Justin Wolfers

This is real life.

“We’re in a Schrodinger’s tariff right now.” One proclamation says “a 10% tariff on the rest of the world,” the next post says “a 15% tariff literally effective immediately,” then the White House pretends he never said it.

The crack team who brought you the trade war are now in Iran.

"oil prices up 50%... But I still want to emphasize one thing. Yeah, that hurts at the pump. Yeah, it sucks. But you know what's worse? War. And so we shouldn't trivialize the big issues here, which is, you know, we're at war with Iran. Big deal for young American troops. Big deal for the Iranians."

"They promised us a very, very different future... That future hasn't arrived and I am frankly angry. I'm angry that these folks won't own up. I'm angry they won't tell the truth and I'm angry that this is a result of a series of absolutely insane policy blunders."

Sometimes all I've got left is sarcasm. And when that runs out, I get serious.

I don't think you have to Nostradamus to figure that bombing Iran might raise oil prices. And it seems pretty obvious that buying oil in advance of causing an oil price spike might just save Americans a lot of money. But...

...maybe there wasn't much planning?

Not in Australia

Markets are *very* unhappy about developments in Iran.

Line keeps going up.

"Since Liberation Day -- the President's last big, bold set of promises when he told us everything was about to be magical -- we've lost jobs. We've gone backwards...

I'm going to call that a jobs recession."

“The US is roughly speaking oil independent… on net, we export petroleum products.”

That’s why this is less an ‘America is poorer’ story than an ‘Americans reshuffle who wins’ story. Drivers lose. Oil industry wins.

"Oil prices are up about 50%. You should expect gas prices to rise about 50%... Gas... about $3 a gallon... you should therefore expect gas to be a bit above $4 a gallon...

So if you get an opportunity to stop by the president's gas station when he's seeing it at $2 a gallon... definitely fill up "

“If you saw an economy teetering on the brink, the only advice I’d give the administration is don’t do anything rash… don’t do anything silly.... I have a feeling that advice may have come a week too late.”

This is how liars lie (and how I call it out).

Thank you for reporting. I appreciate you.

Trump’s War With Iran Is Hurting Your Retirement If you love What Next: TBD, join Slate Plus at https://slate.com/youtubeplus? to unlock weekly bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. When…

Podcasting about the economic and financial market consequences of the war with Iran.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgbC...

Seems troubling.

More troubling would be the idea that the Administration might have bombed Iran without expecting this.

No-one actually expects gas prices to rapidly return to normal.

Weak jobs numbers => The Fed is more likely to consider rate cuts, sooner.

"The latest employment report just came out... and this is my worried face."

My advice to the Administration: With the U.S. uncomfortably close to a recession -- and already in a jobs recession -- don't do anything rash that could make things worse.

No-one is happy about the jobs report.

Minor aside: If you calculate the extra decimal places, the unemployment rate this month is 4.44%. So it's really just a hair from being reported as 4.5% instead of 4.4%.

Here's the point to remember about the brutal negative revisions in today's job market report: They aren't saying the labor market showed green shoots that withered. It's saying that there never were any green shoots. They were an illusion.

While employment in health care shrank this month, it continues to account for more than all of the jobs created over the past year.

My brow is furrowed as I type and graph this.

This is not good.

The U.S. economy has lost jobs since "Liberation Day."

The economic story just changed dramatically.

Payrolls fell -92k in Feb. Jan growth was revised down by -4k to +126k. And Dec revisions subtracted -64k to -17k.

Unemployment rate up a tick to 4.4%.

Recession questions are back on the menu

Trump, Markets, And “TACO”: Why The Usual Warning Signal May Fail In Iran, Warns Justin Wolfers What happens when the U.S. starts a war—and the biggest economic pain lands somewhere else? Financial markets are a real-time forecasting machine: billions of dollars placed on bets about the…

Here's what worries me. The U.S. is less oil-dependent than our peers, and so Wall Street has responded far less to the war in Iran than financial markets abroad. When the country calling the shots feels only a small share of the pain, that's a dangerous asymmetry.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfTL...