45th President of the United States, Donald Trump. (Vol 6)
Discussion
Following on from Vol. 5 here: https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
Previous volumes have had trolling and abusive posts removed leading to the banning of PHers from N, P and E.
So please keep it civil and polite
Previous volumes have had trolling and abusive posts removed leading to the banning of PHers from N, P and E.
So please keep it civil and polite
Tbh I didn't think that (a) the judge would do that as I assumed the WH would say "Acosta can FO. Our gaff, our rules!"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-4624097...
Anyway the first question from JA to DT will have more viewers that the Superbowl Half-time show
On another note...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-4624097...
Anyway the first question from JA to DT will have more viewers that the Superbowl Half-time show
On another note...
Sarah Fuggawee-Sanders said:
There must be decorum in the White House
NRS said:
Countdown said:
Randy Winkman said:
For a thicko like me, can you or someone else explain to my how the deficit weighs up against the fact that we have been told in the last few months that the US economy is "booming"? 
You get a £5k bonus at work so you take out a £50k car loan to buy a Range Rover Sport.On the face of it you're doing really well, you have a nice car and a good job. Assuming your job continues and you keep getting the bonuses there won't be any problem financing the RRS or paying off the mortgage. However the kids are getting older, you might need to buy a bigger house, you never know what's round the corner....would it not have been better off paying the mortgage?
That's what trump's done, he's taken out a loan and (some) taxpayers are reaping the (short term) benefits. If the economic boom continues then it's all gravy........
If reducing taxes means everyone has 10% more money in their pocket then all that happens is that retailers raise their prices by 10%. You get a booming economy for the time it takes retailers to raise their prices and then individuals will have the same purchasing power as they did before the tax cut but now the government has got a funding problem as well.
My prediction when the tax cuts were announced was that the stimulus would trail off in 2019 and become problematic in 2020. Not far off the analysis Bernanke came out with too: http://uk.businessinsider.com/ben-bernanke-says-tr...
<><><>
Regarding the debt ceiling you need to split it in to two categories, foreign and domestic. https://www.thebalance.com/who-owns-the-u-s-nation...
Domestic
Roughly two thirds of US debt is domestically held and for the most part this can be considered good debt because it cycles through the economy in to social security, pensions, insurance, etc. This debt is never and should never be paid off as doing so would collapse the pensions, welfare, etc that a healthy economy needs to function. The continuous creation and destruction of this debt acts like a pump circulating currency through the economy.
Like all debt in a fiat currency you can take on too much of it and you can get a build up in the difference between principle and interest. With domestically held government debt this is managed through inflation - A period of high inflation reduces purchasing power of each dollar until the principal plus interest on the debt is brought back in to line with work done in the economy. For the most part this process is self correcting which is why central banks should be free from political influence.
If any politician or journalist tells you that "*Insert scary big amount of debt here* therefore we need to cut welfare / nationalise or privatise something / follow their ideology." Then know that you are being lied to and manipulated for political gain. Without knowing how much of that is good debt then the overall figure for government debt is meaningless. That this puts 99% of American and British discourse on economics in to the category of potentially harmful agitprop does worry me.
Foreign
Roughly a third of America's debt is held by foreign banks and governments with the two major holders being the Chinese and Japanese governments. For anyone who isn't the holder of the world's reserve currency this will be bad debt because the taxpayer is making interest payments to a foreign economy so that money's gone forever and will never cycle back round to the economy which paid the tax. This can be offset by domestic financial institutions holding the foreign debt of other countries.
There is a limit to how much debt you can sell domestically so the higher you raise the debt ceiling the more debt you must sell to foreigners. Provided people are willing to buy the debt everything's tickety boo. China and Japan have a policy of buying up all the excess US debt because that keeps Americans buying their products which in turn keeps their populations employed and happy. This purchasing of American debt also keeps demand for the dollar high, thus strengthening the dollar against the yen and yuan, which in turn makes it easier for them to export good to America, which again keeps their populations employed and happy.
America can get away with having the Chinese and Japanese effectively pay America to keep buying their goods because there is currently no one who can replace the American consumer and the American currency. Every time the debt ceiling is raised exporting economies have to buy that debt to prevent job losses at home. By printing more of their own currency equal to the debt they are purchasing Japan and China can buy as much debt as America are wiling to sell, which is why it appears to Americans that it's possible to raise the debt ceiling without consequence.
