Wednesday, May 6, 2020

TRUMPERNOMICS - BANKRUPTING AMERICA AND HANDING IT TO WALL STREET


Trump Is Surrounded by Criminals

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-fall-of-donald-trump-final-days.html

 “The legal ring surrounding him is collectively producing a historic indictment of his endemic corruption and criminality.” JONATHAN CHAIT


TRUMPERNOMICS FOR THE RICH…. and his parasitic family!
Report: Trump Says He Doesn't Care About the National Debt Because the Crisis Will Hit After He's Gone
 "Trump's alleged comment is maddening and disheartening,
but at least he's being straightforward about his indefensible
and self-serving neglect.  I'll leave you with 
this reminder of the scope of the problem, not that anyone in power is going to do a damn thing about it."
Few Debt Critics Remain As U.S. Ramps Up Borrowing to Aid Economy

This Sept. 18, 2019 photo shows the U.S. Treasury Department building viewed from the Washington Monument in Washington. The Treasury Department says it will need to borrow a record $2.99 trillion during the current April-June quarter to cover the cost of various rescue efforts dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. Treasury …

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government has opened the spigots and let loose nearly $3 trillion to try to rescue the economy from the coronavirus outbreak — a river of debt that would have been unthinkable even a few months ago.
And yet the response, even from people who built careers as skeptics of federal debt, speaks to the gravity of the crisis: Almost no one has blinked.
With the U.S. economy in a frightening free-fall, they say, the government has no choice but to pour trillions into an emergency operation. Doing less would risk a catastrophe — a recession that could devolve into a full-fledged depression. And if that were to happen, the government’s fiscal health would end up far worse.
What’s more, the lessons of World War II and the 2008 financial crisis suggest to many that a combination of ultra-low interest rates and eventual economic growth can keep government debts manageable and prevent a budget crisis.
In a sign that investors worry more about a deep recession than about whether the government might eventually struggle to repay its escalating debt, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note remains well below 1%. Many analysts say that while soaring federal debt may end up slowing an eventual recovery, there won’t be any recovery if the government doesn’t borrow and spend aggressively now.
“Like most folks, I’m not especially concerned about deficit and debt now,” said Donald Marron, director of the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank. “Interest rates remain low. Immediate health and economic concerns must take precedence.’’
Nonetheless, the numbers are shocking. After Congress passed four programs to sustain the economy through the COVID-19 crisis, the budget deficit — the gap between what the government spends and what it collects in taxes — will hit a record $3.7 trillion this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
On Monday, the Treasury Department announced that it will borrow $2.99 trillion in the April-June quarter, blowing away the previous quarterly record of $569 billion, set in the recession year of 2008, and eclipsing the $1.28 trillion it borrowed in the bond market in all of 2019. By the time the budget year ends in September, the government’s debt — its accumulated annual deficits — will equal 101% of the U.S. gross domestic product, according to the CBO.
Policymakers are trying to fend off catastrophe. The lockdowns and travel curbs meant to contain the virus are battering the economy. GDP is expected to fall at a 40% annual rate from April through June. That would be the worst quarter on record dating to 1947. Thirty million Americans have sought unemployment benefits since the virus struck.
Even before the health crisis, the government’s debt to the public, swollen by President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, amounted to more than 80% of GDP, highest level since 1950.
The nation has been here before. In 1946, the year after World War II ended, federal debt peaked at nearly 109% of GDP. By 1962, the debt burden had dropped below the 1940 level of 44% of GDP. The surging postwar economy poured tax revenue into government coffers.
In some ways, things are different now. The economy doesn’t grow as fast. From 1947 through 1962, the economy averaged a robust, debt-erasing 3.5% annual growth. It’s unlikely to achieve anything that impressive anytime soon. Since 2010, GDP growth has averaged just 2.3% annually.
Economists have long worried about the consequences of big government debts. When the government takes on debt, the argument goes, it competes with private borrowers for loans. It “crowds out’’ private investment, heightens borrowing rates and threatens growth.
But after the financial crisis, economists began to rethink their approach to debt. The recovery from the Great Recession, in the United States and especially in Europe, was sluggish in part because policymakers declined to juice growth with more debt. The 19 European countries that share the euro currency slid back into recession in 2011. As their economies slumped, their debt problems worsened.
In the United States, rates didn’t rise much even as the economy gradually strengthened. It turns out investors have a near-insatiable appetite for U.S. Treasurys, given their status as the world’s safest investment. Their rush to buy Treasurys helped lower the government’s borrowing costs. So did persistently low inflation.
In such a low-rate, low-inflation environment, the risk of piling on debt seems more manageable, at least for countries like the United States and Japan that borrow in their own currencies.
“We can worry much less about the amount of debt than most economists guessed,” said Douglas Elmendorf, a former CBO director and now dean of the Harvard Kennedy School who for years has been a critic of runaway federal debt.
Today’s U.S. policymakers enjoy the support of the Federal Reserve, which has been flooding the market with cash and keeping borrowing costs ultra-low. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell took the unusual step at a news conference last week of imploring Congress not to worry right now about the risk that its aggressive rescue programs will produce excessive debt.
“I have long time been an advocate for the need for the United States to return to a sustainable path from a fiscal perspective,” Powell said. “This is not the time to act on those concerns. This is the time to use the great fiscal power of the United States to do what we can to support the economy and try to get through.”
Likewise, Olivier Blanchard, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, challenged the old consensus on government debt in a speech last year:
“Put bluntly, public debt may have no fiscal cost… The probability that the U.S. government can do a debt rollover, that it can issue debt and achieve a decreasing debt to GDP ratio without ever having to raise taxes later, is high.’’
Then again, the future might not be like the recent past. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said he thinks rates will eventually start rising as the economy regains health, perhaps in 2022 or 2023.
“There’s going to be a day of reckoning,” Zandi said. “We are going to as a nation have to address these deficits and debts. We’re going to have to raise taxes. We’re going to have to restrain spending.’’
But for now, he said, “You have to respond with everything you’ve got to make sure the economy doesn’t completely fall apart.’’
“The question is not: How much does this cost? But rather: How much will debt go up if we do this, versus if don’t do this?’’ said Richard Kogan, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a budget adviser in the Obama administration.

