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I agree but I’m sure it will create some new problem as teams try to optimize to please the computer. The bubble controversy is just something to fill three days between selection Sunday and the tourney start. In a week everyone will have forgotten who the snubs were anyway. This isn’t like the college football playoff where a snub can entirely destroy a program. Sorry FSU…

How could the economic playing field for US goods possibly improve on the other side of all of these tariffs? I'm genuinely curious what that might look like. The best case scenario that I can think of is that things to like the Russia economic restrictions and we manage to find new trading partners.

I think any previous "soft landing" monetary policy can be thrown out the window at this point. The Fed will need a new strategy to deal with the current situation. Rate increases are more likely than decreases in my opinion. But I think everything is complicated by the uncertainty. If the tariffs happened and were set in stone, you might see more domestic hiring and higher wages. But with the uncertainty I think we might see higher prices without a corresponding uptick in investment in domestic production. I think stagflation is a real risk. The bottom line is that the economic policy decisions are being made to gain political leverage over various groups. The actual impacts to the economy are not really being considered, the goal is control.

The stock market would crash if the Fed lowered rates because it would indicate that the executive branch coerced them to do it. It would set off a panic for sure. The uncertainty is what’s killing the economy right now more than anything. If they set 25% tariffs and stuck with them the market would probably adapt and move on after a period of disruption. But instead it’s a new policy every day!

Is this real life? You actually believe that? The Fed better quit with the tariffs!

Yeah they wouldn’t want to do that. Need an independent source of funds. Someone deep pocketed who wants to resurrect women’s bball.

Increase their NIL fund?

Yeah I kinda wish it would drop hard to force policy changes but instead they are just punting tariffs out and delaying federal job cuts, so we will just sit in a period of uncertainty where the market stagnates or slowly slides.

I moved about half of my retirement savings to cash positions at the end of January and I’m riding it out now. I know it goes against common investing wisdom but I think this is an exception where it is very easy to time a market pullback. Figuring out the bottom may be more difficult but I’m not worried about that yet, it might be a while since it seems like it’s going to be a slow slide but the general policy goals of the current admin and their consequences couldn’t be more obvious.

The crazy thing is that it doesn’t feel like they are playing fast. They are just efficient. They get into their half court set and 5-10 seconds later they have found a high percentage shot.

Haven't watched much this year…wow this team can put up points. Crowl is having a heck of a game.

Really sad. It’s amazing how little fanfare this has gotten given it is the largest mass layoff in American history by far. Most of what I’ve seen has been personal stories like this. Lots more to come as government contracting companies go under. I have a family member at one at a 5,000 person company which is prepping to file for bankruptcy.

C+ Despite the grade I’m fine with the offseason, the reality of our finances is what it is. I’m glad we hung onto Hoskins and the Williams trade is a “wait and see”. I would have liked to see us make at least one more move with some high upside but it seems like the trade market has been pretty quiet and when 93 wins is your baseline you don’t necessarily have to shake things up too much with a fairly young team that should see some individuals have career years in 2025.

Switched to Hulu after November price increase. It’s been fine, all these services are basically the same. MLB season will be interesting, I’m currently boycotting paying for my local team (Seattle) until they make it easier to watch so might be sailing the high seas this year or watching more Brewers, which is free with MLB.tv through my season ticket membership.

Right, your company is screwed, but the markets won’t feel that for a while. Honestly good for Canada — they can’t win this fight on economic might but if they unite and boycott US made goods it will give them real leverage.

The markets mostly see this stuff as negotiating tactics for now. The real damage being done is going to take some time to filter through.

