Bubbles Are Often A Result Of Public Policy
A weekend topic starting with The Atlantic. “One of the most useless political observations since the election is that liberal elites live in bubbles. It is useless, not because it’s wrong—they often do—but rather because it’s like saying ‘liberal elites live in the biosphere.’ Living in bubbles is the natural state of affairs for human beings. People seek out similarities in their marriages, workplaces, neighborhoods, and peer groups. The preferred sociological term is ‘homophily’—similarity breeds affection—and the implications are not all positive. White Americans have 90 times more white friends than they have black, Asian, or Hispanic friends, according to one analysis from the Public Religion Research Institute. That’s not a description of a few liberal elite cliques. It’s a statistic describing the social networks of 200 million people. America is bubbles, all the way down.”
“But American homophily is not purely driven by our individual choices. Bubbles are often a result of public policy. For decades, U.S. housing policy has subsidized large suburban homes, but restricted housing construction in rich neighborhoods and deprived minorities of mortgage support. So, poverty concentrates in one area, and the rich cluster in another.”
From The Intercept. “In 2011, unemployment was at a near crisis level. The jobless rate was stuck around 9 percent nationally, an unusually high number due to the continuing effects of the financial crash. House Democrats were aghast. Behind closed doors at the Federal Reserve however, the conversation struck a different tone. According to transcripts released this month after the traditional five-year waiting period, Federal Reserve officials in November 2011 were debating whether unemployment was caused by bad work ethics and drug use – rather than by the greatest financial crisis in 80 years. This debate then factored into the argument over setting monetary policy.”
“‘I frequently hear of jobs going unfilled because a large number of applicants have difficulty passing basic requirements like drug tests or simply demonstrating the requisite work ethic,’ said Dennis Lockhart, a former Citibank executive who ran the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank. ‘One contact in the staffing industry told us that during their pretesting process, a majority—actually, 60 percent of applicants—failed to answer ‘0’ to the question of how many days a week it’s acceptable to miss work.’”
“The room of central bankers then broke into laughter.”
From Libcom.org. “It is hard to remember now, but Enron was once a very widely respected company. Luminaries such as Nelson Mandela, Alan Greenspan, and Colin Powell made the trip to Houston, Texas to receive the Enron Prize for Distinguished Public Service. A major Republican Party donor, Lay influenced high-level federal policy through top officials in the George W Bush administration. Affectionately known by George W. Bush as ‘Kenny Boy,’ Lay was also a close friend of the Bush family.”
“When Enron suffered a slight blow to its share price in 2001, it didn’t take long for investors to see the company for the hollow shell that it was. Despite its impressive connections, the Bush administration was not willing to defend Enron. The health of financial markets depends on investors acting on at least somewhat reliable information and fraudulent activity undermines this; not to mention the fact that Enron had defrauded the Republican Party’s primary constituency, wealthy investors. Enron was finally out of luck, and when the axe fell, it fell swiftly.”
“Managing to escape serious penalties for its involvement in the scandal was Citigroup. Citigroup helped Enron defraud its investors by designing intentionally complex structured finance transactions to help Enron keep its debts hidden from plain view. When Enron’s share price began to falter, Citigroup board member and former Bill Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin made a phone call to the Bush administration’s Treasury Undersecretary to try and forestall a credit ratings downgrade.”
“The decision not to prosecute Citi (or JP Morgan Chase which was also caught up in the WorldCom scandal) was probably due to a Bush administration reticence to go after institutions central to the neoliberal project. The Bush administration already felt that it had gone too far by pursuing charges against Arthur Anderson, and Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase in many ways represented the face of the burgeoning financial industry. For their part, far from counting their blessings, Rubin and Citigroup (and JP Morgan Chase) would end up escaping from the fallout of the first bubble only to throw themselves headfirst into more illegal activities.”
“Robert Rubin and Citigroup, indeed it is impossible to talk about one without talking about the other, are the unholy poster children of the modern Democratic Party. Originally created by the 1998 merger of the commercial bank Citicorp and the investment banking and insurance conglomerate Traveller’s Group, Citigroup was formed in defiance of the, already severely weakened, Glass-Steagall act.”
“Then Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Rubin, along with Democratic Party hacks like future Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, made the push within the Clinton administration to repeal the Glass-Steagall act and allow the Citigroup merger to go through without difficulty. After Glass-Steagall was effectively repealed in 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act, Rubin left the Treasury Department to take up a position on the board at Citigroup.”
“Shortly after Rubin joined the company, Citigroup ran into trouble. By 2002, Citigroup had already been fined $215 million for its involvement in tricking low-income borrowers into taking overpriced mortgages and credit insurance. An additional fine was paid in 2004 for approving mortgages to homeowners without properly checking their credit history. The rush to approve mortgages for homeowners was tied to Citigroup’s investments in the growing housing bubble.”
“So what did Rubin and the Citi executives do when 2007 came around and homeowners actually did begin defaulting on their mortgages en masse? They did what Enron did when its assets started to be far outweighed by its liabilities, lie. When it became clear that he could no longer keep his position at Citi, Rubin retired in 2009 having pocketed a total of $126 million during his time there, much of it tax free,. Of his absurd compensation, Rubin remarked, ‘I bet there’s not a single year where I couldn’t have gone somewhere else and made more.’”
“In 2010 the FCIC recommended that the Justice Department consider bringing criminal charges against Rubin for his role in creating the crisis and for lying to investors about the status of Citigroup. Obama’s Justice Department, led by Attorney General Eric Holder, never followed up. The decision not to prosecute Rubin is not surprising when one considers that prior to running the Justice Department Holder was an attorney at the DC based corporate defense firm Covington & Burling whose clients included Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Freddie Mac.”
“Apart from a Justice Department full of corporate defense lawyers, the other major obstacle towards preventing any criminal prosecution of Citi was that any prosecution of Citigroup executives would have probably implicated quite a few high level Obama administration officials. As Matt Taibbi explains, to a staggering degree the Obama administration was dominated by Citigroup personnel and people directly connected to Rubin himself.”
“In addition to former Citi executives, two of Rubin’s protégés held key positions in the Obama administration. Heading the Treasury Department was Timothy Geithner, who considered Rubin his mentor while he was an undersecretary to Rubin in the Clinton administration, saying, ‘while Rubin enjoys an amazing amount of public respect and credibility, people who have worked with him know that he’s substantially better than even that exalted perception.’”
“Of course it wouldn’t truly be a Democratic Party corruption story without mentioning Hillary Clinton. A somewhat credible leak showed that if elected, Hillary Clinton planned to tap Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg for Treasury Secretary. Sandberg worked under Summers at the Treasury Department during the Clinton administration and is currently an advisor on the board of the Hamilton Project, a free market think tank co-chaired by, drumroll please, Robert Rubin. In the age of Obama, neoliberalism truly triumphed.”
The last link is worth reading in full.
Yep, and the people are waking up to the phoniness of the left
The Rubin Report - The Left is No Longer Liberal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq86Beh3T70
The comments are interesting. Funny how people are so confused.
It’s just as phony to watch politicians try and shoe-horn all sorts of positions into conservatism. Best to stay away from stinky pigeon holes.
Boulder County, CO Rental Rates Plunge 9% YoY
http://www.zillow.com/boulder-county-co/home-values/
“we have to bake that bread ourselves” DJT
‘The decision not to prosecute Citi (or JP Morgan Chase which was also caught up in the WorldCom scandal) was probably due to a Bush administration reticence to go after institutions central to the neoliberal project.’
‘Neoliberalism
‘For the school of international relations, see Neoliberalism (international relations). For other uses, see Neoliberalism (disambiguation).’
‘Neoliberalism (neo-liberalism) refers primarily to the 20th century resurgence of 19th century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism. These include extensive economic liberalization policies such as privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society…The implementation of neoliberal policies and the acceptance of neoliberal economic theories in the 1970s are seen by some academics as the root of financialization, with the financial crisis of 2007–08 as one of the ultimate results.’
‘Once the new meaning of neoliberalism was established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy. By 1994, with the passage of NAFTA and the Zapatistas reaction to this development in Chiapas, the term entered global circulation. Scholarship on the phenomenon of neoliberalism has been growing. The impact of the global 2008–09 crisis has also given rise to new scholarship that critiques neoliberalism and seeks developmental alternatives.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
This “neoliberalism” definition is quite the mish-mash. Makes about as much sense to me as the present definitions of conservative, liberal, Democrat, and Republican.
Deregulation? Every single year the Federal Register tens of thousands more pages of laws. There has been no trend towards deregulation, only more and more regulation.
And since when have we had a reduction in government spending?
Before that neoliberalism started, a lot of industries were more heavily regulated, like trucking and the airlines. Regulations on Savings and Loans were reduced under Reagan, leading to crisis.
Congratulations, Mike, you know how to parrot the mainstream narrative. It’s not actually true, though.
The Motor Carrier Regulatory Reform and Modernization Act, more commonly known as the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 (MCA) is a United States federal law which deregulated the trucking industry.[1]
Motor carrier deregulation was a part of a sweeping reduction in price controls, entry controls, and collective vendor price setting in United States transportation, begun in 1970-71 with initiatives in the Richard Nixon Administration, carried out through the Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter Administrations, and continued into the 1980s, collectively seen as a part of deregulation in the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_Carrier_Act_of_1980
Airline Deregulation Act
The Airline Deregulation Act is a 1978 United States federal law that deregulated the airline industry in the United States, removing U.S. Federal Government control over such things as fares, routes and market entry of new airlines, introducing a free market in the commercial airline industry and leading to a great increase in the number of flights, a decrease in fares, and an increase in the number of passengers and miles flown. The Civil Aeronautics Board’s powers of regulation were phased out, but the Act did not diminish the regulatory powers of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) over all aspects of air safety.
