GDP Hits 4.1 %! In Second Quarter

You're a lying SOB, M T Brain Socket! What everyone knows is that Slick Willie the Perjuring Sexual Predator's boy, Larry Summers, lobbied for that bill and that Slick Willie the Perjuring Sexual Predator readily signed it into law repealing Glass-Steagall -- which led to the economic meltdown, M T Brain Socket.
Originally Posted by I B Hankering

Everyone knows the three guys it was named after are all Republicans. You are a Moron.

Everyone knows the three guys it was named after are all Republicans. You are a Moron. Originally Posted by MT Pockets

Everyone knows that Slick Willie the Perjuring Sexual Predator's boy, Larry Summers, lobbied for the bill and Slick Willie the Perjuring Sexual predator's signature repealed Glass-Steagall, M T Brain Socket.

LustyLad, I'm reluctant to argue with you, because you know a ton about this. I've read several articles written by economists who argued low national savings is the main reason or one of the main reasons for our current account deficit.

Argue all you want, that's what this forum is for. Since you didn't provide any links, I can't evaluate the arguments of the economists you allude to. But here is a simple argument I imagine they would make - if we as a country save more, it means we consume less, which in turn means we import less and should have smaller trade and current account deficits. I get that. However, there is nothing FORCING us to save more and consume less. Our ability to consume isn't constrained by the size of our trade deficit. So in my opinion, it's silly to BLAME the trade gap on our low savings rate.


You're undoubtedly right that we are better able than other countries to "attract enough capital to plug the holes in our trade in manufactured goods." There are other countries, with smaller current account deficits, that could not plug the hole and suffered mightily as a result - over the last 30 years, Indonesia, Argentina and Russia come to mind. But there's something magical about the U.S. dollar.

Yep. The world's acceptance of the dollar as the primary international reserve currency is a huge benefit to us. It allows us to live beyond our means and postpone any day of reckoning longer than any other nation. When other countries mismanage their economies and run large trade deficits, they quickly run out of dollars/foreign exchange reserves and have to go hat in hand to the IMF (International Monetary Fund) for a bailout in return for strict domestic belt-tightening measures. This has happened to DOZENS of countries in the last 30 years, not just the three you mentioned. Because our currency is the linchpin of the international economy, the US isn't held to the same level of accountability.


China holds $1.2 trillion in U.S. treasuries, not a lot compared to the total $15.3 trillion held by the public. And indeed a lot of investors in U.S. debt aren't problematic. Can we count on this forever? That the dollar will be the primary reserve currency and people in Latin America, Africa, etc. will prefer dollars instead of Euros, Swiss Francs, gold, whatever? That the dollar will retain its magic? Maybe. Or maybe not. In the early 80's it looked like it was losing it. I wonder if we start running up huge debt to the rest of the world if we could be putting ourselves at risk, like other countries do.

China stopped increasing its US Treasury holdings a few years ago. As for the dollar, it's true that nothing lasts forever and confidence can be ephemeral. But if we keep our fiscal and external deficits manageable as a percent of our GDP, compared with the rest of the world, there is no reason the dollar cannot continue to be the world's #1 currency. Where else will investors go? Gold? It fluctuates widely in value and earns zero return. Bitcoin and crypto-currencies? I don't think many central banks will want to load up on dark money conduits that have no backing. Euros? Their monetary union looks frayed, with 19 sovereign nations sharing a single currency while pursuing widely disparate fiscal policies. Renminbis? Even if China's economy surpasses ours in size in another 20 years, as some predict, I doubt if many people will prefer yuan/renminbis over dollars. Think convertibility and political risks. The Chinese currency is like the Hotel California - easier to check in than to check out. But I don't want to sound complacent. We constantly need to retain confidence in the dollar. Currency runs, when they occur, can resemble cattle stampedes.

By the way, I don't recall us "almost losing it" in the early '80s. Back then we hoisted interest rates to 15-20%, which helped suck in plenty of money. I do recall a global run on the dollar under Jimmy Carter and his inept Federal Reserve Chairman William Miller back in 1978. It was stopped only by massive and coordinated central bank intervention in foreign exchange markets, along with the hasty arrangement of huge swap lines between the world's major central banks. Fucking Carter. He had to fire Miller and bring in Paul Volcker. Originally Posted by Tiny

Good discussion.

Hey, it looks like our textile industry is finally making a comeback!

Ooops! Never mind....


