PPCC: Pisitófilos Creditófagos. Invierno 2025

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/expansion-empleo/desarrollo-de-carrera/2026/02/20/699729cd468aebe7798b456e.html

https://www.expansion.com/expansion-empleo/desarrollo-de-carrera/2026/02/20/699726e5468aebdb798b4571.html

https://www.expansion.com/expansion-empleo/desarrollo-de-carrera/2026/02/20/69983ab7468aebd8048b457a.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.pressreader.com/spain/expansion-nacional-sabado/20260221/textview/page/84

Expertos en dirigir negocios con seguridad

Saludos.

[Urederra]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mgwUi9JRLtU

[asustadísimos]

[Las sobrevaloraciones a corregir son 4: inmuebles, Bolsa, Deuda y dólar.

Los bancos ya tienen bien provisionada la corrección valorativa en deudas públicas y dólar; y hay generosidad con ellos por parte de los Tesoros. Pero con una condición: avanzar en la correcciones valorativas de inmuebles y Bolsa.

La de inmuebles está en marcha. La de la Bolsa, asoma la patita. Ambas están esperando a que EE. UU. tenga cojones de una vez para dar oficialmente la recesión que hay. Cuanto más tarda en darla, peor... para EE. UU.

Había que haber dado la recesión en el momento preciso determinado por las autoridades monetarias occidentales y europeas cuando procedieron al 'endurecimiento de las políticas monetarias' por la inflación rara 'cadenasuministrosa', je, je, una inflación que afectaba selectivamente solo a una parte del mundo, ¡qué curioso!

Había que haberla dado cuando tocaba según el proceso que aquí, acertadamente, llamamos Catacrack-Recatacrack-Requetecatacrack, que es cuando la recesión empezó materialmente.

Si los Gobiernos de Occidente y de la UE, hubieran cumplido en su momento con el ortograma capitalista, lo que quedaba entonces de transición estructural hubiera sido más suave —dentro de la brutalidad que es el hundimiento del 'todos capitalistitas'—.

Y, desde luego, no habría habido tanta sangre al fondo del Mediterráneo para 'frenar' a la UE o condicionar una temporadita el suministro de energía.

Por cierto, lo que EE. UU. le hace a Cuba es una cabronada sin explicación racional alguna. Los cubanos aprietan los dientes pero no pierden su entereza y alegría de vivir. Siento mucho dolor por los cubanos. «El dolor tuyo de toda la vida»: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/o0RYviaW7lo

La derecha de EE. UU. está tan invadida de cáncer anticapitalista (inmohomoploutía, je, je), que, además de perder el amor al prójimo, ha perdido la sensibilidad pro-Capital y pro-Dinero y traiciona el ortograma capitalista. En España, esta patología se ve muy bien en los histriones que dicen esa estupidez de que «el dinero es basura» parapetados en que «es que yo soy de la derecha fetén».

Es como cuando Aznar sustituyó a Felipe. La derecha mal llamada moderna da vergüenza de lo socialista-de-derecha que es (Trump, Milei, Ayuso).

Yo solo digo que el dinero siempre se venga. Y que contemplar hoy los gráficos de la Bolsa estadounidense da risa de lo levantada que tiene la trompa el serpencamelirafante. No hay absolutamente nada que justifique semejante deformación de precios. Ni IA ni leches.]


[La conclusión de la entrevista a Alastair Crooke (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUwcRXFkJ24) es que EE. UU. tontea con una guerra directa en Oriente Medio... ¡que es imposible que pueda ni medio ganar!]


[A EE. UU. le está creciendo el mayor enano de todos. Este fin de semana hemos visto cómo la UE está contraatacando la ofensa al anglo. Lo hace con la excusa de la ilegalidad de la 'yihad' arancelaria, con el telón de fondo del caso Epstein. Pero es más profundo de lo que parece. Considera que la estrategia de seguridad anglo es una declaración de guerra sucia conta ella. Y está hasta el gorro del anglo en Ucrania y en la carnicería de Gaza.

A nosotros nos interesa especialmente cómo está administrándose el puñeterismo prodólar de los felones del euro —la mejor moneda del mundo visto lo visto en 2025 y lo que llevamos de 2026—. En particular, estamos ansiosos por ver qué pasa con el euro digital. Si todo va bien, antes del verano se aprobará la legislación que lo regula. Y el año que viene tendríamos pruebas piloto. La derecha moderna española está dando la nota en la UE con su furibundia anti euro digital. ¡Qué vergüenza!]

[asustadísimos]

[«Si EE. UU. viera lo que hace EE. UU., entonces. EE. UU. hubiera invadido EE. UU.» ¡Ja, ja, ja!
https://www.transicionestructural.net/index.php?topic=2638.msg256302#msg256302
A lo mejor este año hay una autoextracción madura.]

[asustadísimos]

FICHA || EL LADRILLO ES COMUNISTA.—

Ladrillo es la ESTAFA que se ha montado con la Vivienda desde los años 1980. Es una mera redistribución de la Renta mediante un timojuego de dinero sin trabajar ni emprender, que inflama los salarios en contra de la acumulación de Capital y destruye el poder adquisitivo del Dinero.

Comunista es lo que está contra del 'statu quo' actual del Capital & Dinero.

La prueba de que el Ladrillo es comunista es que los jugadores del Ladrillo acusan de comunistas a los que no comulgan con su retórica engañosa, que consiste en invocar la ley de la oferta y la demanda, ley que no es aplicable en las ESTAFAS.

