Just thought I’d mention it. The Dow Jones lost 766 points today. Ain’t winning grand?
The Mahablog
Politics. Society. Group Therapy.
Just thought I’d mention it. The Dow Jones lost 766 points today. Ain’t winning grand?
Oh, Lordy, I'm so tired of all of this damn winning!
Especially this trade war which, let's face it, was so easy to wi…
What's that you say?
But tRUMP said trade wars were easy to win!
The markets did WHAT?!?!?!?!?!
Ya know, I think we could all do with a lot less of what tRUMP calls "winning!"
'I think that word does not mean what he thinks it means…'
We may be overdue for a recession after a decade of growth. The trade war(s) may put the economy over the edge. A war over oil may be brewing as tankers are being hijacked. (Yeah, three 'mays'.) The only economy that will (not may) flourish if oil exports are curtailed is Russia. We will get hit hard. I remember the Carter years and the oil embargo. Trump is tap dancing in an economic minefield – this may not end well but it may put coffin nails in his campaign. The POTUS has less control over the economy than most think.
OT – Is Texas the ball game? If Hispanics get registered and vote, can the state turn blue sooner than conventional wisdom says? Is there extensive polling about this we don't know but the GOP does? The 'invasion' has been going on a long time – a lot has settled in TX but been silent. Might Trump atrocities awaken that demographic at exactly the right moment? The reason for question marks is I don't have any numbers but there were lines in the El Paso manifesto.
https://www.yahoo.co-markets-154935903.html?.tsrc=jtc_news_indexm/news/trade-war-farmers-trump
Trump has managed to put farmers on taxpayer funded life support with his trade war while comrade Putin has managed to bring home the bacon as a result of Trump's easily winnable trade war. But not to worry! On the 1st of September Trump is going to deliver a knockout blow to China with a tariff on 350 billion dollars worth of Chinese goods. That aught to bring them begging to Trump for some relief by means of an unconditional surrender. It'll be a wham bam thank you mam event as Trump dispenses with another economic lightweight.
Sorry for the bad link…But essentially the news story goes on to say that farmers are cursing the day they traded their John Deere hats for MAGA hats. Now they are saying that even if Trump manages to pull off a trade deal with China their markets have been taken up by other countries and if there will be any hope of regaining a share in those markets they'll have to compete in an altered market place that will yield a lower price for their product.So no matter how it plays out their pain will outweigh their gain, thanks to Trump.
Trump thinks that because he can financially devastate some schmuck looking for economic justice after being ripped off by Trump University that the formula of financially overpowering an opponent will work in all situations. It's one thing when you're dealing with an individual, but an entirely different thing when dealing with a country. Especially one that has been in existence for over 5,000 years.
Let's hope for an even bigger fall
By now almost everyone knows that China is manipulating it's currency. They know it because Trump keeps repeating it. Let us just say that such thinking is usually an error as we all should know by now. Most likely, when he makes an accusation, it is to cover for something he is doing. Most of the time it is the exact same activity he is up to. It is one of his frequently used covers, It has occurred so often it has become a standard operating procedure of Trumpism. It is the old junior high trick of accuse them first of what you have been doing to them. Smack em up the back of the head and then yell – quit hitting me. Works almost every time.
Treasury department standard procedure (until now) was to file a report annually on countries which it contends are manipulating currency. This (until now) was done with deliberation and due diligence. This time the announcement from Treasury lacked deliberation and diligence. Such a claim will still winds slowly toward world monetary authorities anyway, where it will find the lacking diligence and deliberation. This information was discussed at some length by credentialed people this morning on the NBC business channel. I wish I had a hard copy or a link to the broadcast to include here.
What is not being said is that every person in this country has an increased debt load from the national debt, under Trump. A national debt increase of over two trillion dollars has come under Trump. Put simply, let us just say every man, woman and child now owes about 7-8 thousand dollars more in their share of the national debt that they did when he took office. A lot of this borrowed money went for tax breaks for the filthy rich and those farm checks for the new welfare class of trade war victims.
Now the market is betting on a one percent federal fund rate easing. This is due to projected slowdowns due to China trade war actions. These are the rate cuts we should, in many wise money people's opinion, save in case of economic troubles. That kind of sounds like another debt increase in just a different form to me. The con man did not get his reputation for nothing.
This is irrelevant, because the National Debt never has to be repaid and never will be. Paying off the National Debt would mean no Treasury Bonds are available to maintain liquidity for banks and hube mega-corporations. Every time there has been a serious effort to reduce the National Debt it has produced a serious financial depression. Even Clinton's brief excursion into budget surplus produced a brief but sharp recession.