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I used to run marketing and business development for a large law firm (four of them, actually). One of my peers was very successful, and yet, was let go from a large Midwestern law firm. He can’t find a job, and one employer explained to him that he “didn’t fit their culture.” What she meant was that they were essentially prohibited from hiring a white, hetero male. Too bad. It’s a different world.
Apparently, President Trump is not a fan, at least of the large law firms that gave him grief. He’s revoked the security clearances of both Covington & Burling (#29 on the AmLaw Top 100 Law firms list) and Perkins Coie (#45).
Interesting for two reasons. First, the Top 30 firms are pouring everything they can into artificial intelligence and establishing a partner:associate ratio to reflect a Big Four accounting firm profile. Most law firms have a roughly equal partner: associate ratios, the large firms are lopsided, with the same “up or out” mentality that drives the Big Four. This could significantly impact Covington, given their reliance upon government-related work. Both attorneys and clients could flee.
Ditto for PC, currently a sliver from falling into the second half of the AmLaw 100. That’s a no-man’s land…they aren’t as cheap as very strong mid-sized and regional firms, and they don’t have the bench strength of firms in the Top 30. A similar phenomenon happened in my first business, accounting. Between 1972 and 1988, 42 of the top 50 firms went out of business, for similar reasons.
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Here’s the podcast in question:
And, This Is Charlie Kirk – This is Gavin Newsom – Apple Podcasts
Interestingly, Gavin Newsom connected with Charlie Kirk through his ex-wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle — recently drumped by Trump Jr. As Kirk recounts it “This is a guy who wants to be President more than any other human being alive.” Yep. That’s true.
Newsom has a lot to walk back, and my guess is that it will take him the better part of two years. The 2028 primary battles will start in early 2027, right after Newsom terms out of the Governorship.
Guilfoyle, for her part, says the Progressives really changed Newsom, who used to fight for small businesses, entrepreneurs, etc., and the party pushed him far to the Left.
IMHO, Newsom has to do three things before he’s a legitimate presidential candidate:
- Repudiate the madness of the Progressive Left, all the woke BS.
- Fix what he ruined in California, in particular infrastructure and the budget.
- Embrace moderate ideas, a la Senator Fetterman.
It’s the political equivalent of threading the needle. It’s going to be difficult, a real challenge. Ironically, the wildfires will have helped him, given that they revealed the shortcomings of woke policies.
Here’s Charlie Kirk’s after-action analysis of his interview with Newsom:
FIRST LOOK EXCLUSIVE: Analyzing My Interview with Gavin Newsom | The Charlie Kirk Show
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Get ready for Gavin Newsom, moderate.
His first podcast, with Charlie Kirk no less, he says he’s against transgender athletes.
Gavin Newsom breaks with Democrats on trans athletes in sports – POLITICO
He also pointed out Kamala’s shortcomings, particularly over gender transformation surgery for immigrants, and the fact that she didn’t repudiate it.
And…
- Distanced himself from “defund the police”
- Rejected pronoun misusage
- Rejected the use of “Latinx”…which Latinos hate, btw.
- Denounced “cancel culture”
- Said there are internal issues with Black Lives Matter
He could have gone A LOT further. There’s plenty wrong with California that he either spurred, advocated, agreed with or failed to resist. And I think he realizes that there is a lot of breaking down…he has a lot to answer for, not the least of which is the $150 billion train between whocares and nowhere.
He also said the Republicans were right to paint Democrats as out of step politically.
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He’s got enough for a baseball team and a basketball team.
Having and raising kids are two different things. My dad had six kids and found a way to play 100 rounds of golf a year. He was a 4 handicap. Great golfer. Didn’t see him much, especially post-divorce and pre-second wife.
After I had kids, I played golf once a year — only on the company employee getaway day — and still got the stinkeye from Mrs. Mick.
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Negative GDP growth around the corner, says the Atlanta Fed:
The first quarter is on track for negative GDP growth, Atlanta Fed indicator says
-1.5% shrinkage.
BTW, remember the guys who craterd the economy in 2008 and 2009? They’re back…
They Crashed the Economy in 2008. Now They’re Back and Bigger Than Ever. – WSJ
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Zelensky is clearly desperate…but also entitled. Yes, TrumpVance should have had an answer to Ukraine’s security concerns. There was no way anyone would accept the mineral development deal if the U.S. and Russia split Ukraine up between them.
