US Erection 12 *AND* 16 *AND* 20 *AND* 22 *AND* 24 *AND* Beyond

[Strangelove]

USA spends enormous sums globally on aid and what not. I'd imagine this is the goal

Sit back and look past the childish crap. Its actually quite brilliant. Knock everyone off balance then renogiate better terms on everything.

While you and the rest of the world are detailing exactly how moronic his antics are his team is behind the scenes securing friendlier terms on trade deals, military spending, etc.

But keep focusing on the funny looking hairdo!

That is exactly what he is doing, and doing very effectively. His supporters see it, his detractors see bombastic tweets, but don't look at the actions.

He's seen the free ride others are getting on his taxpayers ticket and making those foreign governments pay more for joint services. They do so, because they need the US more than it needs them and they know they can and should be doing more.

He's attaching chains to foreign aid where only a mirage of string previously existed.

The twitter distraction is rude obnoxious and not worthy of a sane adult. But I guess he isn't one.

"Crazy like a fox"

But the real problem is his actions, which at present seem to be pushing the world towards a global recession.

"Economists have allowed themselves to walk into a trap where we say we can forecast, but no serious economist thinks we can. You don't expect dentists to be able to forecast how many teeth you'll have when you're 80. You expect them to give good advice and fix problems."

- Tim Harford

And his whole "trade wars are good" philosophy is pure madness. Ask anyone who has a degree in economics.

Okay, I"ll ask the Donald, he has a degree in economics from the most prestigious business school in the world.

It's a road toward mutual destruction, and he is not only threatening to do this, he is actually doing it, raising tariffs haphazardly as he sees fit. The warning is already there on the wall for all to see, and more and more experts are now predicting a major recession within two years.

"Economists have allowed themselves to walk into a trap where we say we can forecast, but no serious economist thinks we can. You don't expect dentists to be able to forecast how many teeth you'll have when you're 80. You expect them to give good advice and fix problems."

- Tim Harford



What if he colluded with the Russians, what if he had hookers pee on him, what if he's a white supremacist, what if he triggers a global recession.

What if, what if, what if, what if, what if, what if, what if, what if...

Never change TDS sufferers!

[5thhorseman]

... his team is behind the scenes securing friendlier terms on trade deals, military spending, etc.

Can you back that one up UDL? What are his accomplishments to date?

[Cousin Strawberry]

... his team is behind the scenes securing friendlier terms on trade deals, military spending, etc.

Can you back that one up UDL? What are his accomplishments to date?

Probably but it would require a prolonged abstinence from the convalescence I'm currently enjoying. I do believe his well documented nationalist agenda is a fairly clear indicator but specific actions with dates and what not....well....

*repacking the perc...

...yaaa I'll have to get back to you on that....

bubble-bubble-bubble.......

[Per]

The twitter distraction is rude obnoxious and not worthy of a sane adult. But I guess he isn't one.

"Crazy like a fox"

Well, quite possibly.
There are quite a few observers who have suggested that Trump uses twitter to distract people from focusing on the important issues.
We should perhaps not rule out the possibility that it is a premeditated strategy. But still.

But the real problem is his actions, which at present seem to be pushing the world towards a global recession.

"Economists have allowed themselves to walk into a trap where we say we can forecast, but no serious economist thinks we can. You don't expect dentists to be able to forecast how many teeth you'll have when you're 80. You expect them to give good advice and fix problems."

- Tim Harford

Dentists also do forecasts. At least here in Sweden you can get a fixed monthly cost for all the dental work necessary over the next five years, based on your current dental health.

But yeah, forecasts are always sketchy. There are too many factors that can influence what actually happens, but you still need to do them to have at least an idea of what awaits behind the corner.

An increasing public debt is one warning sign.
https://www.pgpf.org/the-fiscal-and-eco ... mic-impact
Long term interest rates being lower than short term interest rates is another.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... it-matter/
Insecurity about market rules, eg when there's a looming trade war, is another downer.
https://www.businessinsider.com/stock-m ... ?r=US&IR=T
A drop in the PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) a fourth.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-sta ... confidence

When more and more indicators start to point toward an upcoming recession, you had better start to hedge your bets.
Just giving you a heads up, mate. Take actopn or ignore it as you see fit.

And his whole "trade wars are good" philosophy is pure madness. Ask anyone who has a degree in economics.

Okay, I"ll ask the Donald, he has a degree in economics from the most prestigious business school in the world.

Trump went to Harvard?!

So what's all this BS about him having a BS degree in economics from Wharton, eh?

I'm not surprised he has a BS degree, because BS-ing is what he excels at.

Yet I'm wondering a bit about whether it's really economics or mostly business administration? I mean they are adjacent fields, and usually you study both. In his previous line of work (using the term loosely) business administration would seem more relevant than actual economics.

