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New Donald Trump thread


Muda69

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On 3/6/2020 at 7:55 PM, foxbat said:

You do realize that Strom Thurmond, who ran most of his political career on a segregationist platform, had a mixed-race daughter as a result of a liaison with the family's Black maid?

Ok - but the current President (not a senator) is who nominated the first black officer to the position that was noted in the article......

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23 minutes ago, swordfish said:

Ok - but the current President (not a senator) is who nominated the first black officer to the position that was noted in the article......

He has a black friend

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1 hour ago, swordfish said:

Ok - but the current President (not a senator) is who nominated the first black officer to the position that was noted in the article......

I was speaking to the idea that such an act doesn't preclude one from being a racist.  Strom Thurmond also paid for college for his daughter who attended an HBCU.  I think we'd have trouble posting a line like "Strom Thurmond paid for an HBCU college education for his mixed-race daughter.  I sure wish Senator Thurmond wasn't so racist."  

I don't have an issue with the posting of the act of the nomination, but I did not see it, as seemed to be alluded to, as somehow providing evidence that the President isn't racist or doesn't have racist tendencies.  I do find the timing interesting ... on the heels of the South Carolina primary ... when talk of Black support for Biden compared to Sanders was at the forefront of several media coverages.  A prime opportunity to blunt said news and for the President and/or White House to say "me too."

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“I encourage everyone who chooses to be negative and question my work at the White House to take time and contribute something good and productive in their own communities. #BeBest”

First Lady Melania Trump responding to former First Lady, former Senator, former Secretary of State, former Democrat Presidential Candidate,  HIllary Clinton's criticism of her cyber-bullying initiative.

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15 hours ago, foxbat said:

FTA:

Quote

At an emergency meeting last week, the Fed made the deepest interest rate cut since the financial crisis a decade ago. Forecasters expect borrowing costs could hit the zero lower bound by this spring.

So Mr. Trump effectively wants to borrow money for "free".  Nice.

And anyway the Federal Reserve is an unconstitutional creation that should be abolished in the first place:

https://www.aier.org/article/its-a-snap-to-abolish-the-fed/

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...

There is a disconnect between what the Fed says and what it does simply because the system is too complex to be run from the center. Money in circulation is determined by a combination of depositor/borrowing behavior and the risk tolerance of banks themselves. There is no money wizard in Washington who can operate the whole like some precision machine.

Which raises the topic: why do we need the Fed?

It manages a clearing system for banks but banks can do that themselves without help from Washington. It manages the federal funds rate because it holds overnight loans between banks. Here again, banks can perform those operations without help. It pursues a mandate to control inflation and unemployment – macroeconomic stabilization, as it is called – but the record shows that this has mostly been a failure.

What else does the Fed do? It backs the promise to make good on debt issued by the federal government, but municipal governments issue debt all the time without recourse to a central bank. Plus, Treasury debt should be subject to a default premium like all other debt. Without such market pressure, investors get poor signals about the real quality of the debt they are holding.

Anything else? The main Fed and all the regional Feds issue an amazing amount of research reports but surely the fine men and women who write them can find other outlets, such as the Social Science Research Network or maybe Medium. It’s true that the St. Louis Fed has the best online tool for data reporting but how many people know that this is actually outsourced to a private sector firm? [Correction from the St. Louis Fed media relations: “FRED is a St. Louis Fed product, it is not outsourced.”] 

Money without Policy

There is plenty of downside to having a central bank. It tempts politicians to believe there is no cost to endless debt issuance. Without a default premium and rational investing decisions, there is no punishment for fiscal irresponsibility. Think of how state governments have to have balanced budgets. This is because they have no central bank to guarantee payment on the debt. Ending the Fed would do far more to restrain spending than pious speech or even a Constitutional amendment for a balanced budget at the federal level.  

Imagine a world in which financial markets were not constantly buffeted between optimism and pessimism based on the words of the Fed chairman. The current system is not bringing stability but just the opposite.

I’m thinking too of the long history. The Fed was created more than a century ago. Its first great achievement was not ending “wildcat banking” but rather providing the funding for the first World War. Not a good beginning. That blew a bubble that popped in 1921. Then it blew another that popped in 1929. Then it botched an attempt to reflate from 1930 all the way to the second World War, which it also funded.

The postwar history was of endless screw ups: inflation, recession, stagflation, and all-around mercy that culminated in the great pillaging of 1979. Then came the Savings and Loan Crisis, the dotcom bubble, the reflation after 9/11, the housing fiasco that blew up 7 years later, then the bailout of banks with balance-sheet manipulations, then the convoluted and contradictory regime that followed.

Finally, there is the grave political danger of the Fed. Every president wants lower rates. The only exception in my lifetime came in Reagan’s first term when he demanded tight money to end inflation. I doubt we’ll ever see those days again. Even the current president who denounced bubble blowing on the campaign trail is now pushing for the Fed to help his reelection prospects.

It’s all too much. At some point, we should recognize that the idea of central banking is a relic from a technocratic/nationalist age that does have a role in an infinitely complex and global financial and monetary world. Unlike a century ago, forms of money, lending, and banking are hugely diverse. As a practical matter, the Fed and the banking system controls less and less of it. This undermines the whole premise of central banking. And yet this institution is still hanging around.

Here to There

How to get rid of it? I used to think this was a complex problem, that we needed some huge monetary reform to make it happen. A serious gold standard would be great. The trouble here is that sensible reform will require the cooperation of the people and interest groups that benefit most from the status quo. The best policy will be the one that has the least steps, remembering that the main point is to end the system of centralized, discretionary policy that is so subject to abuse.

