Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Kapture1]

can you imagine for a second, being arrested in 2015 and sentenced to 10 years hard labor in North Korea. three years later being released and you find out that it is thanks to the President of the United States, Donald John Trump....

[Dr. Strangelove]

DSL you never answered the question...Chicago Style Deep Dish or NY thin...until you answer...you are dead to me...

NY Style if we're talking pizza. Deep Dish is a delicious casserole

[Jeff Buchanan]

This a very good article from my news feeds. While I think DJT is an unmitigated ass hole lacking integrity and the fitness necessary for a US president facing significant national and international challenges, I'm willing to accept that he (his administration) may be embarking on a course of economic and foreign policies beneficial to US interests nationally and internationally.

In fact, I'm constantly looking for good news in the face of the incessant revelations of presidential misconduct from the main stream press ...... and believe me, I'm giving this as much weight as I give to the very little positive news about DJT and his administration, excluding FOX and most of the broadcast and/or social media that I pay no attention to at all.

The gist of this article is that the economic policy of the trump administration is producing a "High Pressure Economy" that differs greatly from the "Low Pressure Economy" that has prevailed under both R and D presidents since JFK; that type of economy is responsible for the lack of corporate capital investment and stagnant wage growth. You have to read the entire article to gain an understanding of the implications but here's an excerpt .....

In the 1970s, Arthur Okun, one of the founding fathers of modern macroeconomics, popularized the term ?high-pressure economy? to refer to a state of affairs in which unemployment is low and overall economic growth is high. Workers who might struggle to find remunerative employment in a low-pressure economy, where the opposite conditions prevail, thrive in a high-pressure one, when employers have little choice but to invest in improving their production techniques and providing all of their workers with the capital they need to increase output. Eventually, employers might have no choice but to invest more in training low-skill workers, in the hopes of boosting their productivity levels. Judging by past experience, they?ll invest in training only as a last resort. But they?ll get there.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/mnuchin-high-pressure-economy/560108/?utm_source=feed

[Jeff Buchanan]

........ worth pointing out that this take on the administration's emerging economic policy direction is in the category of let's wait and see, just about like all the program or policy initiatives this administration has undertaken.

[froot loops]

Jeff - good link, a lot hope there from Salam. A couple of things about it I question:

1. My personal pet theory about the American economy is it has been somewhat permanently scarred by the stagflation era of the 70's to the point where the Fed will never let the economy run hot. Anytime the inflation gets near the stated goal of 2 percent you can be sure rate hikes will be on the agenda. Will the Fed be willing to keep the rates stable, the public comments do not indicate that.

2. Matt Yglesias likes to point out that it's been so long since firms were in a tight labor market that a lot of firms just aren't familiar with competing for workers, so instead of increasing wages to attract workers, they will leave the recs unfilled. One of the Fed governors recently spoke about this, someone in his region spoke to him about their inability to hire workers at a certain rate but we're unwilling to raise the wages to attract those workers.

[Kapture1]

little seizures

[CGVT]

But Hillllllllary....

[Ghengis Jon]

That's a good article Jeff. I think you'll find that the most successful companies invest in their people because it not only improves productivity, but it also instills a sense of loyalty that produces a willingly increased effort. Public companies rarely free spend because of Wall Street demands for growth. Its all short term for Wall Street. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of cancer. Better to let business decide where to put their money and strengthen themselves for the long term and asset appreciation. But Wall Street demands immediate growth or your stock gets hammered. I don't know which is worse for publicly held business - gov't interference or Wall Street demands for numbers that can unnecessarily pound a stock.

Investment in people pays the biggest benefit. Attracts the best talent, sharpens the skills, provides a sense of intrinsic worker value, and promotes pride in your work. Sadly, lots of companies won't invest in their people for fear of missing the Wall STreet numbers for a quarter or two. It's short term vs long term thinking.

And that's without factoring in greed.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Jeff - good link, a lot hope there from Salam. A couple of things about it I question:

1. My personal pet theory about the American economy is it has been somewhat permanently scarred by the stagflation era of the 70's to the point where the Fed will never let the economy run hot. Anytime the inflation gets near the stated goal of 2 percent you can be sure rate hikes will be on the agenda. Will the Fed be willing to keep the rates stable, the public comments do not indicate that.

