After His Orange Highness blinked on most of the tariffs, my 401(k) plan recovered around half of the value that it lost the prior week. As I mentioned, I lost close to an entire year's salary in two days thanks to him thinking that he's a financial Sooper Genius and that AI can set American economic policy, and thanks to Congress handing over the financial keys to him. (I blame both parties for having been so stupid as to have allowed this to happen by abrogating their constitutional responsibilities.)

Because I have a lot of faith in Glorious Orange Permanent Leader for Life and Beyond's ability to crash markets, I decided to withdraw $25,000 ($31,250 including the withholding against income taxes) so that I could both clear any remaining consumer-grade debt (that is, everything other than the mortgages on Fernley House and the East Lot) and have a significant cash reserve.

I am (as of last month) more than 59 1/2 years old, so there is no penalty for withdrawal from the plan. I just will owe income tax next year on the withdrawal, and since I'm still fully employed, it will be at a (relatively) high rate, which is why there is so much additional money held back against taxes. But when you hear that Warren Buffett has moved a staggering amount of his fortune into cash and equivalents, I don't think it's such a bad thing for me to get more cash on hand. And thanks to having moved to Nevada, I don't have a state income tax about which to worry.

When I heard in the news yesterday that markets went back down, I worried that my sell order was too late, but checking this morning, it looks like the order must have gone in early enough that I at least got some of the short term recovery. I also hope that the fund managers (who must be going crazy right now) have managed to move more of the mutual funds into safer investments. I'm in the tranche of people with a projected retirement of about ten years from now. When I started investing in my 401(k) back in my twenties, the money was in higher return/riskier things because I had time to recover. There were some significant market swings over that time, but overall I have done quite well. However, I no longer have time to make it back.

I have to hope that the economic chaos gets bad enough for the super wealthy to actually be able to get the Orange One's attention. He doesn't give a fig about ordinary people. Indeed, since I'm sure he expects to rule forever as King, and now that he got their votes, he really doesn't care much about even his own ordinary supporters, who are just suckers in his book. But maybe, just possibly, the people with most of the money in this country (including Co-President Musk) might just be able to get through to him how much harm he's doing. He won't listen to me or you, but maybe the lawsuit from Koch will make him pay attention.