Original post by Justin O. Smith
Intro © February 19, 2020
As a Conservative in 2016 I was a Cruzer (Ted Cruz). After
Cruz’s mathematical elimination from winning the GOP nomination, only then did I
support Donald Trump.
In my mind Trump did not fit my image of a guy that
supported Christian causes such as Christian religious freedom, Pro-Life,
Pro-Israel, Pro-Originalist Judges and Anti-LGBTQ (who desire the destruction
of Christian morals in America. Trump early got on board with Conservative
thoughts on illegal immigration and the craziness of importing American-Culture-hating
Muslim refugees. That got my attention.
I’m a limited government, Balance the Budget, Bring down
deficit spending guy too; but the above issues I listed are more important to
me. Trump has delivered or at least worked hard in the face of Dem obstruction to
deliver on my primary list of concerns (although Trump seems a bit wishy-washy on
LGBTQ morality). Lately President is even vocally lining up behind pro-2nd
Amendment issues.
For Conservatives that economics is a primacy, President
Trump’s economic actions pertaining to Budget issues should be a huge waving red
flag. Trump’s centrist perspective could produce big problems for America after
a Trump second term in Office (YUP, I’m still voting Trump). Justin Smith effectively
goes over those budget red flags.
JRH 2/19/20
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& debit cards are accepted by my PayPal account:
OR just buy some FEEL GOOD coffee.
BLOG EDITOR: I’ve apparently
been placed in restricted Facebook Jail! The restriction was relegated after
criticizing Democrats for supporting abortion in one post and criticizing
Virginia Dems for gun-grabbing legislation and levying protester restrictions.
Rather than capitulate to Facebook censorship by abandoning the platform, I
choose to post and share until the Leftist censors ban me completely.
Conservatives are a huge portion of Facebook. If more or all Conservatives are
banned, it will affect the Facebook advertising revenue paradigm. SO FIGHT
CENSORSHIP BY SHARE – SHARE – SHARE!!! Facebook notified me in
pop-up on 1/20/20: “You're temporarily restricted from joining and posting to
groups that you do not manage until April 18 at 7:04 PM.”
**********************
The Unsustainable Trajectory of America's Economy
By Justin O. Smith
Sent 2/14/2020 10:38 PM
"The suspicions that the
system is rigged in favor of the largest banks and their elites, so they play
by their own set of rules to the disfavor of the taxpayers who fund their
bailout, are true. It really happened. These suspicions are valid." ~ Neil Barofsky, TARP Inspector General [Wikipedia
info]
America is witnessing President Trump's "I've abandoned
free market principles to save the free market system"" moment,
similar to former President George Bush on November 16th 2008 and the
high-speed implementation employed by former President Obama in 2009, as Trump
presented his 2021 Budget and a $4.8 trillion spending plan to the press on February
10th. It is a farce of a "budget", since it doesn't even balance
until 2035, according to the Wall Street Journal, and it sells America a load
of economic crap, that includes the same old out-of-control socialist spending,
now adopted by the Republican Party too, minus the taxes, and certain to harm
America; given the socialist trends in the ranks of the Millennials, the
Democrats are certain to hold the White House during a few of these years and
take full advantage of Trump's lapse in judgement on this issue.
On January 18th 2020, the Washington Post reported: "To those who criticized
his spending and the growth of the national debt, Trump said: 'Who the hell
cares about the budget? We're going to have a country.'
For most of President Barack Obama's time in office,
Republicans seemed to care very much about the budget, making fears around the
national debt and deficit their top talking point. They've backed off those
concerns under Trump."
President Trump's proposal will run a near trillion dollar,
$996 billion [Blog Editor: I couldn’t locate “$996 billion” figure nonetheless
there are a plethora of sources predicting a near or over a Trillion dollar
deficit for 2020; e.g.: fxstreet.com, MarketWatch.com, baynews9.com, cbo.gov
and more], deficit next year, just as he did in the previous years of his
administration, that is close to fifty-percent higher than the $666 billion
deficit Trump inherited from President Obama in 2017. Federal spending will
accelerate from $4.6 trillion next year to more than $6.5 trillion in 2030, and
the proposed cuts to be made by Congress in this year's budget are not
significant enough to offset the recent spending increases Trump has approved
since taking office.
Has America so soon forgotten the worse economic recession
since the 1930s -- the 2008 economic collapse and the collapse of fifty percent
of the stock market -- and the terrible risks banks and businesses took that
created it? Not much has changed, because many of the financial markets
proceeded, from the first day of the bailout, that followed, to the present,
with the same exact risky practices. They know the government, essentially the
U.S. taxpayer -- the American people, will bail them out again, that is if
there's any money or credit line available for a bailout, which is going to be
unlikely.
