Economics Thread
- Thread starter sturg33
- Start date
striker42
Well-known member
Sitting presidents have relatively little ability to control the economy. There's so much that is completely out of a president's power that has way more impact than anything a president can do.
Clinton rode the wave of the dotcom boom but that was technology decades in the making transforming the world in never before seen ways.
Obama and Trump have ridden the wave of economic recovery from the financial crisis and resulting recession. Years of economic caution have resulted in a dam burst of growth.
On the other hand, George W Bush inherited a housing market that had been mishandled for years. Banks had gone wild with loans and were being cheered on by the government. When that finally toppled you had a recession.
(An interesting aside, I don't think Bush will ever be given credit for what he did to prevent economic disaster. An absolute crisis arose, the career bureaucrats told him what had to be done to fix it, and that's what was implemented. Bush took flack from the right for abandoning free market principles and took flack from the left for the economy nosediving. It was a bad situation but complete disaster was averted. I'll also tip my hat to Obama for having the good sense to listen to those career bureaucrats as well and not role back those policies and programs just because of who started them)
The bottom line is that looking at the DOW is a terrible way to judge a president. The impact of what a President can do is marginal compared to the incredible size of the economy and the forces at work within it.
57Brave
Well-known member
Strange thing is, I made the same point in spring 2017 while Trumpers crowed about the booming market due to the new found confidence business had in the White House.
And why, just last week I was told Trumps reelection was a sure thing because of the booming economy and one metric used was the record setting stock market
Odd when it is pointed out that ah, maybe not so much, it becomes an "oh well DOW doesn't mean a thing"
For the record, while the Obama Administration led recovery stemming from the debacle of Bush43 or the "housing bubble" whitewash of the Clinton years due to the disaster that was Ronald Reagan(economics) --- I never trumpeted the success's of the markets.
Because markets have no idea who the POTUS is, not what year nor whether it is raining or sunny.
So yeah Striker, we agree
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...18/02/05/trump-stock-market-credit/308627002/
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-stock-market-fall-2018-2
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/06/tru...tock-market-63-times-since-2016-election.html
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Stock Market is heading for one of the best months (June) in the history of our Country. Thank you Mr. President!
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/04/trump-on-dow-25000-i-guess-our-new-number-is-30000.html
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/w...alk-obama-trumps-current-president-2017-03-01
.......................
" if you want to live like a Republican, vote for a Democrat"
-HST
And why, just last week I was told Trumps reelection was a sure thing because of the booming economy and one metric used was the record setting stock market
Odd when it is pointed out that ah, maybe not so much, it becomes an "oh well DOW doesn't mean a thing"
For the record, while the Obama Administration led recovery stemming from the debacle of Bush43 or the "housing bubble" whitewash of the Clinton years due to the disaster that was Ronald Reagan(economics) --- I never trumpeted the success's of the markets.
Because markets have no idea who the POTUS is, not what year nor whether it is raining or sunny.
So yeah Striker, we agree
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...18/02/05/trump-stock-market-credit/308627002/
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-stock-market-fall-2018-2
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/06/tru...tock-market-63-times-since-2016-election.html
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Stock Market is heading for one of the best months (June) in the history of our Country. Thank you Mr. President!
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/04/trump-on-dow-25000-i-guess-our-new-number-is-30000.html
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/w...alk-obama-trumps-current-president-2017-03-01
.......................
" if you want to live like a Republican, vote for a Democrat"
-HST
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sturg33
I
The reason I tend not to bother explaining things to you these days is because:
1) You literally don't understand
2) Even if you were to understand, you completely reject objective data in favor of your ideology
Do you, or do you not understand the difference between starting your Presidency during one of the worst economic times in history (i.e., nowhere to go but up), vs starting your Presidency after a 6 year recovery with record low unemployment?
Let me give you a simpler example.
Manager A takes over the a 60 win baseball team, and takes it 85 wins. Manager A increased their wins by 42%
Manager B takes over the 85 win baseball team, and takes it to 100 wins. Manager B increased their wins by 18%
One of those is harder to do than the other.
-----------------------------------
On to the next point.
Do you understand the effects of 0% interest rates on the stock market? Do you realize that Obama presided over 0% interest rates his entire term, and the fed did not once raise rates. Do you understand that the fed has raised interest rates 8 times since Trump took office? Back to the first point, do you understand that the stock market does better with lower interest rates?
