#SummerOfScarcity

If you're selective with social media and limit yourself to following smart, savvy—in the good sense—people (which now pretty much means Bluesky), you will often start hearing about the next big story a week or more before everyone else.

Case in point: last week, when everyone was trying to decipher the latest vague and contradictory comment on tariffs out of the White House, those who followed people like Carl Quintanilla knew that the first wave of damage from the tariffs was already on its way (or, more precisely, not on its way), and it was too late to do anything about it.

This information was coming out before and during the huge market rally.

 

Toward the end of the week, this started getting serious coverage. Of the major news orgs, the LA Times seems to have beaten the competition by at least a day or two.

Imports at the Port of Los Angeles are expected to plunge in the next two weeks, even as negotiations over the final tariffs that China and other countries must pay are still being negotiated by President Trump.

That was the sobering message that port Executive Director Gene Seroka had Thursday for the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners during an update on port activity.

“It’s my prediction that in two weeks’ time, arrivals will drop by 35% as essentially all shipments out of China for major retailers and manufacturers have ceased, and cargo coming out of Southeast Asia locations is much softer than normal,” Seroka told the board.

That whole thread from Marshall is worth checking out, particularly the conclusion.

Social media platforms such as Blue Sky have tools that let you decide who to let in and it turns out that these platforms can be pretty great if you only listen to people worth listening to.

Markets can remain high on LSD longer than you can remain solvent.

I'm not sure there has ever been an earnings call as disastrous as Tesla's three days ago. I'm absolutely certain there has never been one this disastrous that was followed by such an inexplicable reaction. As for the disaster: just over a 70% drop in profits, an enormous—perhaps unprecedented—level of brand damage, and a flagship product they couldn't sell before the CEO became one of the most hated men in the world.

Musk basically dropped the pretense of arguing that the car manufacturing business could ever justify the stock price of his company. Instead, he went all in on robots and robotaxis, despite a report leaked to the press a few days ago revealing that Tesla's own internal auditors had determined the self-driving taxi business would actually be a money loser.

But here's the truly amazing part: the markets responded to this train wreck of dumpster fires—this once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a company absolutely implode—by pushing the stock up 17 points over the next couple of days. The P/E ratio is now an eye-watering 142.83.

Tesla now has the worst of both worlds. Musk said he will continue his involvement with (and being the face of) the toxic DOGE movement, while also spending more time in the office tweeting, playing video games, and randomly rage-firing people.

Edward Niedermeyer, who wrote the definitive book on Tesla, probably does the best job capturing the profound insanity of  the call. Here are a few excepts of his very long thread.

"somehow the car business which generates the majority of the company's revenue doesn't matter" because Tesla will never make enough selling cars to justify its valuation, not even if it sold more than Toyota, VW, Ford, and GM combined. The fact that sales are cratering only highlights what has always been obvious.

Make a mental note of that last one.

As recently as October, his robots required human operators to perform tasks as simple as pouring drinks. 

When Noah Smith and Ezra Klein wax poetic about abundance, remember they're getting their ideas from people like Marc (crypto, WeWork 2.0) Andreessen and Elon Musk.

It looks like the proposal is for a modest geo-fenced version that at best matches what competitors have been offering for years. Not an option you'd go with if you had "a general solution to self-driving, present tense."

I also wouldn't be surprised if this was the last we saw of the Cybercab.

Musk has been promising a million robotaxis on the road next year since 2019.

Because Waymo has waymo advanced technology. 

About that...

God, what a loser.

This next part is fun.

As mentioned many times before, Musk learns most of his engineering lines phonetically. Currently there are a number of conversations on Blue Sky with actual experts trying to figure out the original line he mangled.

"Been down so long it looks like up to me" -- a tale told mostly in tweets*

Market Psychology in 2025

"I'm going to lob a half dozen grenades into that building!"

Everyone runs out, screaming and trampling each other.

[Consults with advisors]

"Maybe I'll just lob three grenades into the building."

Everybody runs back in, singing and dancing.

 

We’ve talked about this before. Despite what you’ve heard, the current stock market loves uncertainty—probably because it contains at least the possibility of good news, and traders really want to hear some of that. As far as I can tell (keeping in mind that I am no expert on the financial system in general, and bonds in particular), bond traders remain more traditionally hard-headed in this respect.

Huge surges are sparked by vague, noncommittal statements from a secretary who is currently in a power struggle with Musk and Loomer and who may not outlast those unsustainable tariffs.

While on the subject of uncertainty, you have to wonder how the markets would react under some other administration if the Secretary of the Treasury—who was seen as one of the primary sources of stability in the economy—were to get into a shouting match in broad daylight at the White House with the second (second?) most powerful man in the country.

