Trump's Team

Not to sure about this -- but only because I like having Sessions in the Senate


US SENATOR JEFF SESSIONS HAS ACCEPTED TRUMP'S OFFER TO SERVE AS US ATTORNEY GENERAL -TRANSITION OFFICIAL
 
Will be interesting to see if Trump selects "choker" Romney and "Lyin' Ted" as part of the Trump team. It's amazing how low politicians are willing to grovel in order to grab some power. Sanders endorsed Clinton after she conspired against him and now two Republicans are evidently willing to become part of Trump's team after being humiliated. Go figure.
 
Musburger1 said:
....Sanders endorsed Clinton after she conspired against him and now two Republicans are evidently willing to become part of Trump's team after being humiliated. Go figure.
Click to expand...

I agree in part, but the Sanders analogy is false
Bernie got a cash buyout. He literally and figuratively sold out. And he immediately bought himself a new lakehouse.
This is not what's going on with Romney or Cruz.
 
Last edited:
Pompeo was a Tea Party guy
Flyn talks/thinks like one
Should alleviate fears on right Trump might swing left
And the thought of Sessions has Lois Lerner googling "non-extradition countries"

 
Last edited:
Another Bannon piece -- this one more interesting that Politico's^ (go figure)
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...trategist-plots-new-political-movement-948747

“...... Darkness is good,” says Bannon, ...... “Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they—“ I believe by “they” he means liberals and the media, already promoting calls for his ouster “—get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.”

* * * *

It’s the Bannon theme, the myopia of the media, that it tells only the story that confirms its own view, that in the end it was incapable of seeing an alternative outcome and of making a true risk assessment of the political variables — reaffirming the Hillary Clinton camp’s own political myopia. This defines the parallel realities in which liberals, in their view of themselves, represent a morally superior character and Bannon — immortalized on Twitter as a white nationalist, racist, anti-Semite thug — the ultimate depravity of Trumpism.

* * * *

..... he gets a lucrative piece of Seinfeld royalties, ensuring his own small fortune .....

* * * *

He absolutely — mockingly — rejects the idea that this is a racial line. “I’m not a white nationalist, I’m a nationalist. I’m an economic nationalist,” he tells me. “The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f—ed over. If we deliver—” by "we" he means the Trump White House "—we’ll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we’ll govern for 50 years. That’s what the Democrats missed, they were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It’s not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about.”

* * * *

“Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement,” he says. “It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.”

(more at the link)
 
Last edited:
Joe Fan said:
..... I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. ...”
Click to expand...

I thought this part was the most striking, with benefit of hindsight

I dont know if the rest of you are old enough to remember Obama's first year? He promised the same thing. His first spending bill, which he began soliciting ideas for immediately upon taking office, cost close to $1T. I think it was listed at $880B but probably ended up over $1T. Certainly in terms of total spending, with interest, it did.

Can you recall all of Obama's promises about "infrastructure" at that time? Obama kept saying he wanted "shovel ready" projects. Shovel Ready became a pet phrase of the media for a little while.

But it was all baloney. Almost none of Obama's $1T initial spending bill went to infrastructure. Where did it go? That money went to pay off Obama's political supporters. IMO, the whole thing was a criminal vote-buying scheme. Of course, the media covered for him. They never went back to examine this issue. There was no 60 Minutes episode asking, "Where did all that money go?" They just let it slide. "Shovel Ready" became a Fred Sanford skit.

We have to hope that Trump/Bannon are more serious about this than the last bunch. One thing arguing in the country's favor this time is that Trump does not have huge political bills to pay. Trump doesnt have a long list of people he owes, like Obama did. It is my hope that this is one of the downstream benefits of having a Billionaire run for office. No one else owns him. He owes no one else. If this is right, then the US infrastructure may actually get rebuilt this time.
 
I think this is an interesting angle as the stimulus bill that Obama pushed did have investments spread around the economy but was sold as infrastructure. Of course, could clean energy investments be spun as "infrastructure". Much of that stimulus also went to save the auto industry if I remember correctly. The whole "shovel ready" branding is a myth. There aren't fully formed projects with construction companies ready to go just waiting for funding. These projects are multi-year programs. Do we need to invest in infrastructure? Absolutely. Is it something that can be done tomorrow? Doubtful.

