Reboot Rapid React: The Crony Courtiers Keep Dancing on Quicksand as Companies Slash Jobs
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Update 7.3.25:
Reuters on jobless claims numbers: The total ranks of those on jobless benefits rolls was unchanged in the week ended June 21 at 1.964 million, which is the highest level since the fall of 2021.
Update 7.2.25:
Per Fast Company: Microsoft announces new layoffs today, cutting 4% of its workforce
The company is cutting up to 9,100 jobs, hitting Xbox and gaming teams hard.
The June 2025 ADP report isn’t a day at the beach—unless your definition is the sands quickly descending into the realms below. Job growth decreased by -33,000 on a +100,000 expectation.
CNBC additionally reported:
The May job growth figure was revised even lower to just 29,000 jobs added from 37,000.
With wages cooled. Construction shriveled. Transportation stalled. But most concerning is that for a service-based economy, where the U.S. actually runs a significant trade surplus, the quicksand is even swifter:
The bulk of job losses came in service roles tied to professional and business services and health and education, according to ADP. Professional/business services notched a decline of 56,000, while health/education saw a net loss of 52,000
But inside the Trump regime’s marbled hall of mirrors? The music plays on. The Chamber of Commerce clinks its goblets as the bill no one likes passes its Senate hurdle. Wall Street warbles its favorite fallacy lullaby—the crony courtiers keep dancing. Deeper. And deeper.
No talk of course correction. No talk of contraction. No talk of the American worker sprinting backwards on a treadmill slick with political grease. Just another week of burgeoning profit margins, AI hallucinations, and champagne toasts to a future that doesn’t include the middle class.
The private sector quietly begins its retreat: layoffs here, cuts there, and hiring freezes dressed up as “strategic realignments.” The gilded PR machine hums at full speed, because perception—not P&Ls—is the meme-coin of this crumbling realm.
And yet, the regime smirks as it sinks. Almost like they’ve discovered a way to waltz across quicksand without sinking.
They haven’t.
We’ve seen this courtier charade before.
Mantua, 1629. The plague snakes into the city through trade routes and grain sacks. Towns nearby shutter their gates. Cremona burns its linens. Brescia posts guards. But what do es The House of Gonzaga do?
They throw a tournament.
Gold-threaded lances. Feathered helmets. Imported horses. A pageant of denial, staged while rats and fleas run rampant across the banquet tables. The ducal scribes draft cheery dispatches to Vienna. Merchants are told to smile. Presses are muzzled. The economy gasps. Still—the music plays.
Because to acknowledge the rot is to take responsibility for it.
By the time Mantua faced its truth, it was buried under it. Forty thousand dead. Debts unpayable. The duchy stripped and sold. All because the ruling class couldn’t stop spinning long enough to feel the ground collapse.
What world could that ever compare to…wait…
2025 isn’t suffering a plague again, or hopefully ever. It’s suffering a derisive delusion. That if the right people keep the waltz in unison, the facts will stay silent. That if the rich keep dancing, the pit will politely wait. But the data is in. The spending is down. The sentiment is sinking. The scaffolding of the labor market is sagging.
And still the music plays.
The cronies know it.
The courtiers feel it.
But they dance anyway.
I saw two guys today who had their division shut down. "We're walking dead. We have until September"...to find new jobs.