A Looming Trade Lesson

Tariffs threaten the jobs that Standard Textile brought back to the U.S.

By The Editorial Board
Aug. 9, 2018 6:47 p.m. ET

America lost more than three-fourths of its textile-mill jobs between 1991 and 2016. “One of my main objectives was to bring those opportunities back,” says Gary Heiman, president and CEO of Cincinnati-based Standard Textile. Mr. Heiman has succeeded, creating around 400 jobs in two Southern towns, but now the Trump tariffs are threatening to drive those jobs back overseas. That’s the opposite of what Mr. Trump claims is happening due to his tariffs.

Standard Textile specializes in making sheets, towels and other reusable fabric products for hospitals and hotels. Since 2002 the company has invested some $66 million in American manufacturing facilities and equipment in Union, S.C., and Thomaston, Ga.

Workers don’t need a college degree, and Standard Textile provides on-the-job training for anyone who shows the right attitude and aptitude to work. Employees earn an average of $44,000 a year in salary and benefits - well above the median household income of $35,000 in Union and $27,500 in Thomaston.

A raw fabric known as greige is Standard Textile’s main input, and the company buys about $30 million worth from China each year. Workers at the Union facility scour, bleach, dye and finish the cotton material, sending rolls of the fabric to Thomaston for cutting, sewing and packaging. But in July the Trump Administration proposed raising tariffs by 10% on $200 billion of Chinese goods - greige included. On Aug. 1 President Trump directed the U.S. Trade Representative to lift the tariff to 25%.

That increase would put Standard Textile at a major disadvantage against foreign competition. The company paid $2.9 million in duties for greige last year, and this would add up to $7.5 million more to its manufacturing costs. Finished textiles made by Chinese workers would continue to face the old tariff of 6.7%.

Mr. Heiman says the increased tariffs on greige would be such a burden that it could force him to shut down some of his American manufacturing plants, lay off hundreds of workers, and move operations overseas.

Mr. Trump won a majority of votes in Union and Thomaston in 2016. Russ Ogle, a plant manager at Standard Textile’s Union facility, says the President’s proposed tariffs have left his workers feeling bewildered. “The mantra for the Trump election, the promises, were bring back jobs to the United States, and particularly, manufacturing jobs,” Mr. Ogle says, adding:

“We’re here trying to fight the battle, to be competitive against lower-wage-paying countries around the world. And this tariff and its possible consequences would be devastating - absolutely devastating. Not only the loss of income, but the senselessness of it. This policy creates an unfair advantage for companies that are sourcing finished products from overseas at the expense of American manufacturers and jobs. We aren’t asking for any handouts, just a level playing field.”

Hundreds of companies are asking similar questions as they cope with the harmful consequences of his tariffs that Donald Trump doesn’t like to talk about.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-loomi...son-1533854863

Hey, I own Alcoa stock. I thought tariffs were supposed to help, not hurt?

The Trade Casualties Mount

Peter Navarro says the harm is a ‘rounding error.’ He’s out of touch.

July 20, 2018 7:05 p.m. ET

President Trump is escalating his trade rhetoric, threatening China and Europe with more tariffs on more goods if they don’t agree to his terms. Mr. Trump says winning these trade wars is “easy,” so let's take a look at the early returns on his steel and aluminum tariffs and the retaliation they’ve inspired.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in March slapped a 10% tariff on aluminum and 25% on steel in the name of helping American metal manufacturers. But one problem is that downstream businesses can’t easily reconfigure global supply chains, and higher input costs are making them less competitive globally.

Consider Alcoa, the top U.S. aluminum manufacturer whose shares plunged 13% Thursday and another 3% Friday after the company reported that tariffs are crimping earnings. The tariffs could wipe out $100 million of income this year, equal to about 18% of profits last year. “Tariffs will not solve the challenges facing the aluminum industry,” Alcoa CEO Roy Harvey said on an earnings call.

Alcoa makes about 28% of its aluminum in Canada because of lower energy costs, and nearly half of U.S. aluminum imports come from Canada. While Alcoa is restarting part of an idle smelter in Warrick, Indiana, the company isn’t planning to bring others back online because U.S. smelters are among the oldest and least efficient in the world. Retrofitting plants is expensive, which is why six have shut down since 2012. Many manufacturers are expanding operations abroad where energy is cheaper.

