US economy shrinks in first quarter of Trump 2.0 amid sweeping tariffs.

This is the beginning of the beginning of the depression that is on the way. This quarter of economic decline didn’t occur because of tariffs, but rather due to business uncertainty. That is actually worse than tariffs and as long as Trump makes random unaccountable decisions the economy will only get worse.

Too much is up in the air at the moment for more substantive claims, but we are definitely going to be in a depression for a while. The best case scenario is 2-3 years. I give this a 30% chance. The most likely case is 5-8 years of depression followed by low growth. I give this one a 60% chance. And the apocalyptic case is complete destruction of the economy with further Trump-like figures succeeding him. This would perpetuate depression conditions (even if there is some intermittent growth occurring due to how great was the decline) for 20+ years. This of course has a 10% chance of happening.

We are living in terrible times. They’re already here. Most people just don’t know it yet because they can’t see that the plane has already lost all power and the mountains loom in the distance.