Congratulations again. More parroting.
You quote a couple of acts which CHANGED the regulatory structure of a couple of industries.
Actual deregulation would mean repealing all regulations concerning those industries, and these acts did nothing of the sort. Deregulation would indicate a lack of regulation of these industries, and this is nothing of the sort.
All the PTB has to do to con people is throw in words like Deregulation Act or Free Trade Agreement, and 99% of people don’t bother to look into the substance of these acts or to think about what is actually going on.
Not deregulation and not free trade, that’s for sure.
AND the point I made is of the overall political, regulatory, and economic structure of this country under what some people are calling neoliberalism. This overall structure and trend is shown in the tens of thousands of pages added to the Federal Register every year.
And there has been no reduction in government spending either.
So now we’re getting into the definition of a word. Lots of people have the used the word to mean a reduction in regulations. You think that it should mean complete elimination of regulation of an industry.
So now we’re getting into the definition of a word. Lots of people have the used the word to mean a reduction in regulations. You think that it should mean complete elimination of regulation of an industry.
Words have actual meanings. Only deceivers try and reinvent them.
And, once again, the acts you cited did not reduce regulations in those industries. They got rid of some regulations and added others!
I don’t know about that. You’d have to go and count the number of regulations before and after the changes. It certainly appears that the two industries were more lightly regulated after the changes and more subject to market forces.
A result of the law was that the number of new firms has increased dramatically, especially low-cost, non-union carriers. By 1990 the number of licensed carriers exceeded forty thousand, more than double the number in 1980. Combined with the Staggers Act (1980), intermodal freight transport surged, expanding 70 percent between 1981 and 1986.[citation needed]
Deregulation—freeing up the trucking market to permit much more flexible pricing and service arrangements, disciplined by competition—allowed manufacturers to reduce inventories, move their products more quickly, and be more responsive to customers. Consumers indirectly benefited from the more efficient, lower-cost transport of goods. (See From Economic Deregulation to Safety Regulation Department of Transportation comprehensive study on deregulation effects.)
Words have actual meanings. Only deceivers try and reinvent them.
My quick internet search shows that the word came into existence some time in the 1960s. Shortly afterwards, most people who used it, used it in the way that Wikipedia uses it in those two articles. It’s not really a controversy.
‘Economic liberalism prevailed in the United States through the 1800s and early 1900s. Then the Great Depression of the 1930s led an economist named John Maynard Keynes to a theory that challenged liberalism as the best policy for capitalists. He said, in essence, that full employment is necessary for capitalism to grow and it can be achieved only if governments and central banks intervene to increase employment. These ideas had much influence on President Roosevelt’s New Deal — which did improve life for many people. The belief that government should advance the common good became widely accepted.’
‘But the capitalist crisis over the last 25 years, with its shrinking profit rates, inspired the corporate elite to revive economic liberalism. That’s what makes it “neo” or new. Now, with the rapid globalization of the capitalist economy, we are seeing neo-liberalism on a global scale.’
‘A memorable definition of this process came from Subcomandante Marcos at the Zapatista-sponsored Encuentro Intercontinental por la Humanidad y contra el Neo-liberalismo (Inter-continental Encounter for Humanity and Against Neo-liberalism) of August 1996 in Chiapas when he said: “what the Right offers is to turn the world into one big mall where they can buy Indians here, women there ….” and he might have added, children, immigrants, workers or even a whole country like Mexico.”
‘Around the world, neo-liberalism has been imposed by powerful financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. It is raging all over Latin America. The first clear example of neo-liberalism at work came in Chile (with thanks to University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman), after the CIA-supported coup against the popularly elected Allende regime in 1973. Other countries followed, with some of the worst effects in Mexico where wages declined 40 to 50% in the first year of NAFTA while the cost of living rose by 80%. Over 20,000 small and medium businesses have failed and more than 1,000 state-owned enterprises have been privatized in Mexico. As one scholar said, “Neoliberalism means the neo-colonization of Latin America.”
‘In the United States neo-liberalism is destroying welfare programs; attacking the rights of labor (including all immigrant workers); and cutbacking social programs…The beneficiaries of neo-liberalism are a minority of the world’s people. For the vast majority it brings even more suffering than before.’
‘Other countries followed, with some of the worst effects in Mexico where wages declined 40 to 50% in the first year of NAFTA while the cost of living rose by 80%. Over 20,000 small and medium businesses have failed and more than 1,000 state-owned enterprises have been privatized in Mexico’
Cancun Files: WTO Opens to Tragedy and Protest | Alternet
http://www.alternet.org/…/cancun_files%3A_wto_opens_to_tragedy_and_prot...
Sep 10, 2003 - The ritual suicide of a South Korean farmer in protest of WTO policies … attempted to immolate themselves, and one died, in anti-WTO protests. … The militants appeared to include Mexican students, Europeans with black …
Anti-WTO protests erupt - tribunedigital-chicagotribune
articles.chicagotribune.com/…/0309110316_1_free-trade-world-trade-or…
Sep 11, 2003 - CANCUN, Mexico — The protesters locked elbows, scaled the fences and were fought back with a barrage of tear gas. One stabbed himself …
Top Reasons to Oppose the WTO | Global Exchange
http://www.globalexchange.org/resources/wto/oppose
The WTO rules are written by and for corporations with inside access to the …. Mexico and Hong Kong, China, the WTO met thousands of activists in protest, …
World Trade Organization - WTO - Cancun, Mexico - Protests - Travel …
https://www.organicconsumers.org/old_articles/wto_cancun.php
Travel with OCA to WTO protests in Cancun, Mexico. … Asia are expected to converge on Cancun, including leading farm, food, Fair Trade, and anti-GE activists.
Anti-globalization movement - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-globalization_movement
The anti-globalization movement, or counter-globalisation movement, is a social movement …. Other anti-war demonstrations were organized by the antiglobalization movement: see for example the large ….. Jesús F. Reyes Heroles the former Mexican Ambassador to the US, stated that “in a poor country like ours, the …
1999 Seattle WTO protests - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Seattle_WTO_protests
1999 Seattle WTO protests, sometimes referred to as the Battle of Seattle or the Battle in Seattle …. (Submitted by a witness who participated in the Vancouver anti-APEC actions and the Seattle anti-WTO actions, and referred to Wikipedia’s …
[PDF]WTO Talks Collapse Amidst Protests In Cancun
archive.clamormagazine.org/communique/communique32.pdf
justice activists on the streets of Cancun, Mexico were jubilant on Sunday, Sept. … a week of dramatic anti-WTO protests struggled to be heard inside the highly.
The real battle for Seattle, 5 Dec 1999 | World news | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com › World › WTO
Dec 4, 1999 - On the front line of the protest a small debate was taking place. … A consensus had grown that the WTO was giving international democracy a … Sem Terra (the Landless) in Brazil and the Zapatistas in Mexico are beginning to …
From anti-war remarks at Oscars to WTO protests, Mexican actor …
http://www.iatp.org/…/from-anti-war-remarks-at-oscars-to-wto-protests-mexica...
Dec 14, 2005 - Gael Garcia Bernal spoke out against the war in Iraq while presenting an award at the Oscars two years ago. This week, the Mexican actor …
‘As a university lecturer I often find that my students take today’s dominant economic ideology – namely, neoliberalism – for granted as natural and inevitable. This is not surprising given that most of them were born in the early 1990s, for neoliberalism is all that they have known. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher had to convince people that there was “no alternative” to neoliberalism.’
‘But today this assumption comes ready-made; it’s in the water, part of the common-sense furniture of everyday life, and generally accepted as given by the Right and Left alike. It has not always been this way, however. Neoliberalism has a specific history, and knowing that history is an important antidote to its hegemony, for it shows that the present order is not natural or inevitable, but rather that it is new, that it came from somewhere, and that it was designed by particular people with particular interests.’
‘So how did things change? Where did neoliberalism come from? In the following paragraphs I offer a simple sketch of the historical trajectory that got us to where we are today. I demonstrate that neoliberal policy is directly responsible for declining economic growth and rapidly increasing rates of social inequality – both in the West and internationally – and I make a few suggestions for how to tackle these problems.’
from this same article:
So much for the trickle-down effect; as Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang has so aptly put it, “Making rich people richer doesn’t make the rest of us richer.” Nor does it stimulate economic growth, which is the sole justification for supply-side economics. In fact, quite the opposite is true: since the onset of neoliberalism, the industrialized world has seen average per capita growth rates fall from 3.2% to 2.1%.[5] As these numbers show, neoliberalism has completely failed as a tool for economic development, but it has worked brilliantly as a tool for restoring power to the wealthy elite.
If neoliberal policy has been so destructive to most of society, how have politicians managed to pass it off? Part of it has to do with the decimation of organized labor after the Volcker Shock, the demonization of unions as “stifling” and “bureaucratic,” attempts by the Left to distance itself from socialism after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the rise of the “consumer” as the key figure of American citizenship. We might also point to the increasing influence of corporate lobbying in the U.S. political system, and the recently exposed conflicts of interest among academic economists bankrolled by Wall Street. But perhaps most importantly, on an ideological level, neoliberalism has been successfully marketed under the quintessential American value of “individual liberty.”[6] Conservative think tanks like the Mont Pelerin Society, the Heritage Foundation, and the Business Roundtable have devoted the past forty years to peddling the idea that individual liberty can only be properly achieved through market “freedom”. For them, any form of state intervention is liable to lead to totalitarianism.