Salam seems to cover this concern with the following paragraph:

Jerome Powell, Trump’s pick for Fed chair, is careful to allay the concerns of those who fear the bogeyman of galloping inflation, even as he pursues an accommodative approach. Overall, though, Trump’s domestic-policy agenda seems likely to create a “high-pressure economy,” fueled by loose fiscal and monetary policies, that will benefit his base.

I don't think this covers your concerns at all but at least indicates Salam is aware of them. I also think there are limits to what DJT's administration can do with regard to influencing the monetary policy of the Fed.

The question of whether an administration (the government including the Fed) sets interest rates was the subject of an exchange many posts back between myself, Geezer and Entropy. Geezer's position was that an administration or president doesn't set interest rates, the open markets do. Here's my response if you care to look at it. It does inform the things we are talking about here.

http://www.detroitlionsforum.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1177658&postcount=35069

......2. Matt Yglesias likes to point out that it's been so long since firms were in a tight labor market that a lot of firms just aren't familiar with competing for workers, so instead of increasing wages to attract workers, they will leave the recs unfilled. One of the Fed governors recently spoke about this, someone in his region spoke to him about their inability to hire workers at a certain rate but we're unwilling to raise the wages to attract those workers.

I'm not an expert in labor markets and the economics of them so this is a 10K foot view: I think what Salam was talking about was not a shortage of qualified workers hired at a fair price but rather a shortage of general labor which, if a company was so inclined, could invest in their training to qualify them for a particular job and then pay them a fair wage for what they do. He also states in his article that companies who choose not to invest in training and retaining labor in these ways end up being noncompetitive in the markets within which they are selling their products and eventually fail.

[froot loops]

The Fed is supposed to be independent and has twin mandates. One of the mandate is an inflation target and they get real skittish if they come close to the target let alone go above the target in quarter. Make no mistake the Fed has a direct impact on interest rates. When Volcker brought the Hammer down in 1980, it was necessary but ever since that has been the tool.

[Dr. Strangelove]

The big mistake Cohen made was not to form a foundation to receive the money from AT+T and Novartis. THEN the Dems would think he farts rainbows and shits unicorns. I wonder how much he gets for speeches?

Seriously, I believe the two companies' rationale. They both had opposed Trump with their political donations, and they certainly didn't think he would get elected. When he was elected, they wanted insight into his thinking and wanted to line the palm of his attorney. Novartis signed a $ 100,000/mo deal for a year, met with Cohen once, and paid the full contract even though Cohen didn't deliver anything that he promised. AT+T paid $ 200,000 in four equal payments. For this, the AT+T merger with Time Warner was opposed in court by the Trump DOJ. DSL, you should understand that pay-to-play involves payment after the politician delivers. Lobbying involves payment to a lobbyist before the politician delivers. Cohen's behavior was legal. Hillary's was not. One is a charlatan and one is a criminal.

DSL: do you have a link that says Cohen was a VP of the Trump Organization with operational control or input. Or was he a VP of several of the 500 or so Trump entities?

And, regarding Cohen being a graduate of Cooley Law, he passed the New York bar exam, something Ted Kennedy couldn't do.

The CEO of Novartis eventually got a meeting with Trump in January of 2018. And the total amount they paid Cohen per month was significantly more than they were paying their lobbying firm at the time, which was more like $15,000/month if I recall correctly.

We don't know yet if any of the money they paid Cohen was passed on to anyone holding a government position. If it did, that's bribery, even if there weren't tangible benefits for these corporations.

Also, if the corporate structure to the Trump Org exists, I cannot find it, but Cohen has been introduced on tv and in news stories for years as an Executive VP of the Trump Organization, not Trump Hotels or Trump University or anything like that.

The video below (if you fast-forward to about the 5:20 mark) shows an interview with Cohen on ABC from 2011 when Trump was exploring a presidential bid. Cohen was sent out to Iowa to gauge support for him. He's described as an Ex VP and Sp Counsel in this piece as well.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad9PFd27gSo"]Trump Adviser on Possible Run: 'I Hope He Does' - YouTube[/ame]

[Ghengis Jon]

Interesting blurb on the news. Ukrainian lawmakers have announced that 4 corruption investigations of Paul Manafort have been halted out of fear of angering Trump. Seems Trump's vindictiveness reaches around the world. The Ukraine appeasing both Putin AND his cock holster.