Century Aluminum, the second biggest U.S. aluminum manufacturer, boasts that its Iceland smelter is “our largest, most-modern and lowest-cost facility,” producing about 17% more than rated capacity. Two of its three U.S. smelters last year were running at half capacity. Century’s stock also tumbled this week as investors bet that tariffs might whack its earnings.

Meantime, many businesses are delaying investments in the U.S. because of the uncertainty caused by the tariffs. Borusan Mannesmann, which produces pipelines for the oil and gas industry, was recently notified that Commerce had denied its application for a steel-tariff exemption. This has frozen its plans to invest $75 million in expanding production in Baytown, Texas.

Commerce also rejected an exemption for Plains All American, which is building a pipeline from the Permian basin to the Gulf Coast that will relieve a supply bottleneck. Inadequate pipeline capacity in the region has curtailed oil production and exports, which will frustrate Mr. Trump’s efforts to keep a lid on gas prices while applying sanctions pressure on Iran.

Plains All American said it wanted to import steel from Greece because no manufacturer in the U.S. produces the specific type it needs. The company had put the purchase order in last year, and asking a domestic manufacturer to produce the specialized steel now would delay the pipeline’s completion. But its costs will be higher.

Meanwhile, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told CNBC on Thursday that the damage from the trade war so far is no big deal. “We got two economies that add up to around $30 trillion in annual GDP. The amount of trade we’re affecting with the tariffs is a rounding error compared to that,” he said. That drew a sharp rebuke Friday from the American Farm Bureau Federation that has watched retaliatory tariffs hit U.S. agriculture especially hard.

“Prices for all of our export-sensitive farm goods have tanked since May, when this tariff game started. Farm income was already off by half compared to four years ago, with debt levels rising - hardly a strong position for agriculture going into this trade war,” said the Farm Bureau. “This situation will only worsen as combines roll between now and the fall election season. The nation’s farmers and ranchers support the broader goal of strengthening our overall economy and trade balance, but not at the risk of long-term, irreparable harm to our ag exports and the jobs they create.”

All of this and more are examples of the real and growing damage that Mr. Trump’s arbitrary and punitive trade policy is doing to U.S. companies and workers. Businesses have been relatively quiet so far because they are happy with the tax reform and deregulation. But if Mr. Trump escalates his protectionism, the pain will increase and so will the political backlash before November.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tra...unt-1532127901

Hog owners, take notice!


Trump Rides a Harley—to Europe

The U.S. casualties of his trade war are starting to mount.

June 25, 2018 7:09 p.m. ET

Donald Trump’s trade war has been an abstraction for most Americans so far, but the retaliation has now begun in earnest and the casualties are starting to mount. The President’s beloved stock market took another header Monday on news of more restrictions on investment into the U.S., and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is now down for 2018. But the biggest losers Monday were the American workers who make Harley-Davidson motorcycles whose jobs will soon be headed overseas thanks to the Trump tariffs.

Last year Mr. Trump commended Harley-Davidson for “building things in America,” calling the company “a true American icon, one of the greats.” And he proclaimed last week at a rally in Duluth, Minnesota, “We’re bringing back our jobs from other countries.” Awkward timing, Mr. President. On Monday the motorcycle company announced it will shift more production out of the United States.

U.S. motorcycle sales have been on the decline, so Harley has kept its rubber side down by focusing on global growth. The company considers the EU a “critical market,” and last year it sold nearly 40,000 bikes to European consumers. But in retaliation for Mr. Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs, the European Union raised its tax on American-exported Harleys to 31% from 6%, effective last Friday. That amounts to a $2,200 tax on each motorcycle exported from the U.S. to the EU.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Monday, Harley said “the tremendous cost increase, if passed on to its dealers and retail customers, would have an immediate and lasting detrimental impact to its business in the region, reducing customer access to Harley-Davidson products and negatively impacting the sustainability of its dealers’ businesses.” Translation for Mr. Trump: Unlike real estate, cars and motorcycles are a global market.

Harley has opted not to raise prices, instead bearing the $90 million to $100 million annual cost of the tariffs in the short term. To avoid those trade penalties in the long term, Harley will scale back U.S. operations over the next 18 months, making more bikes overseas.

Harley hasn’t provided details about how its American workforce will be affected. But Harley employs more than a thousand unionized U.S. steelworkers - the very folks the President claims he’s protecting. Harley’s main manufacturing facilities are in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and Mr. Trump has said the “big league” support of Harley employees helped him win the swing states in 2016.