Midway of 2008, the United States' national debt was
approximately $9.4 trillion and right at 65 percent of the Gross Domestic
Product. Consumer debt stood at $2.7 trillion, while the total credit market debt
had peaked at $54 trillion. And mortgage debt was a massive $14.8 trillion, as
the Federal Reserve balance sheet remained below $900 billion as it had for
years.
Most logical minded Americans believed then and now that
there is not any such thing as "too big to fail", and they thought
the regular bankruptcy laws could have handled the situation and allowed the
crisis to settle itself. People understood that liquidating bad debt and
expunging it from the system would reset the economy forcing corporations and
consumers to live within their means and act conservatively, using debt wisely
for real needs, and most of us saw that as the best road to take for America's
future.
AIG, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Citicorp, Bank of
America and several other "too big to fail" banks were bankrupt by
September of 2008. They should have been liquidated through existing bankruptcy
law, and their assets should have been sold to still reputable banks that had
not undertaken fraudulent risks, that hit their investors with devastating
consequences.
Nobody in 2007 would have ever forecast that the national
debt would climb to over $23 trillion during the past twelve years, or that the
national debt would be 105 percent of GDP, with consumer debt exceeding $4
trillion. The ruling class "elite" of both parties have had their
propaganda machines operating at warp speed to convince Americans that somehow
$1 trillion annual deficits are normal and sustainable.
Never underestimate the ability of this president, or any
president, or any Congress and the Federal Reserve to take outrageous and
reckless steps to convince America that the abnormal is really normal. One
should always keep in mind the egregious $700 billion TARP bailout and the lies
and threats Hank Paulson perpetrated in order to
protect his billionaire pals, whenever one gives scrutiny to today's
events.
[Blog Editor: Articles examining Hank Paulson:
o Documents Reveal How Paulson Forced Banks To Take TARP Cash;
By Joe Weisenthal; Business Insider; 5/13/09 7:25 PM
o So, Paulson lied? He’s misled America from Day One;
By Michelle Malkin; MichelleMalkin.com; 10/5/09 12:20
PM
President Donald Trump promised to eliminate the national
debt in eight years, and although I thought it was an impossible task at the
time, I did think Trump might reduce spending quite a bit, along with reducing
annual deficits. He was constantly haranguing the Federal Reserve's moves to
keep interest rates at an unsafe level, which created a stock market bubble and
contributed to the exorbitant rise in debt; and, one would have thought that
after experiencing one Federal Reserve induced market crash after another, the
American people would have realized this gross rise in debt since the 1990s had
to end.
But Trump's relationship with the Truth is something far
less than stellar, and for him, it is something to manipulate at the drop of a
dime and to shift in content depending on the President's immediate need and
desired effect. And over the years, he has used this manipulation to bend Fed
puppet, Jerome Powell, to do his bidding, after
finding the Fed's 2.25 percent rate increase too much to handle.
In July 2019, President Trump stated: "The U.S. economy would grow
more quickly if monetary policy were eased. If we had a Fed that would lower
interest rates, we would be like a rocket ship. We don't have a Fed that knows
what they're doing. Our most difficult problem is not our competitors, it is
the Federal Reserve. The Fed raised rates too soon, too often, and doesn't have
a clue!"
That's quite contrary to what Candidate Trump was saying on
the campaign trail in September 2016, when he stated: "They're keeping the rates
down so that everything else doesn't go down. We have a very false economy (J.
Smith: something I've stated for years now). At some point the
rates are going to have to change. The only thing that is strong is the artificial
stock market. The U.S. economy is in a big, fat, ugly bubble. I will get
rid of the nation's more than $19 trillion national debt over a period of eight
years. I'm renegotiating all of our deals, the big trade deals that we're doing
so badly on. (J. Smith: And still are, i.e. USMCA)"
Will the Real Donald Trump please stand up? It's almost as
though we have a president with multiple personalities, at least two at
conflict with one another.
Trump's proposed $4.4 trillion cuts to domestic spending,
including $2 trillion in promised savings from entitlement programs, with some
$844 billion cuts to Medicaid and $750 billion to Medicare spread over the next
decade. With Congress unlikely to cooperate on this and Trump unwilling to
spend too much political capital on it, this will probably fall by the wayside.
After calling for fairly large domestic spending cuts in 2018, Trump still
signed a deal in 2019 that added $320 billion in spending and demolished
previous spending caps.