[SeattleLionsFan]

For the record, I also believe the companies. They paid Cohen millions of dollars for access to the President. That is corruption

[Jeff Buchanan]

For the record, I also believe the companies. They paid Cohen millions of dollars for access to the President. That is corruption

With regard to your and Entropy's posts on payments to Cohen by Novartis and whether or not a crime was committed if any of the money from those payments flowed to past or current administration employees (bribery), I'm pretty sure this is a crime under Title 18 › Part I › Chapter 11 › ? 201.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/201

Clearly, nothing is available in the public domain that is evidence of such crime but this would be the kind of thing the Mueller probe would likely have knowledge of.

Let's assume for the purpose of discussion Mueller has evidence that tracks the Novartis payments and they do indeed constitute bribery under the applicable code. Can he connect the president to this crime? What would the elements of such a prosecution be? Who does he prosecute?

As I said up thread and that Kapture disputes, it is important that Cohen received payments from these mentioned companies ostensibly to gain access to DJT and that access was granted.

The Cohen news is important and how he acted and what he might have done for these payments is like, well, important to the president and whole lot of other people who want to nail him. He's vulnerable.

[Da Geezer]

DSL, I don't know what to say except I posted the entire financial disclosure form that Trump had to fill out and file with the FEC. Cohen does not have any operational control of any of the decisions made by the Trump Organization. Often, attorneys are officers of organizations in order to facilitate the signing of contracts when other officers are not available. What I remember from the financial disclosure was that Trump keeps his businesses tightly controlled. Hope Hicks was one officer who had operational control.

DSL said: I'm not sure why you keep asking about negative interest rates and insist these are an indication of a lack of economic growth during the BO administration and as it especially applies to the ARRA.

Negative interest rates are not necessarily a bad thing and viewed independently as you seem to be asking us to do, misses half of the equation in relationship to the question: are negative interest rates an indicator of economic growth or lack thereof?

I have no idea what ARRA stands for, but my contention is that negative REAL interest rates do indeed reflect the health of the economy, or, if you choose, high-pressure v low-pressure economies using Salam's formulation. The rental rate for money is set by the market, but the Fed's open market operations can and do affect the market rate.

But this whole discussion came about because you happily quote data from government sources that are proven to be inaccurate. You were touting the "growth" under Obama. I stated factually that this "growth" was spending on bureaucrats, welfare, subsidies for farmers and environmental projects of all kinds, and other spending that does not produce anything. My point was/ is that the traditional measures of GDP no longer measure goods and services for the items I mentioned, and many others like Title IX compliance officers that have proliferated.

So I suggested you use your own eyes and look around. Remember, for the Fed to keep interest rates at zero, they had to buy an unlimited amount of bonds in the market, which are now held on the Fed's balance sheet. This is supposed to stimulate the economy, but it didn't under Obama. The negative real interest rate during all but a few months of Obama was a reflection of a stagnant economy. Do you know anyone other than someone in a government-related job that did well during Obama? Neither do I. You might mention hedge funds and Wall Street titans, but they were speculating with free money, a major government benefit to them. That is why I know of no Wall Street firm that backed Trump in the election. The financial sector gave overwhelmingly to Hillary. And every one of those trades the Wall Streeters make is counted toward GDP. Are they all producing some good or service?

Negative real interest rates are indicative of a low-growth or no-growth economy. That is what we had for 8 years. Japan and Germany had it worse than we did in terms of growth. In fact, the more socialist an economy the less economic growth occurs in that economy, because a larger part of "production" is done by government, and government is never as efficient as the private sector.

Remember, the Great Recession ended in March of 2009. That was before any of Obama's policies were in place, but it certainly did lower the denominator for future calculations. If you actually work in the oilpatch, you can see with your own eyes how much better things are now than they were 2-3 years ago. I doubt if you would deny that would you?