The simplest solution would be to normalize the Fed’s balance sheet (it’s already happening) and then pull the plug by freezing the monetary base. No more printing via open-market operations. Let banks and other intermediaries take it from there, issuing their own branded and redeemable notes on a competitive basis in response to consumer demand. Competition, redemption requirements, transparency, and no more too-big-to-fail would prevent overissue and incentivize a system far more sound than the current one.

As part of this, we need liberalization of monetary alternatives, whether proprietary monies, precious metals like gold and silver, or permissionless use of cryptocurrency. We live in an age of innovation. The quality of money, banking, and payments systems should benefit from market forces rather than be monopolized by government.

Wouldn’t the world fall apart? Not at all. I predict that the news would be front page for the usual 48-hour news cycle and then the world would move on. No big deal. There is no downside. And a huge upside. All it requires is some political courage.

Ideally, Congress, which created the creature in the first place, would step up and do the right thing. It’s also intriguing to imagine what would happen if the president, famous for his edgy uses of the executive order, would shutter the place with the stroke of a pen.

Even if it doesn’t happen, I am safe to predict the Fed’s growing irrelevance in an age of innovation in cryptocurrency and ever more choice over depository institutions. Might as well call it now and end the Fed.

 

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21 minutes ago, BARRYOSAMA said:

If there is anything we have learned over the past 3 years....

It's the medias fault.

As I have stated several times, I have been involved in a couple of media stories, one of which garnered some national attention. The amount of misinformation, in some cases outright lies is astounding to me. To think at the very least the media isn't manipulative is sticking your head in the sand. And I know local media doesn't like to be tied into the CNN's/Fox/MSNBC's of the world, but they are just as culpable. I saw an article posted just last week on one of the Indy TV stations in regards to one of my stories, numerous fallacies to the point it was pretty much laughable in my opinion. Some of it is clearly incompetence, but some of it is clearly intentional. How else could you watch CNN and Fox coverage of the same story and get two completely different stories? 

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Pentagon to “reconsider” parts of controversial $10 billion JEDI contract. Amazon says it lost deal because Trump hates Bezos; DoD will now review.: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/pentagon-to-reconsider-parts-of-controversial-10-billion-jedi-contract/

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Amazon has notched up another minor victory in its lawsuit against the Department of Defense over a massive contract the federal government awarded to Microsoft late last year.

The DoD said Thursday that it will re-evaluate part of its decision to award the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract (JEDI, because of course) to Microsoft, CNN Business was first to report. In a court filing, the agency specified that it "wishes to reconsider its award decision in response to the other technical challenges presented by" Amazon Web Services.

JEDI, an agreement to build a cloud computing and storage platform for use by the entire DoD, is valued around $10 billion over the next several years. Multiple enterprise computing companies were on the initial shortlist of potential vendors, including Oracle and IBM. By April, the DoD dropped the list of finalist candidates to two: Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure. Industry-watchers by and large thought Amazon would win out and were surprised when Microsoft emerged the victor in October.

Amazon filed suit in December, claiming that Microsoft got the contract not because of a superior platform or superior bid, but rather due to "improper pressure from President Donald J. Trump, who launched repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks to steer the JEDI Contract away from AWS to harm his perceived political enemy—Jeffrey P. Bezos, founder and CEO of AWS' parent company, Amazon.com, Inc. ("Amazon"), and owner of the Washington Post."

The company sought and won a preliminary injunction prohibiting the DoD from moving forward on the project while the legal challenge is still in progress. In that order (PDF), which was recently made public, Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith ruled that Amazon seems likely to win its case on the merits. Not only does the record seem to support Amazon's claim that the DoD erred in certain technical and pricing judgements when making its decision, Campbell-Smith wrote, but also it seems to support Amazon's claim that the decision was due to improper prejudice.

Amazon said it was "pleased" the DoD is reviewing the JEDI award, adding, "We look forward to complete, fair, and effective corrective action that fully insulates the re-evaluation from political influence and corrects the many issues affecting the initial flawed award."

For its part, Microsoft said it supports the decision to "reconsider a small number of factors" as likely being "the fastest way to resolve all issues and quickly provide the needed modern technology to people across our armed forces."

I wouldn't put such behavior past Mr. Trump.

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Interesting that most of the USA now believes the office of POTUS is some magic, mythical position where one can just wave his hand and voila!  this or that problem is taken care of.

No friends, that kind of power shouldn't be in the hands of one person, not unless you a believer in true monarchies.  That power belongs in Congress.

 

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1 hour ago, Muda69 said:

Interesting that most of the USA now believes the office of POTUS is some magic, mythical position where one can just wave his hand and voila!  this or that problem is taken care of.

I don't think most of the USA believes that.

The POTUS himself believes he can tell any lie about any problem and that problem is taken care of. Certainly is NOT the case.

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I don't see any quotes.  Must be that linking to the human cesspool known as facebook again..................

 

22 hours ago, gonzoron said:

I don't think most of the USA believes that.

The POTUS himself believes he can tell any lie about any problem and that problem is taken care of. Certainly is NOT the case.

Which POTUS are you referring to?  All POTUS'es have lied while in office, have they not?

 

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5 hours ago, Muda69 said:

I don't see any quotes.  Must be that linking to the human cesspool known as facebook again..................

 

Which POTUS are you referring to?  All POTUS'es have lied while in office, have they not?

 

If you can’t see it, why waste your time commenting?

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3 minutes ago, gonzoron said:

If you can’t see it, why waste your time commenting?

To hear you whine about it.

Mission Accomplished.  

Enjoy the Echo Chamber.

 

 

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