This link seems to confirm he was basically focussing on real estate, although the Wharton business school diplomas always say "economics".
https://www.quora.com/Did-Donald-Trump- ... -he-claims

My own diploma says "Master of the Sciences of Business Administration and Economics", but you typically just abbreviate it MBA.

Anyway, the internets tell me he was supposedly working in his mother's company throughout his time at Wharton. How much did he actually attend class, and what efforts did he have to put in to get that degree? Now, we know he was receiving a six digit salary from his father's company at age six, so I guess it is quite possible he did the same for his mother as he previously did for his father, ie not much, but it could also be that he was actually working and only enrolled at Wharton and more or less bought his degree. Just speculating here though.

What we do know is that he lied about being top of his class. The records show that he graduated without honours, and it would be a pretty abysmal year if not a single student in his class graduated with honours.....

"Wharton was not as competitive in 1966 as it is today. Nolan told the Post that more than half of all applicants were accepted — and that rate was even higher for transfer students like Trump. In contrast, the admissions rate in 2019 for the incoming class at the University of Pennsylvania was 7.4 percent.

While Trump's exact academic records at the University of Pennsylvania are not known, he was reportedly not listed among the top honorees at the university's commencement and his name did not appear on the dean's list, which would have indicated he was among the top 56 students in his graduating class of 366. The Post went into detail about how some of Trump's classmates recall him as a less than impressive student"

https://www.salon.com/2019/07/09/former ... difficult/

And at least his marketing professor does not seem impressed:

William Kelley, a marketing professor, described Trump as a terrible student.
...
“He said he [Donald Trump] came to Wharton thinking he knew everything. He talked about his arrogance,” DiPrima said. “He said, ‘Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.’”

https://libn.com/2017/10/20/the-educati ... ald-trump/

[Strangelove]

And his whole "trade wars are good" philosophy is pure madness. Ask anyone who has a degree in economics.

Okay, I"ll ask the Donald, he has a degree in economics from the most prestigious business school in the world.

Trump went to Harvard?!

https://www.forbes.com/business-schools/list/

https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-sc ... a-rankings

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/11/us-news ... he-us.html

WE'RE NUMBER ONE WE'RE NUMBER ONE WE'RE NUMBER ONE

[Per]

And his whole "trade wars are good" philosophy is pure madness. Ask anyone who has a degree in economics.

Okay, I"ll ask the Donald, he has a degree in economics from the most prestigious business school in the world.

Trump went to Harvard?!

https://www.forbes.com/business-schools/list/

https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-sc ... a-rankings

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/11/us-news ... he-us.html

WE'RE NUMBER ONE WE'RE NUMBER ONE WE'RE NUMBER ONE

OK, there are apparently many different rankings. I looked at https://www.topuniversities.com/univers ... hools-2019

Both Financial Times and CEO World also ranked Harvard ahead of Wharton, albeit they had different #1s, INSEAD and Stanford respectively.

Either way, even though his diploma says BS of economics, it seems he really majored in real estate, and from the poor grasp of economics he has shown so far, I doubt he really studied actual economics very extensively.

A former chair of the US central bank has sharply criticised President Trump's economic knowledge.
On American Public Media's Marketplace programme, Janet Yellen said Mr Trump did not understand economic policy or the US Federal Reserve's purpose.

She also said that Mr Trump's focus on the US-China trade deficit was misguided.
The US and China have been in a year-long dispute, which has seen the imposition of trade tariffs.

Ms Yellen, who left the Fed in 2018 and is now at the Brookings Institution research group, also said President Trump's attacks on current Fed chair Jerome Powell were harmful to the public's confidence in the central bank.

Asked on Marketplace, the BBC's US radio partner, if she thought the president had a grasp of macroeconomic policy, she replied: "No, I do not."

She went on to say Mr Trump did not seem to understand the Fed's two responsibilities of controlling inflation and supporting employment.
"Well, I doubt that he would even be able to say that the Fed's goals are maximum employment and price stability, which is the goals that Congress have assigned to the Fed," Ms Yellen told the programme.

On the trade gap with China, she said: "When I continually hear focus by the president and some of his advisers on remedying bilateral trade deficits with other trade partners, I think almost any economist would tell you that there's no real meaning to bilateral trade deficits, and it's not an appropriate objective of policy."

Mr Trump said: "I don't like MOUs because they don't mean anything. To me they don't mean anything. I think you're better off just going into a document. I was never... a fan of an MOU."
His trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, contradicted him, saying: "An MOU is a contract. It's the way trade agreements are generally used... A Memorandum of Understanding is a binding agreement between two people.
"It's a legal term, it's a contract."

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47369123

A dizzying, sometimes contradictory blizzard of tweets and statements coming from the White House over the past several days left Wall Street on edge, and economists scratching their heads. President Donald Trump’s numerous proclamations about the economic impact of trade wars and tariffs, they say, range from wrong-headed to flat-out wrong.