The only response White House press secretary Sarah Sanders could muster on Monday to the Harley news is that “the European Union is trying to punish U.S. workers by engaging in unfair trade practices.” But the Harley harm is made in America - that is, the White House.

Mr. Trump threw the first punch with his steel and aluminum tariffs, which have already driven up the cost of Harley’s raw materials by $15 million to $20 million this year, CFO John Olin said in an April earnings call. Mr. Trump also killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have cut tariffs on American-made motorcycles. U.S. withdrawal forced Harley to pursue its “Plan B” and build a plant in Thailand to avoid Asian tariffs.

“We would rather not make the investment in that facility, but that’s what’s necessary to access a very important market,” CEO Matt Levatich told Bloomberg in April. Meanwhile, the company will close its 800-worker Kansas City, Missouri, plant by 2019. Harley will expand operations in York, Pennsylvania, but the result is still a net loss in American jobs.

The protectionist pain isn’t limited to Harley. Mid-Continent Nail of Poplar Bluff, Missouri, makes about half of the nails produced in America. But Mexican steel wire is the company’s main input, and it’s now subject to a 25% tariff. Mid-Continent tried passing that added cost to consumers, but purchases plummeted and buyers cancelled existing orders, opting for cheaper Chinese nails. The company has already cut 60 employees from its workforce of 500, and it will likely soon lay off 200 more. It’s now pinning its hopes on a tariff exemption from the Commerce Department, which is grappling with a backlog of 21,000 similar petitions.

The list of job casualties will continue to grow. A June report by the economic consulting firm Trade Partnerships Worldwide estimates a net loss of 400,445 jobs over the next three years because of the steel and aluminum tariffs, quotas and retaliation. That’s 16 jobs lost for each steel or aluminum job gained.

The damage is likely to have political consequences, as the retaliatory tariffs target industries in swing states. Wisconsin produces more than 90% of America’s ginseng, and 95% of that comes from Marathon County. The county went for Mr. Trump in 2016, but it’s now wrestling with the consequences of China’s new 15% retaliatory tariff. Mr. Trump is also going to have some explaining to do to Wisconsin cranberry farmers, Florida orange-juice producers, and Iowa soy and corn growers.

Good luck to Republicans running on the Trump tariffs in November.

No Country for American Locker Makers

How the Trump steel tariff is harming a U.S. company and its workers.

Updated June 17, 2018 7:30 p.m. ET

An American locker manufacturer struggles for survival in the era of Trump’s steel tariffs.

Opportunity lured entrepreneur John Altstadt out of retirement and into the business of making lockers for workplaces, gyms and schools. Yet a year after becoming president of Lyon Group Holding, his company is struggling to survive as Donald Trump’s steel tariff gives his Chinese competitors an unfair advantage. Meet the law of unintended tariff consequences with arbitrary harm to the innocent.

Lyon Group Holding owns Lyon and Republic, century-old companies that dominate the market for American-made lockers. The companies’ combined annual sales are around $100 million, and they employ some 400 full-time workers at three manufacturing plants in Indiana and Illinois.

Steel has long accounted for 45% of the cost of making lockers at Lyon and Republic, the single biggest expense. Mr. Trump’s 25% tariff has driven up the price of foreign steel and given domestic steel the chance to raise prices. American hot-rolled steel coil recently sold for $900 per short ton - the highest price in a decade. That’s up 38%, or $248 per ton, since the beginning of January.

Lyon and Republic now spend $40.68 on steel for their $100 individual locker units, up from $33.90 before the tariffs. In this low-margin business, that’s the difference between a $5 profit and $1.78 loss on each unit.

“This is do or die for businesses,” Mr. Altstadt says. “Either you fix this problem, or if you can’t fix it somehow, the business will have to close completely because you can’t have a negative profit on the product you sell.”

Raising locker prices isn’t an option. Even before the tariffs, Lyon and Republic’s clients were paying a 10% premium for the convenience of buying American instead of Chinese, and they can't afford to go any higher, Mr. Altstadt says.

There’s no tariff on Chinese lockers or locker components, so foreign manufacturers are benefiting from Mr. Trump’s steel protectionism. If the tariffs remain in place, Mr. Altstadt says he’ll have no choice but to buy foreign-made locker components. Reluctantly, he’s visited factories in China to consider his options. But if Lyon and Republic outsource locker parts from abroad, Mr. Altstadt says he’ll have to lay off at least one-fourth of his American workforce and perhaps shutter and sell one of his metalworking factories.