The irony of this situation was that when Obama brought this up the topic was fought as "fiscally irresponsible" by the right. Is there any doubt those same Republicans will line up at the trough now to support it? After all, Ryan has to talk his party out of reinstating earmarks just this week. At least, they agreed to table the vote on reinstating earmarks until January when the furor of "drain the swamp" may be dampened a bit.
 
OK, so, looks like Sessions, Flynn, Pompeo are in
Next level rumors of Huelskamp, Mattis and Arnn are out there as well right now

These names make the opposition to Trump from people like Erik Erickson, Jonah Goldberg, the NRO and Ben Shapiro look more ridiculous than ever

But, like the rest of the US media, they will never admit they were wrong

Further, if Goldberg/NRO, et al., had won, we would would have someone like John Podesta as Secretary of State.
 
More Bannon -- here on the liberal US media

“The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what’s wrong with this country,” he continues. “It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f—ing idea what’s going on. If The New York Times didn’t exist, CNN and MSNBC would be a test pattern. The Huffington Post and everything else is predicated on The New York Times. It’s a closed circle of information from which Hillary Clinton got all her information — and her confidence. That was our opening.”

from link above
 
More Bannon -- here on Fox/Murdoch

",,,,, It is clear .... that it is not just the liberal establishment that Bannon feels he has triumphed over, but the conservative one too — not least of all Fox News and its owners, the Murdochs. “They got it more wrong than anybody,” he says. “Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump. To him, Trump is a radical. Now they’ll go centrist and build the network around Megyn Kelly.” Bannon recounts, with no small irony, that when Breitbart attacked Kelly after her challenges to Trump in the initial Republican debate, Fox News chief Roger Ailes — whom Bannon describes as an important mentor, and who Kelly’s accusations of sexual harassment would help topple in July — called to defend her. Bannon says he warned Ailes that Kelly would be out to get him too....."
 
"Like [Andrew] Jackson's populism, we're going to build an entirely new political movement," he says. "It's everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I'm the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement."​

I'm afraid once the spending ramps up, the interest rates will rise along with it. Now that the country is approaching $20 Trillion of debt, a significant rise in rates would kill any economic recovery.

Most likely, in order to hold down interest rates to accommodate the spending, the Fed will re-start a massive QE printing spree. That may hold rates down, but would it effect the strength of the dollar?

A weaker dollar wouldn't be a big deal in my opinion once the country is self-sufficient in terms of energy production. But if the shale miracle flops, we're screwed.
 
Mr. Deez said:
In what sense was the 1930s exciting? The US was in the Great Depression, and fascism was taking over Europe. That's not the kind of "excitement" we should be seeking.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that was kind of an odd comparison. I'm afraid the 30's may be a foreshadowing of ugly times ahead.
 
Musburger1 said:
"Like [Andrew] Jackson's populism, we're going to build an entirely new political movement," he says. "It's everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I'm the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement."​

I'm afraid once the spending ramps up, the interest rates will rise along with it. Now that the country is approaching $20 Trillion of debt, a significant rise in rates would kill any economic recovery.

Most likely, in order to hold down interest rates to accommodate the spending, the Fed will re-start a massive QE printing spree. That may hold rates down, but would it effect the strength of the dollar?

A weaker dollar wouldn't be a big deal in my opinion once the country is self-sufficient in terms of energy production. But if the shale miracle flops, we're screwed.
Click to expand...

Please explain why a weaker dollar would have less effect once we are energy self sufficient.
 
iatrogenic said:
Please explain why a weaker dollar would have less effect once we are energy self sufficient.
Click to expand...
Theoretically, if you have a country that produces everything it needs, and you aren't dependent on buying goods outside of the country or making payments of debt denominated in other currencies to other countries, then your currency's strength relative to other countries doesn't matter. In fact, if you make products and EXPORT them to other countries, your industries will be more competitive.

If however, we aren't energy dependent and have to buy oil from outside our borders, that oil becomes very expensive because the dollar is weak (especially if the exporting country decides to sell the oil in a currency other than the dollar). And since energy is a major cost in producing goods, it hurts your economy in many places; higher production costs, higher consumer prices, etc.
 
