Trump announced he's nominating Keith Sonderling to be labor secretary. Sonderling is already acting labor secretary. This is like proposing to your wife.
The nomination requires Senate approval. Sonderling has been doing the job without needing their permission. Now he needs their permission to keep doing what he's already doing. Bureaucracy operates on the same logic as a gas station that makes you prepay after you've already pumped.
Retail traders will read this headline and think it moves markets. They'll check futures. They'll scan for labor sector ETFs. They'll convince themselves this changes something about their positions. It doesn't. Nothing happened. A man doing a job will continue doing that job pending approval from people who could have stopped him at any point but didn't.
The announcement came via Truth Social on Monday. Truth Social is where official government personnel decisions get posted between ads for commemorative coins and whatever Eric Trump is mad about this week. We've reached the point where cabinet appointments share a platform with your uncle's rant about chemtrails.
Sonderling's qualifications don't matter. His policy positions don't matter. Whether the Senate confirms him doesn't matter. He's already labor secretary in every way that affects your portfolio, which is to say not at all. But some guy in Michigan just panic-sold his shares of a staffing company because he thinks this headline means something about immigration enforcement or minimum wage or whatever financial horoscope he read this morning.
The position requires Senate approval but the acting position didn't. So we've built a system where you can do the entire job without permission until someone decides you need permission to continue doing what you've been doing. It's the governmental equivalent of working for exposure.
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