[Bytor Peltor]

Robert Mueller had dinner in Georgetown tonight......looks like David McCallum aka “Ducky” from NCIS is on the job : )

 

 

 

[!@#$%!]

tv man, go read a book

[!@#$%!]

paul krugman’s newsletter from this morning

Tuesday, May 7, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/column/paul-krugman


Trade war, what is it good for?


Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist

If you’re trying to understand why we may be on the brink of a full-scale trade war, with a huge expansion of U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods and, inevitably, Chinese retaliation, it may help to remember what happened a few weeks ago, while Notre Dame was burning.

As you may recall, Donald Trump decided to tell French firefighters how to do their job, tweeting that they should use “flying water tankers” to douse the flames. The French civil defense department responded with a tweet — in slightly fractured English — that didn’t mention Trump, but pointed out that water-bombing could cause the entire cathedral to collapse.

What does this have to do with trade? What the water-bombing incident shows us is that Trump has strong opinions on everything, even when he is completely ignorant of the subject. Fortunately, when it came to French firefighting, he couldn’t turn those opinions into action. Unfortunately, when it comes to trade policy, he can: U.S. trade law gives the president enormous discretionary authority to impose tariffs.

Trump’s tweets over the past few days may well be featured in future economics textbooks as perfect illustrations of how people misunderstand the basics of international trade and trade policy. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee it, since I’m the co-author of two textbooks.

First, Trump is still saying that because we run a $500 billion trade deficit with China — it’s actually $379 billion, but who’s counting? — that means we lose $500 billion. As some economists quickly pointed out, by this logic we all lose when we go shopping at our local supermarkets. After all, do the supermarkets buy anything from us in return? No!

Second, Trump keeps asserting that China is paying the tariffs he has already imposed. This could be true, if tariffs were driving Chinese prices down; in fact, the threat of more Chinese tariffs on U.S. agricultural exports is one reason grain prices have just plunged to a record low.

But enough time has passed for economists to look at the actual results of Trump’s trade policy so far, and the Chinese are not, in fact, paying the tariffs. As I wrote a couple of months ago, “to a first approximation, foreigners paid none of the bill, U.S. companies and consumers paid all of it.”

So if you’re trying to make sense of what’s happening on trade, you should start with the basic point that Trump has no idea what he’s doing, that there isn’t any coherent U.S. policy goal.

That still leaves the question of why what seemed to be a deal in the making may have fallen apart (or maybe not: this could all be theater.) Last week it looked as if China would mollify Trump by offering some “tweetable deliveries” — promises to buy U.S. products that would let him claim victory without leading to any substantive change in Chinese policy. Did the Chinese actually, as the administration claims, start to walk back some of their promises? Did a trade hard-liner get Trump’s ear? Did Trump hear that the likely deal would probably be panned by the news media? Nobody knows.

One thing is certain, however: If we do get into a full-scale trade war, for whatever reason, it will be very hard to end it, and the world economy will never be the same.

Heads up: I'll be on vacation for the next two weeks. Next newsletter: May 28!

[ilduclo]

In keeping with the quality control of Trimp properties (rats, roaches and raw sewage at Trimp restaurants), we now have hazardous fecal coliform levels in Trimp swimming pools

 

https://qz.com/1612352/pools-at-trum...th-inspectors/

[Derek]

Originally Posted by ilduclo

more Sanders history

‘Anyone Ever Seen Cocaine?’ What We Found in the Archives of Bernie Sanders’s Long-Lost TV Show.
What a forgotten trove of videotapes reveals about the man who rewrote America’s political script.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/st...eo-2020-226761

