Ray Dalio says the risk to U.S. Treasurys is even greater than what Moody’s is saying

Published Mon, May 19 2025The sky is falling chickens come out

Key Points

• Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio said Moody’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating does not take into account the risk of the federal government printing money to pay its debt.

• Bond holders would suffer losses due to the depreciating value of the money they are getting paid, Dalio said.

Bridgewater Associates founder and billionaire Ray Dalio warned Monday that Moody’s downgrade of the U.S. sovereign credit rating understates the threat to U.S. Treasurys, saying the credit agency isn’t taking into account the risk of the federal government simply printing money to pay its debt.

“You should know that credit ratings understate credit risksbecause they only rate the risk of the government not paying its debt,” Dalio said in a post on social media platform X.

“They don’t include the greater risk that the countries in debt will print money to pay their debts thus causing holders of the bonds to suffer losses from the decreased value of the money they’re getting (rather than from the decreased quantity of money they’re getting),” the Bridgewater founder said.

Moody’s on Friday cut the U.S. credit rating one notch to Aa1 from Aaa, citing the federal government’s ballooning budget deficit and soaring interest payments on the debt. It was the last of the three major credit agencies to downgrade the U.S. from the highest possible rating.

U.S. stocks fell Monday as the 30-year Treasury bond yield jumped to 4.995% and the 10-year note yield climbed to 4.521% in response to Moody’s downgrade.

“Said differently, for those who care about the value of their money, the risks for U.S. government debt are greater than the rating agencies are conveying,” Dalio said.

Bridgewater’s assets under management dropped 18% in 2024 to some $92 billion, Reuters reported in March, down from a recent peak of $150 billion in 2021.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/19/ray-dalio-says-risk-to-us-treasuries-greater-than-what-moodys-says.html

They also don’t account for the trillions coming in from other countries.

What El Salvador's Bukele, a hero for the American right, isn't showing the worldKate Linthicum Sun, May 18, 2025 at 6:00 AM EDT (LA Times really hates Bukele, 4 page article, repeats gossip and non-verifiable statements. They fail to prove any of their accusations, no real sources)

Victor Barahona was grateful when soldiers started rounding up gang members who had long terrorized this working-class city. No longer would his grandchildren pass drug deals or be startled from sleep by the crack of gunfire.

But when El Salvador's military started hauling away neighbors Barahona knew had no connection to the gangs, he spoke out, criticizing the arrests on his community radio program.

Soon after, police rapped on his door. Barahona said he was handcuffed and sent to prison, with no access to lawyers, no contact with family and no clear sense of the charges against him.

He recalls seeing inmates being tortured and guards hauling dead bodies from cells whilehe lived on meager portions of noodles and beans. He would later lodge a complaint with the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

When he was released almost a year later — 70 pounds lighter, and with no explanation — Barahona was alarmed to see that President Nayib Bukele was winning global praise for bringing peace and prosperity to El Salvador, with his iron-fist security strategy heralded by American conservatives such as President Trump.

A 43-year-old former adman first elected in a landslide in 2019, Bukele has been largely successful in rebranding El Salvador from a poor backwater plagued by murderous gangs into an innovative and safe nation that he compares to Singapore. In prolific social media posts, he presents himself like a tech CEO: a disrupter-in-chief willing to break norms and create what he terms a "new history."

But for all his modern trappings — his embrace of Bitcoin, TikTok and slick promotional videos — Bukele's critics say he's just following the playbook of previous Latin American strongmen, including the military leaders who ruled El Salvador as a dictatorship from 1931 until the early 1980s.

Bukele jails opponents, fires judges and has been implicated in corruption. He pushed for a court decision that paved the way for his reelection even though the country's constitution prohibits it.Last week, he launched a crackdown on nonprofits, calling for 30% of their donations to be taxed. (Oh I see NGO’s that are more corrupt than Rome, don’t like their money taken away, unless it’s for a protest against the leader of the country)

"He's not a divergence," said Noah Bullock, the director ofCristosal, a human rights group. "He governs in the same way as past dictators and uses the same instruments of power. It's a regime that tortures and kills and disseminates fear."

There is little doubt that Bukele's mass arrests starting in 2022 helped dismantle the gangsthat once held this country in a chokehold. And for that, most Salvadorans are thankful.

But as part of his security push — which included asking Salvadorans to denounce suspected "terrorists" via an anonymous tip line —tens of thousands of innocent people were wrongfully detained, human rights groups say. While polls show that most Salvadorans support Bukele, they also show that a majority fear retribution if they express their views. (But the Times fail to post the poll?)

“We used to be afraid of the gangs," Barahona said as he walked through Apopa, where rifle-toting soldiers are posted every few blocks. "Now," he said, "we’re afraid of the state.”