Putting aside the fact that these new “moderate” tariffs are still sky-high, there is no reason to believe that Trump won’t return to his more extreme position. For starters, Trump and many of his advisors deeply believe in the wisdom of tariffs, though their rationales may differ and even contradict each other.

Trump’s ego—and his favorite negotiating strategy—both depend on maintaining a perception of dominance. It is difficult to imagine the general reaction to this new position not getting under his skin.

It is worth mentioning that even if Powell’s job is secure through the end of his term—something I’m not sure we should necessarily assume—Trump is continuing to interfere with and attempt to intimidate the Fed on a level that, in normal times, would cause an outcry and a substantial reaction from the markets.

"May defend"

Even if we take the tariffs and the firing of Powell off the table, there’s still plenty of bad news to go around.

* Technically not "tweets" but you know what I mean. 

We'll be okay as long as the Silicon Valley grown-up are in charge -- Greenland edition

I'll try to come back to this one with one or two more detailed posts, but for now, here are a few quick observations.

1. This goes a long way toward explaining why the conquest of Greenland remains such a high priority for the White House. I suspect that most people assumed this was just a personal, passing obsession with Trump, when in fact it appears to have considerable support among his backers.

2. The assumption that the sane and sober PayPal Mafia and their hand-picked vice president would be a moderating and stabilizing influence on the administration was always based on a profound misunderstanding of who these people are.

3. The discussion of Greenland's mineral resources was, for me, perhaps the most chilling part. Just coming out and saying we should take them over because they have nice stuff strips away any pretense of justification.

4. Thiel et al. have had this dream for a long time. From Wired (paywalled but discussed here):

THE SEASTEADING INSTITUTE was the toast of tech entrepreneurs when it received financial backing from venture capitalist Peter Thiel in 2008. Its mission was to build a manmade island nation where inventors could work free of heavy-handed government interference. One early rendering shows an island raised on concrete stilts in eerily calm waters. [Spoiler alert: it turned out that the open ocean in the middle of international waters were seldom eerily calm. -- MP]] The buildings atop the platform resemble nothing so much as the swanky tech campus of an entrepreneur’s ultimate dream: No sign of land or civilization in sight. The island, despite appearing strapped for square footage, has room for a full-size swimming pool with deck lounges.

...

Thiel’s reassessment marks a clear departure from tech culture’s unflinching confidence in its ability to self-govern. In recent years a number of prominent entrepreneurs have urged Silicon Valley to create a less inhibited place for its work. Larry Page called on technologists to “set aside a small part of the world” to test new ideas. Elon Musk has aimed at colonizing Mars. And venture capitalist Tim Draper made a proposal to divide Silicon Valley into its own state. But aside from the continued growth of full-service tech campuses such as Google’s and Facebook’s, very little has been accomplished in the way of true societal independence.

One quick side note. While California Forever does have a clear libertarian influence and is modeled after the far-right, white-flight enclave that gave us Matt Gaetz, unlike the Greenland proposal, it is less of a political statement and more of a classic real estate scheme taken from the oldest page in the playbook: Quietly, or even secretly, scoop up land on the cheap, then manipulate the system to get it rezoned. It's a classic because it may be the simplest and easiest way to make a huge windfall profit without breaking any laws (at least most of the time).

Mack DeGeurin writing for Popular Science:

Who is behind the freedom city? 

The Reuters report cites claims Howery, Thiel, and prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreesen are amongst the most prominent names backing the Greenland effort. Howery, who still needs the US Senate to confirm his position as ambassador to Denmark, is reportedly a long-time friend of billionaire Elon Musk and formerly founded a venture capital firm with Thiel. Thiel, meanwhile, has emerged as one of the loudest supporters, both vocally and financially, of the “Seasteading” movement, which is trying to build floating, stateless utopia cities in the ocean. Andressen, notably, is also part of a tech-investor consortium California Forever looking to build the city in Solano County.  Each of these efforts—along with others like the already existing city Próspera in Honduras—are united by libertarian political ideals, a focus on technological development, and lots of money.  

Rumors around the proposed Greenland city date back at least to November 2024 when Praxis co-founder Dryden Brown fired off a series of tweets explaining how he had tried to purchase land in Greenland. Praxis is a self-described “internet-native nation” crypto startup with a stated goal of “restor[ing] Western civilization,” and has reportedly received over $525 million in funding to start building out new cities. Brown told Reuters he has since been approached by several companies to explore establishing a new city on Greenland.

 

Why the obsession with Greenland? 