Trouble is, cheap money from the Fed which goes only to a select few insiders has nothing to do with liberality (AKA Freedom).
“So how did things change?”
“The post-war period from 1945 to 1973 was the era of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates and capital controls. It was a time of rapid economic growth in the rich world as countries rebuilt themselves after the war and as the technological innovations of the first half of the 20th century—cars, televisions, and so on—came into widespread use. High taxes reduced inequality; fiscal policy was used to control the economic cycle. It all came crashing down in the early 1970s as the fixed-currency system collapsed, and an oil embargo imposed by Arab producers ushered in stagflation (ie, high unemployment combined with inflation).” —TheEconomist
By the mid-sixties the U.S. government began spending way more than the taxes being collected. The Vietnam War, LBJ’s Great Society, the Jooz 1967 War, Nixon’s Clean Water Act, the Jooz Yom Kippur war, the Arab’s OPEC Oil Embargo. All economic data and charts agree that the U.S. middle-class stopped growing in the early seventies.
‘The following is a preview of a chapter by Claudia von Werlhof in “The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century.” (2009)’
‘Is there an alternative to plundering the earth? Is there an alternative to making war? Is there an alternative to destroying the planet?’
‘No one asks these questions because they seem absurd. Yet, no one can escape them either. Until the onslaught of the global economic crisis, the motto of so-called “neoliberalism” was TINA: “There Is No Alternative!”
‘No alternative to “neoliberal globalization”? No alternative to the unfettered “free market” economy? What Is “Neoliberal Globalization”?’
‘Let us first clarify what globalization and neoliberalism are, where they come from, who they are directed by, what they claim, what they do, why their effects are so fatal, why they will fail and why people nonetheless cling to them. Then, let us look at the responses of those who are not – or will not – be able to live with the consequences they cause.’
As the gold collar crowd is learning, there is an alternative.
Is there alternative? Yes, stop having so many babies. Instedad of asking how to feed 7 billion people, let’s ask how we got 7 billion people to feed.
“Of course it wouldn’t truly be a Democratic Party corruption story without mentioning Hillary Clinton. A somewhat credible leak showed that if elected, Hillary Clinton planned to tap Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg for Treasury Secretary. Sandberg worked under Summers at the Treasury Department during the Clinton administration and is currently an advisor on the board of the Hamilton Project, a free market think tank co-chaired by, drumroll please, Robert Rubin. In the age of Obama, neoliberalism truly triumphed.”
Thank God Crooked Hillary and her coterie of DNC insiders were done in by their own hubris and arrogance, and thank God for 61 million Deplorables who finally stood up and said “Enough!”
Note that the most fierce critics of neo-liberalism that I have posted here would be considered leftists.
I question the validity of terms like “left” and “right.” You’re either on the side of the oligarchy, or on the side of humanity.
Which side is Trump on?
The jury is still out on that one. But what is clear is that he upset the apple cart, and anyone so universally loathed and reviled by the oligarchy and their media lapdogs is A-OK in my book.
‘At the busy San Ysidro border crossing between the United States and Mexico, it’s hard to find anyone with positive words about President Donald Trump’s vow to build a wall between the two countries.’
‘Adding a wall “is not going to stop people coming into the United States; it will only result in more deaths,” said Enrique Morones, founder and head of Border Angels, a charity working to help prevent immigrant deaths.’
‘A wall would only push undocumented migrants to cross at even more remote locations, he said. Some 11,500 people have died crossing the border in remote locations since 1994, Morones added, “and many more will die if the wall is expanded.”
All this press coverage, all the focus, and no one asks, “how could things be so desperate in these countries that people would risk death by the thousands to escape it?” Jeebus, this is 2017! It isn’t acceptable.
Personally, I don’t favor building a wall, at least not until an objective cost-benefit analysis is done to determine whether it would be effective enough to justify the enormous costs. There are better means to crack down on or deter illegal immigration, namely going after employers and the people who rent to illegals. No wall is going to be a match for human ingenuity.
Rent to them? The US government had Freddie Mac set up a special loan designed to help them buy houses.
The first time I remember hearing the term neoliberal was Professor Keen in Australia describing why they had a housing bubble. He said neoliberal was what the prevailing central bank/IMF/multinational corporation conglomerate called themselves. What can be seen is that the housing bubbles and globalism come from the same group.
IMO, it would be a great benefit to do some defining. What or who do you define as oligarchs?
“Which side is Trump on?’
On the side of oligarchy. Fossil-fuels based oligarchy, to be exact. Including Russians.
noun, plural oligarchies.
1.
a form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few.
2.
a state or organization so ruled.
3.
the persons or class so ruling.
Wikipedia also has a good description of oligarchs and oligarchies.
“There’s a kind of hush
All over the world
tonight….”
‘On the side of oligarchy’
The term came from Russia I believe.
Putin and the Oligarchs | Foreign Affairs
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/…/putin-and-oligarchs
A year earlier, he had Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of the oil group Yukos and one of the world’s richest men, arrested and thrown in jail on charges of fraud and tax evasion-a move widely interpreted as a declaration of war against the so-called oligarchs, who have amassed phenomenal wealth and power since the …
A Fallen Russia Oligarch Sends Warning to Rest of Putin Insiders …
https://www.bloomberg.com/…/a-fallen-russia-oligarch-sends-warning-to...
Jan 12, 2016 - Now Yakunin, 67, has some parting advice for the remaining members of what he dismissed as Putin’s “so-called inner circle”: know your place.
Putin vs. the Oligarchs: How a Failure to Protect their Assets Could …
https://intpolicydigest.org/…/putin-vs-the-oligarchs-how-a-failure-to-prot...
May 18, 2012 - With the inauguration of Vladimir Putin to the Russian presidency on 07 May 2012, Russia’s leading entrepreneurs instead of restoration of …
Putin Shrugs Off Oligarch Opposition To His ‘Holy War’ And Policies
http://www.forbes.com/…/putin-shrugs-off-oligarch-opposition-to-his-holy-wa...
Feb 3, 2015 - Russia’s oligarchs have let it be known they are not happy with Putin’s holy war against Ukraine and the West, which has cost them one quarter …
“IMO, it would be a great benefit to do some defining.”
And its a cryin shame you’ve gotta explain that point after 13 years of running this blog.
On a side note, everywhere you look there is failure on the part of the globalista masters. They really can’t execute anything correctly. I suggest they hire some outfits that actually know WTF they’re doing.
On a side note, everywhere you look there is failure on the part of the globalista masters. They really can’t execute anything correctly.
Clearly you haven’t been paying attention. Never in human history has no much wealth and power been concentrated in so few hands. Heckova job, central bankers.
I’m talking about there bumbling fools at the lower levels.
On a side note, everywhere you look there is failure on the part of the globalista masters. They really can’t execute anything correctly. I suggest they hire some outfits that actually know WTF they’re doing.
They’ve been doing pretty well for themselves. Things would only get worse for the majority if they got better at their assault on the population.
45 was sent in to destroy it all, take our medicine, recession … then come out of it like the phoenix. It wont be pretty.
We all know the career politicians are worthless and spineless.
Just hope China and Russia dont take advantage when we are down. People voted for change. 27% of the population wanted 45 to do it, even if he embarrasses us all with his TV watching and Tweeting.
Whoa, a rare moment of lucidity for Mikey.
“The term came from Russia I believe.”
Ben, are you seriously suggesting that Putin is not an oligarch? And that he didn’t (by force) concentrate all of Russia’s immense wealth in the hands of his own criminal KGB-based gangster oligarchy?
Look up “Tambov organized crime group”. That’s Putin’s oligarchs. He’s mafia. They are mafia.
Everything that you quoted was just about stealing wealth from other criminal groups. A gangster war, won by Putin’s Tambov-KGB group.
I don’t know much about it. I read that he’s popular in Russia though.
BTW, some of us think the Clinton’s and Bush people are crime families.
All this press coverage, all the focus, and no one asks, “how could things be so desperate in these countries that people would risk death by the thousands to escape it?” Jeebus, this is 2017! It isn’t acceptable.</em.
Mexico has no excuse for being poor. It is rich in resources. There is only one reason for its situation: endemic corruption at all levels of society.
Mexico has no excuse for being poor.
no country does.
It is rich in resources. There is only one reason for its situation: endemic corruption at all levels of society.
no country does. see hong kong and japan.
my apologies for the errant post just before this one
—
Mexico has no excuse for being poor.
no country does.
It is rich in resources.
it isn’t the resources that make a country rich. see venezuela for the latest example. venezeula’s oil fields are said to be bigger than the saudi’s.
see hong kong and japan for rich countries without resources (except fishing and very light farming).
There is only one reason for its situation: endemic corruption at all levels of society.
true.
@Ben Jones - “I read that he’s popular in Russia though.”
Much less so now than before. People are hurting, a lot.
If you talk to average folks on the streets, everybody’s complaining, and a lot of them are blaming Putin. That’s in stark contrast to a few years ago, when so many were enamored of their “macho president who will make Russia great again”.
He was very popular during the period when oil prices went from $12/barrel to $110/barrel, and people went from having nothing (and going hungry for days in some areas) to a relative prosperity. It’s very easy to achieve “prosperity” when you start from zero and share a bit of the oil windfall with your formerly starving population.
However, before they shut down independent social polling (after taking Crimea), the polls showed that while the majority approved Putin’s foreign policy, they equally disapproved his internal policy and his handling of the economy. And that was before the latest recession.
If you conduct a poll now, everyone will approve everything. Because it’s dangerous not to.
Also, they think (they were told repeatedly) that America is dreaming of conquering Russia and taking its natural resources. They think (they were told) that there’s a plan by Americans to kill off almost all Russians and to keep just 13-14 million (out of 140 plus million people) to serve the oil and other natural resources production. Many believe it.
