California saw a 3.1% drop in private-sector employment the week immediately after the Trump administration stepped up its immigration raids in the state, according to a new analysis of U.S. Census data. UC Merced researchers said the steep drop is second only to the unemployment surge the state experienced during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, and greater than the immediate decline during the Great Recession in 2007 and 2008.
This appears to be the first analysis of the data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey from the time when federal agents’ focus on the state became clear in early June, when a raid at a garment factory in downtown Los Angeles preceded weeks of sweeps and unrest.
The Census Bureau surveys Americans every month about whether they worked the week before. The UC Merced researchers compared survey results from the week of May 11 to the week of June 8, and found that in California, more citizens than non-citizens reported that they did not work the week after that first raid.
The percentage decline would equate to a loss in California of 271,541 jobs from citizens and 193,428 non-citizens, the report said: “What we know from previous research is that the work that undocumented immigrants or non-citizens do does not exist in a vacuum,” Edward Flores, lead author of the report, told CalMatters. “If there’s disruptions to the work that undocumented immigrants do, it has ripple effects. A slowdown in one industry could cause slowdowns in other industries.”
That’s consistent with other studies that have shown that mass deportations of undocumented workers reduces job opportunities for U.S.-born workers, and studies that have shown the raids’ negative effects on local economies.
The effects of the enforcement may continue to be felt more strongly in California. The report also showed that the number of male citizen workers slightly increased in the rest of the U.S. compared with California during the same periods.
White and Latino workers in California were the most affected, the researchers found. The number of Latinos in California who reported work between May and June declined 5.6%, while the number of whites in the state who reported work during the same period decreased 5.3%, according to the report.

suicide...ignorance...'cult'

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According to M* VOO is up 6.39% YTD.
I wasn't looking for anything. Stating that the S&P 500 is up 25+% in just 3 months demands a closer look is all in the long run.

The prevailing exuberance—and preponderance of nosebleed valuations—hasn’t been lost on the members of the Barron’s Roundtable

After the dollar’s steepest half-year drop in decades, investors see continued declines ahead.

Receding confidence in the dollar is driving investors to sell dollars and buy gold and other major currencies.

The dollar is unlikely to lose its dominance quickly

A very large thread topic drift has taken place …

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A tighter labor market, tariffs on $3.4 trillion of imports, tax cut stimulus, and a high level of government spending are all happening. This is not even questionable.
The question is not whether or not these are all inflationary pressures. They are classic inflationary pressures. The question is how much inflation they produce. The FEDs hands will be tied. In a tight labor market unemployment will not necessarily rise severely, but wages will go up as businesses compete for scarce resources. The FED may actually have to raise rates, unless they kowtow to political pressure and let inflation run which would be disastrous.
The FED may be unable to ride to the rescue, with unemployment only incrementally higher & inflation rising, if GDP slows as it is projected to do by nearly every source.
From the linked article: "The economy is likely to enter a period of slow growth in the 1% to 2% range. Inflation will hover between 3% to 4%, and unemployment will rise to 4.5% to 5%. While these economic conditions don’t match the double-digit interest rates and inflation and chronically high unemployment of the 70s, the stagflation-lite economic framework will still shock consumers.
Yes, the economy is likely to experience a sugar high following the coming tax cuts, which will temporarily send growth to 3% or higher. But the combination of new tariffs, tighter immigration policies, and sustained annual budget deficits will soon act as a drain on private sector investment as firms and households are priced out of the market."
This implies that there may still money to be made in the 3Q of 2025. But that the whole shebang will coalesce into bad juju at some point not too far off. If inflation hits, GDP falls and the FED raises rates, I would assume that both stocks and bonds take a hit. Cash and cash equivalents may still be a good bet.
Some relevant comments from Roubini in this article:
https://www.bitget.com/news/detail/12560604851369