The fact of the matter is that the US has clandestinely been supporting Islamist militants, not unlike what we did in the late 70's early 80's in Afghanistan. And we've done this for the geopolitical reasons of controlling Eurasia (weakening Iran and Russia). But at the same time, we've justified increasing the military budget by stating we are waging a war against militant Islam. So we are at the same time fighting them with our left hand and supporting them with the right, depending on what the objectives of the Jihadist group under consideration is at the time.

Apparently Trump, Bannon, and Flynn are tired of the hypocrisy. The CIA, State Department, the defense industry, and a significant percentage of the military are fighting them and the press has sided with the status quo.
 
Musburger1 said:
Theoretically, if you have a country that produces everything it needs, and you aren't dependent on buying goods outside of the country or making payments of debt denominated in other currencies to other countries, then your currency's strength relative to other countries doesn't matter. In fact, if you make products and EXPORT them to other countries, your industries will be more competitive.

If however, we aren't energy dependent and have to buy oil from outside our borders, that oil becomes very expensive because the dollar is weak (especially if the exporting country decides to sell the oil in a currency other than the dollar). And since energy is a major cost in producing goods, it hurts your economy in many places; higher production costs, higher consumer prices, etc.
Click to expand...

You are correct about matching domestic consumption with production, but just correcting our trade deficit on oil won't do it. Even if the U.S. produced all of the goods we needed, there would still be an imbalance in trade due to a few other items (travel, etc.)

Oil imports are a small percentage of what we import (13%). Therefore, being energy independent still won't mean we are self reliant. The largest import is industrial machinery.

The assumption of the dollar being "weak" is not necessarily true, and varies from country to country, and, of course, over time.

The current, non-theoretical, situation, I believe, is as follows:

The U.S. $ is the currency held by most foreign countries in reserve. The Euro is the second most held currency. It is estimated that 75% of all $100 bills, and 50% of all $50 bills are held by foreigners. This helps the U.S. a little because the U.S. $ is liquid (readily available), which reduces the dollar's fluctuation, and therefore decreases exchange risk.

Most international trading (invoicing and settlement) is done in US $ (The U.S.$ is present in about 90% of the trades in the foreign exchange market, and the euro is present in about 40%). Foreign countries the U.S. has paid, for goods the US has imported, try to avoid converting their US $ reserves to the local currency because the added demand for the local currency will increase its value relative to the dollar, which will decrease exports to the US because Americans will have to pay more for the products. (Example: a U.S. company wants to buy 100 sheets of melamine laden drywall from China. The trade will be invoiced and settled in dollars. The exchange rate ($U.S. vs RMB) moves against the dollar because somebody in China wants to convert their US$, received as payment for a prior transaction, to RMB's, and now the U.S. firm can only buy 99 sheets of bad drywall).

The problem is that a weaker dollar makes dollar denominated assets less attractive to foreigners. The U.S. runs a steady trade deficit (i.e. a "current account deficit"). Overconsumption in the U.S. (i.e. U.S. imports in excess of U.S. exports) drives 2% the world's GDP. In order to finance the trade deficit (and the fiscal deficit), the U.S. sells securities. Guess who buys much of those securities? The same countries we are importing from (mostly China and other Asian countries). They use some of the profits from their trading with us to do so. It is odd that China buys our dollar denominated assets since the returns on investments in emerging markets like China are higher. Fortunately for the U.S., their financial markets are not well developed....yet.

Theory aside, at this point, other countries are dependent on us buying their products, and we are dependent on those same countries to finance our deficits (by buying our securities). If we reduce our trade imbalance by manufacturing more and/or exporting more, other countries suffer. If the other countries suffer, they won't buy as much of our exports, and they won't buy the securities we use to finance our deficits. Another problem is quantitative easing. If the US government is buying back bonds to increase the money supply, there are fewer bonds available to be sold.