Bankrupting America

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Posted: Apr 08, 2020 12:01 AM
Two weeks ago, President Donald Trump signed the largest stimulus bill in U.S. history: more than $2 trillion.
For once, both Republicans and Democrats agreed. The Senate voted 96-0. The House didn't even bother with a formal vote.
At the White House, a reporter asked the president, pointing out that the bill includes $25 million for the Kennedy Center, "Shouldn't that money be going to masks?"
"The Kennedy Center has suffered greatly because nobody can go there," Trump responded. "They do need some funding. And look -- that was a Democrat request. That was not my request. But you got to give them something."
"Something" they got. The bill includes $25 million for Congressional salaries, $50 million for an Institute of Museum and Library Services and lots of other wasteful things.
Only a few politicians were wary. Rep. Thomas Massie complained that he wasn't even allowed to speak against the bill.
Rep. Alex Mooney asked: "How do you pay for it? Borrow it from China, borrow it from Russia? Are we going to print the money?"
Those are good questions.
Our national debt is already $24 trillion. Now it will jump, percentage-wise, to where Greece's debt was shortly before unemployment there hit 27%.
Greece was bailed out by the European Union. But the United States can't be bailed out by others.
How will we pay off our debt? That's the topic of my new video.
There are really three options:
1. Raise taxes.
2. Print money.
3. Default.
Let's consider each:
1. Raising taxes on rich people is popular. Even Michael Bloomberg wants "higher taxes on billionaires" like him.
But raising taxes on the rich often kills the wealth and jobs some rich people create. And it won't solve our debt problem. Even if we took all the billionaires' wealth -- reducing their net worth to zero -- it would cover only an eighth of our debt.
2. Some on the left now say, "Don't worry about debt, just print money!"
This belief, called Modern Monetary Theory, destroys lives.
Zimbabwe's dictator tried it. Eager to spend more money on wars, higher salaries for government officials and luxury for himself, he had his government print more money. But that meant more money pursued the same goods. That caused explosive inflation. Soon, a $2 bag of onions cost $30 million Zimbabwean dollars.
The more money the government printed, the more inflation there was. They eventually even issued 100 trillion dollar bills. Today those 100 trillion bills are worth about 40 cents.
Inflation wrecked lives in 1920s Germany, Argentina and Russia, and in modern-day Venezuela, too.
3. America could simply refuse to pay our debt. But that would betray everyone who invested in America, and bankrupt Americans who bought Treasury Bonds.
Defaulting on your debt wrecks economies, too. When Argentina defaulted, unemployment rose to 21%.
Once you're deep in debt, no option is good.
How did we get to this point?
Presidents have talked about the dangers of debt for decades. But they didn't deal with it; they just talked about it.
"We have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future," warned Ronald Reagan. "We must act today to preserve tomorrow."
Bill Clinton said, "We've got to deal with this big long term debt problem."
Barack Obama called driving up the national debt "irresponsible" and then proceeded to do exactly that.
Donald Trump complained that Obama "doubled" the nation's debt. But now, under Trump's presidency and the new CARES Act, our debt will grow even faster.
This will not end well.
So far, the deficit spending hasn't done enormous harm. But it will. You can stretch a rubber band only so far, until it breaks.
Our debt will wreck our children's lives.
Yet, today politicians mostly talk about spending more.
John Stossel is author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media." For other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.
TRUMPERNOMICS:

THE SUPER RICH APPLAUD TWITTER’S TRUMP’S TAX 

CUTS FOR THE SUPER RICH!

"The tax overhaul would mean an 

unprecedented windfall for the super-rich, on 

top of the fact that virtually all income gains 

during the period of the supposed recovery 

from the financial crash of 2008 have gone to 

the top 1 percent income bracket."


TRUMPERNOMICS:

THE SUPER RICH APPLAUD TWITTER’S TRUMP’S TAX 

CUTS FOR THE SUPER RICH!

"The tax overhaul would mean an 

unprecedented windfall for the super-rich, on 

top of the fact that virtually all income gains 

during the period of the supposed recovery 

from the financial crash of 2008 have gone to 

the top 1 percent income bracket."


Pence Rejects One-Time 


Coronavirus Wealth Tax 


— ‘The Way to Jump-Start 


This Economy Is Exactly the 


Opposite’

1
2:39
Wednesday during an interview with nationally syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt, Vice President Mike Pence dismissed the suggestion of a one-time wealth tax to finance the federal government’s response to coronavirus.
Pence argued for the opposite and predicted 2021 would be a strong year for the American economy.
“President Trump has got our economic team working on a range of proposals, particularly as we look at what’s commonly referred to as a Phase 4 legislative package,” he said. “And we actually think the way to jump-start this economy is exactly the opposite, Hugh. We think now’s the time for us to look at eliminating the payroll tax, to look at other possible tax reforms. I mean, look, the President often says this, and it’s, you can’t say it too often, is that this is what you said. It’s a hundred-year event. No one saw this coming. The impact on our economy, the impact on businesses large and small, and hard-working American families is, was, is utterly unprecedented in our lifetimes. And so we need to think boldly about how once we’ve largely put the Coronavirus in the past, which may well be in the months ahead that we find ways to encourage investment and encourage growth and encourage the American people to safely and responsibly return to work and return to all of the activities that we all enjoy as parts of communities.”
“I really do believe that it’ll be, it’ll be one of the primary focus of this President going forward is how do we, not only how do we safely and responsibly open up America again, but what policies are we going to be able to enact that will create the kind of investment that’ll create jobs and growth in this economy,” Pence continued. “You know, one of the things the President’s often talked about is allowing for the expensing, once again, of business costs for dining out. It’s one of the ways that you can encourage businesses to have their employees start going back to restaurants and doing business at restaurants as once was the case before that tax deduction was eliminated. But rather than raising taxes, I promise you, President Trump, President Trump’s going to use the full strength of the American economy, because this is a president who knows that growth will solve all of our problems. We get the American economy growing again, starting to grow in the third quarter, rolling in the fourth quarter. And as the President said, we think 2021 could be one of the most prosperous years for economic growth in American history.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor 


Goldman Sachs Bankster “King of the Foreclosures” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin vows that the Goldman Sachs infested Trump Admin will hand no-strings massive socialist bailouts to Trump Hotels. Mnuchin says the welfare will exceed the Bankster-owned Democrat Party’s massive bailout of Obama crony Jamie Dimon of J P Morgan’s bailout in 2008

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