Because
Okay dokey, a new study by the Federal Reserve shows that Trump’s tariffs on imports, which were intended to boost the economy and protect jobs, ultimately led to job losses and higher prices for consumers.
Well, shock-a-roni, Skippy.
Do you want to know why this happened? Because Trump does not know what he’s doing. Never has and always won’t.
However, there is an upside.
The world’s richest 500 people increased their collective wealth by 25% in 2019.
Phew. So everything’s okay because of Newton’s Equal Stuff Out Law.
Add tariff management to the list of Republicon fails. Trickle down, anyone? Of course “fail” is an elusive term to Republicons. As long as the dollars continue to flow upward and sideways into their campaign coffers, that’s a ‘win’ for them. Given their spin on Donnie’s in your face criminal activity, they’re not overly concerned that IQ4.5 has ripped the band-aid off any pretense that Republicons represent anyone other than themselves and their oligarch owners.
1Hey, a gal has to refurbish her yacht for the new decade.
2I’ll be ever’where — wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’ — I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready.
– John Steinbeck
Trump turns back on workers as companies force employees to train their cheaper foreign replacements: report
https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trump-turns-back-on-workers-as-companies-force-employees-to-train-their-cheaper-foreign-replacements-report/
3@megasoid: Trump doesn’t give two hoots about anybody but himself. I’m sure he laughs at the people who believe every word he says. He could not care less what happens to them.
4thatotherjean @4 The analogy of the dust bowl conditions to current events was apparently lost somewhere along the way. No one alive right now with the exception of of MAGA zealots could be unaware of the executive fascist’s last 3 years of misery, want and existential threat to Americans or inhabitants of this planet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grapes_of_Wrath
5In a much longer term financial ‘connect-the-dots’ vampire squid saga, y’all might remember the real estate bubble and foreclosure mania back in the Cheney-Bush Great Recession of ~2008-2012.
There were huge numbers of people nationwide losing their homes and property due to job loss, adjustable interest mortgages, collapse and devaluation of RE prices [some areas saw 30-50% declines], with widespread ‘underwater’ borrowers, etc., etc.
Well, we sometimes heard of these distressed properties getting snapped up by those [the usual 1-10%’ers] who had massive cash reserves available during the general economic crash. Your basic “Disaster Capitalism” scheme…
A relatively small number were acquired by some of the luckier watchers of those many TV real estate ‘wizards’ who mostly snookered the gullible into buying their ‘get-rich-quick’ RE seminars and books.
Little appreciated was that most of those properties were acquired [the foreclosures/distressed ones, for pennies on the dollar], and held long-term as rental investments [with changed tax laws, depreciation, etc., such a property can be churned many times]; given that a large number of former homeowners were now renters, along with the usual population factors.
It’s now apparent that those massive property acquisitions, in a time of national economic crisis, have been extremely profitable –to those who were positioned to take advantage– of the misery of so many average people who had [briefly] moved into homeownership.
A financial news segment on the PBS business news program* “Nightly Business Report, NBR”, on last Friday, explained how some of the giant RE investment companies who pulled this off have been raking in fantastic profits renting out those millions of homes and apartments that they snatched up for pennies on the dollar back during the great collapse.
The NBR –segment– about the rental property investment companies can be seen in this video of the whole half-hour [1st link below]. The individual video segments and transcripts are usually available a day or two later than the air date.
They don’t have this particular segment transcript/video up yet [links below].
They may not ever*, since Friday was the last ever NBR program to air!
http://nbr.com/2019/12/27/nightly-business-report-december-27-2019/
http://nbr.com/category/transcripts/
http://nbr.com/category/real-estate/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightly_Business_Report
* “Nightly Business Report, NBR”, I was dumfounded to hear that this program has been canceled! Friday, 27 Dec, was the last one!
41 years of this program, and it gets axed [I’ve been watching it for decades, sometimes ticked me off though, as it was often hostile to unions].
Yet another example of how the ‘public’ PBS has been decimated and mismanaged, beginning with the infiltration and sabotage of the Rethugs from ~2004 onward.
http://nbr.com/
6Very scary times ahead…
A major factor in the current –illusory record stock market indices– is that the Federal Reserve has recently been pumping Trillion$ of dollars [our dollars, hundreds of Billions per week] into Wall Street and the major banks, artificially propping them up.
“The Fed, through its money spigot, the New York Fed, began sluicing these funds to Wall Street on September 17, the day the overnight borrowing rate in the repurchase agreement (repo) loan market spiked from 2 percent to 10 percent. This was the first such intervention by the Fed since the financial crisis. The repo market is where banks, hedge funds and money market funds loan each other money overnight on the basis of good collateral like U.S. Treasury securities.”
This has been artificially inflating the economy, to tRump’s benefit, and been a factor in the rapidly rising National Debt.
–An extreme economic crash, likely worse than any before, is almost certain to happen.– Soon…
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2019/12/trump-and-the-stock-market-are-the-winners-in-the-feds-repo-loan-binge-heres-the-losers/
.
The National Debt numbers, now over $23 Trillion and ballooning like crazy every week.
It was about $5.4T when GW Bush became 43 in 2001 [Clinton had reduced it], nearly doubled to about $11T when Obama became 44 in 2009.
It was ~$19T when tRump was dropped into 45 in 2017, up $4T in three years.
“The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It”:
https://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current
.
Remember all that OMFG! “fiscal responsibility”, National Debt, and National Deficit yammering by Moscow Mitch and the Repukes during the WJC and BHO Presidencies?
7Not a whisper about it with GWB and DJT…