This is as close to a free lunch as you can get in economics and is also the driving force behind America's trade deficit, which is one of the things that makes it so amusing to read American political discourse about the trade deficit while the government is dramatically increasing the quantity of debt sold to foreign governments. Trump is stoking the very mechanism which creates the trade deficit and then trying to stop the consequences of his own actions with tariffs. It's hilarious, like watching someone pressing both the accelerator and the brake at the same time and not understanding why the car isn't doing what they want.
There's no such thing as a free lunch
Having other people pay you to buy their goods is an extremely rare and privileged position so for it to continue then you have to convince everyone else in the system that it's in their interest to let you be top dog. In particular America has to convince China, Japan and the EU because without their acquiescence the system can not continue. America first and brexit are the exact opposite of what you need to do achieve this.
This is what's behind the Maas plan which would have been an unthinkable suggestion even two years ago. If implemented alongside eurobonds it would create a European consumer of last resort and would be one currency swap away from adding Chinese and Japanese consumers of last resort. Over time you can add India and others to that list.
None of that's going to send America back to the stone age, no one wants to see that, it's just a natural consequence of the move towards a multipolar world. What it will do is mean that there comes a point where America can't raise the debt ceiling without incurring painful interest rates, just like everyone else has to do. The purchasing power of the dollar would drop a bit and the average American would have to tighten their belt a bit. Painful but not insurmountable.
Tartan Pixie said:
As countdown says Trump has bought a booming economy on tick however it's more of a hire deal than a purchase because there's nothing to own at the end of it.
If reducing taxes means everyone has 10% more money in their pocket then all that happens is that retailers raise their prices by 10%. You get a booming economy for the time it takes retailers to raise their prices and then individuals will have the same purchasing power as they did before the tax cut but now the government has got a funding problem as well.
My prediction when the tax cuts were announced was that the stimulus would trail off in 2019 and become problematic in 2020. Not far off the analysis Bernanke came out with too: http://uk.businessinsider.com/ben-bernanke-says-tr...
<><><>
Regarding the debt ceiling you need to split it in to two categories, foreign and domestic. https://www.thebalance.com/who-owns-the-u-s-nation...
Domestic
Roughly two thirds of US debt is domestically held and for the most part this can be considered good debt because it cycles through the economy in to social security, pensions, insurance, etc. This debt is never and should never be paid off as doing so would collapse the pensions, welfare, etc that a healthy economy needs to function. The continuous creation and destruction of this debt acts like a pump circulating currency through the economy.
Like all debt in a fiat currency you can take on too much of it and you can get a build up in the difference between principle and interest. With domestically held government debt this is managed through inflation - A period of high inflation reduces purchasing power of each dollar until the principal plus interest on the debt is brought back in to line with work done in the economy. For the most part this process is self correcting which is why central banks should be free from political influence.
If any politician or journalist tells you that "*Insert scary big amount of debt here* therefore we need to cut welfare / nationalise or privatise something / follow their ideology." Then know that you are being lied to and manipulated for political gain. Without knowing how much of that is good debt then the overall figure for government debt is meaningless. That this puts 99% of American and British discourse on economics in to the category of potentially harmful agitprop does worry me.
Foreign
Roughly a third of America's debt is held by foreign banks and governments with the two major holders being the Chinese and Japanese governments. For anyone who isn't the holder of the world's reserve currency this will be bad debt because the taxpayer is making interest payments to a foreign economy so that money's gone forever and will never cycle back round to the economy which paid the tax. This can be offset by domestic financial institutions holding the foreign debt of other countries.
There is a limit to how much debt you can sell domestically so the higher you raise the debt ceiling the more debt you must sell to foreigners. Provided people are willing to buy the debt everything's tickety boo. China and Japan have a policy of buying up all the excess US debt because that keeps Americans buying their products which in turn keeps their populations employed and happy. This purchasing of American debt also keeps demand for the dollar high, thus strengthening the dollar against the yen and yuan, which in turn makes it easier for them to export good to America, which again keeps their populations employed and happy.
America can get away with having the Chinese and Japanese effectively pay America to keep buying their goods because there is currently no one who can replace the American consumer and the American currency. Every time the debt ceiling is raised exporting economies have to buy that debt to prevent job losses at home. By printing more of their own currency equal to the debt they are purchasing Japan and China can buy as much debt as America are wiling to sell, which is why it appears to Americans that it's possible to raise the debt ceiling without consequence.
