Gallup: Trump Job Approval On The Economy Reaches New High

A weak world economy isn’t responsible for our own domestic irresponsibility. We’re doing stupid things because they provide a measure of immediate, short-term gratification. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where they’re leading. The miracle no-stick skillet isn’t going to be what the sales pitch promised.

Trump has it in his head that the dollar should be deliberately weakened as a means of dealing with the trade imbalance. The problem is that policies to deliberately make that happen could put the dollar on a downhill race course without any reliable brakes. You could devalue the dollar and print currency to render the accumulated debt load lighter, but you’d destroy the fixed value of American savings in the process.

Aren’t you the least bit curious what markets and currencies he and his family are heavily invested in to immunize themselves against the negative effects of his own policy? I certainly am. He’s part of a financial class that will happily feed on the collective wreckage of disaster as a means of personal empowerment and enrichment. They’re first class passengers with both privileged information and the best access to the lifeboats.

From FOX Business News, August 6, 2019 – Trump wants a weaker US dollar – here’s why

You might want to disregard the out-of-date video report about the stock market surging and go straight to the written report about Trump’s strategy to weaken the dollar.

A weakening dollar will promote inflation, further reducing the value of the assets held by conservative traditional savers who are the bedrock of any nation’s economic stability. They have already been robbed of their interest for years on end, and told that anyone who doesn’t gamble in Wall Street’s rigged financial casino is a fool. Yet we know from past experience that when the game blows up, it’s the casino owners and big players who get bailed out—with the cost of doing so added to the nation’s collective debt. The little guys who got robbed don’t get reimbursed or bailed out. They’re left holding the empty bag.

How can anyone who has worked, saved, and avoided the temptation of debt not feel aggrieved and cynical about all this? The concerns of millionaires and billionaires are increasingly placed ahead of those of everyone else, because they’ve increasingly got more money and power to make it that way. Then the people are told that the beneficiaries of this arrangement are actually their benefactors and the creators of wealth, prosperity, and all good things; that those at the top of the pyramid are what holds everything below them up.

This is not a healthy situation. When you’ve got deficits and debt growing so rapidly in the best of times, it’s like noticing a plummeting barometer reading while the sky is still clear. It’s why Mark Sanford is warning republicans about a coming storm. They really ought to listen to him and think about what he’s saying. He’s not the one who has abandoned conservative principles.

Workers at Shell’s new $6 billion plant ‘were told they wouldn’t get PAID if they didn’t attend a Trump speech’ and ‘were ordered not to protest during the event’

‘No yelling, shouting, protesting or anything viewed as resistance will be tolerated at the event.’

“I’m going to speak to some of your union leaders to say, ‘I hope you’re going to support Trump.’ OK? And if they don’t, vote them the hell out of office because they’re not doing their job.”

If only the power of all this blowhard’s self-aggrandizing hot air could be harnessed…

One union rep, speaking off the record, said failure to attend could have cost some workers up to $700 in combined hourly pay, overtime, and related benefits.

If only Trump’s followers weren’t so astonishingly gullible…

August 16, 2019 – Fmr. GOP Rep. Joe Walsh: Republicans Will Get “Wiped Out” in 2020 If Trump Is Nominee

A question is posed to Joe Walsh regarding Joe Walsh: How did this guy get from there to here? He explains. He also suggests a solution, but it’s unlikely anyone in the Republican Party will listen. Good news, though. Walsh proves that a person can recover from a past episode of lunacy.

@Greg: That’s why you guys are overthinking this entire election thing. Just relax, nominate Bernie and cruise to victory.

@Nan G:

Apparently, Greggie Goebbels, and the left wing British press, doesn’t seem to understand how union jobs work.

It says that those employees who did not attend the Trump rally, and instead, choose to take the day off, would not get paid for the day nor would they be eligible for overtime. I would guess their contract says “all over 8, all over 40” which means they would not have gained their 40 hours by the time Friday rolled around. Monday, 10 hours; Tuesday, off; Wednesday, 10 hours; Thursday 10 hours, by Friday, those workers would only have 30 hours tops and would not have been eligible for overtime pay.

