Trump's Card

[Gerontophile]

What do you mean by 'refresh'? Refreshing the page doesn't work.

[WOM]

Try a tall glass of iced tea with a mint leaf in.

[ursus arctos]

I believe he means updating Chrome

[ursus arctos]

If only they were half as committed to the country as they were to grifting.

https://twitter.com/taniel/status/1024651228834418690?s=21

https://twitter.com/taniel/status/10...834418690?s=21

[San Bernardhinault]

Fucking hell!

[ursus arctos]

The towns didn't even get a monorail

[San Bernardhinault]

Not even a racist monorail that refuses to allow hispanics on board

[Tubby Isaacs]

It's too much to hope this fucks up Kobach's run for Kansas Governor, right?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Mixed polling.

Democrats up by 2 in Georgia Governor, but down by 1 in Nevada Governor.
Senate polls have Republicans up in Florida, Texas and Nevada, but down in Arizona.

But it's all on the day.

[adams house cat]

Grisham up by 13 points in New Mexico governor's race. Heinrich ahead in Senate race.

[Gerontophile]

IT'S ONLY AUGUST!

[Amor de Cosmos]

Quite. We were away last week. I didn't take a phone, computer, listen to a radio, or watch TV for six days. It was the most refreshing and energising thing I've done in months.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

In the case of the Eurozone you'd have to view the Eurozone economies as one bloc if you want to make a direct comparison to the USA. In that case we can see that the Eurozone, as a whole, has never had a balanced budget. The trend is broadly similar to that of the USA. No surprise, both are fiat currency blocs functioning within the global economy.

Of course, the internal functioning and debt burden redistribution within the Eurozone is a complete shitshow, what with it being a currency union with no political nor fiscal union, but that's another issue.

Ah now, that's not how it works. That european graph isn't the way it is because Europe is a fiat currency bloc, That Graph shows the initial impact of the maastricht criteria, which substantially reduced budget deficits across the board in preparation for the euro, then it nearly breaks even at the height of the dot com boom, takes a wobble in the crash of late 2001-2, sinks to the 3% limit, before picking back up as the bubble lifted all boats. Then you have the crash, but look at the trajectory of the line after the introduction of the European fiscal compact in 2011-12. Last year, Bulgaria, cyprus, croatia, czech republic, denmark, Germany, greece, lithuania, luxembourg, netherlands and sweden, all ran budget surpluses. Slovenia hit it bang on the button. That's 13 of the EU 27 (and also Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and bosnia) Ireland, Estonia and Latvia have deficits of less than .5% of GDP Between .5% and 1% you have Austria, Belgium, finland and slovakia. So last year 20 out of the EU 28 had a budget deficit of 1% or better, and if they keep up their current trajectory they should get those 20 over the line this year. And they can set about using economic growth to reduce their debt to gdp ratio before the next downturn.

That leaves you with 8 countries that haven't quite got to grips with things yet, and need to get their act together, and sort this out before the next crash. The problem is that those 8 countries make up nearly 2/3rds of the Eu's population, and half of its economy. The four main problem children are Italy, France, Spain and the UK. (though the UK may be less of a concern) You also have Portugal, and Poland, Hungary and Romania.

Now of those countries, Romania and poland have national debts which are well below the 60% threshold, and Hungary is in the low 70%s, however economic growth is a bit shaky in these three countries compared to the rest of the EU. The problem that these countries have have governance issues, i.e. they are run by fascist gangsters, and it's worth considering the paths down which a mixture of a slowing economy and pretty aggressive dubiousness will lead them. I can't help feeling that Orban would be less reliant on jew-baiting, and muslim hating if Hungary was doing a lot better. These countries could however get their act in order in two years if they made an effort. They just don't want to.

Italy Greece and portugal are currently basically bankrupt. Portugal seems to be growing relatively strongly, but that is effectively matched by their budget deficit, and they will likely remain effectively bankrupt for quite a while. And progress in dealing with their issues. But if there is another economic downturn, we've already been there before with Italy, so the impact is manageable. The toughest, and most important nuts for the EU to crack are France and Spain. these are countries that aren't bankrupt, but have debt to GDP ratios in the high nineties, relatively anaemic growth and relatively large budget deficits. If these two countries go under then the EU will come under severe pressure. The new spanish govt are taking a bit more of a leisurely approach to dealing with the issue. The spanish budget deficit was 3.1% last year, and the target is 2.7% this year, and 1.9% the year after. Macron's stated target is to get the Debt to gdp below 90% by the end of his term. If they can get control of their finances before the next crash, then a) the next recession will be less damaging b) there's a better chance that they will avoid bankruptcy.

But the point is that even though the EU is an economic bloc, that can print money, all of the members are legally bound to a fairly prescriptive policy of Counter cyclical macro economic policy That will at times see them all producing budget deficits when that is necessary, balanced budgets once the economy has recovered, and Budgetary surpluses when things are starting to get a bit bubbly. Everyone has to lay out their spending, showing how their budgetary changes each year will impact their future budgets which is an enormous change. The thing is that aside from being a useful end in itself, and reducing the size, impact and duration of recessions, it's an important first stage. It removes the idea that any future EU transfers are to subsidize southern European countries, and their traditional desire to collect less tax than they wish to spend.