Whatever good it did for Bernie Sanders at the time, “Bernie Speaks with the Community” is now 1,667 minutes of material for opposition researchers, health care insurance companies and Trump’s reelection campaign to pick through. Here’s a short, and surely incomplete, list of the things Sanders said on his TV show that his opponents could cut into a 30-second ad: The Nicaraguan Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega “happens not to be a communist.” Nora Astorga, the Nicaraguan ambassador to the United Nations who had recently visited Sanders, might have gotten cancer because of the “tremendous grief and suffering that’s going on in her own country” caused by the war. The Soviet Union’s economy is being “devastated” by military spending. And perhaps, as he proposed to a classroom of small children, Burlington should develop an exchange program with communist and socialist countries around the world. “I would like to see families—your mothers and dads and yourselves maybe—go to the Soviet Union and learn about that country, and people from there come to here,” he says. “If you actually had kids here who were from Nicaragua or from the Soviet Union, and they could tell you what's going on in their own country, boy, you could learn a whole lot. And then if kids from Vermont or Burlington were in those countries, they could tell those people what was going on in their hometown.”

No one cares about that shit tho and only makes him more likeable to a large chunk of people. Things like Biden's voting record and bill legislation will be much more harmful than Bernie's silly public access TV show which by the way rules:

 

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Derek

No one cares about that shit tho and only makes him more likeable to a large chunk of people. Things like Biden's voting record and bill legislation will be much more harmful than Bernie's silly public access TV show which by the way rules:

 

wow he had the same terrible posture way back when! and here i thought it was an age thing (like my great grandma)

i’m watching...

-

the goths start at 14’

he’s nice and lets them talk. even when they speak gibberish lolol

it’s like a social studies teacher

[Derek]

Imagine cracking his back for him and the proceeding sound wakes up every child and dog in the neighbourhood.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Derek

Imagine cracking his back for him and the proceeding sound wakes up every child and dog in the neighbourhood.

the walls of the indoor amusement park would fall hahaha

anywya that was a fairly nice cable access show. more “bernie listens” than bernie speaks. which is refreshing. i saw it all hahaha.

[ilduclo]

Originally Posted by Derek

No one cares about that shit tho and only makes him more likeable to a large chunk of people. Things like Biden's voting record and bill legislation will be much more harmful than Bernie's silly public access TV show which by the way rules:

I guess you're an idiot

[Derek]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

the walls of the indoor amusement park would fall hahaha

anywya that was a fairly nice cable access show. more “bernie listens” than bernie speaks. which is refreshing. i saw it all hahaha.

I'm glad that you're not buying into ilduclo's nonsense. That article was overly positive yet he chose to copy and paste the only negative paragraph. Sad!

[Derek]

Originally Posted by ilduclo

I guess you're an idiot

Hah look at this idiot who can't win an argument because he cherrypicks shit

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Derek

I'm glad that you're not buying into ilduclo's nonsense. That article was overly positive yet he chose to copy and paste the only negative paragraph. Sad!

ildouche doesn’t listen to anyone who disagrees with him. he’s got everyone on ignore. i guess he’s ignoring you too now.

me, i don’t care for cognitive closure. the whole point of a forum is to discuss shit.

[Derek]

And people say that progressives are the close minded speech nazis haaaaaa

[!@#$%!]

some are, lol

but anyway...

[Derek]

Exactly, they're hypocrites!

[Bytor Peltor]

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

BARR is bulletproof......

 

From last I heard eleven hours ago, not one Democrat has entered the Secure Room to read the 99.9% unredacted version.

A) they don’t want to know the truth
B) they already know the truth

Either way, all their grandstanding won’t change a thing!
(Shut Up Jerry)

Originally Posted by Robert Schunk

Nancy Pelosi claims she has a Constitutional crisis on her hands, as Attorney General Barr has disregarded her "deadline" to reveal the full, unredacted Mueller report to Congress.

That this is the cheapest form of political grandstanding is obvious to anyone who understands that:

1) the Attorney General is not required by law to release ANY of the Special Prosecutor's report to ANYONE;

2) certain items contained within the Special Prosecutor's report are justifiability classified, such as grand jury testimony and intelligence which might reveal sources and methods of acquisition.