[asustadísimos]

FICHA || ES FALSO QUE LAS COMPRAS A TOCATEJA NO ESTÉN FINANCIADAS.—

Toda compra se financia con Recursos Propios (Capital) o con Recursos Ajenos (Deuda) o con las dos cosas a la vez.

El Capital del empleado está extraído, vía salario, del Capital del empleador.

El Capital del funcionario, de ti, contribuyente.

Aunque toda burbuja acaba yendo contra el Capital de alguien, si un gancho de un timo dice, por ejemplo, «esta burbuja no lo es porque no está financiada con Deuda», y es verdad, es que está siendo realimentada directamente contra el Capital acumulado de los compradores.

[Frommer]

[Reflexión sobre la inflación.— En España, hay una inflación percibida muy superior la inflación observada (la oficial), que a su vez es muy superior a la inflación realmente existente.

La inflación es el alza generaliza de los precios, pero se percibe individualmente como «mi pérdida de poder adquisitivo». Sin embargo, todo individuo, 'siempre y en todo lugar', carece de información sobre todos los precios de la economía y ningún carnicero mira cómo va la oferta monetaria para poner sus precios.

Cada señorita Pepis solo debiera hablar de su pequeño mundo de señor Feliciano y de sus fantasías animadas de ayer y hoy.

Es más, actualmente, la 'inflación realmente existente' en la eurozona está en mínimos, ¡con la que está cayendo! Incluso, para muchísimos eurozoneros, dado su presupuesto individual de ingresos y gastos, hay desinflación, cuando no deflación.

La culpa de esta distorsión la tiene el desquicie de la ESTAFA del Ladrillo —con el delirio anglo de telón de fondo—. Los valores de catálogo para el gran público no dejan de crecer, pero los operadores profesionales están aplicando inmensos rebajones en sus operaciones de racionalización. Así, la retórica engañosa se ha instalado peligrosamente en un catastrofismo que trasciende lo político.

¡No se dejen llevar!

En los negocios, por este sesgo mierdista, muchos están tomando decisiones —que benefician inmensamente a otros—, decisiones que se van a lamentar grandemente en el próximo futuro, desde adquisiciones de bienes y servicios comunes hasta operaciones de reestructuración bancaria o empresarial, pasando por el sobreturismo y, por supuesto, el timojuego del Ladrillo.

Tenemos una sociedad asustada con la vacuidad de sus 'himbersiones', que se niega resentidamente a dar su brazo a torcer, pero que imbécilmente actúa contra lo que siente en su fuero interno. El resultado es una sociedad ideal para ser ESTAFADA, para regocijo de rocamboles.

Piensen, por ejemplo, en cómo las familias ucranianas entregan la vida de sus mejores hijos o en cómo los venezolanos aceptan la humillación nacional, por no hablar de la genuina esclavitud laboral que están admitiendo los argentinos, que cobran sus salarios en moneda nacional, mientras sus empleadores, que ahorran en una mone unda extranjera, especulan con esta contra aquella.

¿Ustedes qué inflación creen que hay de verdad?]

De hactibos. Y de estafadores. Inflación brutal.

[asustadísimos]

[En qué horror nos ha metido la ESTAFA del Ladrillo, ¡Dios mío!]

[conejo]

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/xz6nwu818v870e1s8owkm/EL-COUP-ALEM-N.mp3?rlkey=s9w3owfu7m71j4ca6r8ux4ic3&st=x6d1opuh&dl=0

Yoh!

He quedado para ver
Una casa en la montaña
En una de las comarcas
Más bonitas de España

El vendedor aparece
En un coupé alemán...
Siendo un parado de pueblo
¡No parece irle tan mal!

Dice que es una herencia
Y la quieren rematar
Porque él y su familia
No la pueden manejar

El techo está casi caído
Queda menos de la mitad
Eran vigas de castaño
Pero están para tirar

Por esa razón el precio
Me lo pueden rebajar
Cientocincuentamil euros
Menos que un piso en la ciudad

Yoh!

Pregunto por los papeles
Y me los quiere mostrar
Me dice que le acompañe...
Y subo al carro del man


En la pantalla del coche
Tiene todo escaneado
El IBI, escrituras, contratos...
Agua y luz todo pagado

La parcela de la casa
Son dos mil metros cuadrados
Se puede poner  piscina
Lo tiene todo pensado

Un camping, un restaurante
Una casita rural...
Me pregunto porqué él
En vez de reformar
Y arreglar todo el lugar
No le puso la piscina
Y con ese dineral
Se compró el coupé alemán

Yoh!

La casa es toda de piedra
La tenían para guardar
El ganado de su abuelo
Que vivió en aquel lugar

O sea,
Que más que una casa
Este sitio era un pajar
A punto de derribar

Yo soy un poco burro
No se lo voy negar
Pero no busco un pajar
Para eso ya tengo el curro

Y en él tiempo que me aburro
No me voy a dedicar
A restaurar una ruina
Que además tengo que pagar

Ha!

