Welcome to The Now

 Just as people breathe a sigh of relief that what looked like the beginning of WW3 ended up being something (for now) less than, something from the recent past has resurfaced : The Tariff War. On April 9, President Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause on all "reciprocal" tariffs imposed by the US, excepting those on China. As Morgan Stanley notes, July 9 is the next deadline for tariff negotiations . Markets are waiting to learn how Trump will approach this next phase. There are three chief reasons tariffs could come roaring back into view for investors. Geopolitics has overshadowed the trade war recently. The Israel-Iran conflict in recent weeks has taken up a lot of investors' focus, but the risks from that event appear to be dwindling. The next shoe to drop with regard to volatility is likely to be the next chapter of the trade war. Tariffs' effect on inflation may be lagged. Economists caution that the data in recent months showing inflation cooling might not la...

Huh . The owner of the Four One Three Salon, Alicia Powers, told Business Insider that she closed her Pittsfield, Massachusetts, business that day at the request of the Secret Service, which examined the area earlier in the week. The salon is located behind the Colonial Theatre, a performing arts space in the Berkshires, where Harris spoke. "They had a bunch of people in and out of here doing a couple of bomb sweeps again — totally understand what they have to do, due to the nature of the situation," Powers told Business Insider. "And at that point, my team felt like it was a little bit chaotic, and we just made the decision to close for Saturday." A Secret Service spokesperson told Business Insider that the agency's employees "would not enter" without the permission of the business owner, but acknowledged an agent taped over the security camera lens. At 8:10 that Saturday morning, a Secret Service agent — wearing a dark suit and open-collared white sh...

W hether it's JP Morgan , Google or Amazon , the big companies who should be thinking about how they treat their employees better have decided to lament how in-person collaboration is the key to their success, and sharing ideas virtually is problematic. Never mind that attitudes seemed to change after the COVID aid ran out , or when people started using that extra time from driving or being in public transportation to spend time with their families (and in the later, some of them decided they didn't want to spend more time with families!). Or that working from home has shown to be more productive .  Maybe it's the fact people were learning things and doing things the CEOs of these companies may not approve.  Here's a solution for the anti-work-from-home crowd : pay employees for their commuting to work: gas, car maintenance, parking. If you're saying that they must physically be there, those workers who are leaving an already suitable work environment at home sh...

 Am I talking about a recession? A depression? Mass unemployment? Rise in cost-of-living? More bank bailouts? I'm talking about all of it. Or some of it. Or a combination. Something is coming, and Americans are not being properly prepped. This isn't about stoking fear; it's about being informed enough so that when something does happen, your actions are being governed by fear. Let's start with this news from Business Insider, " The dollar falls behind the yuan for the first time in Chinese cross-border transactions ": For the first time ever, the yuan has eclipsed the US dollar as the most used currency for Chinese cross-border transactions. The yuan's use in cross-border payments and receipts rose to 48.4% at the end of March while the dollar's share slid to 46.7%, according to a Reuters calculation of data from China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange. In 2010, the yuan's share was nearly 0% while the dollar's was 83%, according t...

 What is Governor Greg Abbott of Texas doing? He's busing immigrants to New York City : New York City Mayor Eric Adams is criticizing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for sending busloads of migrants to the city, saying that Abbott "used innocent people as political pawns to manufacture a crisis." "Unlike Governor Abbott, New York City will always do our part," Adams said via Twitter, after his office posted images of the mayor greeting migrants and refugees arriving at the Port Authority bus terminal in midtown Manhattan. "This is horrific when you think about what [Abbot] is doing," Adams said on Sunday, according to the Gothamist website, which reports that more than 4,000 immigrants had arrived from Texas so far. New York isn't alone: Abbott's office says Texas has already sent more than 6,100 migrants on buses to Washington, D.C., as NPR reported. Both cities are now the main targets in Abbott's program to send people who recently crossed the U...

  This one's about Vitamin D : Israel scientists say they have gathered the most convincing evidence to date that increased vitamin D levels can help COVID-19 patients reduce the risk of serious illness or death. Researchers from Bar Ilan University and the Galilee Medical Center say that the vitamin has such a strong impact on disease severity that they can predict how people would fare if infected based on nothing more than their ages and vitamin D levels. Lacking vitamin D significantly increases danger levels, they concluded in newly peer-reviewed research published Thursday in the journal PLOS One. The study is based on research conducted during Israel’s first two waves of the virus, before vaccines were widely available, and doctors emphasized that vitamin supplements were not a substitute for vaccines, but rather a way to keep immunity levels from falling. Vitamin D deficiency is endemic across the Middle East, including in Israel, where nearly four in five people are low on...

 So the former president was banned from Facebook and Twitter. Not the most democratic of moves, even considering the large role he played on the events of January 6th, 2021. Nevertheless, it was a move that had a profound effect: without access to the two most widely used social media mediums, an influential celebrity and politician was all but neutered.   Sure he decided to go elsewhere and continue voicing his opinion on everything important to him (hint: himself) on what could be accurately described as a blog, but apparently it wasn't enough . Apparently, he has plans to move to another platform, but time will tell. As nice as it may be to not have the media report on the tweets of the former president, the fact that banning him had such a profound impact on his messaging, the fact that the banning process was fairly arbitrary, and the fact that literally anyone can now be banned at any time for any justifiable reason, makes the power social media hold truly disturbi...