Zelensky and Trump came at this from different angles, not understanding each other’s position. Trump thinks “we’ve paid big and have had no return and we need to get paid back. So we’ll offer to help them develop their mineral resources in exchange for a big return on investment.” Zelensky thinks “the West in general but the Americans in particular conflict with Russia, so Ukraine will partner with America and the other allies to ensure our safety. They supply arms and money, we supply the men and we fight their proxy war against Russia.” Two different perspectives.
Zelensky is the one who wanted the reporters to see the negotiations. Severe miscalculation. I guess he thought he could shame Trump, but Trump is impervious to embarrassment.
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You’re saying the quiet part out loud, and I fundamentally agree. The last Democrat who tried to rein in the government was Clinton. Since 2008, the Fed government has belonged to the Democrats who shaped it for 14 of the last 17 years (I’m going to include the last year of Trump’s first term when COVID forced everyone’s hand and Trump had to knuckle under to some truly vapid, truly stupid policies). So the Dems have been on a pell-mell race to shape the government as the provider/resource of first and last resort, hence the mountainous debt and the cavalcade of Federal contractors.
I don’t think Trump can pull it off. Can he make government more efficient? Sure he can, at a massive, massive price. Can he make consumers spend more? Yes…if they have money in their pockets, they will spend more, but their family debt is 50% higher than when Obama left office. It climbed when Trump was in office but skyrocketed during Biden’s term. Can he improve the trade deficit? Over the long run, maybe. Short term, with the tariffs and ticking off our trade and military partners? Nope.
That leaves business investment…and this is why Trump might pull it off. CEOs invest when they’re feeling optimistic. And the CEO Optimism Index skyrocketed in Q1:
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https://x.com/RealEJAntoni/status/1895126764189556786 Amazing how much we sacrificed long term growth for short term numbers.
That second chart is alarming. As I mentioned in prior posts, Trump is cutting government spending. The entire key to his economic success is domestic investment. And as the chart proves, investment was fairly predictable up until COVID when it fell off the cliff. It recovered, somewhat, eventually, and the trend is one of two things: either it is poised for sharply increased growth, or it is going to tank. I don’t think there’s a middle ground. And frankly, I think the USA needs to grow and improve and reshore manufacturing and get more people working and get more goods build and manufactured and created on American soil.
I think Trump’s policies are trying to make that happen. He wants people to do less unproductive, unfulfilling, government automaton work and more actual private sector work. He wants to reverse the trade deficit, get businesses to invest and have consumers spend more.
It’s going to be tricky, but it needs to be done. Otherwise, continuing descent into mediocrity.
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The key to Trump’s economic plan is more and better domestic investment and reshoring of manufacturing…much of which started long before his watch.
There is a valid concern about a recession, given the current cuts. Could happen, I suppose.
Economists are starting to worry about a serious Trump recession
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Summers has an interesting reputation. As Pres. of Harvard University, the Winklevoss twins showed up at his office on a Friday afternoon — wearing suits — and demanding that Summers discipline (suspend or expel) Mark Zuckerberg for hacking their site (in order to ultimately create Facebook).
Summers later said of the Winklevi “when an undergraduate shows up in your office wearing a suit on a Friday, either they want a job or they’re an asshole. This was the latter.”
Summers on his portrayal in “The Social Network”. It’s worth a watch, two minutes.
Larry Summers in the Social Network
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I think Silicon Valley support is not that certain.
You’re probably right, based on this Financial Times chart. Incidentally, I saw Ed McCracken (CEO of Silicon Graphics) speak at the Churchill Club in the mid-1990s. He was very visibly aligned with the Democratic party at the time (he was a favorite of Clinton and Gore), but everything that came out of his mouth sounded like Republican party talking points…a fact that the first questioner in the audience pointed out to much laughter.
Incidentally, corporate America in general is trending leftward:
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The answer is, I would have given more support than Biden — though I don’t entirely blame him. Recall that Congress dithered for seven months last year before even bringing a vote to give Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine aid. I had hoped for someone more competent than Biden, but you guys voted in dipshit Russian stooge who makes Biden look like a hero. The bar was so low, but you found someone who is even worse.
