and secured by actually assets that are, in theory, equal to the value of the loans. This is important in the case of a bankruptcy. Senior secured lenders get paid first in a bankruptcy and are going to have the best recovery rate (the amount of debt outstanding that they actually get back). There's still risk of exposure to junk grade stuff as the economy potentially cools/goes into a recession and borrowers get downgraded by credit agencies.
https://www.ft.com/content/ae51bf73-a50a-4140-a187-084af2cc25f5
https://archive.is/T0jKE
Damn, awesome timing! Thanks.
Retail just loves piling into stupid investments, that is amazing. How do they even know about this? Are there celebrity ETF managers out there? Does ETF have its own Cathie Wood or Elon Musk?
Yea, this article talks about ETFs trading at a discount, but what are the mechanics of the CLOs they hold? When do those get revalued, I'm guessing only after the bankruptcy proceedings (when they happen) are done and it is precisely known how much money was lost inside the specific CLO and they have to be revalued, or do the banks just do it whenever they feel like it? Because even if the company is no longer paying back its insane adjustable-rate loan, everyone probably presumes that they will get the full value of the loan back in bankruptcy (lol), right?
Not sure when you wrote this, read the second article I added if you haven't
The simplest answer is "when they are sold". What FT means by that is that bonds aren't sold on an exchange like stocks or ETFs are, and are instead traded less frequently and usually sold through broker-dealers (over-the-counter), so the whole process is decentralized and it can take a while for prices to adjust. Stocks and ETFs are sold on exchanges and are price in real time due to being traded more and market makers keeping the market relatively liquid
One of the things that not talked about in here, which gives me some concer, is what's known as "liability management exercises", where companies restructure their debt in a way that brings in new creditors that place them in a "super senior" position above their own senior creditors (which means the new ones get paid out before the old ones) called uptiering, or transferring collateral (what a loan is secured against) to a subsidiary in order to borrow against it again (called a dropdown) even though it's supposed to be collateral in an existing loan. A lot of creditors are behind the curve on protecting against this bullshit that a bunch of lawyers created, and big ETFs that own this stuff aren't necessarily going to be monitoring everything they hold to make sure their collateral or position in the capital stack has been eroded the same way a traditional creditor would.
Ah, I will read it, thanks. I clicked on your post right as you wrote it.
Damn, so there is extra bullshit on top of bullshit that I already don't fully understand. That is awesome. I'm guessing that the banks don't really care about the new "super senior" stuff, since this time (unlike 2008) they don't own anything in the chain, once they sell the CLO to a pension fund the banks are no longer at risk from any side of the equation. And that is assuming that private equity didn't already squeeze everything out of the company before it goes bankrupt, like selling its assets and real estate and then doing lease-back for it.
Thanks for the info, it sucks!
[edit]
That is huge! O_o
Ah! I guess this is new?
I just went back and answered your question about pricing in my last comment, fyi.
The banks absolutely care, it's just that all of this stuff is still somewhat new. There was just a big test case today where NY State court upheld an uptiering transaction (Mitel Networking). There's even a whole term for this whole thing, "creditor on creditor violence" lol. There are more lenders that are putting in protections against LMEs into their credit agreements with debtors, but generally the bankers are behind the lawyers in terms of this shit (except for the big guys who can pay the real cutthroat big law firms).
I will check it out, thanks!
I'd absolutely watch that show!
One of those new things we learn about when things are going totally fine
just a normal, healthy economy producing goods and services with all of this invested capital instead of melting it all down to sell for scrap, you betcha
look at 'fair value hierarchy'
No, those are fairly standard. The CLO managers would be required to start selling off the loans they own, and potentially lower tranche owners wouldn't get paid as a result.
Look at ARKK
Oh, I'm looking! I love Cathie. I was talking about the CLO business specifically.