But hey, don’t expect Greggie Goebbels to understand any of that. He’s just not that bright.

@Greg:

Apparently you have difficulty understanding that the contract rules—whatever the specifics might be—were used in such a way that those attending Trump’s speech would realize a hefty financial advantage which those who didn’t attend would not. You’re rewarded if you attend and penalized if you don’t.

I have no problem understanding contract rules. It is pretty simply for anyone who has an I.Q. higher than their shoe size. Go to the rally ON COMPANY TIME and be paid for it. Choose to take the day off and don’t get paid for it. It is just that simple and even a simpleton like you, Greggie Goebbels, should be able to understand that.

The fact that you don’t understand it means one of two things; either you have an unnatural and record breaking shoe size or your I.Q. is painfully low, hence, you are an idiot.

@retire05:

Maybe you should get a hobby.

The Art of the Pitch

The Washington Post reported Monday, citing three people familiar with the discussions.

Well, there you have it. If the Washington Compost sites three anonymous people it must be true.

ROTFLMAO

@Greg:

Got it. Democrats are attempting to pull the Trump economy down through the use of Mind Power.

No, through the use of propaganda and the Fed. Like Maher, Democrats desire public pain and suffering so they might appear to be a better option. It is a disgusting, cowardly ploy, but not beneath Democrats.

Collusion didn’t work. Obstruction didn’t work. So, destroy the economy and blame Trump. The more tragedy, the better.

@Greg: If Democrats would agree to spending cuts we could cut the deficit. Democrats NEVER think of fiscal responsibility, only buying votes. Imagine the deficits if ANY of these lunatic Democrats get in office. Where will $10 trillion a year MORE come from? Are your Democrats liars or lunatics?

A recession is liberal propaganda. They told us lethargy and poor jobs was a boom and now they tell us great growth and great jobs is bust. Like your examples of Trump’s racism… nothing but lying.

@Deplorable Me:

A recession is liberal propaganda.

“Former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said the US is most likely not entering a recession in an interview with FOX Business Network set to air on Friday.

“I think the answer is most likely no. I think that the US economy has enough strength to avoid (a recession).”

They told us lethargy and poor jobs was a boom and now they tell us great growth and great jobs is bust.

Didn’t Obama tell us that 1.5% growth was the new normal and that Trump would have to have a “magic wand” to be able to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.?

Like your examples of Trump’s racism… nothing but lying.

The left is hooked on the three R’s that they think is a winning platform: Russia, Racism and Recession.

Deficits have risen by an average of 15 percent each fiscal year that Trump has been in office. Increased spending was, in fact, a part of that.

Federal tax revenue declined by 0.4% in 2018, the first full year that the tax cuts were in effect. Increased spending has nothing at all to do with that result.

Clearly the tax cuts are not “paying for themselves.”

If this is the situation when the economy is going like a house on fire, what’s going to happen when the inevitable downturn hits?

Even The Fiscal Times acknowledged that collected federal revenue decreased in 2018.

I suppose if you pretend inflation doesn’t reduce the value of dollars collected so that no adjustment is necessary for a valid comparison between years, one could spin the takeaway in such a fashion. It seems a bit deceptive. Kind of like claiming the national debt is smaller that we think because dollars aren’t worth as much as they used to be. To their credit, The Federal Time is attempting no such deception. They make perfectly clear what the actual situation is in the first sentence of their article.

From Fiscal Times:

Federal tax revenues were lower in 2018 than in 2017, reversing a trend of rising revenues seen in recent years, according to U.S. Treasury data tracked by District Economics Group.

Individual tax receipts totaled $2.593 trillion in the 2018 calendar year, one percent higher than 2017 in nominal terms but about half a percentage point lower on an inflation-adjusted basis.