And even when Republicans controlled both the House and the
Senate, they still agreed to a bipartisan budget that increased domestic
discretionary spending in all government departments, especially the Pentagon.
They essentially refused to cut the State Department's and the Environmental
Protection Agency's budgets, so whether they follow through with cutting the
EPA by 26 percent in this budget is anyone's guess.
Ironically, on February 4th, when Pres. Trump was practicing
his State of the Union Speech for twenty Republican supporters, former
Congressional deficit hawk, Mick Mulvaney, head of the Office of Management and
Budget, argued there wasn't any need to mention the growing deficit, because
:nobody cares" about it. That's a one-hundred and eighty degree turnaround
since he campaigned to earn his spot over the OMB and a time he made deficit
reduction his "central policy concern." Mulvaney's change of heart
seems to have coincided with the Republican Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
And, on February 7th 2020, Vice-President Mike Pence told
MSNBC's audience that deficits can help boost economic growth, which proves
beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Republican Party, or at least Trump's
Republican Party, has now seeming embraced socialist and Keynesian economics and notions on
spending. This same argument used by Leftists across America used to drive
Republicans to some great degree of anger, whenever it was stated by Obama and
his staff.
[Blog Editor: Economics theory hurts my brain. Simplistically,
choice in supply and demand good. Being told what, when, or able to buy – bad. To
those of you who like to hurt your brain, here are some Mises Institute economics critical
of Keynesian economics (article, audio, pdf-book & video):
o Modern Myths of Keynesian Economics; 56
minute audio presented by Jeffrey
M. Herbener; Mises Institute; posted 11/03/2018 delivered
at Harvard Square in 1989
o The Critics of KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS; Edited
with an Introduction and new Preface by HENRY HAZLITT; Published by The
Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. – 439 page pdf on Mises Institute;
©1995 - Originally published 1960 by D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc.
Posted by misesmedia
88.4K subscribers - Jul 30,
2019
Recorded at the Mises Institute in
Auburn, Alabama, on 18 July 2019.
Mises University is the world's
leading instructional program in the Austrian school of economics.
Mises.org/MU19]
The federal subsidies are still flowing to the Repurchasing
Markets at $100 billion a day, as they have since October, so corporations can
buy back billions of their own stock, resulting in the artificially high stock
market, the highest valuations since 2000. And in the meantime, the military is
getting anything and everything it wants, as America continues to act as the
World's Policeman and our entitlement payouts are constant and on an
unsustainable trajectory, as President Donald John Trump and all the feckless
Congressmen in Washington, D.C. pretend all is well.
Despite boasts of the "Greatest Economy Ever",
record corporate profits, stock market the highest ever, lowest unemployment in
history and the Federal Reserve balance sheet at $750 billion, approximately
$150 billion lower than normal, and interest rates still at emergency levels,
somehow the Federal Reserve feels compelled to cut rates and restart
Quantitative Easing, although they are not using that terminology. Powell is
taking Trump's orders and acting in a way that is only ever seen during a
recession or a financial crisis.
Several successive administrations have used every debt
based solution for this debt based crisis in their attempt to avoid another
1930s style Depression, but essentially, they have merely ensured that the next
collapse is going to be exponentially much worse than it has to be. And the
angst and divisions in our society are only compounding the situation through a
whispered promise of impending catastrophe that sweeps the existing social
order away in a chaotic cataclysm of death and destruction and all-out
war.
America's future is being stolen and sold. The future of
America's children is being stolen and sold. America is being sold down the
river, pillaged and raped, by the few at the top, the "elite" ruling
class, at the expense of the American people, in an egregious manner that harms
all society and America during the long journey ahead towards our eventual rise
from the ashes of the coming economic chaos.
By Justin O. Smith
+++++++++++++++++++++++
BLOG EDITOR: I’ve apparently
been placed in restricted Facebook Jail! The restriction was relegated after
criticizing Democrats for supporting abortion in one post and criticizing
Virginia Dems for gun-grabbing legislation and levying protester restrictions.
Rather than capitulate to Facebook censorship by abandoning the platform, I
choose to post and share until the Leftist censors ban me completely.
Conservatives are a huge portion of Facebook. If more or all Conservatives are
banned, it will affect the Facebook advertising revenue paradigm. SO FIGHT
CENSORSHIP BY SHARE – SHARE – SHARE!!! Facebook notified me in
pop-up on 1/20/20: “You're temporarily restricted from joining and posting to
groups that you do not manage until April 18 at 7:04 PM.”
_______________________________
Edited by John R. Houk
Text embraced by brackets and
source links are by the Editor.
© Justin O. Smith