Do you understand that under Obama, the Fed spent trillions in bailouts, pumping cash into the system and thus inflating assets?
-------------------------------------
Now, I'm sure you don't understand any of the above. But let's try this.
Do you understand that it's harder to grow something bigger than it is to grow something smaller? As mentioned, Obama came in to a "small" stock market, and Trump came into a "big stock market."
Now, here's the fun little exercise I asked you to do that of course you were unable to.
The market increased 42% during Obama's first 31 months in office. The market has increased only 30% during Trump's first 31 months.
But that little point about the law of large numbers?
The market cap of the S&P 500 increased from $7.85T to $11.76T during Obama's term... or an increase of $3.91T
Under Trump's first 31 months? It increased from $19.27T to $24.74T, or an increase of $5.47T
So, to summarize, the wealth generated under Trump's 31 months is $1.56T more than under Obama's despite the increased rate environment... that's 40% more wealth created to stockholders in this country, which nearly 60% of Americans.
------------------------------------------
So there's the math. Do you understand now?
Having said all of that... as striker and others have said... the President has little to do with the stock market. The Fed is the driving factor, and has been ever since 08. That's why Trump is constantly bitching about the fed not cutting rates, bc he wants higher stock prices .
This is something I wish more people misunderstood. A President can worsen an economy much easier than he can improve it, but his role is small in either direction. And as a comp to your Dubya example, Harding and Coolidge had far more blame for the Depression than Hoover, but Hoover took almost all of the contemporary blame. But Hoover also did very little to help (he did try, to be fair, but was ineffectual). And while Roosevelt's New Deal got the credit for the recovery, and did help a little more than Hoover's policies, the real, ahem, "credit" (for lack for a better word) for that should go to Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito. There were suddenly a whole lot of new jobs in various sectors of the war effort.
acesfull86
Well-known member
“And why, just last week I was told Trumps reelection was a sure thing because of the booming economy and one metric used was the record setting stock market”
He doesn’t deserve the credit, but that doesn’t mean he won’t get it from the voters
He doesn’t deserve the credit, but that doesn’t mean he won’t get it from the voters
Yuge news today with the record setting stockmarket.
cajunrevenge
Well-known member
You just dont understand market cycles.
57Brave
Well-known member
Sarah Reese Jones
@PoliticusSarah
·
2h
Trump has caused the worst stock market day of the year
as his policies move the country closer to a recession.
..........
that aged well
sturg33
I
Or it could have been the 2 year and 10 year treasury yield curves inverting.
I know you dont know what that means
57Brave
Well-known member
Wajahat Ali
@WajahatAli
·
5h
Trump promised to eliminate the debt in 4 years; he increased it.
He promised to win the easy trade war with China; he didn't.
He promised Mexico would pay for the wall; it won't.
His tax cuts were going to trickle down and spur the economy;
it didnt
Maybe it is time someone with a resume not littered with bankruptcies, fraudulent university's and gambling casinos that lose playing with house money
steer the economy.
Who knew
@WajahatAli
·
5h
Trump promised to eliminate the debt in 4 years; he increased it.
He promised to win the easy trade war with China; he didn't.
He promised Mexico would pay for the wall; it won't.
His tax cuts were going to trickle down and spur the economy;
it didnt
Maybe it is time someone with a resume not littered with bankruptcies, fraudulent university's and gambling casinos that lose playing with house money
steer the economy.
Who knew
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cajunrevenge
Well-known member
57Brave
Well-known member
By Aaron Blake
August 14 at 5:01 PM
For the first two years of his presidency, Donald Trump bore an existential fear of the Russia investigation. And more often than not, he focused his ire on one man: then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
It’s possible the bigger threat to Trump’s presidency is now the economy, which is showing increasing signs of instability. And just as before, Trump appears genuinely worried and has found one man on which to focus his blame: Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome H. Powell.
Powell could be in for a world of pain ahead of the 2020 election — especially if things do go south.
With the stock market tanking following Trump’s announcement of new China tariffs — amid other warning signs — the Trump administration on Tuesday gave itself a mulligan and delayed some of the more high-profile tariffs until late this year. That was the first sign there was real concern; Trump after all, had announced the tariffs less than two weeks earlier, and pulling back on them could easily be seen as a sign of weakness in his standoff with the Chinese.
ADVERTISING
That precipitated a rally in the stock market Tuesday. But then Wednesday, the inverted yield curve — which is generally acknowledged as one of the most prescient indicators of a recession — delivered more bad news. The markets fell again.