El houser me intenta liar
Me dice que pida hipoteca
Que la propiedad está en regla
Y qué el banco aceptará

Con una pequeña reforma
La casa será como nueva
Y con las vistas que tiene
La vas a tener siempre llena

En el pueblo él tiene un bar
Que lo trabaja su yerno
Y conoce al constructor
Al del banco y al carpintero

Lo tiene todo pensado...
¡Pero él no quiso hacerlo!
El prefiere pasear
En su gran coupé alemán

Este asunto es una ESTAFA:
Yo me tengo que arriesgar
A convertir un lugar
-Donde guardaban la paja-
En un negocio rentable
Pagando a este miserable
Un tremendo pastizal
Por una casa sin techo
En medio de un pedregal

El houser me mira
Mientras no para de hablar
Como si yo fuera un pavo
A punto de degollar

Yoh!

"Piénsatelo", me decía
Mientras cerraba el portón
"Es una joya escondida
No pierdas esta ocasión"

Ya lo tengo muy pensado:
¡Váyase usted al cuerno!
Yo no voy a ser el primo
Que le pague el bar a su yerno

Me voy en mi coche normal
Viendo por el espejo
Cómo el techo del pajar
Se caía sobre el techo...

¡Del deportivo alemán!

Ha!

[Derby]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-02-22/blue-owl-redemptions-halt-intensifies-private-credit-fears

Blue Owl Anxiety Rattles the $1.8 Trillion Private Credit Market

Despite years of solid returns, direct lenders can't shake concerns about the once-niche corner of global finance.


Photo Illustration: 731. Source: Getty Images

Blue Owl Capital Inc.’s co-chief reeled off all the times he'd seen this type of fear before. Covid. Silicon Valley Bank's collapse. Liberation Day.

Marc Lipschultz was addressing analysts on the 11th straight day of losses for the firm’s shares, the worst streak since Blue Owl went public almost five years ago. Just weeks earlier, investors yanked more than 15% of net assets from one of the money manager’s tech-focused funds.

But as Lipschultz saw it, this was par for the course when markets get jittery. Some clients in private credit funds like theirs ask for their cash back in times like these. The firm was handling this latest bout of worry just as it had in the past.

It appears different now. Blue Owl last week permanently shut the gates on one of those funds — preventing investors from withdrawing their cash every three months as they’d previously been allowed — and began selling assets to return investor capital.

It’s the latest sign of tumult in a $1.8 trillion market stricken with worry about overspending on artificial intelligence, the technology’s disruptive power and lending standards more broadly. And it’s evoking comparisons to the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis.

“The red flags we are seeing in private credit today are strikingly familiar to those of 2007,” said Orlando Gemes, chief investment officer of Fourier Asset Management. He pointed to worsening lender protections and convoluted liquidity terms that “obscure the mismatch between what investors believe they own and what they can actually exit.”

Investors reacted fast. Shares of Blue Owl tumbled as much as 10% on Thursday and triggered a broad decline in the stocks of money managers with fingers in the private credit pie. Ares Management Corp., Blackstone Inc. and Apollo Global Management Inc. were among those dragged down. Blue Owl's shares have now plunged almost 60% in the past 13 months, even as the firm's revenue continued to climb in that period.



That a move to limit withdrawals from a $1.6 billion fund drove a $2.4 billion drop in Blue Owl's market value shows shareholders' skittishness. Investors in the fund, known as OBDC II, have been gated for months as the firm pursued and then abandoned a plan to merge it with another of its vehicles. Blue Owl is now selling roughly one-third of OBDC II's loans and handing 30% of investors' money back to them, a move the firm says is accelerating, not slowing, the overall return of capital. When redemptions were allowed, Blue Owl had the option to limit withdrawals every quarter to 5% of net assets to prevent any forced selling.

“Instead of resuming a five percent a quarter tender, where only tendering investors get a small portion of their capital back, we are returning six times as much capital and returning it to all shareholders over the next 45 days,” the firm said in an emailed statement.

After years of unfettered growth, the once-niche world of private credit has become a linchpin of global finance. Its players are now backing everything from mammoth data center operations to multibillion dollar buyouts of software makers and healthcare companies — far from the industry’s roots funding middling businesses that fell through the cracks of the banking system.

That’s bringing ever-more scrutiny to a market that has always had its naysayers. Despite years of solid returns and remarkably few blowups so far, direct lenders like Blue Owl can’t seem to shake fears about the business model as a whole. Chatter about disparate valuations across lending books stalk executives at every turn. Concerns over the opacity of the market — where debt changes hands infrequently and outside of public view — have dogged the industry for years.


Blue Owl signage outside the Seagram Building at 375 Park Ave.Photographer: Bing Guan/Bloomberg

And for Blue Owl in particular, a yearslong streak of acquisitions, aggressive dealmaking and raising funds that cater to individual investors have placed it directly at the center of everything investors worry about most. It’s placing big bets on AI infrastructure that rely on fast growth to make sense. And if AI use does explode, investors fear that the traditional software firms that Blue Owl has lent billions to may be at risk of extinction.

As for investors in OBDC II, those who want fully out will have to wait — or sell at a discount. Hedge funder Boaz Weinstein on Friday offered to buy stakes in OBDC II and other Blue Owl funds, likely at a 20% to 35% haircut.

It all comes at a particularly sensitive time for alternative asset managers, which have been ramping up their efforts to tap into the $14 trillion sitting in US retirement accounts. US Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, took the opportunity on Thursday to slam the sector.

“A shadowy private credit firm is suddenly blocking investors from withdrawing their money,” Warren, the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement. She called for more oversight and transparency of the industry. “The Trump Administration needs to wake up. Stop pushing these risky investments into Americans’ retirement accounts.”