“The reason for the trade war keep shifting,” said Monica de Bolle, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “In order to leave those facts aside and keep the story going, the rhetoric keeps changing,” she said. “Because it’s not really based on facts and evidence… the narrative shifts.”

Trump harped on a favorite topic last week with his references to bringing manufacturing “home.” In reality, the United States doesn’t have the kinds of factories, supply chains, infrastructure or labor to replicate the vast majority of what American companies import. And even American manufacturers don’t have domestic options for many of the components or inputs they source from China.

For instance, Petri said, “Where will U.S. automakers get thousands of Chinese-made parts?” For a company like Apple, which relies heavily on China for manufacturing, trying to rebuild from scratch without China could literally take decades, he said.

Trump has repeatedly asserted that China is paying for the tariffs, but economists push back on that.

“In practice, that’s not how it works. Obviously, it’s the importers in the U.S. who pay the tariffs. The way that China ‘pays’ is there may be less U.S. demand for Chinese products [but] for the actual payment, it’s the firms in the U.S. that import Chinese goods,” de Bolle said.

Some of those costs are already being passed onto consumers, and market observers say that will increase. New calculations from JPMorgan found that if the new tariffs set to be imposed in September and December take effect as planned, they will cost the average American household around $1,000. Dubravko Lakos-Bujas, head of U.S. equity strategy at JPMorgan, warned in a client note that due to the large amount of consumer products targeted in this tranche of goods, “The expected consumer impact should be larger in the latest round.”

“My Stock Market gains must be judged from the day after the Election, November 9, 2016, where the Market went up big after the win, and because of the win. Had my opponent won, CRASH!” Trump tweeted on Sunday.

The numbers tell a different story. Markets have risen nearly 10 percent a year since Trump’s election, but Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, points out that the rate of growth during Obama’s first term was larger, at 12 percent annually. In addition, recent market volatility — much of which economists attribute to uncertainty regarding protectionist trade policies — has eroded some of those gains. “After lots of ups and downs, it has gone nowhere since January 2018,” Zandi said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/econom ... w-n1046346

[Per]

And this:

More than 70% of economists think a US recession will strike by the end of 2021
Gina Heeb
Aug. 19, 2019, 11:12 AM

The US economy appears poised to enter a recession within the next two years, a new survey out Monday found.
More than 70% of economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics said they think a recession will occur before the end of 2021.
Stocks dropped sharply last week after a key recession signal flashed for the first time since before the global financial crisis in 2007.

The US economy appears poised to enter a recession in two years, a new survey of business economists found.

In the survey by the National Association for Business Economics, out Monday, 72% of economists predicted that a recession would occur by the end of 2021. That's up from 67% in February and according to data gleaned from more than 200 respondents.

The new figure combines the 38% of economists who said they expect a recession to strike in 2020 with the 34% who said they see one befalling the US economy in 2021. In a survey conducted in February, 42% said they saw a 2020 meltdown, while just 25% forecasted one in 2021.

The survey was taken before the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates on July 31 and before data pointed to heightened recession concerns in financial markets.

Stocks dropped sharply last week after a key recession signal flashed for the first time since before the global financial crisis in 2007. Economists and investors have also become increasingly jittery about escalating trade tensions between the US and China, which the business economists recently cited as a risk.

"After more than a year since the US first imposed new tariffs on its trading partners in 2018, higher tariffs are disrupting business conditions, especially in the goods-producing sector," NABE President Constance Hunter said in a separate survey of the economy last month.

"The majority of respondents from that sector, 76%, indicates that tariffs have had negative impacts on business conditions at their firms."

That contrasts with recent comments from the White House, which has maintained a far rosier view of the economy than both private and government experts. The Trump administration has repeatedly promised the economy would grow at or above 3% throughout its term.

"I'm prepared for everything," President Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday when asked whether the administration was ready for a downturn. "I don't think we're having a recession. We're doing tremendously well."

He said the rest of the world economy "was not doing well like we're doing," a strain that economists have widely warned could drag down US growth. But the president downplayed that risk, pointing to corporate tax cuts that took effect last year and second-quarter earnings results.

"Our consumers are rich," Trump said. "I gave a tremendous tax cut, and they're loaded up with money. They're buying. I saw the Walmart numbers; they were through the roof, just two days ago. That's better than any poll. That's better than any economist."

Trump privately sought guidance from Wall Street executives on the economy last week as the recession signal sent stocks lower. During a conference call with Bank of America's Brian Moynihan, Citigroup's Michael Corbat, and JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon, the president was briefed on the economic landscape and markets.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/new ... 1028456445

[Strangelove]

I hate it when you use my own memes against me!