That’s why they fully support Putin’s foreign policy. “Russia is humiliated and on its knees, we’re surrounded by enemies, America is our main geopolitical foe who’s dreaming to destroy us and take our natural resources, lets make Russia great again”.
Very Goebbels like.
Greetings from Mexico!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/expd/32418706182/in/dateposted-public/
Very Goebbels like.
I suppose that having nuclear US missiles on their borders has nothing to do with it. I mean, if the Russkies placed missiles on the Mexican border, we’d be cool about that.
Thank Heaven neocon Hillary lost.
-> Ray: “No wall is going to be a match for human ingenuity.”
While I am a strong believer in the old phrase: “Good fences make good neighbors”, I also think what you said is true. The Mexicans will just build more tunnels like they have been doing along the California border. I’m sure you’ve seen them — railways, forced air, everything. And it works.
The wall might not stop them completely, but it sure will make it a lot harder and will discourage many from even trying.
We cannot eliminate all crime but it does not mean you do not try. Eisenhower sealed the border fairly well with less money and technology. It is more the will to do it than having the means.
see hong kong and japan for rich countries without resources (except fishing and very light farming).
There is only one reason for its situation: endemic corruption at all levels of society.
Actually, both areas have always had a fairly high level of corruption at the top. I think wealth is more tied to IQ and the ability to exploit a high IQ. Communist countries do stifle cognitive differences. That said, high IQ societies in general do tend to be less corrupt.
I think wealth is more tied to IQ and the ability to exploit a high IQ.
it isn’t. why were the asian tigers floundering before they started to embrace capitalism?
why didn’t they reject communism in the first place, if IQ was the most important factor?
i saw a quote i liked a few weeks ago. “morality is the science of prosperity.”
That said, high IQ societies in general do tend to be less corrupt.
IQ is economically worthless without honor and standard morality.
Please forgive me if my history is wrong, but whenever there’s been a communist revolution, isn’t the first thing they do is kill all the smart people?
They may kill some of smart people, but only a few. They need them to run the country. It’s the same reason that the 10% below the top 1% have in America over the past 40 years while incomes have stagnated or fallen for the majority.
Besides that, smart people usually know how to accommodate the new regimes. In the 30s in Italy and Germany, the professors at the universities fell all over themselves writing books and articles justifying the dictators.
This guy (KGB defector) says it’s the useful idiots who are taken out and shot first.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9ytTbNYMIE
They must not be very useful then.
-> “They may kill some of smart people, but only a few. They need them to run the country.”
So, the high-IQ / smart people end up being the oligarchs after the communism has failed.
@In Colorado - “I suppose that having nuclear US missiles on their borders has nothing to do with it.”
That’s right. It had nothing to do with US missiles, and everything to do with blatant anti-american propaganda, which, it seems to me, claimed another victim in yourself.
The goal was to make their population forget that they were being robbed blind, and to take their eyes off of Russia’s humiliating defeat in Chechen war, and to create an “external enemy” to boost regime’s popularity, and to explain the anti-democratic crackdown…
There were many reasons, but US missiles were not one of them. Early in Putin’s term there was even talk about inviting Russia to join NATO. Just imagine. LOL
No, they’re given good, high status positions in the economy, doing challenging, rewarding work. Some of them may join the oligarch class, but oligarchs are only some fraction of 1% percent of the population, so the vast majority of the smart people can’t be oligarchs.
-> “No, they’re given good, high status positions in the economy, doing challenging, rewarding work.”
LOL, I like your sense of humor.
I’m sincere. I’m talking about the scientists and engineers who developed Spunik, the musicians in the state orchestras, medical researchers in elite university hospitals. The oligarchs need them, so they treat them well. It’s the same in this country.
Mike is right. The purpose of “killing all the smart people” at the beginning of the revolution is to shut them up. Smart people are harder to fool and more prone to independent thinking. They are dangerous, if not silenced one way or the other.
Mass killings and oppression leads to folks hunkering down. Why say something anti-tyrant, if that will get you and your family killed or imprisoned or robbed of your livelihood? People learn to survive, and keep their mouths shut.
Once everyone is sufficiently terrorized, mission accomplished. Everyone (well, almost) will bend over backwards to show their loyalty, and will work diligently to serve their new masters.
Also, something akin to the Stockholm Syndrome happens - when the reality becomes unbearable and your life is in mortal danger unless you comply, it’s easier to join the terrorists who are holding you hostage, and convince yourself to believe the lies they spout.
Once that societal loss of the will to fight has been reached, all the tyrant needs to do is occasionally prune society of dissidents, to remind everyone that in order to survive one needs to show unquestioning loyalty - and alternately, heap rewards on those who faithfully serve the regime.
Meanwhile 100 years later, our great friend and ally Russia continues to help lower oil and natural gas prices around the globe.
A big thank you to the great nation of Russia from the people of the US.
This is a craigslist find.
Anyone looking for a miniature stud donkey?
http://charlotte.craigslist.org/grd/5972381770.html
For a miniature debt donkey?
Only if you choose to pay the stud fee in installments, with the pledge of the progeny as collateral.
Prices are falling in Hawaii too. How bout it….
Captain Cook, Hawaii Housing Prices Crater 10% YoY
http://www.zillow.com/captain-cook-hi/home-values/
The neocons might get a war after all.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-donald-trump-war-us-military-official-practical-reality-president-latest-a7550601.html
Everything that Trump does is on you and your buddies. Own it.
The alternative was Crooked Hillary. ‘Nuff said.
Marxist tears are delicious, no?
Only if one’s a fool.
Neocons tears are the best. They cry about everything.
Takes one to know one. Only wusses post about tears. Cry baby, you.
Have not been back for long monitoring this blog but I do find you interesting. Are you a fan of “Pussy Riot”?
She wasn’t there for that, but she can tell you what the “man in the street” is saying now, though he dare not say it out loud. Seems just a tad odd. I do wonder, if the government there is saying the US wants to kill 90% of them and keep the others in slavery working the mines, we don’t hear of it at all…ever, except from this one Never Trump source (who pops up just as Trump is elected). Just saying the pieces don’t fit nicely.
I will own it for now because I do not want WWIII, or any of the smaller genocides we’ve been eager to engage in lately.
Dan, I was not a fan of Pussy Riot. I think it’s very rude to come into a church and insult those for whom it’s sacred. At the time it happened I thought the girls deserved some punishment - 15 day arrest would be more than enough, for example (that’s a common punishment in Russia for disorderly conduct), or better yet, a month of public service (where they live at home, but have to help clean the streets, for example).
But two years of prison? That was such an overkill. Russian prison is not like American prison, it’s torture. I’m glad the inhumane system didn’t break them. So I guess now I’m a fan. Not for what they did before, but how bravely they handled themselves, and for what they are doing now (they are organizing to protect other prisoners against abuse).
@ Blue Skye - You’re clueless. I make a point of talking to “men in the streets” whenever I go there, (which is pretty often as I have to take care of an elderly relative), in order to gauge what’s going on.
clueless
Maybe so. Not overly gullible though. Credibility has some major logical gaps. I don’t mind an insult here and there, but it doesn’t advance your agenda. You’re the recent arrival. Timing is interesting. Soft engagement then harsh putdown, it’s not trust inducing. Smells more like a spider’s web. Could be simply a personality issue, could be tactics. I have no time for tactics.
The bottom line is that she has to have a better idea of how Russian people think than you do.
She’s the sort of person who thinks society is divided into winners and losers, as indicated by her comments the other day when she said that only a loser would want to work in a factory. That tells me everything I need to know about who and what she really is.
Honestly Mike, she only has a better idea if you buy her story. Actually, her story is pretty sketchy, weakened further by the dismissive responses. Besides, as you and I well know, two people living in the same country can have wildly different ideas about what is actually happening.
@ Blue Skye - “You’re the recent arrival.”
I’m not a recent arrival. You are. If you weren’t, you would have known me. LOL
Does anyone know you? You are so well versed in Kremlin’s talking points, that I have to wonder.
@Karen -
Again with twisting.
Yes, I believe that those who are willing to sell the country to wanna-be dictators and fascists for the fantasy of “working in a factory like grandfather” - while overlooking the clear and real dangers of automation - are shortsighted losers.
I don’t believe that those who work in factories are losers. I respect any honest job. There is more honor in working in a factory than in working as an intellectual supporting oppressive regimes or crooks, for example. (By the way, some Russian dissidents chose to sweep the streets instead of submitting their talents to serve the criminal state.)
It’s not one’s social status that makes one a loser. It’s good to have a dream. But a dream needs to be aspirational, and in touch with reality, not destructive.
the clear and real dangers of automation
you show your ignorance of economics.
“I’m not a recent arrival. You are. If you weren’t, you would have known me. LOL”
Don’t be a DebtDonkey.
The alternative was some semblance of stability
Stability on the glide path to oblivion. We wanted off of that. Either you wanted where we were headed or you are a scared abused victim.
semblance of stability = continue the war, continue the corruption, continue the cronyism……
Dave, btw do you benefit from any of the above?
Trump is continuing the war.
Trump orders ISIS plan, talks with Putin and gives Bannon national security role
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-holds-calls-with-putin-leaders-from-europe-and-asia/2017/01/28/42728948-e574-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html?utm_term=.56d2cfab6d66
He’s also benefited from cronyism himself.
Putin is a war criminal. Joining forces with Putin in Syria means making America participate in Putin’s war crimes.
So is Barrack. Your point?