Credit Veterans

Blue Owl traces its roots to some of the most swashbuckling corners of finance. Co-founder Doug Ostrover spent years running junk-bond and distressed-debt desks on Wall Street before co-founding GSO Capital Partners, the credit fund that later became the backbone of Blackstone’s credit division. Co-CEO Marc Lipschultz spent more than 20 years at KKR & Co., where he held leadership roles across private equity, private credit and infrastructure investing.


Co-CEO of Blue Owl, Doug Ostrover.Photographer: Alexander Karnyukhin/The Forbes /Getty Images

The two teamed up with Craig Packer, a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. veteran, to launch direct lender Owl Rock Capital in 2016 — just as private credit began its explosive growth. In 2021, the firm created what is now Blue Owl by merging with Dyal Capital Partners, a specialist in taking stakes in alternative asset managers.

Since the Dyal merger, the firm has more than tripled its assets under management through a mix of strong fundraising and acquisitions of specialists such as Kuvare Asset Management and real estate lender Prima Capital Advisers. The rapid growth continued last year, with the firm raising more than $1.25 billion for one of the biggest so-called interval funds, which are tailored to individual investors. By the end of 2025, Blue Owl managed more than $300 billion.



Chasing that growth has led Blue Owl into buzzy themes that are now becoming a headache. In 2023, Packer described the firm as “probably the largest lender” to private equity–backed software companies, the very sector now in the crosshairs of investors worried about AI disruption.

“Many private equity firms were buying software companies at very high valuations — not at nine times earnings, but at 20 or even 40 times,” said Antoine Flamarion, co-founder of Paris-based alternative asset manager Tikehau Capital. There are a few big winners in the software business, but finding them is a challenge, he said.

Blue Owl has spearheaded several multibillion-dollar financings for software providers, including RLDatix and Smartsheet. The basic bet is that corporate clients will prefer to stick with entrenched systems rather than suffer the cost of switching.


Co-Chief Executive Officer Marc LipschultzPhotographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

The rise of AI is quickly putting that to the test. The possibility that bots like Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT will allow companies to cheaply build their own systems has ricocheted through the market, cratering the stock-market values of companies like Atlassian Corp. and Freshworks Inc.

And that’s showing up in investor withdrawals for Blue Owl. Last month, the lender let investors in one of its technology focused-funds cash in about $527 million of shares, or roughly 15% of the fund’s net assets, according to a regulatory filing. Previously, redemptions had been capped at about 5%, in line with the industry standard.

The performance of the fund, known as OTIC, has held strong, and its liquidity remains “substantial,” Blue Owl said. “We have honored all tender requests ever made in OTIC.”

Lipschultz has, in characteristic style, struck a defiant tone. In the earnings call earlier this month, he said performance has been strong and losses minimal. Investors are ignoring facts and acting out of fear, he argued. More recently he’s taken to LinkedIn, boasting about Blue Owl’s ability to pick the companies that will benefit from AI and avoid those that won’t.

Investors need to “distinguish between a very narrow application that, for example, just processes information or does a very simple, narrow function, versus what we focus on and finance — which are these systems of record that organize business processes,” Lipschultz said earlier this month in a CNBC interview. “And they are, in fact, the adopters of AI tools.”

To his credit, initial analyst reactions to last week’s selloff indicated little concern for the overall health of the business. Blue Owl managed to sell the $1.4 billion of loans at close to par, adding “modest positive” sentiment for private credit as a whole, according to Evercore ISI. And while investor redemptions remain an overhang, the sales “validate” Blue Owl’s loan book, a UBS Group AG analyst wrote.

Others were more downbeat. Mohamed El-Erian, former CEO of Pacific Investment Management Co., questioned whether the news was a “canary-in-the-coalmine moment” for private credit, comparing it to the moments before the 2008 financial crisis.


Blue Owl office in New York.Photographer: Jose A. Alvarado Jr/Bloomberg

“Bad credit decisions lead to revelations of liquidity mismatches, and that is always dangerous,” said Kentaro Otani, managing director and head of private markets investment firm Siguler Guff Japan. “There could be others like Blue Owl, but if you are a good credit manager and maintain discipline and proper fund size — also proper investor type in the fund — I don’t think this happens.”

The loan sale has also stoked concern that troubles in credit could simply be shifted into less visible corners of private markets. Among the buyers of Blue Owl’s loans was Kuvare, the life insurance and annuities provider that Blue Owl partnered with in 2024 by buying its asset management unit and investing $250 million into the insurer. The loan sale to Kuvare could provide a template for similar maneuvers between private credit lenders and affiliated insurers, analysts at Barclays wrote in a note.

“If similar transactions are repeated frequently, it would deepen the ties between these two parts of the non-bank sector, which could make it more difficult to track the risk,” they wrote.

AI Exposure

Other pockets of risk are easier to see. Blue Owl has led the charge among private capital firms into the AI infrastructure boom, splashing out billions to stake its claim.

The firm bought digital infrastructure fund IPI Partners in early 2025 for $1 billion. The deal brought with it more than $10 billion of fresh assets and control of Stack Infrastructure, a significant data-center operator. More recently, it struck a deal with the Qatar Investment Authority to create a permanent capital platform for digital infrastructure backed by $3 billion of data-center assets.