Wutevs Per, we'll see wut happens, you and your wut-ifs lol, none of them ever come to fruition.

You keep forgetting economist and stable genius Donald Trump is playing 7-dimensional chess...

[Per]

I hate it when you use my own memes against me!

Wutevs Per, we'll see wut happens, you and your wut-ifs lol, none of them ever come to fruition.

Or is it already happening... ?

Since last November General Motors has cut several thousand factory jobs at plants across the Midwest. In early August us Steel said it would lay off 200 workers in Michigan. Sales of camper vans dropped by 23% in the 12 months ending in July, threatening the livelihoods of thousands of workers in Indiana, where many are made. Factory workers are not the only ones on edge. Lowes, a retailer, recently said it would slash thousands of jobs. Halliburton, an oil-services firm, is cutting too.

Residential investment in America began to drop two years before the start of the Great Recession, and employment in the industry peaked in April 2006. Conditions in housing markets were rather exceptional at the time. But in the downturn before that, typically associated with the implosion of the dotcom boom, housing also sounded an early alarm. Employment in residential construction peaked precisely a year before the start of the downturn. And now? Residential investment has been shrinking since the beginning of 2018. Employment in the housing sector has fallen since March.

In the previous cycle, employment in durable-goods manufacturing peaked in June 2006, about a year and a half before the onset of recession. This year has been another brutal one for industry. An index of purchasing managers’ activity registered a decline in August. Since last December manufacturing output has fallen by 1.5%. Rather ominously, hours worked—considered to be a leading economic indicator—are declining. Some of this is linked to President Donald Trump’s trade wars, which have hurt manufacturers worldwide. But not all. Domestic vehicle sales have fallen in recent months, suggesting that Americans are getting more nervous about making big purchases.

In recent decades employment in “temporary help services”—mostly staffing agencies—has reliably peaked about a year before the onset of recession. The turnaround in temporary employment in 2009 was among the “green shoots” taken to augur a long-awaited labour-market recovery. Since December it has fallen by 30,000 jobs.

https://www.economist.com/united-states ... -recession

[ukcanuck]

I hate it when you use my own memes against me!

Wutevs Per, we'll see wut happens, you and your wut-ifs lol, none of them ever come to fruition.

Or is it already happening... ?

Since last November General Motors has cut several thousand factory jobs at plants across the Midwest. In early August us Steel said it would lay off 200 workers in Michigan. Sales of camper vans dropped by 23% in the 12 months ending in July, threatening the livelihoods of thousands of workers in Indiana, where many are made. Factory workers are not the only ones on edge. Lowes, a retailer, recently said it would slash thousands of jobs. Halliburton, an oil-services firm, is cutting too.

Residential investment in America began to drop two years before the start of the Great Recession, and employment in the industry peaked in April 2006. Conditions in housing markets were rather exceptional at the time. But in the downturn before that, typically associated with the implosion of the dotcom boom, housing also sounded an early alarm. Employment in residential construction peaked precisely a year before the start of the downturn. And now? Residential investment has been shrinking since the beginning of 2018. Employment in the housing sector has fallen since March.

In the previous cycle, employment in durable-goods manufacturing peaked in June 2006, about a year and a half before the onset of recession. This year has been another brutal one for industry. An index of purchasing managers’ activity registered a decline in August. Since last December manufacturing output has fallen by 1.5%. Rather ominously, hours worked—considered to be a leading economic indicator—are declining. Some of this is linked to President Donald Trump’s trade wars, which have hurt manufacturers worldwide. But not all. Domestic vehicle sales have fallen in recent months, suggesting that Americans are getting more nervous about making big purchases.

In recent decades employment in “temporary help services”—mostly staffing agencies—has reliably peaked about a year before the onset of recession. The turnaround in temporary employment in 2009 was among the “green shoots” taken to augur a long-awaited labour-market recovery. Since December it has fallen by 30,000 jobs.

https://www.economist.com/united-states ... -recession

Too much facts Per, they don't like too much facts, they like walls.

[Per]

I hate it when you use my own memes against me!

Wutevs Per, we'll see wut happens, you and your wut-ifs lol, none of them ever come to fruition.

Or is it already happening... ?

troubling economic indicators

Too much facts Per, they don't like too much facts, they like walls.

I see..... like this?

[Strangelove]

You keep forgetting economist and stable genius Donald Trump is playing 7-dimensional chess...

Well said Doc!

[Cousin Strawberry]

Is a stable genius an expert in animal husbandry?

[Strangelove]

Is a stable genius an expert in animal husbandry?

He's taking leftist sheeple to slaughter!

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/d04854dc-1 ... 0f6c19aa32

[Per]

Is a stable genius an expert in animal husbandry?

Stop horsing around; he’ll have a cow, hog the whole thread and make you the goat.