My point is Barrack isn’t. Putin is. Putin, if one could deliver him today to Hague (unlikely), could be successfully tried for multiple war crimes, including brutal killings of scores of little kids, women, wounded, etc., on purpose.
Putin’s war crimes are a tactic. He’s a terrorist, by choice.
Same as Brock.
‘Own it’
We don’t have much choice do we? To think we nearly came down to a choice between Clinton and Bush again. Look at the last link: look at the connections between Bush, Clinton and Obama. In part that was what we rejected. And this is a liberal website that published it.
@Ben Jones - “We don’t have much choice do we? To think we nearly came down to a choice between Clinton and Bush again.”
I agree the choice was horrible. While I question the wisdom of chopping off our hands to spite our face (hands, not a nose, because the magnitude of potential damage is not cosmetic), nevertheless I sympathize and understand.
But. What’s done is done. WHAT ABOUT NOW?
He’s already acting like a two-bit dictator, who’s taking a hammer not just to the government but to the Constitution, to all our democratic institutions. Why no public outcry of concern?
He already did immense damage to our standing in the world. Why no words of caution?
Okay, forget about Trump - perhaps it’s too early to expect his supporters to start questioning their choice (although later might prove too late, IMHO).
But what about GOP? This circus we’re witnessing with repeal of ACA - how come those knuckleheads spend years doing NOTHING in Congress (and preventing Obama from doing anything of value), because all they did was try to repeal ACA, and now it turns out they DO NOT (and neither does Trump) have a replacement plan in mind? And yet, no public outcry for the wasted years.
My point is - you won. During elections, you had to make a choice and take the good with the bad, I understand that. But now, you won. You no longer have to accept the bad. Take the good - but oppose the bad. No?
Support him in whatever he does that you approve - but won’t you (I mean collective you, his supporters, his base) stand up to him when he’s in the wrong?
Imagine if Hillary started behaving so rashly and rule by executive order - wouldn’t you start calling for pitchforks right about now?
Get lost!
DJT is doing as close to exactly what he said he would as he can.
I love it!
No public outcry? No words of caution?
Have you been living under a rock??? The public has been out crying for months now, both in the streets and all over Youtube. The media has been screaming words of caution even before the election.
Our standing in the world? Based on the trade and immigration numbers and debt numbers, it seems to me that America is standing somewhere between sucker and laughingstock.
‘won’t you stand up to him when he’s in the wrong?’
First on this:
‘Why no public outcry of concern?’
Sure, I can go stand next to Madonna and bitch about tampons. It seems to me the corrupt corporate media has the rest of the public outcry going well.
There’s a lot here that is pertinent to the topic above. First, in retrospect Ron Paul never stood a chance at election. Say whatever: he was too nice, it took someone willing to stand on the stage with a Bush and say “your brother let 9/11 happen on his watch.” Or say Screech should be in jail, in a debate with her! Ron Paul would never have done those things.
I’ve said for years, the president is too powerful, and someday someone is going to get in there that all these apathetic people won’t like and they’ll be horrified. They should have been concerned about this concentration of power all along. Why haven’t the checks and balances been in use? For instance, they let the president and the president alone have the up or down on NAFTA. Oops!
For myself, this is how I see it. Trump did this. I decided to vote for him, but this is his party and movement. Yes, it was a huge gamble. But it was Bush or Clinton. I just hope he can walk this thing out of trouble. And that’s where the globalists had taken us and nothing was going to change from within the neoliberal order.
NYchk,
One thing you seem to be missing is that voting for Trump was middle America’s middle finger to the Republicrat duopoly, its oligarch puppet masters, and the bicoastal “elites” who are actually hedonistic, vacuous scum. Speaking as a Deplorable, do I agree with everything Trump says and does? No - but at least he’s finally taking action that reflects the will of the silent majority. We do not want open borders. We are fed up with being the overflow tank for every Third World cesspool, especially those whose religion makes them implacably hostile to western civilization and values. We detest globalism. The Establishment’s “choice” — HillaryJeb - showed their abject failure to grasp how deeply they and their corrupt crony-capitalist status quo were despised. When the arrogant, unaccountable Powers-that-Be closed ranks against Trump, they unwittingly propelled him to victory, as a vote for him was a down vote to a system that represents only its oligarch donors and patronage and graft networks. Voting for Trump was the ONLY way to register our disapproval of a feckless, heedless Republicrat duopoly. Does that mean we worship Trump? No. But it does mean we are finished with business as usual - and if the Establishment doesn’t take heed, we will send them an even stronger message in 2020.
So you don’t care one way or the other about Trump’s actual agenda.
“It seems to me the corrupt corporate media has the rest of the public outcry going well.”
They don’t. Free press is the most important thing right now, and if the public does not protect free press from attacks we are all doomed, (as a lot of now-fully-autocratic countries learned, to their detriment).
But free press and outcry in the media is not enough.
Even in Russia - the only time when their autocratic ruler sometimes (very rarely) listened, and stopped doing whatever latest outrage he was proposing, was when people publicly and loudly objected. When many many people took to the streets, or when many many people overwhelmed the government website with a petition - only then, sometimes, he would back off.
Trump seems to be obsessed with ratings and popularity. I think it would be prudent of his supporters to use it - to guide him. So that he doesn’t turn America into the U.S. of Russia.
“So you don’t care one way or the other about Trump’s actual agenda.”
His actual agenda is all I DO care about.
@ Raymond K Hessel - “voting for Trump was middle America’s middle finger to the Republicrat duopoly”
I get it - but don’t you agree that now that Trump won, his base (YOU) should hold him accountable for everything he does, INCLUDING correcting him when he does something BAD?
Elections are over, he (you) won. It’s no longer about middle finger to whomever, now it’s about what will happen next.
If our system of checks and balances is broken, then it’s up to the people to step up and protect our democracy. Trump couldn’t care less about those people who didn’t vote for him - but he might (I hope) care if his base starts voicing their concerns, to prevent him from doing something exceptionally harmful.
Trump couldn’t care less about those people who didn’t vote for him
Isn’t that true for all presidents? Most presidents got away with their lying, cheating and murdering ways. Why should Trump be held to higher standards?
Well, he said that he would drain the swamp and make America great again.
For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished — but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered — but the jobs left, and the factories closed.
The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.
That all changes — starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.
Other presidents always made a point to stress that they are working for the entire country, including those people who didn’t vote for them.
Until Trump.
Other presidents were better liar than Trump then. Why do people always fell for lies?
I get it - but don’t you agree that now that Trump won, his base (YOU) should hold him accountable for everything he does, INCLUDING correcting him when he does something BAD?
As a citizen of the Republic, it is my duty to be eternally vigilant. Of course I hold Trump responsible and accountable. But I do not have a personal hotline to his office, and Ivanka won’t return my obsessive phone calls. All I can do is support candidates, groups, blogs, etc. that are fighting the good fight for the libertarian-conservative principles I believe in, and standing up for Americans’ Constitutional rights.
So you don’t care one way or the other about Trump’s actual agenda.
I care a great deal about Trump’s actual agenda. Any fiscal stimulus is madness for a country that’s 20 trillion in debt. Appointing Goldman Sachs alumni to positions of trust is an odd way to “drain the swamp.” Moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem will piss off a billion Muslims and alienate Arab allies like Jordan, for no good reason. Blatant disrespect for Mexico and Mexicans is a fool’s game - they’re our neighbor and we need to show neighborly respect toward them. Alienating millions of Americans with ill-considered rhetoric is moronic when the country is already dangerously divided. So yes, Mikey, I find a lot of disturbing things in Trump’s agenda. But his redeeming virtue is that he’s not HillaryJeb.
“Other presidents always made a point to stress that they are working for the entire country, including those people who didn’t vote for them.
Until Trump.”
That is an outright falsehood, unless you are referring to those who wish to come to this country but haven’t yet been invited.
So yes, Mikey, I find a lot of disturbing things in Trump’s agenda. But his redeeming virtue is that he’s not HillaryJeb.
It’s not clear if you think that a Hillary or Jeb administration would do things that are worse than that list of Trump mistakes, or if you just hate them so much that you don’t care.
WhopperMike, what “mistakes” has Trump made in his first week?
I was talking to Ray. I was referring to that the actions that he disapproves of.
Oh, I thought you had a list of mistakes.
” But I do not have a personal hotline to his office, and Ivanka won’t return my obsessive phone calls”
A bit of hilarity tossed in with the usual brilliant lexicon.
Excellent! lol
It’s not clear if you think that a Hillary or Jeb administration would do things that are worse than that list of Trump mistakes
I do think that. I just think that it would not be immediately obvious because they would be of the “frog slowly heating up in the pot” variety. One good thing about Trump is that his downsides are immediately obvious. Hopefully we will survive them. More of the same was a more dangerous path than you might think.
Who stands to lose more in a backlash to globalism than the Chi-coms? Of course they are going to stamp their little feet.
“Of course they are going to stamp their little feet.”
Lots of people stamping their little feet today, and not just the Chi-coms. There’s been a great disturbance in the force. And those not stamping their feet are cooling their heels in airports all over the world.
Did google just admit to having employees who probably shouldn’t have been in the US to begin with?
Do we really need google in the first place? Aren’t there other browsers, other search engines?
There are other search engines, but they probably employ undocumented immigrants too. As I said yesterday, try finding a hotel that doesn’t have undocumented maids. We simply aren’t going to be able to vote with our wallets by boycotting companies and choosing competitors.
“We simply aren’t going to be able to vote with our wallets by boycotting companies and choosing competitors.”
Yep, that’s what all the globalists say.
As to hotels, Air BNB, baybeeeeeeeeee! Homes owned by Americans, too. Maybe I need to re-think this Air BNB thing.