Favorite of the American right

More and more, Bukele's El Salvador is a model for the American right.

The Cool Down. He got a rock-star welcome at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, where participants chanted his name and he warned U.S. leaders to fight "dark forces … taking over your country…"

https://www.yahoo.com/news/el-salvadors-bukele-hero-american-100000599.html

US Supreme Court lets Trump end deportation protection for Venezuelans

Andrew Chung Mon, May 19, 2025 at 12:37 PM EDT

(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court let Donald Trump's administration on Monday end temporary protected status that was granted to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in the United States by his predecessor Joe Biden, as the Republican president moves to ramp up deportations as part of his hardline approach to immigration.

The court granted the Justice Department's request to lift a judge's order that had halted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's decision to terminate deportation protection conferred to Venezuelans under the temporary protected status, or TPS, program, while the administration pursues an appeal in the case.

The TPS program is a humanitarian designation under U.S. law for countries stricken by war, natural disaster or other catastrophe, giving recipients living in the United States deportation protection and access to work permits. The designation can be renewed by the U.S. homeland security secretary.

The court's brief order was unsigned, as is typical when the justices act on an emergency request.

The court, however, left open the door to challenges by migrants if the administration tries to cancel work permits or other TPS-related documents that were issued to expire in October 2026, which is the end of the TPS period extended by Biden. The Department of Homeland Security has said about 348,202 Venezuelans were registered under Biden's 2023 TPS designation.

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole member of the court to publicly dissent from the decision.

The action came in a legal challenge by plaintiffs including some of the TPS recipients and the National TPS Alliance advocacy group, who said Venezuela remains an unsafe country.

Trump, who returned to the presidency in January, has pledged to deport record numbers of migrants in the United States illegally and has taken actions to strip certain migrants of temporary legal protections, expanding the pool of possible deportees.

The U.S. government under Biden, a Democrat, twice designated Venezuela for TPS, in 2021 and 2023. In January, days before Trump returned to office, the Biden administration announced an extension of the programs to October 2026.

Noem, a Trump appointee, rescinded the extension and movedto end the TPS designation for a subset of Venezuelans who benefited from the 2023 designation.

But San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Edward Chen ruled in the challenge to the administration's action that Noem violated a federal law that governs the actions of agencies.Chen also said the revocation of the TPS status appeared to have been predicated on "negative stereotypes" by insinuating the Venezuelan migrants were criminals.

The Independent

"Generalization of criminality to the Venezuelan TPS population as a whole is baseless and smacks of racism predicated on generalized false stereotypes," Chen wrote, adding that Venezuelan TPS holders were more likely to hold bachelor's degrees than American citizens and less likely to commit crimes than the general U.S. population.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on April 18 declined the administration's request to pause the judge's order.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-supreme-court-lets-trump-163741727.html

>>23055582

2/2

Justice Department lawyers in their Supreme Court filing said Chen had "wrested control of the nation's immigration policy" away from the government's executive branch, headed by Trump.

"The court's order contravenes fundamental Executive Branch prerogatives and indefinitely delays sensitive policy decisions in an area of immigration policy that Congress recognized must be flexible, fast-paced, and discretionary," they wrote.

The plaintiffs told the Supreme Court that granting the administration's request"would strip work authorization from nearly 350,000 people living in the U.S., expose them to deportation to an unsafe country and cost billions in economic losses nationwide."

'WE'RE DEFENSELESS'

Some Venezuelan migrants who are TPS holders voiced concern on Monday after the court acted.

"We're defenseless, vulnerable," said TPS holder Maria Rodriguez, 33, who has lived in Orlando for five years with her husband and two children including a 2-year-old son born in the United States. "We left Venezuela because we couldn't make ends meet there. There was no work. … We have no family left in Venezuela. It's a true drama."

"It doesn't surprise us but it does make us more fearful," said TPS holder Reinaldo Alvarado, 29, who migrated first to Chile before moving to Texas five years ago.

"I have TPS and in theory that protects me from deportation. But they are taking everyone here, so my medium-term plan is to go to Spain," Alvarado said.

The State Department currently warns against travel to Venezuela "due to the high risk of wrongful detentions, terrorism, kidnapping, the arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, poor health infrastructure."

The Trump administration in April also terminated TPS for thousands of Afghans and Cameroonians in the United States. Those actions are not part of the current case.

In a separate case on Friday, the Supreme Court kept in place its block on Trump's deportations of Venezuelan migrants under a 1798 law called the Alien Enemies Act that historically has been used only in wartime, faulting his administration for seeking to remove them without adequate legal process.