More the latter I think -- specifically the common assumption about where AI is going to go in the next 5-10 years. It's also about the dynamic between the buyers and sellers of AI models and chips as well as between open source and proprietary models. The assumption prior to this week is that the only way that these giant LLMs are going to get better is with more data and more compute -- basically building giant data centers with Nvidia chips that are so energy intensive that they need their own nuclear power plant. Microsoft has been throwing their weight and dollars in that direction, not to mention their stake in ChatGPT 4o. On the other side are the users of AI who clearly stand to benefit from this development. That's Meta and Apple. Meta's AI model is open source -- they were actively trying to encourage a startup like DeepSeek to make an innovation like this, which will eventually lead to cost savings. Apple hasn't invested much in AI relative to the other big players so the common assumption here is that they made the right call in not throwing hundreds of billions at an AI model that isn't any better than what a startup can do at a fraction of the cost. --- Personal take is that overall it isn't that big of a deal and I don't think anyone is all that surprised that somebody figured this out (possibly by stealing OpenAI data, but that doesn't really matter because OpenAI stole most of that data first). With hundreds of billions at stake it's a guarantee that people are going to figure this stuff out. None of it gets us any closer to AI replacing knowledge workers -- so maybe 5 years from now we just end up with cheaper AI that isn't much better than the current LLMs.

I think that’s an outdated line of thinking for the most part when it comes to China. In the case of DeepSeek, we’ll know in a week since the model is out there for anyone to verify. American CEOs also run their mouths with outlandish claims…

Right, so to me the question becomes how long the middle market fans put up with the current situation. We’ve seen this in the NL Central — the Brewers are better run than the Cubs/Cardinals, so as the spending gap has shrunk, we’ve found our way to the top. I get the impression that those fans are not going to tolerate the status quo, which is likely that the Brewers continue to rack up division titles, with no ability for the mid-markets able to spend their way ahead of us because 5 teams are hogging all of the good free agents and leaving scraps for everyone else. I guess we’ll see though.

This news seems especially bad for Nvidia and OpenAI but the average Joe should benefit from cheaper, open source AI. America should probably accept that we’re not going to be the gatekeepers of AI and more broadly that our science and R&D is rapidly falling behind China.

Right, nobody knows what they will follow through on and to what scale. But overall the policies and current events will lead to upward price pressures in my opinion. There certainly doesn’t appear to be much if any effort to lower prices.

The current situation is of great benefit to the Brewers. The mid-markets are feeling the declining TV revenue the worst, especially the ones that own or have majority stakes in their network — because they are directly losing revenue vs. being locked into a contract where a third party is losing money or going bankrupt. The Brewers have closed the payroll gap with many of those teams. Mid-market fans are fed up. They could play with the big boys during the luxury tax + RSN era and now those days are over and it’s back to a handful of teams that have a huge revenue advantage. I think the rule changes and expanded playoffs delayed things a bit but if revenue and salaries decline then there will be pressure from both sides for change at the next CBA. Keep an eye on attendance and TV ratings in markets like Minnesota, Seattle, St. Louis, and Baltimore. I think there will be appetite for change soon like there was when the Yankees dominated in the aughts, it’s just a matter of how far the pendulum swings before both sides have motivation to change the rules.

30% of our lumber comes from Canada which will be 25% more expensive on Feb 1 if the tariffs go through. So that’s a third of the CPI that is potentially affected, but it would probably take a year or two for that to start affecting inflation. Food prices are in trouble because of bird flu. Maybe we’ll change the policy to stop culling infected animals? That will surely end well. Medical services are going to increase due to the ending of various price caps that were put in place by the previous administration. If new cars go up and people shift to used cars, that causes used car prices to increase. Again, likely 1-2 years for that to start filtering through the market. Not to mention that the fed will be watching this and will be more likely to raise rates as a result. Unless Trump finds a way to intervene there and force lower rates…then we’ll have bigger problems on our hands.

Yes and the impact is far from instantaneous, the changes reverberate through the marketplace. Right now what is being proposed is blanket tariffs on everything from Canada and Mexico. Whether they go through with it or not is anyone’s guess. In other news, the S&P 500 had a good week. Early signs are that big tech is going to benefit tremendously from this administration.

Inflation is clearly sticky for a number of reasons and the economic agenda for the next administration is to remove the debt ceiling and extend tax cuts. Unclear if Congress will allow it but that’s the goal. The fed wants 2% inflation, so to me the odds favor rate increases in 2026 unless a recession is triggered. Your suggestion that fighting trade wars, deportation, and climate-related pressures won’t cause inflationary pressures is wishful thinking. The question is again, how much is talk and how much will actually become policy?