It also has fought its way into massive data-center financings with the likes of Oracle Corp. and OpenAI. Last year, it entered a deal to help Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. develop a stretch of land in rural Louisiana to house Hyperion, set to become the largest of the technology giant’s 29 data centers worldwide. Hyperion involves more than $27 billion of debt on its own.

It all feeds into what McKinsey & Co. estimated is a $5.2 trillion spending need through 2030 to keep up with the demand for AI computing power. But prominent financiers have not been shy about the potential for froth in AI-linked financing. Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, has said AI is in the early stages of a bubble.

The Blue Owl representative said that the firm's clients “are very interested in carefully constructed investment opportunities that will benefit from the growth in the buildout of AI infrastructure.”

Fallout from Blue Owl’s move to restrict redemptions is still unfolding. Boaz Weinstein, whose Saba Capital Management offered to buy shares in some private-credit funds managed by Blue Owl, said AI disruption fears aren’t going away anytime soon.

“Private credit was once sold as financial nirvana — effortless double-digit returns in a rising market — but that era is quickly ending,” he said in emailed comments. “Even in good times, the market is now breaking down which signals it is in a spot of great vulnerability.”

To be sure, the funds under pressure at Blue Owl make up a relatively small share of the firm’s assets. These so-called business development companies, however, are the most visible piece of the private credit market. They lay out the names of the companies they lend to and their loan valuations, offering the clearest sight into the health of the overall industry for outsiders.

That also makes them more vulnerable to investor stampedes than vehicles designed for long-term capital commitments. They are, in many cases, accessible to more everyday investors than the institutional-grade funds that draw big checks from pensions and sovereign wealth funds.
But as those sources of capital reach their limits, private credit’s most aggressive players will be increasingly forced to reckon with the flightiness of retail investors.

“This is a classic asset-liability mismatch that can only be solved if both asset managers and investors make concessions,” said Mara Dobrescu, a senior principal at Morningstar Inc. “Semiliquid funds should only be used by investors with the financial ability to weather long stretches — years — without needing their money back. This puts an inherent limit on the ‘democratization’ of private assets.”

[Derby]

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/does-anyone-know-why-were-still-doing

Does anyone know why we're still doing tariffs? Noah Smith

The ridiculous policy has taken on a life of its own.


Cartoon by U.J. Kepper, 1908

In case you haven’t heard, the Supreme Court just ruled many of Donald Trump’s tariffs illegal:

[T]he Supreme Court ruled that the unilaterally imposed [tariffs] were illegal…No longer does Trump have a tariff “on/off” switch…Future tariffs will need to be imposed by lengthy, more technical trade authorities — or through Congress…

In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court said that affirming Trump's use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) would "represent a transformative expansion of the President's authority over tariff policy."…Chief Justice John Roberts said that IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs because the Constitution grants Congress — and only Congress — the power to levy taxes and duties.

This doesn’t mean that Trump’s tariffs are going to suddenly vanish. More are on the way. There are older laws passed by Congress in the 1960s and 1970s that authorize the President to raise tariffs under certain circumstances. Here’s a summary by the Yale Budget Lab:

[T]he president has other sources of legal authority to enact tariffs without further congressional action. These authorities generally fall into two groups: those that require investigations by federal agencies but have few if any restrictions on the eventual tariffs imposed (Sections 201, 232, and 301) and Section 122, which provides a temporary authority to impose tariffs without an investigation, but is limited to a 15 percent rate for only 150 days. There is another authority, under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (otherwise known as Smoot-Hawley) that would allow the President to impose a 50 percent tariff with no investigation or time limitations, but no President has used this authority before, raising again concerns about future legal challenges.

For now, all those other laws still stand, and Trump is going to use at least some of them. He immediately invoked one of the other laws, called Section 122, to put a 10% tariff on all imports from all countries, and then raised that to 15% a day later. This means the overall statutory tariff rate on U.S. imports (or at least, on the mix of imports from 2024), which would have fallen to around 9% after the SCOTUS ruling, will actually fall only a tiny bit:


Source: Joey Politano

But tariffs are very complex, and there are a ton of exemptions. Because these tariffs are more blanket than the ones SCOTUS just struck down, and because they interact with other tariffs that are still on the books, the new regime could raise effective tariff rates to even higher levels than before the SCOTUS decision.

That Section 122 tariff is supposed to be temporary — it only lasts 5 months — but Trump can presumably just renew it for another 5 months when it ends, until he gets sued again and it goes back to the Supreme Court. Then if that doesn’t work, he can use the various other laws, getting sued each time. In other words, Trump will be able to keep imposing large tariffs for the rest of his term in office.

So the fun continues. Whee!!

What was the point of these tariffs? It has never really been clear. Trump’s official justification was that they were about reducing America’s chronic trade deficit. In fact, the initial “Liberation Day” tariffs were set according to a formula based on America’s bilateral trade deficits with various countries.1 But trade deficits are not so easy to banish, and although America’s trade deficit bounced around a lot and shifted somewhat from China to other countries, it stayed more or less the same overall:



Economists don’t actually have a good handle on what causes trade deficits, but whatever it is, it’s clear that tariffs have a hard time getting rid of them without causing severe damage to the economy. Trump seemed to sense this when stock markets fell and money started fleeing America, which is why he backed off on much of his tariff agenda.