The idea of the U.S. acquiring Greenland, once widely regarded as a joke during the first Trump administration, has evolved into a serious U.S. foreign policy objective. The president campaigned on the issue during the 2024 election and has since doubled down, despite repeated assertions from Danish officials that the island isn’t for sale. Nevertheless, Vice President J.D. Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, visited a U.S. military installation on the island in March 2024 and delivered a speech urging Greenlanders to voluntarily cut ties with Denmark. (Recent polling shows that an overwhelming majority of Greenland residents oppose the idea of possible annexation by the U.S.) President Trump, meanwhile, has not ruled out the possibility of taking the territory by force.

So why all the obsession with a mostly uninhabitable island with a population of around 57,000? Supporters of Greenland development laid out their arguments during a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation hearing earlier this year. During the hearing, Texas Mineral Resources Board Chairman Anthony Marchese claimed Greenland’s coastline holds what is “indisputably” one of the greatest collections of minerals found in a single jurisdiction. That includes rare earth minerals, which are crucial to powering a plethora of modern consumer electronics devices.

Of course, the chances of people relying on their 401(k)s breaking even are much slimmer

 

 

 

 Though it's highly unlikely that any of them will ever be anything but obscenely rich, most of Trump's billionaire supporters (of which there are alarmingly many) have found the administration’s economic policies—or lack thereof—incredibly costly, both in absolute and relative terms.

 

Trump keeps finding new ways to terrify Wall Street | CNN Business
Allison Morrow

After months of swearing up and down he wouldn’t fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Trump on Thursday reversed course and said Powell’s “termination” couldn’t come soon enough. Stocks fell sharply.

Then US stock traders had a nice three-day weekend — the first sunny and warm spring weather New York City has seen this year — to ponder whether Trump was serious. Perhaps Thursday’s threat was just a bit of bluster from a president prone to tantrums — a one-off social media post that his more stable advisers will surely try to rein in to avoid an all-out panic.

Or…not.

Shortly after the US stock market opened Monday morning, Trump once again attacked Powell for ostensibly not cutting interest rates fast enough. Stocks immediately tumbled and the US dollar fell to its lowest level in three years.

While Trump’s tariff plan has been disruptive, the uncertainty it created had, to an extent, become priced in. Markets famously hate uncertainty, but the 90-day pause on the administration’s most aggressive tariffs offered a measure of reassurance that Trump may relent if there’s enough of a negative reaction.

Attacking the independence of the Federal Reserve is a new level of recklessness that few thought possible. But now even Kevin Hassett, the White House adviser who literally wrote a book arguing against firing the Fed chair, is saying openly that the administration is discussing whether to do so before Powell’s term ends a year from now.

 

At the same time, those plutocrats who happen to be first in line find themselves on the verge of huge, perhaps unprecedented, windfalls from massive and blatantly corrupt government boondoggles.

Among the “My yacht has a yacht” wealthy, it's safe to say that there will be winners and losers, with the latter greatly outnumbering the former. The one name that seems safely in that first group is Peter Thiel. The outcome for Elon Musk, however, is much more uncertain. On one hand, he appears to be in the pole position for billions upon billions of dollars in sweetheart government contracts. On the other hand, he is likely to lose hundreds of billions through the damage that has been done to Tesla. It could well take a quarter of a trillion dollars in graft just to break even.

Christopher Bing and Avi Asher-Schapiro reporting for ProPublica:

GSA is eying Ramp to get a piece of the government’s $700 billion internal expense card program, known as SmartPay. In recent weeks, Trump appointees at GSA have been moving quickly to tap Ramp for a charge card pilot program worth up to $25 million, sources told ProPublica, even as Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency highlights the multitudes of contracts it has canceled across federal agencies.

Founded six years ago, Ramp is backed by some of the most powerful figures in Silicon Valley. One is Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist who was one of Trump’s earliest supporters in the tech world and who spent millions aiding Vice President JD Vance’s Ohio Senate run. Thiel’s firm, Founders Fund, has invested in seven separate rounds of funding for Ramp, according to data from PitchBook. Last year Thiel said there was “no one better positioned” to build products at the intersection of AI and finance.

To date, the company has raised about $2 billion in venture capital, according to startup tracking website Crunchbase, much of it from firms with ties to Trump and Musk. Ramp’s other major financial backers include Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures; Thrive Capital, founded by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner; and 8VC, a firm run by Musk allies. [Specifically Joe Lonsdale -- MP]

The special attention Gruenbaum paid to Ramp raised flags inside and outside the agency. “This goes against all the normal contracting safeguards that are set up to prevent contracts from being awarded based on who you know,” said Scott Amey, the general counsel with the bipartisan Project on Government Oversight. He said career civil servants should lead the process to pick the best choice for taxpayers.

...

