It's not so simple. The Republican's need to be concerned about getting re elected is all. The Democrats won't do Trump's bidding even if it shuts down government. It will look bad on him and civil servants still get paid for doing nothing which is just bad governance.

That is true, however, I think the boo is already in for weak and short term investors in this stock. Actually I was amazed the stock didn't fall sooner. These types of companies have a way of dying spectacularly after misusing their users information.

China is already hurting. It is losing the war the US lost which is the war Europe lost or more specifically England. Europe bought cheaper stuff from the US, The US bought cheaper stuff from Japan, then Korea and Taiwan, then China. Now the US is buying cheaper stuff from SE Asia as is Japan and even China.

The dumb issue over China is that tariffing China is bad because they are sitting on a mountain of our debt and most of their business is just making cheap stuff for the US to rebrand and sell all over the world. Cutting them off helps them because it forces them to try to move up the value chain which they need to do anyways.

The good news was the tax cut but is getting negated by higher prices and talks of a #tradewar. No tax cuts and no trade war with tame inflation is better than the latter for the economy because a trade war hurts the middle class more and the tax cuts benefited the wealthy who don't spend much more if they make more. That said, what's holding back the market and economy are two things, worry over a trade war or government shutdown and worry over the increasingly important big cap performing stocks. Although economists worry over the Fed's late cycle tightening, it mainly only weakens the effects of the government's tax cuts.

I agree that is another effect. Housing prices are already going soft in Southern California and summer isn't even over.

This was threatened the last time too. You will hear this every time the budget comes up so get used to it.

It is rather hard to win such lawsuits.

In reality doing a tax break and then doing massive tariffs basically negates the benefits of tax breaks. Unfortunately the tariffs won't negate much of the deficit that was created by the tax breaks though.

I actually think the Fed was considering loosing up on the rate increases pushing them further out but its hands were tied by Trump's statements which could be inferred as interfering with the Fed's decision making. The projections show that they are predicting weaker growth and if the trade war further escalates may see still further weakening and inflation rising. We will see how they will cope with that if it happens.

I do think the Fed has room to spread out the rate increases a bit from here if the dollar holds up.

However, Mid East tensions and actions can always counter this. The issue is #oil is rising despite a stronger dollar which is a bit worrisome.