Trump also seemed to believe that tariffs would lead to a renaissance in American manufacturing. Economists did know something about that — namely, they recognized that tariffs are taxes on intermediate goods, and would therefore hurt American manufacturing more than they helped. The car industry and the construction industry and other industries all use steel, so if you put taxes on imported steel, you protect the domestic market for American steel manufacturers, but you hurt all those other industries by making their inputs more expensive.

And guess what? The economists were right. Under Trump’s tariffs, the U.S. manufacturing sector has suffered. Here’s the WSJ:

The manufacturing boom President Trump promised would usher in a golden age for America is going in reverse…Manufacturers shed workers in each of the eight months after Trump unveiled “Liberation Day” tariffs, according to federal figures…An index of factory activity tracked by the Institute for Supply Management shrunk in 26 straight months through December…[M]anufacturing construction spending, which surged with Biden-era funding for chips and renewable energy, fell in each of Trump’s first nine months in office.

And here’s a handy chart, via Joey Politano:


Source: Joey Politano

Trump didn’t cause all of the slowdown — it began a few months before he took office — but manufacturers consistently report that tariffs are making things worse. Tariff cheerleaders like Oren Cass, who goes around shouting that economists don’t know anything and that economics isn’t a science, have gone strangely silent in the face of this clear victory for textbook economics.

On some level, Trump — unlike pundits like Cass — seems to realize the basic economics of how tariffs hurt American industry. Recognizing the AI boom’s importance to the current economic expansion, he has granted huge exemptions for the computers that are being used to build AI data centers:


Source: Joey Politano

Macroeconomically, the tariffs haven’t been as big a deal as initially feared. Growth came in slightly weak in the final quarter of 2025, but that was mostly due to the government shutdown, and will rebound next quarter. Inflation keeps bumping along at a little bit above the official target, distressing the American consumer but failing to either explode or collapse. The President’s cronies have taken to holding up this lack of catastrophe as a great victory, but this sets the bar too low. If you back off of most of your tariffs and the economy fails to crash, you don’t get to celebrate — after all, the tariffs were ostensibly supposed to fix something in our economy, and they have fixed absolutely nothing.

Instead, the tariffs have mostly just caused inconvenience for American consumers, who have been cut off from being able to buy many imported goods. The Kiel Institute studied what happened to traded products after Trump put tariffs on their country of origin, and found out that they mostly just stopped coming:

The 2025 US tariffs are an own goal: American importers and consumers bear nearly the entire cost. Foreign exporters absorb only about 4% of the tariff burden—the remaining 96% is passed through to US buyers…Using shipment-level data covering over 25 million transactions…we find near-complete pass-through of tariffs to US import prices……Event studies around discrete tariff shocks on Brazil (50%) and India (25–50%) confirm: export prices did not decline. Trade volumes collapsed instead…Indian export customs data validates our findings: when facing US tariffs, Indian exporters maintained their prices and reduced shipments. They did not “eat” the tariff. [emphasis mine]

So it’s no surprise that the most recent polls show that Americans despise the tariffs:


Source: ABC

A Fox News poll found the same, and Trump’s approval rating on both trade and the economy is underwater by over 16 points despite a solid labor market. Consumer sentiment, meanwhile, has crashed:



Trump has belatedly begun to realize the hardship he’s inflicting on voters. But instead of simply abandoning the tariff strategy, he’s issuing yet more exemptions and carve-outs in an attempt to placate consumers:

Donald Trump is planning to scale back some tariffs on steel and aluminium goods as he battles an affordability crisis that has sapped his approval ratings…The US president hit steel and aluminium imports with tariffs of up to 50 per cent last summer, and has expanded the taxes to a range of goods made from those metals including washing machines and ovens…But his administration is now reviewing the list of products affected by the levies and plans to exempt some items, halt the expansion of the lists and instead launch more targeted national security probes into specific goods, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Tariffs — or at least, broad, blanket tariffs on many products from many different countries — are simply a bad policy that accomplishes nothing while causing varying degrees of economic harm. But despite all his chicken-outs and walk-backs and exemptions, Trump is still deeply wedded to the idea. When news of the Supreme Court ruling reached him, he flew into a rage and accused the Justices of serving foreign interests:

He called the liberals a “disgrace to our nation.” But he heaped particular vitriol on the three conservatives [who ruled against him]. They “think they’re being ‘politically correct,’ which has happened before, far too often, with certain members of this Court,” Mr. Trump said. “When, in fact, they’re just being fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats—and . . . they’re very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution. It’s my opinion that the Court has been swayed by foreign interests.”

JD Vance, rather ridiculously, called the decision “lawless”:



Why are the President and his loyalists so incensed over the SCOTUS decision? The tariffs are a millstone weighing down Trump’s presidency, and his various walk-backs confirm that he realizes this. It would have been smarter, from a purely political standpoint, to just let SCOTUS do the administration a favor and cancel the tariffs. Instead, Trump is going to the mat for the policy. Why?

One possibility is simply that Trump hates having his authority challenged by anyone. Tariffs were his signature economic policy — something he probably decided on after hearing people like Lou Dobbs complain about trade deficits back in the 1990s. To give up and admit that tariffs aren’t a good solution to trade imbalances would mean a huge loss of face for Trump.

Another possibility is that Trump ideologically hates the idea of trade with other nations, viewing it as an unacceptable form of dependency on foreigners. Perhaps by using ever-shifting uncertainty about who would be hit by tariffs next, he hoped to prod other countries into simply giving up and not selling much to the United States.