Rabois, one of Ramp’s earliest investors, is part of an influential group of tech titans known as the “PayPal Mafia.” Leaders of the early payments company include several influential players surrounding the Trump administration, including Musk and Thiel. Rabois and his husband, Jacob Helberg, hosted a fundraiser that pulled in upwards of $1 million for Trump’s 2024 campaign, according to media reports. Trump has nominated Helberg for a senior role at the State Department.

 

 And it gets worse.

 Mike Stone and Marisa Taylor reporting for Reuters

WASHINGTON, April 17 (Reuters) - Elon Musk's SpaceX and two partners have emerged as frontrunners to win a crucial part of President Donald Trump's "Golden Dome" missile defense shield, six people familiar with the matter said.

...

All three companies were founded by entrepreneurs who have been major political supporters of Trump. Musk has donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump, and now serves as a special adviser to the president working to cut government spending through his Department of Government Efficiency.

...

One of the sources familiar with the talks described them as "a departure from the usual acquisition process. There's an attitude that the national security and defense community has to be sensitive and deferential to Elon Musk because of his role in the government."

SpaceX and Musk have declined to comment on whether Musk is involved in any of the discussions or negotiations involving federal contracts with his businesses.

 But, as Josh Marshall points out, that's not the jaw-dropping part.

 

 

Though not directly related to the IRS story, I have to mention that the "spend more time with his families" joke has gotten much more relevant recently

Remember a couple of weeks ago when everyone assured us that Musk was phasing out his role in government? (discussed here Is Elon stepping back to spend more time with his families?)

Not so much...

From the Guardian via LGM:

 
    Donald Trump is replacing the acting commissioner of the US Internal Revenue Service after treasury secretary Scott Bessent reportedly complained to the president that the agency head had been appointed without his knowledge and under the instruction of Doge leader Elon Musk.

    According to a report from the New York Times published on Friday, Bessent believed that the Doge head “had done an end-run around him” to get Gary Shapley installed as the interim head of the IRS, despite the fact that the IRS reports to Bessent. The report cited five anonymous sources with knowledge of the situation.

 ...

On social media, the conflict between Bessent and Musk was visible as Musk elevated a post from far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer in which she accuses Bessent of collaborating with a “pro-impeachment and pro-censorship Trump hater”, referring to the businessman John Hope Bryant. Musk agreed with Loomer, calling the collaboration “troubling”, on X, the platform he owns.  

Here's a longer quote from Loomer on Bryant:

This DEI hire by Scott Bessent just wants to, you know, proclaim that Donald Trump should resign or that he should be impeached because he was fighting for election integrity and fighting against the stolen election of 2020. I thought that we were getting rid of DEI, and then we get to have these uppity Blacks just walk into the Trump administration and start making demands and acting like they run the Treasury department, and that they should have, like, an active role in the Trump administration while they sit around and try to undermine every initiative that Donald Trump has worked on.

Yes, she did just unironically use the U-word.

For a bit of context...

 While we can debate whether his influence is waxing or waning, Elon Musk clearly still exercises unprecedented power for someone in his position. Even as broadly and badly defined as his duties with DOGE are—picking the head of the IRS still manages to go well beyond them. In at least this one sense, Elon Musk’s role is larger than we realized.

Furthermore, he appears to be trying to entrench—or even expand—that power by taking out rivals within the administration. For anyone familiar with the history of Tesla or the company eventually known as PayPal, this is the exact opposite of surprising.

With the Cybertruck on its way to becoming perhaps the most disastrous vehicle launch in history, and with new stories of corruption involving him and the rest of the so-called PayPal Mafia continuing to break, he may have decided that the only way to maintain his fortune—which currently rests on a precariously overvalued Tesla and SpaceX—is to put himself in a position where he can divert billions upon billions of dollars of government money into his enterprises.

While it sometimes seems like the markets, instead of hating * uncertainty, have come around to seeing it as an excuse for optimism—as when they responded with a surge of enthusiasm to the indefinite and often contradictory claims about the tariff pause—at some point, investors are going to have to face reality and start pricing in the cost of palace intrigue, policy turmoil, and an increasingly dysfunctional government. The possibility of Musk forcing out the Treasury Secretary might not lead to the level of uncertainty you’d get from Trump firing Jerome Powell, but it’s still a reminder that, as incoherent and chaotic as our fiscal policies have been over the past few months, they can still get worse.

* I had ChatGPT proofread this and I didn't notice it had changed "hating" to "heeding" for some unfathomable reason. Always double check the LLM.

UPDATE: Eight hours after we posted "at some point, investors are going to have to face reality and start pricing in the cost of palace intrigue, policy turmoil, and an increasingly dysfunctional government."