Robert Burgess

This new @bopinion feature is now live!

Ambassador Nick Burns has it exactly right. Hundreds of @NATO troops died under my command on the front lines in Afghanistan 2009-2013. I honor their memory every single day.

What if Zuckerberg and Bezos had held their nerve? What if ABC had told Trump they’d see him in court? What if the Ivy League Universities had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Columbia? What if the fabulously wealthy law firms had joined together to sue Trump for trying to blackmail them? But that would require powerful and wealthy people to show a bit of backbone. Cowardice is contagious. Welcome to the Great Grovel prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/united-s….

Last weekend, Goldman revised its US growth and inflation forecasts in a stagflationary direction. Now, it’s a set of even more aggressive revisions from JP Morgan. They took Q4/Q4 growth forecast down from 1.3% to -0.3%, unemployment up to 5.3%, and PCE inflation all the way to 4.4%, 1.4 percentage points higher. Like Goldman, JP Morgan believes the Federal Reserve will be much more sensitive to the employment part of its mandate and, as such, sees the central bank cutting at every meeting this year. #economy #markets #growth #inflatiln #federalreserve @jpmorgan

This is the US budget. Trump/GOP say their agenda won’t cut Social Security or Medicare. They’re *expanding* military spending. And cutting taxes. Now they’re battling over whether to slash Medicaid. There’s not a lot left for savings. Shaping up to hugely increase the debt.

Howard Lutnick's refusal to consider the inflationary effects of tariffs shows he is out of touch with American businesses, @BobOnMarkets says trib.al/Hta1VV4

It's not just tariffs. The risks to growth are piling up under Trump. Latest with @endacurran for @business & @economics: bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

.@elerianm: "While still relatively low, my probability of a recession has increased from 10% at the beginning of the year to 25% to 30% today. This is a consequential and quite unsettling development for an economy with high potential..." bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

*S&P 500 ERASES ELECTION GAIN, WIPING OUT $3.4 TRILLION IN VALUE #WINNING

@GlobalMktObserv bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

🚨A recession indicator is flashing RED again: 31% of US states have seen their 3-month moving average unemployment rates rising at least 0.5 percentage points from the last 12 months low. This is near the highest since the 2020 Crisis and rarely occurred outside recessions.

@JDVance bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

🔥🔥🔥

@Brad_Setser The share of the Treasury market owned by price-insensitive buyers has dropped to around 50%, the lowest since 1997, according to the rates strategists at JPMorgan. Their share was about 75% as recently as 2015. bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

And the less obvious risk is that no one (to my knowledge) knows where the end demand for Treasuries and dollars is coming from right now, as most of the flow runs through financial/ custodial centers ... 8/8

Extraordinary privilege is thrown around a bit too much. Right now there is extraordinary demand for US bonds, but it isn't coming from reserve managers, China or Japanese institutions ... 1/x

This is very interesting. @clive_crook and @BobOnMarkets debate whether investors are right to forgive the US's debt addiction or whether a crisis awaits bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… via @opinion

A weather-changing La Niña has developed in the equatorial Pacific further adding to drought worries in California, as well as the croplands in South America, the US Climate Prediction Center said trib.al/hENYUZk

...the emails show pretty clearly is that Patel politicized the process. In particular, they show he coordinated efforts with high-ranking officials at the White House, Department of Justice and Republican lawmakers to declassify documents he believed were favorable to Trump.

EXCLUSIVE: More than 800 pages of Patel's emails obtained by FOIA Files, from the Office of Director of National Intelligence, raise questions about whether he’ll weaponize the FBI to settle scores if he’s confirmed as its next director bloomberg.com/news/newslette… via @business

That means water is pumped uphill to a tank or reservoir, then fed down to homes and hydrants. The setup provides enough water pressure to meet daily needs like showers and watering gardens or fighting individual structure fires. (3/3)

The truth about fire hydrants running dry? The issue isn’t California’s water management, as some including Trump and Elon Musk have suggested, but rather systems that simply aren’t designed to handle fires of such ferocity burning in or near urban areas. (1/3)

Hydrants are part of municipal water systems and many of those in California are gravity-fed, according to John Fisher, a retired battalion chief of San Diego Fire-Rescue who spent 34 years battling blazes. (2/3) bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

And they wonder why trust in the Supreme Court is at an all time low

Neighborhoods in the path of the Palisades and the other fires have been some of the hardest-hit by insurer defections. The 90272 ZIP code of Pacific Palisades saw 1,930 policy non-renewals between 2019 and 2024, or 28 of every 100 policies. bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… via @opinion