A third possibility is that tariffs offer Trump a golden opportunity for corruption and personal enrichment. Trump issues blanket tariffs, and then offers carve-outs and exemptions to various companies and/or their products. This means companies line up to curry favor with Trump and his family, in the hopes that Trump will grant them a reprieve.

But the explanation I find most convincing is power. If all Trump wanted was to kick out against global trade, the Section 122 tariffs and all the other alternatives would surely suffice. Instead, he was very specifically attached to the IEEPA tariffs that SCOTUS struck down. Those tariffs allowed Trump to levy tariffs on specific countries, at rates of his own choosing, as well as to grant specific exemptions. That gave Trump an enormous amount of negotiating leverage with countries that value America’s big market.

This is the kind of personal power that no President had before Trump. It allowed him to conduct foreign policy entirely on his own. It allowed him to enrich himself and his family. It allowed him to gain influence domestically, by holding out the promise of tariff exemptions for businesses that toe his political line. And it allowed him to act as a sort of haphazard economic central planner, using tariffs like a scalpel to discourage the kinds of trade and production that he didn’t personally like.

In other words, I think that although the tariffs had their origin in 1990s-era worries about trade deficits, they ended up as a way to make the Presidency more like a dictatorship. That is almost certainly why the Supreme Court struck the IEEPA tariffs down, citing concerns over presidential overreach instead of more technical considerations.2

For much of the modern GOP, I think, autocracy has become its own justification. To many Republicans, tariffs were good because they made the President powerful, and SCOTUS’ ruling is anathema because it pushes back on the imperial Presidency.

In this case, America’s democratic institutions held the line. But there will be a next case.

1 The formula, which was probably AI-generated, involved lots of bad assumptions.

2 For example, SCOTUS could have ruled that IEEPA was fine in general, but that trade deficits don’t constitute the kind of “national emergency” that would justify IEEPA’s use.

[Derby]

https://www.cityam.com/i-can-do-terrible-things-trump-launches-fresh-tariffs-tirade/

‘I can do terrible things’: Trump launches fresh tariffs tirade

Donald Trump has warned he can still do “absolutely ‘terrible’ things to foreign countries” in a fresh tirade against the Supreme Court after it ruled that his ‘reciprocal tariffs’ were illegal.

In a further sign that the court’s decision will lead to more trade uncertainty, the US President said the court had “unwittingly” handed him “far more powers and strength” to levy fresh tariffs than before the ruling.

“For one thing, I can use Licenses to do absolutely ‘terrible’ things to foreign countries, especially those countries that have been RIPPING US OFF for many decades,” he wrote on his Truth Social website, “but incomprehensibly, according to the ruling, can’t charge them a License fee – BUT ALL LICENSES CHARGE FEES, why can’t the United States do so?”

The US’s capricious approach to trade policy, which has defined the Trump administration’s second term, was thrown into disarray on Friday after the Supreme Court found his totemic tariffs announced on so-called liberation day to be illegal. In a historic judgment, six of the nine justices sitting on America’s highest court ruled the President’s use of executive orders unilaterally to apply tariffs on US imports under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act was unconstitutional.

[tomasjos]

Mañana tenemos nuevo show. ¿Alguno de entre ustedes espera algo de la desclasificación de la documentación del 23-F?

[Derby]

https://www.elconfidencial.com/inmobiliario/residencial/2026-02-23/vivienda-alquiler-echavarren-fondos-de-inversion-rentabilidad_4308113/

EFIMAD EN CAIXA FORUM
"En los próximos 5 años van a desguazar 40.000 viviendas que están en alquiler"

En los próximos años van a desaparecer unas 40.000 viviendas que ahora están en alquiler y que los fondos que las han creado van a vender a su vez a fondos que las venderán una a una


Mikel Echavarren, CEO de Colliers. (Colliers/Miriam Ruiz)

"En los próximos 3-5 años se van a desguazar unas 40.000 viviendas que actualmente están en alquiler y que los fondos que las han creado van a vender a su vez a fondos para que las vendan a usuarios finales". Estas han sido las palabras de Mikel Echavarren, CEO de Colliers en España y Portugal, durante su intervención en Efimad, en unas jornadas inmobiliarias organizadas en CaixaForum por CaixaBank y Asprima.

Y es que, como ha asegurado, las limitaciones regulatorias, junto con los elevados costes de construcción o la financiación, hacen que el modelo de vivienda asequible en alquiler no sea viable económicamente y "no salgan los números". Y no solo eso, sino que la venta individual de estas viviendas resulta mucho más rentable que si se venden en bloque o se destinan al alquiler.

"Las viviendas son un 30% más caras si se venden por unidades que si destinan al alquiler", en un contexto marcado por el aumento de los costes de construcción, la financiación y las limitaciones regulatorias, de ahí que, según este experto, miles de viviendas que han sido construidas para destinarse al alquiler, acabarán en el mercado de la compraventa en los próximos cinco años. Una diferencia muy relevante que hace inviable la continuidad de algunas carteras en alquiler.

De hecho, ya ha habido varias operaciones en este sentido que obedecen, fundamentalmente, a criterios financieros. Por un lado, Meridia compró el año pasado a Hines el complejo residencial Skypark en Valdebebas (Madrid). Casi 400 viviendas que, previsiblemente, Meridia venderá de forma individualizada a medida que finalicen los contratos de alquiler. Una jugada similar a la que está ultimando el fondo canadiense Brookfield: la compra de una megacartera residencial de 5.300 viviendas propiedad de Blackstone, destinadas actualmente al mercado del alquiler, pero que, como confirman a El Economista varias fuentes del mercado, se irán vendiendo una a una.