Kindly notice the fact that, through the two years of the Mueller investigation. President Trump never invoked Executive Privilege until Congress demanded that Attorney General Barr break the law to satisfy their demands

What Speaker Pelosi is attempting is something I learned about when I was a Trotskyist in college, to which Trotsky referred as his "Transitional Program", which consists In the raising of demands, in a revolutionary or pre-revolutionary situation, which are immediately understood by the people to be necessary to the maintenance of human life and the proper functioning of society, yet beyond the ability of the ruling class to deliver, given the social crisis existing at the moment. In the case of the Russian Revolution, ending Russia's participation in the First World War proved to be just such a demand, and the success of the October Revolution was assured by the raising of this demand against the Kerensky government.

So, Speaker Pelosi is trying the same thing by demanding that the Attorney General break the law by releasing the unredacted Mueller report to Congress. But her demand on this point is nowhere near the critical importance of the Bolshevik Party's demand for exit from alliance with the Allied Powers in the First World War, nor is it understandable nor supportable by the broad masses of the people.

In the same vein, the Violence Against Women Act could easily have been extended by an easy bi-partisan majority, save for the fact that she refused to bring it up to a vote until it had expired, and then offered it up as a new piece of legislation containing an anti-Second Amendment poison pill which she knew Republicans could not possibly support. Besides the obvious question as to why the Violence Against Women Act needed a sunset provision, there remains the issue of Speaker Pelosi accusing Republicans of being in favor of violence against women, when her own deliberate policy of legislative sabotage caused the impasse.

[!@#$%!]

this one is for the non-illiterates

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...ideas-collide/

Trump’s two worst economic ideas collide
Catherine Rampell

At 12:01 a.m. Friday, President Trump’s two worst economic ideas finally collided — and made each other even worse.

To be sure, there are a lot of terrible economic theories espoused by this president (tax cuts pay for themselves, government shutdowns are fun, scam artists should roam free, etc.). But the specific bad ideas I’m referring to are:

1. Trade wars are good and easy to win; and
2. It’s smart for the president to publicly bash the Federal Reserve.

Last fall, Trump began loudly complaining about the Fed’s interest rate hikes, in defiance of a multidecade-long policy for the White House to never comment on Fed decisions. The reason for this norm is clear: Central banks must be politically independent in both practice and perception in order to credibly commit to stable prices. If the public believes that politicians rather than independent technocrats control the printing press, inflation can easily spiral out of control. Lots of other countries throughout history (Venezuela, Argentina, pre-euro Italy) have served as cautionary tales.

But none of that mattered to Trump. He has been throwing tantrums about the Fed’s modest interest rate increases, claiming that they threaten both the U.S. economy and his presidency. At one point, there were even reports that Trump was considering taking the unprecedented and cataclysmic step of firing the Fed chair whom he appointed, Jerome H. Powell.

Markets paid attention. As it turns out, China did, too.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Beijing noticed Trump’s latest Fed-related outbursts and interpreted them as evidence that the president was freaked out about the underlying health of the U.S. economy. They suggested that he might be secretly desperate to make a deal, any deal, with China:

Originally Posted by wsj

Mr. Trump’s hectoring of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to cut interest rates was seen in Beijing as evidence that the president thought the U.S. economy was more fragile than he claimed ...

An April 30 tweet, in which Mr. Trump coupled criticism of Mr. Powell with praise of Chinese economic policy, especially caught the eye of senior officials. “China is adding great stimulus to its economy while at the same time keeping interest rates low,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “Our Federal Reserve has incessantly lifted interest rates.”

“Why would you be constantly asking the Fed to lower rates if your economy is not turning weak,” said Mei Xinyu, an analyst at a think tank affiliated with China’s Commerce Ministry. If the U.S.’s resolve was weakening, the thinking in Beijing went, the U.S. would be more willing to cut a deal, even if Beijing hardened its positions.