However, financial journalist Justin Fox observed in the Harvard Business Review in 2010 that "In fact, Roubini didn't exactly predict the crisis that began in mid-2007... Roubini spent several years predicting a very different sort of crisis — one in which foreign central banks diversifying their holdings out of Treasuries sparked a run on the dollar — only to turn in late 2006 to warning of a U.S. housing bust and a global 'hard landing'. He still didn't give a perfectly clear or (in retrospect) accurate vision of how exactly this would play out... I'm more than a little weirded out by the status of prophet that he has been accorded since."[27][28][29] Others noted that: "The problem is that even though he was spectacularly right on this one, he went on to predict time and time again, as the markets and the economy recovered in the years following the collapse, that there would be a follow-up crisis and that more extreme crashes were inevitable. His calls, after his initial pronouncement, were consistently wrong. Indeed, if you had listened to him, and many investors did, you would have missed the longest bull market run in US market history."[30][31][32][33] Another observed: "For a prophet, he's wrong an awful lot of the time."[34] Tony Robbins wrote: "Roubini warned of a recession in 2004 (wrongly), 2005 (wrongly), 2006 (wrongly), and 2007 (wrongly)" ... and he "predicted (wrongly) that there'd be a 'significant' stock market correction in 2013."[35] Speaking about Roubini, economist Anirvan Banerji told The New York Times: "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day," and said: "The average time between recessions is about five years ... So, if you forecast a recession one year and it doesn't happen, and you repeat your forecast year after year ... at some point the recession will arrive."[36][10] Economist Nariman Behravesh said: "Nouriel Roubini has been singing the doom-and-gloom story for 10 years. Eventually something was going to be right."[17]
In January 2009, Roubini predicted that oil prices would stay below $40 for all of 2009. By the end of 2009, however, oil prices were at $80.[34][37] In March 2009, he predicted the S&P 500 would fall below 600 that year, and possibly plummet to 200.[38] It closed at over 1,115 however, up 24%, the largest single-year gain since 2003. CNBC's Jim Cramer wrote that Roubini was "intoxicated" with his own "prescience and vision," and should realize that things are better than he predicted; Roubini called Cramer a "buffoon," and told him to "just shut up".[34][39] Although in April 2009, Roubini prophesied that the United States economy would decline in the final two quarters of 2009, and that the US economy would increase just 0.5% to 1% in 2010, in fact the U.S. economy in each of those six quarters increased at a 2.5% average annual rate.[40] Then in June 2009 he predicted that what he called a "perfect storm" was just around the corner, but no such perfect storm ever appeared.[41][40] In 2009 he also predicted that the US government would take over and nationalize a number of large banks; it did not happen.[42][43] In October 2009 he predicted that the price of gold "can go above $1,000, but it can't move up 20-30%"; he was wrong, as the price of gold rose over the next 18 months, breaking through the $1,000 barrier to over $1,400.[43]
Although in May 2010 he predicted a 20% decline in the stock market, the S&P actually rose about 20% over the course of the next year (even excluding returns from dividends).[44] In 2012, Roubini predicted that Greece would be ejected from the Eurozone, but that did not happen.[45] The Financial Times observed that in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, he said that policymakers would not mount a large fiscal response. However—they did.[46] Also in 2020, he predicted that a US-Iran war was likely.[46]

@DrVenture, thank you for sharing. The falling dollar since Dec 2024 was concerning when it fallen 9% YTD. The question of whether the dollar remains as the world last resort have been brought up several times. The last downgrade by Moody due to increased deficit is alarming and it is getting worse, not better with the latest tax cut bill. Since late last year, we rebalanced from US to developed and emerging market aggressively and made considerable gains.
With our retirement are coming up, we want to takes some equity risk of the table and focus on better multi-sector and foreign bonds, and not so much with treasury, especially long bond. In all cases, we are staying with short duration in light of inflation still lingering.
My concerns are the following :
1. Staginflation
2. Can US continue to finance its deficient by selling long bonds ? Bessent said her can takes care of that.
3. What will happen when on one would work on the fields and meat packing factories?

hank: What many today overlook, I think, is the compounding effect of inflation. So after 5 years of 7.5% annual inflation things aren’t 7.5% higher. They’re closer to 40% higher than they were at the start of the period.