This is as close to a free lunch as you can get in economics and is also the driving force behind America's trade deficit, which is one of the things that makes it so amusing to read American political discourse about the trade deficit while the government is dramatically increasing the quantity of debt sold to foreign governments. Trump is stoking the very mechanism which creates the trade deficit and then trying to stop the consequences of his own actions with tariffs. It's hilarious, like watching someone pressing both the accelerator and the brake at the same time and not understanding why the car isn't doing what they want.
There's no such thing as a free lunch
Having other people pay you to buy their goods is an extremely rare and privileged position so for it to continue then you have to convince everyone else in the system that it's in their interest to let you be top dog. In particular America has to convince China, Japan and the EU because without their acquiescence the system can not continue. America first and brexit are the exact opposite of what you need to do achieve this.
This is what's behind the Maas plan which would have been an unthinkable suggestion even two years ago. If implemented alongside eurobonds it would create a European consumer of last resort and would be one currency swap away from adding Chinese and Japanese consumers of last resort. Over time you can add India and others to that list.
None of that's going to send America back to the stone age, no one wants to see that, it's just a natural consequence of the move towards a multipolar world. What it will do is mean that there comes a point where America can't raise the debt ceiling without incurring painful interest rates, just like everyone else has to do. The purchasing power of the dollar would drop a bit and the average American would have to tighten their belt a bit. Painful but not insurmountable.
Yes, it's a bit like increasing the minimum wage. In some ways it can help, but effectively you just increase inflation for a short time and then the benefits disappear again. It's not just you predicting this, the stock market seems pretty jittery at the moment related to the risks of a mature economic cycle, what might be indications of the tax cuts not having the full benefits/ running out of steam, trade war with China etc. If reducing taxes means everyone has 10% more money in their pocket then all that happens is that retailers raise their prices by 10%. You get a booming economy for the time it takes retailers to raise their prices and then individuals will have the same purchasing power as they did before the tax cut but now the government has got a funding problem as well.
My prediction when the tax cuts were announced was that the stimulus would trail off in 2019 and become problematic in 2020. Not far off the analysis Bernanke came out with too: http://uk.businessinsider.com/ben-bernanke-says-tr...
<><><>
Regarding the debt ceiling you need to split it in to two categories, foreign and domestic. https://www.thebalance.com/who-owns-the-u-s-nation...
Domestic
Roughly two thirds of US debt is domestically held and for the most part this can be considered good debt because it cycles through the economy in to social security, pensions, insurance, etc. This debt is never and should never be paid off as doing so would collapse the pensions, welfare, etc that a healthy economy needs to function. The continuous creation and destruction of this debt acts like a pump circulating currency through the economy.
Like all debt in a fiat currency you can take on too much of it and you can get a build up in the difference between principle and interest. With domestically held government debt this is managed through inflation - A period of high inflation reduces purchasing power of each dollar until the principal plus interest on the debt is brought back in to line with work done in the economy. For the most part this process is self correcting which is why central banks should be free from political influence.
If any politician or journalist tells you that "*Insert scary big amount of debt here* therefore we need to cut welfare / nationalise or privatise something / follow their ideology." Then know that you are being lied to and manipulated for political gain. Without knowing how much of that is good debt then the overall figure for government debt is meaningless. That this puts 99% of American and British discourse on economics in to the category of potentially harmful agitprop does worry me.
Foreign
Roughly a third of America's debt is held by foreign banks and governments with the two major holders being the Chinese and Japanese governments. For anyone who isn't the holder of the world's reserve currency this will be bad debt because the taxpayer is making interest payments to a foreign economy so that money's gone forever and will never cycle back round to the economy which paid the tax. This can be offset by domestic financial institutions holding the foreign debt of other countries.
There is a limit to how much debt you can sell domestically so the higher you raise the debt ceiling the more debt you must sell to foreigners. Provided people are willing to buy the debt everything's tickety boo. China and Japan have a policy of buying up all the excess US debt because that keeps Americans buying their products which in turn keeps their populations employed and happy. This purchasing of American debt also keeps demand for the dollar high, thus strengthening the dollar against the yen and yuan, which in turn makes it easier for them to export good to America, which again keeps their populations employed and happy.
America can get away with having the Chinese and Japanese effectively pay America to keep buying their goods because there is currently no one who can replace the American consumer and the American currency. Every time the debt ceiling is raised exporting economies have to buy that debt to prevent job losses at home. By printing more of their own currency equal to the debt they are purchasing Japan and China can buy as much debt as America are wiling to sell, which is why it appears to Americans that it's possible to raise the debt ceiling without consequence.