He says he is haunted by “the devastating effect on real people.” Two-thirds of his workforce is unskilled. They earn an average $12 an hour - well over minimum wage, but they still often live paycheck to paycheck. If they lose their locker-making jobs, they’ll have a tough time finding work with comparable pay in rural Illinois and Indiana.

Mr. Altstadt’s message to Mr. Trump: Don’t make me do this. The President says he wants to make the U.S. more competitive and protect American jobs, but his tariffs are doing the opposite. The workers at Chinese locker manufacturers are doubtless thrilled about their new competitive advantage, but they won’t be voting in November.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/no-coun...ers-1529263937

Trump Boils Maine Lobstermen

A case study in how a tariff war will hurt small businesses and blue-collar workers.

June 29, 2018 7:37 p.m. ET

Donald Trump has upended global trade relationships, promising that temporary disruption will end in better terms for American businesses. Tell that to the Maine lobster industry that his policies are putting at a major disadvantage in Europe and China.

These should be halcyon days in lobstertown. Maine harvests more lobster than any other U.S. state or Canadian province. Last year it landed nearly 111 million pounds - its fourth-largest annual haul - which it sold for $450 million. The lobster industry accounts for 2% of Maine’s economy.

And China represents a hungry new market. The post-molt lobsters Maine harvests from July through November have softer shells than Canadian lobsters, so they’re lower quality. But they also sell for several dollars less a pound. In the price-sensitive Chinese market, that has given the U.S. industry a competitive advantage over its Canadian counterparts. In 2017 the U.S. exported more than $137 million in lobsters to China, up from $52 million in 2015.

Yet Mr. Trump’s unilateral tariffs are about to erode the price advantage of American lobsters. After the U.S. announced on June 15 plans to impose a 25% tariff on $50 billion in Chinese goods, Beijing retaliated with a new 25% tariff on American seafood, farm products and autos, effective July 6. That’s on top of the 10% to 15% tariffs China already imposes on U.S. and Canadian lobster.

Meanwhile, on July 1, China’s tariff on Canadian lobster will drop to 7%. “I suspect that will virtually wipe out my company’s Chinese sales,” says Tom Adams, CEO of Maine Coast Company, a lobster dealer.

Mr. Adams founded Maine Coast in 2011, but he’s been in the lobster business since summer 1985, when he turned 15. His “sweat equity” has paid off, and last year his company brought in $57 million in revenue. More than one-fourth of those sales are in China. The company employs 50 workers in Maine and Massachusetts, and last year Mr. Adams expanded his York facility, borrowing for much of that $1.5 million investment.

“What happens if we lose 30%, 40%, even 50% of our market share?” he says. “We have to keep paying the bank for that borrowed money. If we do have an impact in sales, it’s going to have a direct impact on jobs. That’s the only way we reduce our expenses. I hope that doesn’t happen. And to date we haven’t laid anyone off.” Mr. Adams adds that if the trade tensions don’t abate, he would consider moving some of his operations to Canada.

The lobster-sales forecast is also stormy across the Atlantic. While Mr. Trump tweets, the world’s trade negotiators are moving on without the United States. The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the European Union took effect in September 2017, and over seven years it eliminates tariffs on 99% of trade between the two.

The EU has already eliminated its 8% tariff on Canadian live lobster. And over the next three years it will phase out a 6% tariff on frozen whole lobster, a 16% tariff on frozen lobster parts, and a 20% tariff on processed lobster. Those penalties still apply to the United States. In 2017 American lobster exports to Europe dropped by more than $20 million.

“Never did we expect it to be so intense,” Mr. Adams says. “Between China and Europe, it’s a double whammy. It’s like taking body blow after body blow.”

The losers here will be small family businesses and blue-collar workers. Maine lobster wholesalers and processors employ around 4,000 people. Much of the work is highly physical, with workers grading and packing lobsters. Maine also licenses around 4,500 lobster fishermen, limiting them to one boat and one set of gear. You can usually count their crews using your thumbs.

Mr. Trump is furious with Harley-Davidson for moving some motorcycle production abroad amid his tariff battles, but at least Harley is big enough to move. Most of Maine’s lobster industry won’t have that luxury as it pays the price for Mr. Trump’s trade folly.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-b...men-1530315457

ok lustylad, we get that you're a free trader.

ok lustylad, we get that you're a free trader. Originally Posted by dilbert firestorm

I'm just documenting a few of those unintended consequences I mentioned earlier. This tariff war can easily get out of hand and turn into a global clusterfuck.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of RECIPROCAL free trade. I'll give Trumpy 6-9 months to show some results in opening up foreign markets that are currently closed to many of our exporters. Barring that, the costs of his protectionist instincts will be biting.