It seems that the best strategy is to get our fiscal house in order so that we are not relying on foreigners to finance, partially, our fiscal deficit. That is the argument between Republicans and Democrats. Democrats want to pay for social programs by raising taxes. Doing so reduces productivity in the U.S. because the number of possible transactions that could/would take place in the economy are reduced and other transactions are less efficient. This results in less profitability and in a reduction in taxes paid to the Feds.
 
Last edited:
iatrogenic said:
You are correct about matching domestic consumption with production, but just correcting our trade deficit on oil won't do it. Even if the U.S. produced all of the goods we needed, there would still be an imbalance in trade due to a few other items (travel, etc.)

Oil imports are a small percentage of what we import (13%). Therefore, being energy independent still won't mean we are self reliant. The largest import is industrial machinery.

The assumption of the dollar being "weak" is not necessarily true, and varies from country to country, and, of course, over time.

The current, non-theoretical, situation, I believe, is as follows:

The U.S. $ is the foreign held by most foreign countries in reserve. The Euro is the second most held currency. It is estimated that 75% of all $100 bills, and 50% of all $50 bills are held by foreigners. This helps the U.S. a little because the U.S. $ is liquid (readily available), which reduces the dollar's fluctuation, and therefore decreases exchange risk.

Most international trading (invoicing and settlement) is done in US $ (The U.S.$ is present in about 90% of the trades in the foreign exchange market, and the euro is present in about 40%). Foreign countries the U.S. has paid, for goods the US has imported, try to avoid converting their US $ reserves to the local currency because the added demand for the local currency will increase its value relative to the dollar, which will decrease exports to the US because Americans will have to pay more for the products. (Example: a U.S. company wants to buy 100 sheets of melamine laden drywall from China. The trade will be invoiced and settled in dollars. The exchange rate ($U.S. vs RMB) moves against the dollar because somebody in China wants to convert their US$, received as payment for a prior transaction, to RMB's, and now the U.S. firm can only by 99 sheets of bad drywall).

The problem is that a weaker dollar makes dollar denominated assets less attractive to foreigners. The U.S. runs a steady trade deficit (i.e. a "current account deficit"). Overconsumption in the U.S. (i.e. U.S. imports in excess of U.S. exports) drives 2% the world's GDP. In order to finance the trade deficit (and the fiscal deficit), the U.S. sells securities. Guess who buys much of those securities? The same countries we are importing from (mostly China and other Asian countries). They use some of the profits from their trading with us to do so. It is odd that China buys our dollar denominated assets since the returns on investments in emerging markets like China are higher. Fortunately for the U.S., their financial markets are not well developed....yet.

Theory aside, at this point, other countries are dependent on us buying their products, and we are dependent on those same countries to finance our deficits (by buying our securities). If we reduce our trade imbalance by manufacturing more and/or exporting more, other countries suffer. If the other countries suffer, they won't buy as much of our exports, and they won't buy the securities we use to finance our deficits. Another problem is quantitative easing. If the US government is buying back bonds to increase the money supply, there are fewer bonds available to be sold.

It seems that the best strategy is to get our fiscal house in order so that we are not relying on foreigners to finance, partially, our fiscal deficit. That is the argument between Republicans and Democrats. Democrats want to pay for social programs by raising taxes. Doing so reduces productivity in the U.S. because the number of possible transactions that could/would take place in the economy are reduced and other transactions are less efficient. This results in less profitability and in a reduction in taxes paid to the Feds.
Click to expand...
Good stuff! I'll limit my reply to your last paragraph which discusses getting our fiscal house in order. I think that has to begin with medical costs, specifically health care and the government entitlements Medicare/Medicaid. If we can't get that under control it all blows up. After that you have soaring defense costs that go with acting as the worlds policeman and the ongoing arms race. I can recognize the problems but can't envision solutions.
 
iatrogenic said:
Please explain why a weaker dollar would have less effect once we are energy self sufficient.
Click to expand...

Dont forget its a world market for crude, and the price is determined by that (not by domestic demand).

Also, crude is still priced in dollars worldwide and, thus, generally has an inverse relationship with the USD
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

NEW: Pro Sports Forums

Cowboys, Texans, Rangers, Astros, Mavs, Rockets, etc. Pro Longhorns. This is the place.

Pro Sports Forums

Recent Threads

Back
Top