The administration has accused the Venezuelans targeted for deportation under that law of being members of Tren de Aragua, a criminal gang that the State Department has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-supreme-court-lets-trump-163741727.html

The Supreme Court should have stopped the first interference with presidential powers, they will be getting many more illegal immigrants cases and the courts will be bogged down with illegals instead of US law. That's how stupid the SC Roberts is.

by Laura Kelly - 05/19/25 1:46 PM ET

(None of the Europeans, Republicans or arms dealers, want this war to end)

President Trump on Monday said that Russia and Ukraine will immediately begin negotiations on a ceasefire, following phone calls with the leaders of each country. He also noted the Vatican has offered to host the talks.

The White House said Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin for about two hours, after speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier in the day.

Trump has been pushing for a 30-day ceasefire in the war, and the White House said before Monday’s calls that he was frustrated with both sides.

The president called for a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine before entering office, and more than two months of direct diplomacy has failed to get Putin to agree to even basic terms.

The announcement of direct negotiations comes after Putin last week skipped appearing at direct talks in Istanbul that he proposed.

While Zelensky traveled to Turkey in a bid to entice Putin, the Russian leader sent a low-level delegation to meet with the Ukrainian team. Agreement on a ceasefire was not reached, but the two sides agreed on a swap of 1,000 prisoners and committed to keep talking.

On Monday, Trump described the tone and spirit of his conversation with Putin as “excellent.”

“If it wasn’t, I would say so now, rather than later,” he wrote in a post on his social media site, Truth Social.

Trump said he agreed with Putin that “largescale TRADE” can happen between Russia and the U.S. “when this catastrophic ‘bloodbath’ is over.”

It’s not clear if Trump is quoting himself or Putin describing the war in Ukraine as a bloodbath, which Russia initiated with a full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.

“There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED,” Trump wrote in his post.

Trump also said Ukraine can be a great “beneficiary on Trade, in the process of rebuilding its Country.”

Trump said he spoke with the leaders of the European Union, France, Italy, Germany and Finland immediately after his call with Putin and said the Vatican “would be very interested in hosting the negotiations. Let the process begin!”

Putin, in remarks reported by Russian state media, said Russia was ready to work with Ukraine on a memorandum on a future peace treaty. But Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov downplayed expectations of quick agreement, saying ending the Ukraine war would require “rather painstaking and, perhaps, prolonged work,” Russian state media reported.

Zelensky’s office did not immediately provide a readout of the call with Trump.

Kira Rudik, head of the Ukrainian opposition party Holos, said Putin’s statements “mean nothing.”

“We see absolutely no signs of peace, either on the ground or in the skies. The only thing I would trust is: he is ready to continue the war,” she wrote in a post on X.

https://thehill.com/policy/international/5307769-trump-pushes-russia-ukraine-ceasefire/

>>23055728

Trump says direct Russia-Ukraine talks to ‘begin immediately’

2/2

The Vatican has served as an important backdrop over the last few weeks of repaired ties between the U.S. and Ukraine that fractured at the end of February, during an explosive Oval Office meeting where Zelensky was chastised as being insufficiently grateful to U.S. support.

On the sidelines of Pope Frances’ funeral late last month, Trump and Zelensky huddled privately. The moment was captured in an extraordinary image showing the two men sitting in simple chairs face to face.

Shortly after that meeting, Trump criticized Putin as not being interested in stopping the war.

On Sunday, the Vatican again proved an important location for closer U.S. and Ukrainian coordination.

Zelensky met in Rome with Vice President Vance and Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio, on the sidelines of the inauguration of Pope Leo XIV.

Vance’s account on X posted a photo of the Ukrainian leader and Vice President smiling, sitting around a glass table on a shaded patio with a manicured garden in the background.

“Our countries share the goal of ending unnecessary bloodshed in Ukraine, and we discussed updates on the ongoing negotiations for a ceasefire and lasting peace,” Vance wrote on X.

“Thank you to all American people for the support and leadership in saving lives,” Zelensky wrote in his post on X, and posting a similar photo.

Still, Ukraine’s supporters are likely to be disappointed with Trump’s laudatory remarks of Putin and potential business deals. Bipartisan lawmakers in Congress have legislation imposing greater sanctions on Russia ready with a veto-proof majority, but have shown little signs that it will be brought to the floor for a vote, in deference to the White House.

Republicans, while extremely hesitant to break with Trump, are speaking out that Putin cannot be trusted and is not a partner for peace and that only pressure will get him to halt the war in Ukraine.

“Putin has disrespected the US and the goodwill of our President,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) wrote last week, following Putin’s no-show in Istanbul.

On Monday, he re-posted Trump’s social media post describing the call with Putin.

https://thehill.com/policy/international/5307769-trump-pushes-russia-ukraine-ceasefire/

(How does Zelensky not burst into fire while at the Vatican?)