Fimum Cranium’s Shitshow: Act: Ad Nauseam

May 2, 2025 12:00 pm EDT Halodoc Editorial (Open Thread) Comments Off on Fimum Cranium’s Shitshow: Act: Ad Nauseam
Pardon Our Mess. Photo by Marty Mankins.

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Latin rules.

Ad Nauseam: “Ad nauseam” is a Latin phrase meaning “to the point of nausea” or “to a sickening extent.”

fimum is a Latin word for dung or excrement

I couldn’t think of anything more sarcastically pithy even though it is beyond the point of nauseating, it is still a shitshow and he will always be a shithead.

“I feel a strong desire to tell you—and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me—which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs—pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.” – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity; 1952.

Fimum Cranium’s Public Schedule

Friday, May 2 2025
8:00 AM Out-of-Town Pool Call Time Out-of-Town Pool
7:30 PM The President participates in the 2025 RNC Spring Gala Mar-a-Lago Closed Press

#NumbersDay & #ChartsDay:

When your “trade talk” strategy is going super well. 🤡 @reuters.com 🇯🇵 www.reuters.com/markets/asia…

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— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) May 2, 2025 at 7:01 AM

“Shipping ports are empty across the United States. Nothing is coming in. Businesses have cancelled the remainder of their 2025 orders.” (h/t FreightWaves)

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— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) May 2, 2025 at 4:56 AM

Excellent breakdown of yesterday’s GDP report from @josephpolitano.bsky.social, who goes through all the ins and outs of how tariffs showed up in the numbers. #NumbersDay #EconSky www.apricitas.io/p/tariffs-ar…

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— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman.bsky.social) May 1, 2025 at 8:06 AM

The US economy shrank at the beginning of 2025 for the first time since the recession scares of early 2022—GDP contracted at a 0.3% annualized rate, a major downgrade from the 2.4% growth registered at the end of last year. The culprit was the massive economic drag from trade wars, with companies and consumers forgoing business-as-usual to stock up on foreign goods before Trump’s massive tariffs took effect. The trade deficit expanded to record highs in Q1, with investment jumping as American businesses stored or installed their imported goods.

In fact, the trade deficit expanded at such a rapid pace that net exports notched their largest quarterly decline since records began in 1947. Now, it’s important to clarify that this import surge does not itself shrink the economy—GDP is an estimate of domestic production, and is not affected by purchases from abroad. Yet domestic production is difficult to measure directly, so GDP is estimated by summing consumption, investment, government output, and exports while subtracting imports only to prevent double-counting. Thus, consumers rushing out to buy foreign-made clothes will show up as an increase in imports (a negative “contribution” to GDP) and an increase in consumption (an equal-and-opposite positive “contribution” to GDP) and have no net effect on economic growth.

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Apricitas Economics May 1, 2025

There were 7.2 million job openings on the last day of March, down from 7.5 million in February (which was also revised down slightly). The job openings rate has now fallen below its prepandemic peak, but it’s still high by historical standards. #NumbersDay

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— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman.bsky.social) April 29, 2025 at 9:11 AM

There was just a hair over one job opening per unemployed worker in March, down from a peak of 2:1 at the height of the reopening boom.

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— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman.bsky.social) April 29, 2025 at 9:13 AM

The hiring rate (this is gross hires, not net job growth) is below its long-run average, but it has basically leveled off in recent months. No sign the deterioration is continuing, at least as of March.

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— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman.bsky.social) April 29, 2025 at 9:16 AM

The caveat with all of this is that these numbers are from March, before “liberation day” and the most intense tariff uncertainty/market volatility. So very possible that things will look different in April. But as of March, no sign the labor market is giving way.

— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman.bsky.social) April 29, 2025 at 9:22 AM

Payroll employment rises by 177,000 in April; unemployment rate unchanged at 4.2%
Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 177,000 in April, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.2 percent. Employment continued to trend up in health care, transportation and warehousing, financial activities, and social assistance. Federal government employment declined.

US BLS

📈🧵! Job growth held steady in April. March was revised down but still looks solid. Net net, job gains are still bumping along at more or less the rate we were for much of last year. #NumbersDay

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— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman.bsky.social) May 2, 2025 at 7:48 AM

Federal government employment is down by 26,000 since January — a very clear DOGE effect, but nowhere close to the hundreds of thousand of job cuts we've heard about. Many of those workers are still on payroll, though, and therefore are still counted in the jobs numbers.

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— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman.bsky.social) May 2, 2025 at 7:57 AM

Long-term unemployment continued to drift up in April, consistent with the recent evidence that while layoffs are low, it has gotten harder to find a job if you're looking for one.

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— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman.bsky.social) May 2, 2025 at 8:03 AM

Other news roundup:

This happened April 26. It is an old shelf well, capped about 10 years ago, leaking, not a deep water well. When we hear numbers like “30,000 gallons of oil/water mix recovered” that basically translates to about 500 barrels of mix, which can mean anywhere from 5-50 barrels of oil, which translates to about 200-2000 gallons of oil, respectively.

As of yesterday, they have federalized leak response to coordinate and manage containment. The leak has still not been repaired and continues to leak.

According to Times-Picayune| NOLA.com out of New Orleans report on April 28, “the well is 82 years old” … owned by “Spectrum OpCo LLC, which took ownership of the well last year.”

Update as of May 1: Ongoing response to Plaquemines Parish oil leak now under federal control, Coast Guard says.

Coordinating agencies and response stakeholders include:

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA)
Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE)
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)
Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF)
Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ)
Louisiana Department of Energy and Natural Resources (LDENR)
Plaquemines Parish Government
Forefront Emergency Management (FEM)
Environmental Safety & Health Consulting Services Inc. (ES&H)
Clean Gulf Associates (CGA)

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