There’s no need for Google to hire illegal aliens. They can make use of the H1-B program. They’ve also got offices all over the world.
https://careers.google.com/locations/
Do you honestly believe those who work at google cafeterias and do the office cleaning, etc are legal residents on h1b? I know I know you gonna tell me they work for somebody else. Again, distinction without a difference.
Do you honestly believe those who work at google cafeterias and do the office cleaning, etc are legal residents on h1b? I know I know you gonna tell me they work for somebody else. Again, distinction without a difference
I have no idea, but that’s a separate issue. We’re talking about Google’s decision to recall employees travelling abroad.
Though, now that I think of it, companies that clean office buildings can’t be tiny little companies with one or two employees. They’d probably be taking a big risk if Trump were send federal agents to their offices asking to see the appropriate documentation.
Did google just admit to having employees who probably shouldn’t have been in the US to begin with?
The executive order appears to affect holders of green cards and other visas who are currently abroad.
People who did everything legally and jumped through every hoop, including legal permanent residents, are arbitrarily denied entry.
Meanwhile, Trump protected his business interests and did not add to his “ban” those countries where the actual terrorists came from, such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc.
Shameful.
How many of you cucksters were protesting BushObama bombing that killed and maimed muslim children, women and men? This is a minor inconvenience compared to death, isn’t it?
Enough with your fooking crocodile tears!
Deflection. From Kremlin’s manual.
No deflection. Trump didn’t happen in the vacuum. For every actions in the past there are reactions and consequences.
Of course, it’s deflection. Or maybe distraction is a better word. On the surface you’re commenting on the topic, but you’re actually changing the subject.
And now, Democrat Madeleine Albright, who justified the bombing of Muslim children, is suddenly a born again Muslim.
You can’t make this stuff up.
“And now, Democrat Madeleine Albright, who justified the bombing of Muslim children, is suddenly a born again Muslim.”
Does she have cancer, or just a guilt complex?
She bombed the Serbs for the Muslims. Clinton’s policy is one the reasons, the Russians turned to Putin. Up to that point, we were actually liked by the Russians. The Russian Serbian connection has historically been strong.
I didn’t say that she bombed them. She wasn’t in charge them. What she did was justify all those civilian deaths as “worth it”.
https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/wtc/hermantheprice.html
Turning now to the actual use of the phrase “the price is worth it,” we come to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s reply to Lesley Stahl’s question on “60 Minutes” on May 12, 1996:
Stahl: “We have heard that a half a million children have died [because of sanctions against Iraq]. I mean that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And–you know, is the price worth it?”
Albright: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.”
Why was it OK to kill all those Muslim children, but not OK to keep them out of the US?
Why was it OK to kill all those Muslim children, but not OK to keep them out of the US?
HO HO HO
There is Firefox and Microsoft “Edge”
Did google just admit to having employees who probably shouldn’t have been in the US to begin with?
The story I heard was that there were some employees with LEGITIMATE, CURRENT VISAS, who were denied re-entry after leaving to country to go home for a visit.
45 will do a lot of damage in his 2 yrs as POTUS.
be ready
I have isolated myself from the damage. Out of the markets, saving money each mo.
RE is crashing… let the games begin.
@ new attitude - “I have isolated myself from the damage. Out of the markets, saving money each mo.”
How can you isolate yourself from markets if there’s a risk of runaway inflation?
Russia wanted Trump elected, and they certainly do not have our best interests at heart. If they get what they wish (collapse of USD and our economy, to begin with), then where (in which assets) can we hide?
Do you think cash is the most prudent asset class right now?
-> “runaway inflation”
It doesn’t even matter if you hoard gold, guns, and food. They will come for it and take it anyway.
No one here gets out alive.
Meanwhile the deflationary spiral rages on.
Maybe you are right, but all I’ve ever seen in my life are prices going up — with some temporary declines along the way, but overall it’s always going up. It’s not that things become more valuable over time, it’s the currency is worth less and less.
Remember, the Fed said a few months ago, if any deflation happens they are ready and willing to “shock the population into an inflationary future”.
In my opinion they will burn it all down in a hyperinflation to avoid a deflation. I’m not sure why that is — why they feel that way, but they basically stated that is their plan if it happens.
Maybe the deflation you speak of, will be when they convert $100 bills into $1 bills because it’s too heavy to carry money anymore. There ya go, deflation.
In my opinion they will burn it all down in a hyperinflation to avoid a deflation.
Yes. Exactly what I have been saying on this blog for ten years.
Call it what you want. Record high inventory, collapsing demand.
Back to fundamentals; I can ask $50k for my 10 year old Chevy pickup but where is the buyer at that price?
I get what you’re saying. It’s the big debate — what is the end game? The big deflation or the big inflation? Remember that monetary inflation and price inflation aren’t always linked.
Not everything has always been going up in price — technology in particular is pretty deflationary in terms of price over time. So it’s a mixed bag. Perhaps “the end game” is going to be a mixed bag too, maybe something nobody expects.
It’s too complicated for my poor brain.
It’s deliberate. The blog owner mentioned so many are confused. One thing is irrefutable though. Their efforts to prevent deflation has actually accelerated it.
Yeah, you got people who think the future is hyperinflation, and they have good arguments for it, you can point at many third world countries for that. Then you got people who think the future is mass deflation. And those who combine them both, and think it’s first hyperinflation-followed-by-mass-deflation, or the reverse. Who knows.
What I think is — the bankers and politicians look back upon the deflation of the 1930’s and believe that was *such* a horrible thing, they will do anything and everything to prevent that from ever happening again. They all say, the failure of the Great Depression was that they didn’t inject more money into the economy.
Remember that monetary inflation and price inflation aren’t always linked.
true.
It’s the big debate — what is the end game? The big deflation or the big inflation?
I wonder where this notion comes from. Inflation has been between zero and 3% for a few decades now. It may get higher or go negative some time in the future, but there’s no way to say at this point. There’s also no reason to think that one of those things has to happen.
Their efforts to prevent deflation has actually accelerated it.
true, and profound.
Price inflation is driven by wages. It’s easy to identify but it is not the reason we’re in this disaster. Monetary inflation is a bit of a red herring as it relates to prices. Does $40 trillion stockpiled in warehouses create unintended consequences? Nope. Then there is credit(dollars from thin air) to considered. is it monetary inflation? Kinda, sorta, maybe, yes, no. Credit, combined with perpetual repayment plan modifications and *fraud*(always accompanies manias) have created the monster we have today. Relative housing, pick an executed mortage…. any one of them and you will find fraud going back almost 2 decades.
-> “Inflation has been between zero and 3% for a few decades now.”
What are you talking about? Go lookup the M1 money supply. Are you referring to price inflation or monetary inflation? It can’t be monetary inflation you are talking about. We’re well beyond that.
Further, if you are referring to price inflation. Jeeze man, really? A house in the 70’s or 80’s used to cost like $50K and now it’s like $500K, even after upgrading it with granite countertops.
btw, Mike, I apologize for my insults to you before.
I’m referring to what you would call price inflation, CPI. If a house’s price has increased by a factor of 10 over 40 years, that works out to be about 6% per year. Of course, that’s a lot more than 3%. On the other hand, interest rates are a lot lower than they were in the 70s and 80s, so your typical family’s mortgage payment is not 10 times as much as it was in the 70s.
-> Danke: “Does $40 trillion stockpiled in warehouses create unintended consequences? Nope.”
I think I see what you mean — the velocity of money. Yes, you can print a quadrillion of it, but if there’s nobody willing to transact, then what’s the point.
About unintended consequences — oh boy. I believe there are many unintended consequences in everything all of us do, no matter how hard we try. It sucks but that’s the way it is.
Price inflation is driven by wages.
the great ahhaha said that. it’s nearly always true, but not always. i used to argue with him about it.
Can’t tell who has the most sore butt, neoconchk or oldattitude?
You do. You’ve been forked, and didn’t even notice.
After 16 yrs of BushObama rampage, I am so numb to notice any difference.
NYchk at least makes some cogent arguments and valid points. New Attitude is just a straight-up troll.
She makes arguments in the mold of Dick Cheney or Larry Summers. They have been thoroughly rejected by the results on the ground.
“NYchk at least makes some cogent arguments and valid points.”
No doubt, but danged if I know how to find them in the midst of all the hysterical caterwauling.
How can you isolate yourself from markets if there’s a risk of runaway inflation?
As best I can.
As best I can.
In other words “I have clue what I am doing. Help me god.”
A Russin I work with wanted to know why America was bombing
Christains in Serbia for the Muslims.
IDK a UN thing against genocide?
He laughed said we don’t know anything. At least I knew it used to be called Yugoslavia.
He said it was a fake country and I think he was right.
The American empire doesn’t care about religion. We used to fund a regime in El Salvador whose death squad killed the archbishop and even American nuns.
Doris Day, Forever Blowing Bubbles, 1951.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6SXi4I47Qw
Maybe we need to keep this on Mexico’s side of the border.
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2017/01/tijuana-two-women-tortured-and-murdered.html
Do as I say, not as I do…
An examination of US hotels owned by the Trump Organization reveals just how much they rely on foreign imports, a practice that could come under fire from his own administration.
The rooms in Trump hotels are adorned with furniture and products that have traveled farther than most guests. Sets of toiletries in the bathroom were imported from Central America, shipped to the US from the Trump Hotel in Panama City. Headboards, tall and grand and often covered in velvet or leather, came from Jiashan, China. Light fixtures were brought in from Kamenický Šenov, a town in the Czech Republic.
We all have some crap from China, or Taiwan, or Japan, or Mexico in our stuff village idiot.