Sure there's loads of bits missing out of the structure of the single market,but that's simply a function of the may the EU develops. The Commission comes up with an idea, the countries take the bits that they like, and prevent it being adequately supervised, then it goes astray then everyone agrees to do it properly. Banking regulation was considerably stepped up in the aftermath of the crash, It will now be on the agenda again, now that the UK is leaving. But it also opens up the possibility of further harmonization of rules that make the EU single market more than a bit wonky.

Every european country does something really weird, that gets in the way, but can't be changed because it would upset certain powerful forces. For instance the EU is always shouting at the Dutch to do something about their insane bankruptcy regulations. These vary hugely from state to state in the EU, but judging by the duration and implications of the dutch bankruptcy process, they seem to view it as a social shame on about a par with paedophilia. There's a bunch of these areas that need to be sorted out, in much the same way that they sorted out customs in 2015-6.

These include a) bankruptcy b) collection of debts, (a massive problem for Ireland) c) protection of minority shareholders, d) The computerization and registration of property holdings..... To take the first two, in ireland we had a system whereby if you went bankrupt, you basically had to live in a hole in the ground for seven years, and so in order to avoid such a terrible fate, we have made it essentially impossible to enforce a judgement. This system essentially means that if you get into trouble you have to pay your secured creditors first, and you can run away from your unsecured creditors forever. we're not going to change this law ourselves. We need someone to do it for us. Ireland is relatively good at protecting minority shareholders, but that isn't true of all EU countries, and our efforts to computerize our land registry are going about as slowly as you would expect from a political system where solicitors make so much money from conveyancing and legal searches.

And of course there is the big area, where standardization and harmonization of rules would make a major difference to literally everything. The taxation of companies, who at the moment are able to use differences in national taxation regimes to ensure that companies pay essentially no tax. No one govt can change their own rules, without companies threatening to move their operations to another EU country, taking their jobs with them and devastating some local economy. However if everyone does it simultaneously, what are they going to do?

To bring it back to Trump, the essential difference between the EU and the US, is that the EU is a project that relies on each stage of its project working and making things better in order to move on. In the US, there is no such requirement for something to work. it exists in an entirely fact and logic free vacuum, and is more focused on transferring wealth from the many to the few behind the guise of a culture war, and it is shored up by being the dominant geopolitical force in the world and consequently having first dibs on the world's resources.

Either way, I still remain profoundly unconvinced by the strategy of driving the economy as hard as you can under all circumstances. There's very little difference between what you are advocating, and Charlie mcCreevy's attitude when minister for finance.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

BTW the previous post relied heavily on the figures given by the Tradingeconomics website, which I'm not massively sure about. Looking up the various figures for govts budget deficits and debt to gdp calculations really hammered home that such things are frequently a matter of interpretation, rather than easily verifiable and concrete facts.

[anton pulisov]

Either way, I still remain profoundly unconvinced by the strategy of driving the economy as hard as you can under all circumstances. There's very little difference between what you are advocating, and Charlie mcCreevy's attitude when minister for finance

Well this is misrepresentation. I wrote that you can keep on running a small deficit indefinitely as long as your GDP growth is sustainable. Obviously building houses in empty fields Louth to house Polish builders is not a sustainable economic plan. There's productive debt and then there's unproductive debt. As long as the debt is productive you won't have a crisis. The recurring problem in history is that there are too many rentiers out there in places of power able to milk the interest from unproductive debt backed up by the castiron guarantee of government bailouts. It doesn't matter then if you run a surplus or deficit, you're pissing away money either way.

The thing that started all this off is the idea that never running a balanced budget is impossible. Once again, if anyone can point out a country that has not run an average net deficit in the period since 1971 then I'm all ears.

[Tubby Isaacs]

What kicked it off was you being surprised the Democrats might attack the Republicans for raising the deficit substantially now.

[Tubby Isaacs]

On a tangent, though Trump did refer to London murders, how is that "worst than New York" thing looking now?

London was worse than New York for precisely one month, February- London's worst month, and NY's least bad. Totals as of end of June- New York 141, London 80.

[anton pulisov]

What kicked it off was you being surprised the Democrats might attack the Republicans for raising the deficit substantially now.

Well I continually don't understand why the two parties show off about wanting to balance the budget. But I suppose it plays well to the gallery.

[Tubby Isaacs]

You don't have to be into balanced budgets to think that hiking the deficit now (and not just this year) is stupid.

[anton pulisov]

Well it's not that black and white, it depends what you do with it. The Republicans and Democrats have spent the last 38 years lining the pockets of the rentier class. Trump has been no different.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Democrats have also criticized what's being done with this expanded deficit.

So, in summary, people criticizing this Trump bollocks are being simplistic because it could be different to what it actually is?

[anton pulisov]

A Democratic president deregulated Wall Street, they went to town, and ten years later another Democratic president used public money to bail them out. Lots of stones being thrown in glass houses in politics as usual.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Tennessee Primaries in, no surprises. Phil Bredesen v Marsha Blackburn, who is appalling.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

This looks very exciting. What exactly is going on here? Has the state of New York really gutshot the NRA? and could this have possibly come at a worse time for them.

[ursus arctos]

I wouldn’t get your hopes up.

The immediate effect is going to be an uptick in the amount of money that they get from rubes and gun industry types, and their ability to find alternative service providers is significant.