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© 2024 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES 4/14/25

Your word of the day: Uncertainty

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     Tax season was extra painful this year. Because I did well in the stock market last year, I had to pay extra for capital gains, but those gains have evaporated and then some in Wall Street’s downward skid. Now, like millions of others with dwindling retirement accounts, I’m wondering what to do.

     As a journalist, I’ve never made a lot of money, so it’s remarkable that somebody like me even has a stock portfolio. I credit that to workplace 401Ks, some smart brokers and the penny pinching I learned from my mother. 

     More than half of Americans are invested in the stock market, and now we’re watching the money we counted on as nest eggs or retirement income disappear, all because of the president’s trade war. As the markets bled trillions of dollars, even his supporters have objected.

     On April 6 billionaire hedge fund investor and Trump backer Bill Ackman wrote that in socking allies and adversaries alike with massive tariffs we were destroying the world’s confidence in the United States as a trading partner, a place to do business and a safe place to invest. “(W)e are heading for a self-induced economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down.”

     If this guy is alarmed, where does that leave people like me? 

     The state’s investment officers are also worried. Our much-admired permanent funds took a $1 billion hit, and public retirement accounts were also down. Bob Jacksha, chief investment officer for the Educational Retirement Board, blamed the market downturn on “economic malfeasance” by the Trump administration, according to the Albuquerque Journal.

     Our permanent funds underwrite many of the lofty programs that come out of the Legislature, so a squeeze on the funds will eventually mean a squeeze in services. Managers of these big funds say they can ride out downturns in the short term, but what if it’s not short term? 

     Bill Ackman is not an outlier. Anybody who knows anything about business and the economy has one word on their mind these days: Uncertainty.

     A panel of New Mexico economists and trade experts speaking at UNM recently agreed that fluctuating tariffs would not only slam consumer prices everywhere but jeopardize free trade between countries, reported Source New Mexico. Jordan Rosenberg Cobos, president of the International Law Society, said “the uncertainty and the unpredictability behind the tariffs may be even more damaging than the actual tariffs. It’s like you’re taking a load-bearing wall out of the global economy without much notice.”

     Jerry Pacheco, executive director of the nonprofit International Business Accelerator in Santa Teresa, has written about trade issues for years. What Trump called “Liberation Day” in announcing new tariffs should be called “Chaos Day,” he wrote.

     “I have never seen so much confusion and scrambling in the trade community as I witnessed that day.” 

     Pacheco spent days calling contacts, trying to sort out how the on-again, off-again, permanent and paused tariffs would work here. His usual government sources didn’t know. Neither did customs brokers. Companies are scrambling to learn which tariffs might apply to them and how they will affect their markets. “It is this uncertainty that is the most difficult challenge.”

     As an old business reporter, I can tell you what happens when businesses face uncertainty. They hit pause. They postpone hiring, equipment purchases, and expansion. If a slump persists, they cut expenses and lay people off.

It’s no different for individuals: Do we buy a new stove or put it off? Eat out or stock up on beans?

     Economists locally and nationally are starting to use the R-word. 

     “At this point recession seems more likely than not,” Albuquerque economist Kelly O’Donnell told the Journal. “Seldom have so many negative factors simultaneously converged on the U.S. economy, and unlike the global pandemic or world wars, the current crisis is entirely self-imposed.”

     Lately, the president said on his way to Mar-a-Lago for a weekend of golf that “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”

Clearly, he’s not the one taking the medicine.

© 2024 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES 3/31/25

Feds to New Mexico: Burn, baby, burn

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     Our beautiful New Mexico skies have been stubbornly blue for months, and we know what that means. A few weeks ago, Patrick Lohman, of the online Source New Mexico, reported severe drought across the state. 

     Lohman has racked up more fire coverage than any New Mexico journalist, so when I see a fire story with his byline, I pay attention.

     He also reported that “federal cuts could leave one-third of the state without dispatchers to monitor for nascent blazes and fewer firefighters to respond if they blow up.”

     Go online and you’ll find colorful maps with the color red bleeding across the page to tell us that above normal fire conditions cover most of the state. Two years of moderate precipitation encouraged growth of fuels like grass and pine needles. Now they’re dry as paper. It’s a matter of when, not if.

     “It’s bad, man,” UNM fire ecologist Matt Hurteau told Lohman.

     In February the “Department of Government Efficiency” ordered the firing of 3,400 Forest Service seasonal employees. DOGE’s budget cutters were supposed to exempt firefighters. They didn’t know that 75% of the laid-off employees were trained and qualified in wildland firefighting. They didn’t know that most of the agency’s field crews are seasonal employees. They didn’t know that these crews not only clean recreation sites, they maintain trails and thin forests and that both steps are key to fire prevention. They didn’t know that during a fire, they’re also firefighters and fire support. And they didn’t know or care that the Forest Service is already understaffed, which is why every employee is involved in fire management.

     A federal judge ordered the 3,400 workers to be reinstated, but they can still be fired in a reduction in force. The president has asked the Supreme Court to block the ruling.

     What’s particularly shameful is that the Office of Personnel Management told these people they were being fired for “poor performance,” an obvious lie that hinders future employment. As one of them wrote recently, they willingly sleep on the ground, sweat and freeze to clear trails and clean campsites, and respond to backcountry medical emergencies – all for very little money.

     At the same time, DOGE plans to close the supervisors’ offices of the Cibola National Forest and Gila National Forest. Both house dispatch centers that coordinate fire response by federal, state and tribal agencies and monitor wildfire detection systems. They cover 45,000 square miles. Although U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich has received “assurances” that they won’t close, the General Services Administration has been noncommittal.

     UNM’s Hurteau worries that multiple wildfires in the West will quickly exhaust available resources. We’ll have permanent employees providing incident command, along with aircraft, but not boots on the ground. He also worries that under-staffed fire crews, who by nature and culture give their all, will be injured or killed.

     The one spark of good news is that the state Forestry Division is in the process of training 1,500 full-time and volunteer wildland firefighters this year. It also has 37 full-time wildland firefighters in three crews.

     And the Legislature passed House Bill 191, which creates two wildfire-related permanent funds to bolster the state Forestry Division. The Wildfire Suppression Fund will pay for contract wildland firefighters, equipment and supplies, and vehicle rental and repair. The Post-Wildfire Fund will pay for recovery efforts and environmental rehabilitation. 

     It’s a great idea, but the appropriation is $12 million, hardly enough to make a dent during a major disaster, especially if Forest Service cuts are permanent and FEMA disappears.

     The bottom line is that Elon Musk, who pays close attention to his own bottom line, is leaving New Mexico to burn.