Every significant business relationship I have ever had evolved into a friendship. Business does not exclude friendship.
I have had suppliers grant me extended terms when I had a cash flow problem, and we have had suppliers who have had cash flow issues who asked me for early payment. No formalities required.
I have always had the attitude that I did not want to do business with anyone that I would not invite to my home for dinner.
Your friends with Amazon and ebay?
Yes I have had this and agree
I have never viewed my relationships with Amazon or Ebay as significant. Just as I would never view life without freedom as significant. In absolute dollars, they have not been significant,
I would never allow myself to be dependent on either of those companies. I still own my domain names, and one of them would be resurrected should I need more money.
Both Amazon and Ebay provided me with funds which could be used for self-indulgence and personal charity, without any guilt or worry. A luxury in ways that are hard to explain.
I would not invite Pierre or any of his successors, or Jeff or Andy to my home for dinner. Nor are they likely to come if invited.
Having a hard time reconciling those two statements as they seem to be on different sides of your business / dinner table analogy while doing business with both.
Life in a bubble?
This all depends on the nature of your friendship. Iāve had to cut loose many, many suppliers because of issues. Iāve had them help me and Iāve helped them just as you said but I donāt consider that to be personal, itās business on both ends. Would I have considered many of those suppliers as friends? Yes, but I understood that friendship is based on business, not a business based on friendship.
And a new survey points out some pretty bleak figures for the economy in 2025!
Released by Axios today, 10/9/2025 ā ā22 states are in recession or close to it, new analysis findsā
https://www.axios.com/2025/10/09/trump-tariffs-immigration-recession-states
Knowing the effect does not mean one knows the cause.
Effects are backward looking, they are easy to analyze. And as they say, past performance is not necessarily a predictor of future performance.
Credit Axios for including this disclaimer
" Reality check: Like NBERās recession call, this is a subjective assessment. But in this case, itās just one economist doing the ranking.
And in Fortune: Roughly half of U.S. states are effectively in a recession and āhanging on by their fingertips,ā Moodyās chief economist says | Fortune
According to analysis from Moodyās Analytics, 22 U.S. states are seeing their economies contract. Meanwhile, just 16 are seeing economic growth, while 13 are classified as ātreading water.ā That said, the states contributing the most to U.S. GDPāCalifornia, Texas, and New Yorkāare all in the clear, pushing the overall growth of the country into the green as a result.
One thing statisticians sometimes do to data is determine the āoutliersā (significantly above and below the majority of data points, using formulas) and then run the numbers without them. It sounds like if the national numbers excluded California, New York, and Texas, the picture would then be more consistent with most consumerās lived current experiences.
I concur. I like the WSJ when they do a statistical analysis because they usually tell you what theyāve included in the data as well as what may not have been included.
Based on this, I think they are including the data. It would be highly misleading to mention the overall growth of the country due to CA, TX , and NY and then exclude the data when using the choropleth map.
I guess I know where to focus my advertising now. 
This article completely misses the influx of CA and other big state dollars flowing into states like Idaho and Montana and all the expansion states. There are folks bringing their CA dollars with them rapidly increasing costs in those states. On their own, without the influx, those states wouldnāt see economic expansion.
And, sadly, those states have no idea what OTHER changes are going to happen as a result of those migrations. Iād mention voting patterns but it might get censored as political. 
If they arenāt - which I would question, based upon the available evidence - then Iād submit that their decision-makers havenāt been paying enough attention to such trends over the last Ā½-century and moreā¦
The Beige Book was released yesterday: The Fed - Monetary Policy: Beige Book (Branch). Thereās one more due out this year, the day before Thanksgiving.
This piece has some handy visualizations within.
It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the staff writers that did the report to be removed from their positions due to being āwrongā and denying how robust the current economy really is.
Iām torn between that being sarcasm or recognizing the current ārealityā.
What is more sad is those people we know and love who will do absurd mental gymnastics to avoid having to acknowledge that reality, in order to simply save face from being wrong. Itās like watching a flat earther try and argue with an astronaut. Intellectually painful to those watching and the Astronaut, but nothing will change because the other person is simply on āteamā flat earth.
You could put them on an orbiter and they will always think the edge is just over the horizon, no matter how many times they go around the planet.
The moon landing was fake!
We will attest that when we plop our bare behind (aka moon) down on the throne ā¦ it is a very real event.
