Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 50. Sunrise is 6:31 and sunset is 7:25, for 12 hours, 54 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 45.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1865, a day after Union forces capture Richmond, Virginia, President Lincoln visits the Confederate capital.
In this last generation, Whitewater, Wisconsin has felt the effects of national calamities: the Great Recession, a pandemic, an insurrection, and now a trade war.
In each case, a small group of local men and women carried on as though local affairs were paramount1; in each case, they did so while conditions in the city grew worse from those national calamities.
Now comes another calamity, and with it a few likelihoods.
Those who supported the authoritarian movement that made a pandemic worse, inspired an insurrection, the return to power of a would-be king, and now a global economic crisis will never admit that they were wrong. Never. They wanted this and they will continue to want this, all of it.
Those who cannot see past Townline Road won’t develop broader horizons. It’s all roads, press releases, and sanewashing with that crew. They’ll keep thinking that if you talk to a hyena in a soft voice that foul creature will give up meat for vegetables. They’d probably keep thinking this even as that carnivore crunched on the nearest human femur2.
There are, however, many more residents in this city, in this state, and this nation who will stand opposed to wholesale ruin.
Of that ruin, there are months and years of damage3 ahead, with this only a portion:
Is “recession” now spelled T-A-R-I-F-F?
Markets were gripped by the recession trade after President Trump’s tariffs on Wednesday threatened a global trade war. Treasury yields, stock futures and the dollar all plunged.
This isn’t mere market hyperbole. Thursday was only the sixth time in history that the S&P 500 had fallen more than 4% while the dollar also fell more than 1%—with investors shocked that the greenback had failed in its usual role as a safe haven.
The carnage in the markets might be just the beginning: If the biggest U.S. tax rise since at least the 1950s causes the economy to shrink, stocks and Treasury yields still have a long way to go down.
As recessions take hold, stocks are hit both by lower earnings and by lower valuations, as spending falls and savers switch to safer assets. Defensive stocks better able to maintain sales—such as sellers of food and other household staples—beat those selling optional purchases such as luxury goods and cars, known as cyclicals.
See James Mackintosh, Market Upheaval From Trump’s Tariffs Could Be Just the Beginning, Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2025.
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- By contrast, this libertarian blogger has argued that the betterment of the city comes from applying the best of the nation. See FREE WHITEWATER, ‘How Many Rights for Whitewater?’, ‘What Standards for Whitewater?’, and ‘Methods, Standards, Goals’ (2013). ↩︎
- The last words of these sad types would likely be along the lines of ‘but I tried to be bipartisan!’ ↩︎
- The greater losses have been and will be to individual rights. ↩︎
We’ll have more than egg prices to worry about:
See Matt Grossman, Near-Term Inflation Expectations Surge, Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2025.