This is as close to a free lunch as you can get in economics and is also the driving force behind America's trade deficit, which is one of the things that makes it so amusing to read American political discourse about the trade deficit while the government is dramatically increasing the quantity of debt sold to foreign governments. Trump is stoking the very mechanism which creates the trade deficit and then trying to stop the consequences of his own actions with tariffs. It's hilarious, like watching someone pressing both the accelerator and the brake at the same time and not understanding why the car isn't doing what they want.
There's no such thing as a free lunch
Having other people pay you to buy their goods is an extremely rare and privileged position so for it to continue then you have to convince everyone else in the system that it's in their interest to let you be top dog. In particular America has to convince China, Japan and the EU because without their acquiescence the system can not continue. America first and brexit are the exact opposite of what you need to do achieve this.
This is what's behind the Maas plan which would have been an unthinkable suggestion even two years ago. If implemented alongside eurobonds it would create a European consumer of last resort and would be one currency swap away from adding Chinese and Japanese consumers of last resort. Over time you can add India and others to that list.
None of that's going to send America back to the stone age, no one wants to see that, it's just a natural consequence of the move towards a multipolar world. What it will do is mean that there comes a point where America can't raise the debt ceiling without incurring painful interest rates, just like everyone else has to do. The purchasing power of the dollar would drop a bit and the average American would have to tighten their belt a bit. Painful but not insurmountable.
One issue with large amounts of debt is it creates a liquidity problem. A lot of the financial crisis was not the debts in themselves, but related to the liquidity of companies when everyone started panicking and calling in their debts/ not doing any more very short term loans that were being used by a lot of the banks. So of course domestic debt is not a huge issue in itself if the money is circulating in the economy. However one question is also how is a lot of the money circulating? I'd guess growing inequality is a result of more money going to fewer people and companies. So if a company/people are sitting on huge cash reserves like say Apple then it is not circulating or creating value in its own right. But I don't know how much is doing that compared to total debt.
The risk with foreign debt is what you say, plus also countries potentially using it as a weapon. There was a lot of suspicion over China selling off stuff recently to put pressure on the US.
NRS said:
So if a company/people are sitting on huge cash reserves like say Apple then it is not circulating or creating value in its own right. But I don't know how much is doing that compared to total debt.
Trump's recent tax cut and the subsequent flood of cash being brought in from offshore seems to have mostly gone on share buy-backs and dividends rather than jobs or capital investment(no idea how difficult it would have been to place such a onus upon repatriated cash but no effort was made by the GoP); it's circulation of a kind but not exactly showering the 'deplorables' in manna.hidetheelephants said:
NRS said:
So if a company/people are sitting on huge cash reserves like say Apple then it is not circulating or creating value in its own right. But I don't know how much is doing that compared to total debt.
Trump's recent tax cut and the subsequent flood of cash being brought in from offshore seems to have mostly gone on share buy-backs and dividends rather than jobs or capital investment(no idea how difficult it would have been to place such a onus upon repatriated cash but no effort was made by the GoP); it's circulation of a kind but not exactly showering the 'deplorables' in manna.Plus the economy is already mature or close to it in the economic cycle, so we're much more likely to go into recession at some point within the next number of years. So it would be risky for companies to do big real investments, as it'd be likely the mature too late to pay back when we have the next decline/crash again.
Which IMO goes to show the tax breaks were not needed now, and are either a) Republican ideology of low taxes being applied. b) Trump personally benefiting financially c) Trump wanting to get record figures/better economy to be better than Obama. Probably a combination of all of the above in reality.
tshow in a dumpster fire.” 
unrepentant said:
paulguitar said:
Chimune said:
Trump says HE wrote ALL the answers to Muellers questions.
This can only be a good thing I think.
He's lying though. His lawyers did the answers.This can only be a good thing I think.
It’s actually laughable to think of trump trying to write a written legal response to Mueller. The orange one has considerable difficulty coming up with even vaguely coherent tweets and often has to do them several times to correct grammar and spelling issues most 10-year-olds would not have encountered.
B'stard Child said:
unrepentant said:
paulguitar said:
Chimune said:
Trump says HE wrote ALL the answers to Muellers questions.
This can only be a good thing I think.
He's lying though. His lawyers did the answers.This can only be a good thing I think.
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