Such a great call. Get further involved in a war against a country which has nothing but nuclear weapons, all pointed at us. Brilliant, hermano.
Yeah, Putin’s a bad guy. He won’t stop being a bad guy. Russia is a failing country, but they are not a failed country. What they are is a desperate country. And you want to, literally and figuratively, poke the bear. Brilliant, hermano.
If Ukraine had capitulated at the outset, there would be 500,000 fewer casualties, a trillion less spent that no one can afford and zero war crimes. Brilliant, hermano.
All this for a country that receives our support because of bribes to Hunter Biden and The Big Guy…as The Big Guy literally admitted to on video.
And you’re still perpetuating the literally-discredited-by-everyone “Russian stooge” trope.
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I should have also mentioned that I think Trump intends to shrink the trade deficit, #4 above. My old econ prof used to tell us that the national debt didn’t matter much because it was largely money we owed to ourselves (probably true in 1982, not so true now) but the real problem was the trade deficit because we were actively exporting value. I think what Trump is trying to do is:
- Increase #1 consumer spending (hence $5k dividend from shrinking govt)
- Encourage #2, businesses to invest more, and as we re-shore, they should invest more, same with foreign companies, we want them to build here.
- Massive reduction in government spending, including massive reduction in military and foreign spending.
- Improvement in the trade deficit #4.
I think Trump believes that tariffs will lead to greater domestic investment (as the Japanese and Koreans are already doing), which will lead to more jobs and more domestic money, and that tariffs will generate government revenue and improve the trade deficit. We’ll see. Hope it works.
This is what I’m talking about, a $500 billion investment by Apple.
Apple unveils historic $500B investment in US manufacturing, innovation: ‘Bullish on the future’
Incidentally…I don’t think Trump is wrong about the strategy. His bull-in-a-China-shop implementation is a challenge, and he’s definitely trying to thread the needle. It’s a good thing he can’t have a second term because his popularity is going to nose over.
But…
He’s right about a lot of things, he made the right call. The tariffs he implemented the first time around? Biden never removed them. He was right about the damage COVID did to our economy and our children. He’s fundamentally correct about the need to reinvest in America and reshore manufacturing, and he’s correct about the damage DEI has and will continue to do to our country. And I’m not talking about hiring non-white males, I don’t care about that. I’m talking about hiring unqualified people to make a political statement. That’s going to reverberate in a lot of really negative ways, as it already has.
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I’ve been worried about this for a while. The basic calculation of GDP is:
- Consumer spending +
- Business investment/spending +
- Government spending +
- Net of Exports – Imports
Consumers don’t have any money left to spend. That’s constant. We still have a trade deficit. Trump is about to massively reduce government spending at the Federal level. And that’s all fine, if business investment steps up. If the re-shoring of American manufacturing goes well, if tariffs (and tariff threats) have the desired effect of getting more countries to build here — which is what the Japanese have done — then maybe we avoid recession and have a stronger country. Energy investment and exploration will have something to do with that. Ideally, that will help with the trade deficit as well.
I should have also mentioned that I think Trump intends to shrink the trade deficit, #4 above. My old econ prof used to tell us that the national debt didn’t matter much because it was largely money we owed to ourselves (probably true in 1982, not so true now) but the real problem was the trade deficit because we were actively exporting value.
I think what Trump is trying to do is:
- Increase #1 consumer spending (hence $5k dividend from shrinking govt)
- Encourage #2, businesses to invest more, and as we re-shore, they should invest more, same with foreign companies, we want them to build here.
- Massive reduction in government spending, including massive reduction in military and foreign spending.
- Improvement in the trade deficit #4.
I think Trump believes that tariffs will lead to greater domestic investment (as the Japanese and Koreans are already doing), which will lead to more jobs and more domestic money, and that tariffs will generate government revenue and improve the trade deficit.
We’ll see. Hope it works.
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Newsom just asked the Federal government for $40 billion to help combat the effects of fires that killed 29 people, and destroyed 16,000 structures and 57,000 acres of land.
Frankly…I don’t trust him, or the other politicians to not waste that money, on the offhand chance that the Trump administration actually gives it to him.
Newsom wants billions from Congress to rebuild Los Angeles after fire
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