In other words, our dealmaker in chief failed to realize that berating the Fed not only harms the long-run credibility of the central bank; it also hurt his near-term negotiating position with China.

After previously expressing a willingness to make serious concessions, China started playing hardball. Negotiations broke down, and then Trump responded by more than doubling existing tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports, from 10 percent to 25 percent, on Friday. He has also threatened to add tariffs to an additional $325 billion in Chinese goods that aren’t currently taxed.

Trump seems to believe that these tariffs are an end unto themselves because they are bringing “wealth” into the country by forcing China to pay “billions” into the U.S. Treasury:

Originally Posted by trump tweet

 

Talks with China continue in a very congenial manner - there is absolutely no need to rush - as Tariffs are NOW being paid to the United States by China of 25% on 250 Billion Dollars worth of goods & products. These massive payments go directly to the Treasury of the U.S....

This is, to be clear, incorrect.

Two separate studies by separate teams of all-star economists have found that 100 percent of the tariffs Trump has imposed so far are being passed along to, and paid by, U.S. consumers. One of those studies also found that workers in heavily Republican counties were being hurt the most by Trump’s trade wars, thanks to both the tariffs the president has imposed on our imports and the tit-for-tat retaliation other countries have slapped on our exports.

In other words, Trump’s Fed war has worsened his trade war. And in a particularly painful, the trade war might also soon heighten his Fed war.

After all, worsening trade tensions could put the Fed in a bind. An escalation in tariffs is likely to increase uncertainty, slow down business investment and hiring, and ultimately drag on growth. But it might also raise prices, since as those studies I cited note, the cost of the tariffs so far has been passed through to U.S. consumers.

That first effect — slowing growth — would nudge the Fed toward looser monetary policy. The second effect — higher inflation — could instead nudge the Fed toward tighter monetary policy. If a spike in inflation is clearly from a transitory shock (such as a one-time increase in tariffs), Fed officials should ignore it; but even so, it might be hard to tell in the moment what’s behind any given change in the pace of price growth.

Powell acknowledged these challenges when asked by Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal last year about the tools available if trade wars slow the economy:

Originally Posted by marketplace

Powell: ... We essentially have our our interest rate tool, so if the economy weakens, we can lower interest rates. We can slow the pace at which we’re increasing them. There could be an effect on inflation. I wouldn’t want to, you know, dive into a bunch of hypotheticals here, but I would say, you can imagine situations which would be very challenging, where inflation is going up and the economy is weakening.

Ryssdal: And you’re lowering rates all the same, just waiting for stuff to get better.

Powell: Again, it’s not at all clear how it would evolve. Inflation could move up, just sort of a step up in the price level, which wouldn’t affect future inflation, and that would be something you tend to look through what we call a supply shock. But this will, it it’ll have to be a question that we think about. But again I don’t want to get into a lot of hypotheticals. I just think at this point we’re watching carefully and hoping for a good result.

Basically, escalating trade tensions could make the central bank’s already very difficult job even more difficult — and thereby provide even more fodder for Trump to complain about Fed policies.

The moral of the story: Neither trade wars nor Fed wars are good and easy to win. But especially not when fought simultaneously.

[h8kurdt]

So what do you think will be the outcome of all this?

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by h8kurdt

So what do you think will be the outcome of all this?

well, i don’t have a crystal ball, and if powell can’t tell how could i possibly, but besides universal pain and suffering from a global recession (lol) seems to me the marketwatch exchange with powell signals a risk for stagflation, which is when you have economic decline and high unemployment, but prices go up (instead of down due to lack of demand). stagnation + inflation.

last thing this happened here was in the 70s—actually started before the oil crisis and continued after. that’s what ushered in thatcherism and reaganomics.

eta: actually it was milton friedman’s monetarism that got us out of stagflation. but after the last recession there is not a lot of room to cut interest rates and stimulate the economy.

[ilduclo]

DJIA off over 670$ in 5 days, thanks, Trimp!