Corporate tax receipts were lower in both nominal and inflation-adjusted terms, coming in at $233 billion in 2018, down from $316 billion in 2017. That represents a 26 percent drop in revenues on a nominal basis and a 28 percent drop in inflation-adjusted terms.

The figures stated in nominal terms aren’t really the figures that matter.

August 23, 2018 – Trump threatens to lift tariffs on Chinese goods to 30% amid escalating trade war

“Raise” probably would have been a better word than “lift”.

Anything to sustain an artificial boom that’s inherently unsustainable…because once the downturn sets in, the costs of it will all become obvious.

Once again, a Democratic Party president will get stuck with clean up after the binge turns into a bust. But it will be far more difficult this time, because all usual emergency stimulus measures will already have been exhausted to throw the party. That has been the basis of the Trump Economy.

September 11, 2019 – Trump Calls for Fed’s ‘Boneheads’ to Slash Interest Rates Below Zero

WASHINGTON — President Trump urged Wednesday for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates to zero or even usher in negative rates, suggesting a last-ditch monetary policy tactic tested abroad but never in America.

His comments came just one day before European policymakers are widely expected to cut a key rate further into negative territory.

In a series of tweets, Mr. Trump said that “The Federal Reserve should get our interest rates down to ZERO, or less, and we should then start to refinance our debt,” adding that “the USA should always be paying the the lowest rate.”

Mr. Trump continued to criticize his handpicked Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, saying “it is only the naïveté of Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve that doesn’t allow us to do what other countries are already doing.”

He concluded by calling Mr. Powell, whom he nominated to head the central bank in 2017, and his Fed colleagues “Boneheads.”

[Read more about Mr. Trump’s feud with the Fed, which is rooted in history.]

Mr. Trump’s request is extraordinary for several reasons. The United States economy is still growing solidly and consumer spending is strong, making this an unusual time to push for monetary accommodation, particularly negative rates, a policy that the Fed debated but passed up even in the depths of the Great Recession. It is also typical for countries with comparatively strong economies to pay higher interest rates, not the “lowest” ones.

But Mr. Trump is facing an economic slowdown in the United States as the effects of his trade war with China and slowing global growth begin to rattle consumer confidence and threaten business investment, particularly in the manufacturing sector. With the 2020 election looming, Mr. Trump has begun looking for ways to keep the economic expansion going strong. Along with calling on the Fed to lower rates, he’s also mulled additional tax cuts.

The president’s call for negative rates is a significant escalation from what the White House was demanding from the Fed even six months ago. Mr. Trump and his colleagues have quickly gone from calling for a moderate rate cut to urging negative borrowing costs.

Mr. Trump’s economic advisers are also scheduled to meet on Wednesday to continue discussing ways to push through more tax cuts, such as a payroll tax cut, along with the legality of using executive authority to index capital gains to inflation, according to an administration official. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who is scheduled to attend the meeting, said on Tuesday that the Trump administration would be examining “tax cuts 2.0” as something to consider in 2020.

he president has said repeatedly that the economy is doing “great” and has accused the news media and Democrats of trying to sow economic uncertainty. Mr. Trump’s optimistic economic diagnosis makes his demand for negative rates, essentially an emergency policy option that central banks turn to after having exhausted more conventional ways of stoking economic growth, all the more striking.

But Mr. Trump increasingly sees the global economy as a winner-take-all game, one in which countries compete on exchange and interest rates. The president has repeatedly criticized other governments for trying to protect their economies by lowering rates or providing more stimulus, viewing those actions as working against America’s growth.

Negative rates, which have been used in economies including Japan, Switzerland and the eurozone, mean that savers are penalized and borrowers rewarded: Their goal is to reduce borrowing costs for households and companies to encourage spending. But they come at a cost, curbing bank profitability.

While it’s unclear how effective they have been as a policy tool — some research suggests negative rates could curtail lending — they are increasingly a reality in much of the world as central banks rush to support economic growth and investors look for safe assets.