Song of the day: The Beatles “Get Back”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMW1hvvUjGg
Creating a bubble for modified humanoids…
“Canada’s Liberal Party government led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has introduced a bill that would ban transgender discrimination, including both gender identity and gender expression, with up to two years in prison for violators.”
“The bill seeks to amend the Canadian Criminal Code to expand existing “hate speech” prohibitions to include any public speech or communication that “promotes hatred” on the basis of “gender identity” or “gender expression,” and also the Canadian Human Rights Act, to cover transgender people.”
We assume it is up to you to figure out what “title” everyone wants.
Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/canada-may-ban-anti-transgender-speech-with-2-years-in-prison-164382/#cU9KOZmlBFW3WmKi.99
Warning popups.
Canada sounds like it’s ready for its “Deplorables” to be heard.
Hate speech is whatever you want it to be.
Exactly and a repudiation of the basis of the first amendment; that the best remedy for views you disagree with is the ability to refute the views by freely speaking your views. The left only began pushing the concept of hate speech when they began to lose the debates, because the facts were not on their side.
I don’t understand the “hate crime” stuff either — doubling or tripling the punishment. A crime is a crime, a murder is a murder, a theft is a theft, etc. Whether you are bigot or not shouldn’t affect the sentencing imo, but maybe there is some reason why we need to punish people extra if they are “racist” too.
you’re right. in addition it turns crimes into judgment calls. just go with the crime itself and don’t try to read people’s minds. it’s easy to increase or decrease the penalties by changing the law if need be.
I can see a distinction of intent: if your intent is to kill a single person, it’s murder; if your intent is to make thousands of people live in fear by killing a single person, it’s murder, but it’s also terrorism.
Maybe “hate crime” would better have been cast in terror terms?
Regarding tj’s point: many crimes require an element of intent.
yes, intent needs to be considered, but unlike ‘hate’ it’s pretty easy to determine. you know, like how many times did she run over him? more than once is a strong indication of intent.
it’s harder to know if she ran over him because of his race or disability. moreover, it should matter if she ran over him because she hated him or not. she ran over him, and that alone should cover the crime (of course intent and other circumstances have to be determined first). if it was a total accident, it might not be a crime at all.
“it shouldn’t matter if she..”
Another thing I don’t understand with all this identity-politics stuff — the hate speech laws:
“to expand existing “hate speech” prohibitions to include any public speech or communication that “promotes hatred” ”
When was the last time you ever saw some public figure either in Canada or the USA, publicly railing against some minority group because they are inferior human beings? These days, being labelled a “racist” or whatever is such a big deal, it’s like the fear of God is instilled in everyone about it. To me, it seems a bit like much ado about nothing.
Like what if you’re at a pub and you happen to say a little bit too loud to your friend — “Wow, that guy’s got a really big nose!”. Then he calls the cops, you get busted for hate speech.
I think “identity politics” is a distraction for something much worse.
When was the last time you ever saw some public figure either in Canada or the USA, publicly railing against some minority group because they are inferior human beings? These days, being labelled a “racist” or whatever is such a big deal, it’s like the fear of God is instilled in everyone about it. To me, it seems a bit like much ado about nothing.
There are those hundreds of dopey websites like Breitbart where people engage in that sort of thing. They had just a big ball of their own in DC - the Deploraball - on inauguration day.
The left only began pushing the concept of hate speech when they began to lose the debates, because the facts were not on their side.
That doesn’t make any sense. There’s not usually any debate involved.
Bend, OR Housing Prices Collapse 29% YoY As Price Declines Ramp Up Nationally
http://www.movoto.com/bend-or/market-trends/
Yeah, Bend, OR will crash hard. Certainly a very pretty place, but too few real family supporting jobs. Today’s employers come and go too quickly… before your children are teenagers. You can’t raise a healthy family with this sort of instability.
45 can’t like this, buying us vs invading us:
Chinese overseas investment jumped by 50% in 2016, according to an estimate compiled by the American Enterprise Institute. The U.S. was by far the largest recipient with a record-setting $50 billion of Chinese investment.
‘China’s Army of Global Homebuyers Is Suddenly Short on Cash’
‘China’s escalating crackdown on capital outflows is sending shudders through property markets around the world.’
‘In London, Chinese citizens who clamored to purchase flats at the city’s tallest apartment tower three months ago are now struggling to transfer their down payments. In Silicon Valley, Keller Williams Realty says inquiries from China have slumped since the start of the year. And in Sydney, developers are facing “big problems” as Chinese buyers pull back, according to consultancy firm Basis Point.’
“Everything changed’’ as it became more difficult to send money offshore, said Coco Tan, a broker associate at Keller Williams in Cupertino, California.’
I don’t think the money from china will ever dry up. The oligarchs and the connected few are the ones needing to hide their money overseas.
What the Western democracies should have done, but didn’t, was to enforce their own anti-money-laundering laws.
Chinese dirty money, Russian dirty money, they took it all, no questions asked.
And now we’re acting all surprised when this same dirty money is being used to corrupt our politicians and democratic institutions.
That stupid petition for California to secede from the Union - I wonder who’s financing it. It only takes $1.5m to organize support for this petition - it’s peanuts for someone who wants to hurt the U.S.
What the Western democracies should have done, but didn’t, was to enforce their own anti-money-laundering laws.
Money Laundering is the de-facto western banking policy. News flash to you….western governments have stopped working for their people long ago…hence the brexit and Trump and many more to come.
CA should secede if they don’t want to be part of America. I will most likely escape to the east side of the border wall if CA ever becomes independent. I have a better idea, let’s give it back to Mekhiko with Texas, Arizona and NM. Illegal immigration problem solved.
CA should secede ?
Hoping we do. You won’t even miss us
We don’t need your underfunded government pension system, CA is Puerto Rico on steroids.
And cut off the cheap money supply via “DC->WallStreet->CA”, we will be begging for Detroit’s scraps.
“Hoping we do. You won’t even miss us”
Be careful what you wish for. The minute California secedes, China and Mexico will compete to see who takes it over. China would win, of course, but the conflict will be awesome to behold. Fun for the entire family!
And of course the US is going to have to step in, ultimately, because we can’t have China on our border. At that point we’ll make Cali a US territory and extract tribute.
So there’s your secession, good luck with that.
Lost of CA-envy out there.
6th largest economy on the planet.
Instead of California seceding, we could just annex Mexico.
It is not like it is a finite amount. According to the Economist Magazine in the last twelve months, China had a current account surplus of $264.6 billion. Its trade surplus was even larger. BTW, we had a current account deficit of $476.5 billion with our trade deficit being even larger.
Yet Chinas massive debt far surpasses the US. It’s a country in deep trouble.
with our trade deficit being even larger.
your economic big picture would change if you understood there’s no such thing as a trade deficit/surplus. with that knowledge, you’d be making more powerful investment decisions.
hardly anyone here will believe me, including you. but you might believe PHD in economics, walter e. williams if you gave him a thoughtful read.
let me ask you, what would you do to fix so-called trade deficits?
Well tj, I agree with you. Trade deficit doesn’t give a very good picture of money flows. I’ll give an example.
A few months ago I entered Canada and declared Imports of $30. That is what it cost me in materials to produce my art. I sold it for a few hundreds and returned with the money. I created a trade deficit with Canada! I became richer.
I became richer.
that’s right. imagine two countries. your country sells food to another country. they have a trade surplus with our country. in a few weeks their products are eaten and gone. meanwhile, we poor souls have deficits because we have what some people call ‘worthless’ dollars. we’re sitting on all these dollars. poor us.
williams points out that the countries with deficits actually seem to do better. the point is that at the time of the trade, each side in equal in value. as a matter of fact, each side has a slight surplus, but i won’t even try to go into that.
in the mean time, all these world leaders are worrying about trade deficits and are doing goofy things to try to ‘fix’ them.
good to know you agree with me. the only other one i know of is Karen.
“Some people that got stranded on an island, and I think it was 6 or 7 were Asians and there was one American and as soon as they were on the island they had to divide up the jobs.
And one Asian was given the job of fishing, the other one was hunting, one of them got the job of gathering fire wood. So they all had jobs, and the American was assigned the job of eating.
And so at the end of the day, they would all gather around and prepare this feast and the American would sit there and eat it. But he would´nt eat it all, he´d just leave enough crumbs so he could give to the 6 Asians so they could go on and repeat it again tomorrow, spend all day preparing a meal for the American to eat.
Now, the way modern economists would look at it, they would say “Well, this American is vital to the whole island economy. Without him nobody would have to fish, nobody would have to hunt, nobody would have to gather fire wood. He is creating all this employment on the island”.
But the reality is, every Asian on that island, his lot in life would be dramatically improved if they kicked the American off the island because now they would have a lot more to eat or maybe they wouldn´t have to spend all day hunting and fishing and they can lay on the beach a little bit”.
“The U.S. thinks it is the engine of economic growth in the world, when really it’s the caboose. If the rest of the world lets the caboose go, the rest of the train will be able to move faster.”
–Peter Schiff
schiff’s point is that an economy is based on production, not consumption.
“Yet Chinas massive debt far surpasses the US. It’s a country in deep trouble.”
Do not let facts get in the way of your opinion.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html
trade deficits aren’t ‘debt’. after a trade, does anyone owe anything?
I schooled you on housing, construction, oil and markets. Now I must educate you on China?
“China’s questionable GDP numbers”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-20/china-questionable-gdp-numbers-why-does-it-even-bother/8198196
Try looking at the link it is about government debt
You were predicting $10 oil where is that? The World Bank has China’s growth for 2017 at 6.5%. The CIA says that China is the world’s largest economy on a ppp basis and while you have been arguing that China was going to imminently collapse the last few years, it has moved on a dollar basis from being half our economy to be 2/3 our economy. Your education is now finished.
