Day 1 of the Disaster: The Lies Won't Stop

A large, complex system doesn’t organically and naturally reinvent itself. Achieving reinvention requires deep, careful examination and preparation to simplify and reshape the system by first breaking it down into small components, then reassembling it in a more logical way and amplifying the impact of the transformation.

The human body is non-stop. If you want to improve your health, there is no pause. You need to be able to invert all the bad choices as you continue moving forward. The economy is a living system as well—that’s the beauty of price discovery.

You will be introduced to more and more lies. In fact, consider this one: on April 7th, there was a rumor of a 90-day pause, which the White House called “fake news.” Those are fighting words.

But here’s the thing: when you heard the news yesterday, Bessent said they had planned this since Sunday the 6th—one day before the 7th, when the “rumor” leaked and was denied as fake news.

So, which was it? Did fake news turn out to be real news yesterday? And now it’s being applauded as some kind of “art of the deal”? Is that a cop-out—or an attribution error to the supposed genius of the administration, possibly reframed by the WSJ as a panic reaction?

Then you get a social media post from Trump about buying stocks, followed by one of the biggest single-day gains in history. Insider trading? Which is then followed by one of the largest single-day declines.

And it’s happened twice now: 90-day rhetoric followed by a drop. So the question is—who’s doing the selling? Was this a rug pull?

As for the 90 days—what is this, an ESL tax?

Are all these deals getting lost in translation, in nuance and cultural norms? Sitting there, talking to the Vietnamese government about the meaning of “reciprocal”?

Apparently, over 75 countries have been calling the White House. Are we now down to 89 days? Meaning you’d need to close almost a deal a day to hit your deadline?

And during all this, has debt increased?

Has the deficit grown?

All this trade talk feels deficit-expansionary—and the eventual outcomes of these deals might carry unintended consequences.

Was Canada just for shits and giggles?

Because, after all, there nothing else to do during the previous pause.