The timing of Mr. Trump’s tweet is significant. The European Central Bank is expected to cut a key interest rate to a record-low negative 0.5 percent and roll out additional stimulus measures at its meeting on Thursday, in a bid to shore up very-low inflation and waning growth in important economies like Germany. Central banks around the world have been lowering their policy rates, partly because Mr. Trump’s trade war is combining with Brexit jitters and a global manufacturing slowdown to threaten growth in many nations.

The American president has commented on foreign central bank rate moves before, tweeting in June that “they have been getting away with this for years,” when Mario Draghi, who heads the European Central Bank, indicated that officials might provide additional stimulus to shore up the eurozone economy.

The Fed itself has already cut rates and is poised to lower borrowing costs further as risks to economic growth loom. Mr. Powell and his colleagues lowered interest rates for the first time in more than a decade in July to a range of 2 percent to 2.25 percent, and they are widely expected to cut by another quarter of a percentage point at their meeting next Tuesday and Wednesday in Washington.

“The Fed has, through the course of the year, seen fit to lower the expected path of interest rates,” Mr. Powell said in a speech last week, adding “that’s one of the reasons why the outlook is still a favorable one, despite these crosswinds we’ve been facing.”

Since Bill Clinton’s presidency, the White House generally avoided commenting on Fed policy. Mr. Trump broke with that tradition starting last July, and economists say that his now-frequent attacks on the central bank and Mr. Powell personally carry a risk for the institution.

The Fed is tasked with setting monetary policy with an eye toward the longer term — figuring out how to keep employment and inflation steady over time. But Mr. Trump’s regularly-voiced opinions create a risk that anything the Fed does could be seen as either capitulation or resistance.

“Anything they say or do will be seen against the backdrop of Trump’s attacks,” said Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University and former International Monetary Fund official. That’s especially tough at a time when the Fed is already puzzling over what to do with rates, given strong economic data but mounting risks to the outlook.

“If the data were unanimous and if there were consensus on the Federal Open Market Committee, which lately there is not, it would be different,” Mr. Prasad said. “The risk is that a rate cut could get interpreted as the Fed just trying to placate Trump.”

@Deplorable Me, #94:

Trump’s economy is nothing more that getting the government out of the way of capitalism.

Starting from a negative 2008 GDP growth rate of minus 0.1%, the GDP growth rate during Obama’s final 31 quarters averaged 2.2%. Obama inherited an economy that had lost 2.6 million jobs during the 12 months preceding his inauguration. His 8 years in office ended on the 75th consecutive month of job growth.

Trump has boosted the GDP rate to around 3%, but he has done that with tax cuts that are pushing deficits back to an unsustainable one trillion dollar per year mark even with a strong economy, and by pressuring the Fed to keep interests rates at levels that would normally only be maintained as a stimulus measure during periods of recession. That serves to make it easier to run up more debt while putting off the consequences of paying the bills with a credit card. He has also removed regulation without regard for any long-term negative consequences.

You’d better hurry up and give Trump a medal before the chickens come home to roost, because he’s leaving no tools with which to respond to an economic downturn, which any economist will point out is inevitable. The danger is that there will be nothing left but printing currency to pay the bills, which can quickly turn our carefully saved dollars into monopoly money.

The Trump Economy is a con.

Un-Spinning the Trump, Obama GDP Numbers

@Greg: Obama failed and failed miserably. He had the worst recovery from a recession in history and the sole reason was HIM. Obamacare strangled the economy, his taxes and regulations strangled the economy, the jobs created were low paying and mostly part time. Wage increase STOPPED.

Even though the Community Reinvestment Act caused the recession, Obama wanted to DO IT AGAIN!

All that has been turned around by Trump and mostly by Trump not being Obama. That alone restored faith in the economy.

@Greg: Hey ‘Gerg’, name an economic boom that DIDN’T end.