Foot Long Hot Dog
Player Valuation: A packet of pork scratchings
He’s ruining his legacy by allowing himself to become embroiled in the web of lies that surrounds Trump.
Current Affairs Donald Trump POS: Judgement cometh and that right soon
- Thread starter kithnou
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bobbydigital
Player Valuation: £1.5m
In fairness to Rudy, he had pretty much already ruined his legacy before taking up the role of man in charge of lying about the lies or whatever his role actually is.
Given that all political parties agree that there were attempts to interfere with the 2016 election, and one campaign was repeatedly hacked, this is an appalling dereliction of duty to ensure it is not repeated.
In comparison when Trump thought he lost in California because of 3m illegal voters he immediately set up a commision to investigate.
In comparison when Trump thought he lost in California because of 3m illegal voters he immediately set up a commision to investigate.
lol
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...27dd6e-910c-11e8-bcd5-9d911c784c38_story.html
Economic growth probably surged last quarter. If so, expect President Trump and his supporters to crow that Trumponomics has been validated at last. But that probably is the exact opposite lesson Trump, and everyone else, should take from the numbers. On Friday morning, we’ll get an update on how the U.S. economy, as measured by gross domestic product, is faring. GDP growth is likely to look quite strong in the second quarter: Forecasters expect it to be well above 3 percent on a seasonally adjusted annual basis. Some predictions run as high as 4 or 5 percent. Which is, obviously, good news! We want the economy to expand more quickly than it has done for the past few years, when it’s puttered along at about 2 percent. But there are a lot of reasons not to read too much into one quarter of strong growth — or interpret it as evidence that Trump’s tax cut and trade warare good things.
GDP is noisy, bouncing around a lot from quarter to quarter. In fact, while Republicans love to point out that no calendar year during Barack Obama’s presidency reached 3 percent, GDP growth actually did exceed that threshold in eight quarters. Four quarters surpassed 4 percent, and one hit 5.2 percent. (Some of these numbers may look a little different after Friday’s GDP report comes out, since it will include revisions for past years.) So a single three-month period of strong growth is not exactly unprecedented. It’s also not a sign that the economy is going gangbusters or has been fundamentally transformed. What matters is whether that strong growth is sustainable.
Right now, under Trump’s policies, the answer looks like a big fat no. There are a lot of idiosyncratic factors that juiced growth last quarter. One is that growth was relatively disappointing at the beginning of the year and was due for a rebound. Again, the numbers are noisy.
But another major factor is that businesses freaking out about Trump’s trade war likely pulled forward some of their activity. That is, as Morgan Stanley chief U.S. economist Ellen Zentner puts it, they “doomsday prepped” by stockpiling raw materials, intermediate goods and finished products before tariffs raised costs on all those things. Soybean exports surged, for example, as companies raced to beat retaliatory tariffs that went into effect this month. The jump in soybean exports alone probably added 0.6 percentage points to GDP growth in the second quarter, estimates Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. We should expect a reversal later this year, as buyers run down their existing inventory rather than place new orders.
In other words, perhaps a bit counterintuitively, the very thing that may make Trump think his trade war is working — unusually strong growth this past quarter — may be evidence it’s about to backfire. At the very least, uncertainty about trade barriers is not helpful for businesses trying to make longer-term decisions about how much and where to invest, plant, hire and so on.
What about Trump’s fiscal policies? Right now, we’re getting a sort of sugar high from Trump’s tax cuts and spending increases. That may have contributed to second-quarter GDP growth, and will likely lift it throughout this year and next.
But the Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Reserve, the Penn Wharton Budget Model and lots of other private forecasters expect such effects to be short-lived. They generally project higher growth this year of around 3 percent, with output then falling back to a longer-run pace of 1.8 percent or so within a few years. These fiscal policies may be costly, but they’re nonetheless too modest to outweigh the other major structural challenges the United States faces, including our aging population.
The federal debt they generate will also weigh on growth in the long run. And, yes, Trump and tea party confederates are racking up debt big league. Trump’s own Office of Management and Budget projects that the deficit will reach nearly $900 billion this year and top $1 trillion next year. That’s not even including other new costs on the table, such as a $12 billion bailout for farmers hurt by Trump’s trade war or $90 billion in additional tax cuts the House passed this week.
One last thing to keep in mind if you see high-fives at the White House on Friday: Where are the raises? Output may have swelled last quarter, but paychecks did not. Adjusted for inflation, average hourly earnings were flat in June compared with a year earlier, according to the Labor Department. If Trumponomics is indeed working, it’s still not working for workers.
Economic growth probably surged last quarter. If so, expect President Trump and his supporters to crow that Trumponomics has been validated at last. But that probably is the exact opposite lesson Trump, and everyone else, should take from the numbers. On Friday morning, we’ll get an update on how the U.S. economy, as measured by gross domestic product, is faring. GDP growth is likely to look quite strong in the second quarter: Forecasters expect it to be well above 3 percent on a seasonally adjusted annual basis. Some predictions run as high as 4 or 5 percent. Which is, obviously, good news! We want the economy to expand more quickly than it has done for the past few years, when it’s puttered along at about 2 percent. But there are a lot of reasons not to read too much into one quarter of strong growth — or interpret it as evidence that Trump’s tax cut and trade warare good things.
