Devan Stormont
lucidvoyager.bsky.social
Devan Stormont
@lucidvoyager.bsky.social
Entrepreneur and builder
Tech, olive oil, economics
According to Bloomberg, Nigerian princes now represent safer investment opportunities than diminished European empires.
April 11, 2025 at 11:26 PM
"Ironically, just as the “China shock” pushed the US out of low-end manufacturing, the “Trump shock” is propelling China to reallocate resources into higher value, advanced technologies that compete directly with the US."

www.ft.com/content/2583...
If Trump is trying to suppress China, he’s going about it all wrong
The shock of tariffs is pulling Beijing back to economic fundamentals
www.ft.com
April 11, 2025 at 8:45 PM
AI judges tariffs and finds them wanting:

marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...
marginalrevolution.com
April 10, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Matt Levine is going on vacation from his finance newsletter next week.

Given his vacation track record, we can expect weird market events to increase +20% during his absence.

Strap in.
April 10, 2025 at 4:13 PM
This is crazy. Markets now rate Greek bonds as safer investments than US Treasuries.

x.com/DrewPavlou/s...
Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇦🇹🇼 on X: "Incredible: Markets now rate Greek 30 year bonds a safer investment than US 30 year bonds. https://t.co/XMEiI2kLWp" / X
Incredible: Markets now rate Greek 30 year bonds a safer investment than US 30 year bonds. https://t.co/XMEiI2kLWp
x.com
April 9, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Ever since Brexit, the American right seems determined to take England's mistakes and "do it bigger".

This is Trump's Liz Truss moment.

marketmonetarist.com/2025/04/09/t...
This is Donald Trump’s “Liz Truss Moment”
In 2022, then-British Prime Minister Liz Truss announced an unfunded plan for tax cuts, convinced that the markets would welcome her “pro-growth” policies. Instead, the markets panicked. The pound …
marketmonetarist.com
April 9, 2025 at 3:10 PM
FYI, the Treasury market is currently extremely leveraged. What could possibly go wrong?

www.ft.com/content/1df2...
Bills and bonds and Treasury basis trades, oh my!
A fresh look at an old bogeyman
www.ft.com
April 8, 2025 at 4:58 PM
"Trump has described the Smoot-Hawley tariff as a belated attempt to save the U.S. economy from the Depression, which could have worked had it been rolled out earlier."

We are so F'd.

www.washingtonpost.com/history/2025...
Trump tariffs conjure specter of Smoot-Hawley Act, a Depression-era blunder
The 1930 tariff bill hurt exporters and provoked other countries to enact their own tariffs as the U.S. economy grappled with the Great Depression.
www.washingtonpost.com
April 8, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Strong words from Tracy in today's Bloomberg Odd Lots:

www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...
April 8, 2025 at 3:26 PM
"For China, the bet seems to be that by imposing tariffs broadly, the US will drive other countries to deepen their investments in China." 1/

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...
Trump gives China one day to end retaliations or face extra 50% tariffs
China expects to outlast US in trade war, alarming Big Tech.
arstechnica.com
April 8, 2025 at 12:48 AM
So much winning — in 15 charts
The fallout from ‘Liquidation Day’
www.ft.com
April 7, 2025 at 3:25 PM
💲📈 Why Do Domestic Prices Rise With Tarriffs?

"The fundamental reason domestic prices rise with tariffs is that expanding production must displace other high-value uses."

"The result is a net loss of wealth."

marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...
marginalrevolution.com
April 6, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Admitting in court (aka, telling the truth) that your department broke the law?

Now that's a fireable offense: www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
Justice Dept. suspends lawyer who acknowledged deportation was a mistake
Erez Reuveni had worked at the Justice Department for nearly 15 years, most recently as the acting deputy director of the Office of Immigration Litigation.
www.washingtonpost.com
April 6, 2025 at 1:19 AM
“I see no soft landing to this,” Hsu says. “I see this as becoming an explosion of global supply chain disorder and chaos. The ramifications are going to be very long and painful.”
www.wired.com/story/trump-...
Trump’s Tariffs Are Threatening the US Semiconductor Revival
While the White House carved out a narrow exemption for some semiconductor imports, President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs still apply to GPUs and chipmaking equipment.
www.wired.com
April 5, 2025 at 6:42 PM
Reposted by Devan Stormont
This is remarkably close to what we had six days ago. The average tariff rate of most European nations was about 1%.
April 5, 2025 at 5:59 PM
Reposted by Devan Stormont
6) Just 25% of US adults say they expect their finances to look better in five years than today.

That’s lower even than at the nadir of the Great Recession.
April 4, 2025 at 12:51 PM
Reposted by Devan Stormont
NEW 🧵

A quick thread of charts showing how Trump’s economic agenda is going so far:

1) US consumers are reacting very very negatively.

These are the worst ratings for any US government’s economic policy since records began.
April 4, 2025 at 12:51 PM
MUST READ for people looking for historical context.

Scott Sumner is on fire with this one.

He quotes at length from his book The Midas Paradox (written in 2015) and it NAILS the current moment.

scottsumner.substack.com/p/learning-f...
Learning from Smoot-Hawley
And a dozen other thoughts on the Trump shock
scottsumner.substack.com
April 5, 2025 at 2:53 AM
The new Gotham economy.
April 3, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Auto tariffs: Government central planning with a different name.
March 27, 2025 at 4:38 PM
The black market for eggs is bigger than drugs.

And we're incinerating them, rather than just importing to resolve our supply problem.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
March 22, 2025 at 8:01 PM
The US is looking a lot like China - and China is looking a lot like the US
www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...
The US Is Looking a Lot Like China
Hello and welcome to the newsletter, a grab bag of daily content from the Odd Lots universe. Sometimes it's us, Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway, bringing you our thoughts on the most recent developme...
www.bloomberg.com
March 19, 2025 at 3:20 PM