Republicans smartly beat up dimotards whenever their good intentions result in disastrous unintended consequences. Well, this is one area where the GOP could see a lot of unintended consequences, most if not all of them negative. Originally Posted by lustylad

I'd contribute this article to LustyLad's series on unintended consequences, but you can't copy and paste from it. Also, unfortunately, you have to register to read it:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2526939...n_tab_contents

Quoting from the summary:

"A permanent increase in tariffs generates a current account deficit, as the import-competing sector spreads the increase of the capital stock over time. A temporary increase in tariffs has ambiguous effects. If the size and duration of the tariff are large enough, a strong response in investment could outweigh the increased savings, and the current account deteriorates. For small and short-lived tariffs, the postponement of investment reinforces that of consumption, leading to a current account surplus."

In other words, you increase tariffs either permanently or for a long time and you end up INCREASING the trade and services deficit. And there's a lot of wisdom in this:

Don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of RECIPROCAL free trade. I'll give Trumpy 6-9 months to show some results in opening up foreign markets that are currently closed to many of our exporters. Barring that, the costs of his protectionist instincts will be biting....This tariff war can easily get out of hand and turn into a global clusterfuck. Originally Posted by lustylad

Since you didn't provide any links, I can't evaluate the arguments of the economists you allude to. But here is a simple argument I imagine they would make - if we as a country save more, it means we consume less, which in turn means we import less and should have smaller trade and current account deficits. I get that. However, there is nothing FORCING us to save more and consume less. Our ability to consume isn't constrained by the size of our trade deficit. So in my opinion, it's silly to BLAME the trade gap on our low savings rate. Originally Posted by lustylad

OK, I looked, and can find exactly what I thought, economists who say increasing savings (or decreasing investment) will reduce the current account deficit. However, I'm not sure they know diddly squat. I ran across this highly cited paper by someone at the Boston Fed:

https://www.bostonfed.org/publicatio...ed-states.aspx

After reflecting on the part of it that I actually read, your explanation makes a lot of sense. They offer an alternative relationship between current account and savings and investment. Actually, it's not an alternative, just what you get by substituting out some other variables,

CA = GNP - (C + G + I)

where

CA = Current Account
GNP = GNP
C = Private Sector Consumption
G = Government Spending
I = Investment

So, if you can keep GNP constant, you'll cut the current account deficit if you decrease private sector consumption, government spending, and/or investment. Which is pretty much what you said above.

By the way, I don't recall us "almost losing it" in the early '80s. Back then we hoisted interest rates to 15-20%, which helped suck in plenty of money. I do recall a global run on the dollar under Jimmy Carter and his inept Federal Reserve Chairman William Miller back in 1978. It was stopped only by massive and coordinated central bank intervention in foreign exchange markets, along with the hasty arrangement of huge swap lines between the world's major central banks. Fucking Carter. He had to fire Miller and bring in Paul Volcker. Originally Posted by lustylad

Again, you're spot on. I went back and took a look at a historical chart of the U.S. dollar index. It bottomed out from the tail end of 1978 through to roughly the end of 1980, before Reagan took office.

I'm just documenting a few of those unintended consequences I mentioned earlier. This tariff war can easily get out of hand and turn into a global clusterfuck. Originally Posted by lustylad

Dammit Lusty I am starting to think you are not too far gone. I completely agree with you on this.

Dammit Lusty I am starting to think you are not too far gone. I completely agree with you on this. Originally Posted by MT Pockets

No you don't, trailerboy. My views are nuanced and articulate. Yours are crude, uninformed and reflexively anti-Trump.

No you don't, trailerboy. My views are nuanced and articulate. Yours are crude, uninformed and reflexively anti-Trump. Originally Posted by lustylad

Wishful thinking on my part.
I agree there is a certain nuance to your post LOL!

So you think I am against all Trump decisions?

*A possible deal on DACA*
*Laws to encourage women in STEM*
*Scrapping the TPP*
*A $1 trillion infrastructure plan*
*Guaranteed paid leave*
*Bombing the Syrian government*
*Suspending the federal debt ceiling and funding the government for three months in Hurricane Harvey aid package*

Can you say you agree with all of those? Trump and I do.