China is collapsing my friend.
When I paid my 10 year old $10 for cleaning the shop, she too was the highest earner in the family “on a ppp basis”.
hat is what it cost me in materials to produce my art.
I didn’t realize that you are an artist, Blue! What kind of art, if you don’t mind me asking?
White Americans have 90 times more white friends than they have black, Asian, or Hispanic friends, according to one analysis from the Public Religion Research Institute. That’s not a description of a few liberal elite cliques. It’s a statistic describing the social networks of 200 million people.
So, you’re saying that in a country that is 2/3 white people, white people are more likely to be friends with white people? Well imagine my shock.
By the way, the number for black Americans is 83, e.g. 83 black friends, 8 white friends, and the others of other races, out of a theoretical 100. Considering that blacks are 13% of the general population, this seems a lot more biased than the whites.
The study also doesn’t appear to break down by location either.
Hey Donk
“A recent study of U.S. venture capitalists and founders uncovered some astonishing numbers: 90 percent of founders in companies with venture capital (VC) funding are men, and 80 percent of VC firms have never hired a female investor. While the share of women working in formerly male-dominated industries like medicine and law has grown significantly in the last 20 years, it’s barely changed in the founder and VC space.”
No surprise here. The ladies prefer a sure thing due to time constraints. Adult men have forty years to get it right whereas the ladies have roughly half that time to make things happen.
Coventry, CT Housing Prices Collapse 20% YoY
http://www.zillow.com/coventry-ct/home-values/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-28/kremlin-confirms-trump-putin-call-was-friendly-constructive-mutually-beneficial-prio
Kremlin Confirms Trump-Putin Call Was “Friendly, Constructive, Mutually Beneficial”, Prioritized “Fighting Terrorism”
Neoconchk will implode now. Trump should be bombing russia, not talking.
He should be isolating Russia and throwing away the key. Containment. Starve the beast.
Russia is no beast, neither is Iran or Al-qaida or ISIL.
We just wanna live and let live. Why can’t you get this in your thick head? If Trump offers even a hair difference towards peace, that is preferable to your bellicosity. That’s why Trump won.
Al-Qaida and ISIL need exterminating. Every last one along with their supporters.
Al-Qaida and ISIL need exterminating. Every last one along with their supporters.
So who’s gonna Washington, DC?
They still need to be exterminated. I am talking ISIS and other radical Muslims. McCain and his bunch just need to be run out of office. They were supporting the radicals so a NG pipeline could be run through Syria.
Leaked Audio of Secretary Kerry Reveals …
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/…/absolutely-stunning-leaked-audi...
Jan 1, 2017 - A brutally down-played audio of Secretary John Kerry is just such an … Kerry Reveals President Obama Intentionally Allowed Rise of ISIS…
BOMBSHELL: Leaked Audio of John Kerry Reveals Obama …
freedomoutpost.com/bombshell-leaked-audio-of-john-kerry-reveals-oba…
Jan 3, 2017 - For those of us who watched and reported on the Obama presidency from day one, we were struck by Obama’s seeming lack of interest in ISIS, …
Leaked John Kerry Audio Reveals Obama Ordered Rise Of ISIS
yournewswire.com › News
Jan 2, 2017 - A leaked John Kerry audio recording reveals that President Obama requested his administration to facilitate in allowing ISIS to rise to power.
Leaked Sec Kerry Audio that CNN & NY Times Tried to Hide …
thefreethoughtproject.com
It wasn’t just some pipeline.
‘George Packer, in his 2005 non-fiction analysis of the Iraq war The Assassins’ Gate, explicates the Clean Break report “through the lens of Wurmser’s subsequent AEI-published volume, which argued (in 1999) that America’s taking out Saddam would solve Israel’s strategic problems and leave the Palestinians essentially helpless.”
‘In 2006, commentator Karen Kwiatkowski pointed to the similarities between the proposed actions in the Clean Break document and the subsequent 2003 invasion of Iraq.[10] Soon after Phyllis Bennis pointed to the similarities between the proposals in the Clean Break document and the subsequent 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict.’
‘In 2006, Sidney Blumenthal noted the paper’s relevance to potential Israeli bombing of Syria and Iran, writing that “In order to try to understand the neoconservative road map, senior national security professionals have begun circulating among themselves” the Clean Break “neocon manifesto.” Soon after “Taki” of The American Conservative wrote that: “recently, Netanyahu suggested that President Bush had assured him Iran will be prevented from going nuclear. I take him at his word. Netanyahu seems to be the main mover in America’s official adoption of the 1996 white paper A Clean Break, authored by him and American fellow neocons, which aimed to aggressively remake the strategic environments of Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. As they say in boxing circles, three down, two to go.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strategy_for_Securing_the_Realm
How old were you when you left Russia?
She never left Russia.
“How old were you when you left Russia?”
Just graduated from a university. I came here to study for my masters degree.
Just graduated from a university. I came here to study for my masters degree.
Based on your usage of English I smell a rat.
Do you think that her English is too good? It’s quite possible that she studied English as a kid long before she came over.
“Based on your usage of English I smell a rat.”
What do you mean?
What do you mean?
All of a sudden your English isn’t good enough to know what’s being implied?
No, I don’t understand what you’re implying. What exactly are you accusing me of?
I’m implying that your level of English and your command of slang and off-beat sayings seems too high for you to have been born in Russia of Russian parents and lived there until you were 20. I’m also implying that it is illogical that somebody with your command of English cannot understand what I’ve been implying. That’s a contradiction unless you’re faking that you don’t understand what I’ve been implying. And if you’re faking that, it makes you a fake.
сам гонешь самогон или друг приносит ?
Thank you for the compliment.
Trump: Strong military matters more than balanced federal budget
By Jenna Johnson January 26
On the campaign trail, President Trump was confident that he could slash government spending, cut taxes and balance the budget. But in an interview on Thursday, Trump said that a balanced budget is no longer his top priority.
“So a balanced budget is fine, but sometimes you have to fuel the well in order to really get the economy going,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday. “And we have to take care of our military. Our military is more important to me than a balanced budget. Because we’ll get there with a balanced budget. But we have a military that’s really depleted.”
Trump later added: “I want a balanced budget eventually. But I want to have a strong military. To me that’s much more important than anything.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/26/trump-strong-military-matters-more-than-balanced-federal-budget/?utm_term=.8667c97863cc
I doubt he will run up the debt anywhere near what Obama did. Trump probably can run a deficit of $800 billion this year without altering the debt to GDP ratio that Obama created.
Trump is the king of debt. He will pile up as much as he can. The only sad part is he will not declare bankruptcy. Declaring bankruptcy, improving relations with Russia & fighting the corporate media are only few virtues of the Trump administration. Everything else is crap.
Obama cut the deficit on his watch. Take 2 mins, easy to Google this.
Bush wars, bush tax cuts, medicare d…. wow those are expensive.
O - The economy has added 9.7 million jobs.
facts are facts
Phony accounting. The Bush loans to the banks were treated as expenditures while the repayments were treated as revenue under the Obama administration. Everything under Obama was just spin, want to claim you are deporting more people, change the definition of deportation, now turning people back at the border becomes a deportation when it never was previously. etc etc. Obama is the king of debt and while he promised he would eventually balance the budget it was going up at the end of his watch.
Jann 22, 2009
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Promising to return America to the “moral high ground” in the war on terrorism, President Obama issued three executive orders Thursday to demonstrate a clean break from the Bush administration, including one requiring that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed within a year.
Who doesnt love execute orders.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-28/federal-reserve-bankers-mocked-unemployed-americans-behind-closed-doors
Federal Reserve Bankers Mocked Unemployed Americans Behind Closed Doors
While John McCain hangs out with his jihadi hirelings, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D) is out fact-finding in Damascus. Tulsi is the rarest of the rare: a principled Democrat who is asking hard questions about the US involvement in Syria.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O69uVMEOoGk
Rep Tulsi Gabbard (D): why we need to stop spending trillions on AIPAC/neocon “regime change” wars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxaYHDqo5ts
Isn’t Kushner AIPAC mole in the whitehouse?
I will give you a promissory note today for your worthless house.
dude, you crack me up sometimes.
Apocalypse Now!
Jeebus, there’s a lot of nasty fisters out there feelin’ frisky right now.
Oh my God!
Months ago I said here I hoped Trump would put the portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office. I wasn’t predicting anything mind you. Looky here at a pic of the President on conference call with Putin. He’s got the painting of that Son-of-a-Bitch Jackson hung beside his desk! Haha!!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
https://mishgea.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/trump-call2.png
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andrew_jackson_head.jpg
OK, I’ll be outside in the snow doing the Jig. Might even put on my kilt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIfnbVPP3SM
6 alive Goldman alumni vs one portrait of a dead man. I am curious who’s gonna win?
KPIX5 reports that officials are looking for money that flows through Sacramento to the federal government that could be used to offset the potential loss of billions of dollars’ worth of federal funds if President Trump makes good on his threat to punish cities and states that don’t cooperate with federal agents’ requests to turn over undocumented immigrants, a senior government source in Sacramento said.
very few states give to the Feds, most mooch. dont mooch.
Lies utter lies. Very few states also benefit from cheap money printing at the expense of everyone else.
It’s probably false that “very few” states are net contributors. Very few would be, what, less than ten?
Though your remark cheap money printing doesn’t make much sense. What exactly is cheap money printing, and how do some states benefit from it at the expense of others?