"Las viviendas son un 30% más caras si se venden por unidades que si destinan al alquiler"

Un éxodo de los fondos de inversión de un producto, el de la vivienda en alquiler, en el que se habían depositado grandes esperanzas para solventar parte del problema de la vivienda en España, especialmente, en un momento en el que la demanda de vivienda sigue creciendo con fuerza y la creación de hogares triplica el ritmo de construcción de viviendas.

"Ningún mercado resiste que entren 500.000 personas cada año. Y ya partimos de una diferencia estructural de 700.000 viviendas que, en 10 años, si seguimos así, se van a convertir en 2 millones. Mucho más barato que construir viviendas sería reducir la entrada de gente, pero eso no me corresponde a mí valorarlo", ha ironizado.

Echavarren ha incidido en el coste de levantar viviendas en alquiler y, especialmente, en la rentabilidad de estos proyectos. "Se ha producido un aumento del coste brutal desde el primer Plan Vive de la Comunidad de Madrid, y esos costes que conlleva construir vivienda asequible en alquiler no se pueden transmitir al propietario.. Y eso lleva a unas rentabilidades netas para esos planes de vivienda asequible entre el 5,5 y 6% en el caso de Madrid. Eso no es especular. Y no son proyectos que luego salgan a la venta al 4%-3%, porque el inversor está pidiendo un 5,75%. Además, construir vivienda en alquiler se ha convertido en un negocio de fondos de infraestructuras, no de promotores ni de fondos inmobiliarios. El problema es que son menos y tienen más infraestructura que las viviendas, como los centros de datos con los que pueden ganar tres o cuatro veces más".

Uno de esos fondos de infraestructuras, es la alemana MEAG, que hace apenas unos días anunciaba una inversión de 400 millones de la mano de la promotora Culmia para construir un total de 2.500 viviendas en alquiler. Unos fondos de infraestructuras que llevan años mirando el sector residencial en España en busca de proyectos con rentabilidad y estructuras de financiación adecuadas.

"Para que podamos invertir en vivienda asequible en alquiler, es necesario un marco fiscal óptimo, una financiación que permita flujos de caja estables y darle un volumen de unidades interesante a la inversión", ha asegurado en Efimad Andrea León, senior infraestructure investment manager de MEAG. "Tenemos que ser capaces de crear una plataforma para crear sinergias necesarias, también en cuanto a financiación, que permitan poner en marcha un negocio rentable".

Y, en la rentabilidad, también juega un papel clave la duración de los derechos de superficie o concesiones que ofrece la administración pública en sus concursos de vivienda asequible. "Necesitamos periodos bastante largos para tener mayor confort y que la inversión tenga sentido para ambas partes. Si no salen pliegos alineados con estos fondos, no van a llegar a España. Necesitamos tener visibilidad sobre los flujos de caja", ha destacado Andrea León. "El coste de los proyectos no es el mismo si se divide entre más o menos años", ha dicho.

Y es que, como ha insistido Mikel Echavarren, nos encontramos en un "momento complicado a nivel de rentabilidades y este negocio requiere de los fondos privados, y si no les conseguimos atraer, será un lastre enorme"

Asimismo, el CEO de Colliers se ha referido a las insalvables diferencias de rentabilidad de los proyectos de vivienda asequible en alquiler a nivel geográfico. Para ello, ha realizado una comparativa entre lo que supone una inversión de 20 millones de euros en una promoción de vivienda protegida en Madrid y en Andalucía.

"La vivienda asequible en Madrid se mueve en torno al 5,75%, mientras que fuera se piden 100 puntos básicos más, de tal manera que no interesa a los fondos. Si en Madrid hablamos de una rentabilidad máxima para estos proyectos del 6,20%, mientras que esta rentabilidad está en el 3,20% para un proyecto similar en Andalucía. Sí me regalan suelo en Madrid y tengo un coste de capital muy bajo y una financiación muy alta, me pueden salir los números, pero en Andalucía no, salvo que te den subvenciones".

"En contraste con los principales mercados de Madrid, en donde la cesión de suelo es suficiente para alcanzar unos niveles de rentabilidad razonables, en otras regiones de España son necesarias aportaciones adicionales por parte de la Administración para que el modelo resulte viable", según Echavarren,



"Entonces, ¿qué podemos hacer ?", se ha preguntado el CEO de Colliers. "Se pueden hacer algunas cosas o, al menos, pensar en hacer algo. Por ejemplo, ¿tiene sentido que construir un m² de VPO cueste lo mismo que hacer un m² de vivienda libre? En mi opinión, no. O al menos en momentos de emergencia habitacional como el actual, no se puede discutir si el agua es potable; hay que apagar el incendio". Nos estamos empeñando en hacer el SEAT Panda con calidades de Rolls Royce. Y algunos me llamarán especulador. No. Estoy proponiendo resolver un problema de un déficit de 2 millones de viviendas. Estamos en una situación de emergencia habitacional", ha insistido.

"Para atraer a la inversión privada, estaría bien dejar de llamarles especuladores, sinvergüenzas, fondos buitre. No hay ni un solo fondo buitre que sobrevuele España desde hace 15 años", ha concluido.