And Trump’s reaction to it all should erase any doubt about how concerned he is. He has spent much of the past 24 hours bashing Powell for not cutting the Fed’s interest rate fast enough — even as Powell has already given him some of the cutting he desires.
“Even now, you know, you see the interest rates,” Trump said Tuesday afternoon in Pennsylvania. “I’m paying a normalized interest rate. We should be paying less, frankly. This guy has made a big mistake. He’s made a big mistake — the head of the Fed. That was another beauty that I chose.”
Trump then took Powell to task on Twitter on Wednesday, after the inverted yield curve news.
“The Great [Fox Business host] Charles Payne ... correctly stated that Fed Chair Jay Powell made TWO enormous mistakes,” Trump began. “1. When he said ‘mid cycle adjustment.’ 2. We’re data dependent. ‘He did not do the right thing.’ I agree (to put it mildly!).”
Trump then returned to the subject a couple of hours later, arguing explicitly that his China trade war, which economists have spotlighted for their increasingly dour forecasts, is not to blame — Powell is.
“China is not our problem, though Hong Kong is not helping,” Trump said, referring to unrest in the latter. “Our problem is with the Fed. Raised too much & too fast. Now too slow to cut.”
He added: “Spread is way too much as other countries say THANK YOU to clueless Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve. Germany, and many others, are playing the game! CRAZY INVERTED YIELD CURVE! We should easily be reaping big Rewards & Gains, but the Fed is holding us back.”
Trump his criticized Powell before, but he’s now upping the ante — expressing regret for appointing him (just as he did for Sessions) and more explicitly highlighting his mistakes (just as he did with Sessions’s Russia recusal, etc.).
As I argued earlier this week, the odds of a downturn or even a recession are perhaps Trump’s biggest hurdle to reelection. Amid all his controversies and unpopularity, the economy is what has buoyed Trump. Were it to go away or be neutralized, it’s difficult to see his already-difficult reelection math adding up. Even if it just costs him a few percentage points worth of voters, it would start to look insurmountable pretty quickly — unless he’s got a pretty badly wounded Democratic opponent.
Trump’s strategy in blaming Powell for whatever lies ahead would seem twofold: 1) He can lean on Powell to give him what he wants for fear of shouldering the blame for anything bad that happens (perhaps forestalling economic pain until after 2020). 2) If and when that bad stuff does happen, he can simply do what he always does and say, “It’s not my fault; this guy wouldn’t listen to me.”
Layer on top of that the complex inner workings of the Fed and economics in general, and very few people will truly know whom to believe. Even if economists side with Powell and blame Trump’s trade war (as they are now), it will be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: the “deep state” working to take Trump down by kneecapping his great successes on the economy to unseat him, once and for all.
It may not be enough to save Trump’s presidency if such a downturn were to come to pass, but he and some allies in conservative media are clearly already planning for that eventuality. That’s both an indication of how concerned he is and how ugly this all could get.
.....................
bet on the guy that doesn't take credit for signing a bill Obama signed in 2014
or airports or windmills or ... hires the best people
or Ted Cruz' father was involved in JFK assassination.
This is what happens when a bull**** artist is anointed POTUS.
This is in live time how a person bankrupts a sure thing like owning a gambling casino.
Dumb **** cant even win playing with house money --- and GOP eats it up
and here he is again, playing with house money. Named his own Fed Chairman, Sec of Treasury and Commerce etc etc etc
Wonder why Obama never had this problem ???
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sturg33
I
As I've been saying for years, the massive bubble created by central banks since the great recession was going to collapse at some point.
Other countries have negative rates already.
The US 30-year treasury rate has dipped below 2% for.first time in history.
We are in uncharted territory here. There are no levers for the fed to pull in the next recession.
It's not Trumps fault. It's not Obama's fault. It central banking manipulating currencies and interest rates creating a bubble much larger than the housing crisis.
Maybe Ron Paul wasnt so crazy after all.
Other countries have negative rates already.
The US 30-year treasury rate has dipped below 2% for.first time in history.
We are in uncharted territory here. There are no levers for the fed to pull in the next recession.
It's not Trumps fault. It's not Obama's fault. It central banking manipulating currencies and interest rates creating a bubble much larger than the housing crisis.
Maybe Ron Paul wasnt so crazy after all.