GDP is noisy, bouncing around a lot from quarter to quarter. In fact, while Republicans love to point out that no calendar year during Barack Obama’s presidency reached 3 percent, GDP growth actually did exceed that threshold in eight quarters. Four quarters surpassed 4 percent, and one hit 5.2 percent. (Some of these numbers may look a little different after Friday’s GDP report comes out, since it will include revisions for past years.) So a single three-month period of strong growth is not exactly unprecedented. It’s also not a sign that the economy is going gangbusters or has been fundamentally transformed. What matters is whether that strong growth is sustainable.
Right now, under Trump’s policies, the answer looks like a big fat no. There are a lot of idiosyncratic factors that juiced growth last quarter. One is that growth was relatively disappointing at the beginning of the year and was due for a rebound. Again, the numbers are noisy.
But another major factor is that businesses freaking out about Trump’s trade war likely pulled forward some of their activity. That is, as Morgan Stanley chief U.S. economist Ellen Zentner puts it, they “doomsday prepped” by stockpiling raw materials, intermediate goods and finished products before tariffs raised costs on all those things. Soybean exports surged, for example, as companies raced to beat retaliatory tariffs that went into effect this month. The jump in soybean exports alone probably added 0.6 percentage points to GDP growth in the second quarter, estimates Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. We should expect a reversal later this year, as buyers run down their existing inventory rather than place new orders.
In other words, perhaps a bit counterintuitively, the very thing that may make Trump think his trade war is working — unusually strong growth this past quarter — may be evidence it’s about to backfire. At the very least, uncertainty about trade barriers is not helpful for businesses trying to make longer-term decisions about how much and where to invest, plant, hire and so on.
What about Trump’s fiscal policies? Right now, we’re getting a sort of sugar high from Trump’s tax cuts and spending increases. That may have contributed to second-quarter GDP growth, and will likely lift it throughout this year and next.
But the Congressional Budget Office, the Federal Reserve, the Penn Wharton Budget Model and lots of other private forecasters expect such effects to be short-lived. They generally project higher growth this year of around 3 percent, with output then falling back to a longer-run pace of 1.8 percent or so within a few years. These fiscal policies may be costly, but they’re nonetheless too modest to outweigh the other major structural challenges the United States faces, including our aging population.
The federal debt they generate will also weigh on growth in the long run. And, yes, Trump and tea party confederates are racking up debt big league. Trump’s own Office of Management and Budget projects that the deficit will reach nearly $900 billion this year and top $1 trillion next year. That’s not even including other new costs on the table, such as a $12 billion bailout for farmers hurt by Trump’s trade war or $90 billion in additional tax cuts the House passed this week.
One last thing to keep in mind if you see high-fives at the White House on Friday: Where are the raises? Output may have swelled last quarter, but paychecks did not. Adjusted for inflation, average hourly earnings were flat in June compared with a year earlier, according to the Labor Department. If Trumponomics is indeed working, it’s still not working for workers.
abelard
Player Valuation: £35m
We're in growth scenario 2, obvs
Obviously fake news because "the numbers are only for purposes of example"
DERP.
Who cares? No one.
My goodness, you are not serious are you? Can you understand the difference between equality of views under a (ostensible) democracy and a religious sect who beheads people for fun. Shame on you.
LOL. How inconvenient it is for you to have pop-up ads. So sorry that they block out facts that are inconvenient for you. But then again, you haven't come up with a good argument in this forum since you've been here. You strike me as way out of your depth for every issue you bring up. This is not an insult, as you might claim; rather, it is a verifiable fact and I invite you to go back and click on all your posts to discover this for yourself. For example, many folks here (including me) have brought up the trade deficit and the tariffs via links and discussion, but I'm sure you didn't read those links because of the pesky pop-up ads. You still have yet to respond with anything concrete about how Trump's tariffs are going to ultimately open up factories that have long been shuttered in the US (this is what you claimed). But perhaps no one was expecting you would.
As to "authenticated financial bodies"...that's just invented mish-mash, and if you clicked on the link and then flailed your way past those obfuscating pop-up ads that apparently obscure you from obtaining knowledge that could be helpful to you, you would find out that the data come from the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis. Probably one of the cities you visited in your many sojourns to the USA, and which has contributed to, apparently, your numerous miles rewards which would shame everyone here (<--and, yes you really did make that infantile statement).
Those of you who support Trump on various issues, I'm curious about your feelings on this.
In that video, the women claims that we should "build that wall." This is something that has come from the President's mouth. There is no "butwhataboutery" about the cause of her racism.
I am sure you don't find this acceptable, but I wonder about this: what aspects of Trump's leadership and policies are acceptable enough so that you personally can overlook this outright and gross instance of racism that president Trump has instigated?
Do you think Trump's stance on North Korea or the EU are sensible enough that you are willing to say to yourself, "well, Trump has caused great incivility and racist-outburts in the USA, and that's too bad, but boy he sure is great on the EU!" ...is this what you think?
How much racism are you willing to accept so that your own pet-cause--the EU, North Korea, tariffs, the tax cut--is proposed and/or enacted? Is this you what you envision civil society to be like?...trading racism for Brexit, import tariffs for forced parent-child separation, xenophobia for a stance on North Korea, etc.?
Note: I'm not going into how positively ineffectual Trump has been on these above issues, let's pretend that he has been effective (even though he hasn't). But in the pretend world, is this effectiveness the price you are willing to pay even if it comes at the cost of outright racism?
Yoda
Player Valuation: £1m
At the moment they just go around in masks intimating people and giving them a beating, demanding these monuments are removed.
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