Based on their performance thus far, we most certainly don't have to go with any 'explanation' from the current US government. That would be particularly unwise methinks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lullapie
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Based on their performance thus far, we most certainly don't have to go with any 'explanation' from the current US government. That would be particularly unwise methinks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lullapie
You should simply post "I love Trump".Quote:
Originally Posted by Lullapie
It would save you a lot of time and effort.
From "Trump Daddy is gonna make everyone rich" in January, to "People losing houses and jobs in the great financial crisis of 2008 was actually not that bad if you think about it" in April is impressive.
Trump can say he is going to make the US Dollar stronger to a massive cheer and five minutes later say the weaker dollar will boost the US Economy to a cheer from the same people.Quote:
Originally Posted by drillerpie
It's a cult of the morons being taken for a ride by the super-wealthy who see they can make a massive killing during the unnecessary market turmoil.
If the tariffs do raise as much revenue for the US government as touted it will be a tax-cut for the wealthiest in society whilst the poorest will simply be left with significantly higher prices - massive cheers from Cletus in the red hat.
Yeah he says the income from tariffs will pay for his tax cuts for the rich. I doubt that but we will see. That's how the new budget has been presented anyway. For that reason I don't think he will backtrack on tariffs until his budget is passed by Congress.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mapperleypie
Also hard to see how what Trump is doing will not raise inflation and how it will not lead to recession. Trump has the MAGA ultras who love him no matter what but they are not enough to win an election (assuming he still intends to have elections, which is not a given). I see that after they made a big deal about the stock market, crypto reserve and egg prices for years they are now pushing the line that money doesn't matter and in fact not having money is character building.
Fox News even took the stock market ticker off their news channel for the first time in 30 years so as not to scare the boomers. The middle of the road Republican voters will be alienated quite quickly if this continues. It will be interesting to see where Trump's pain threshold and bull**** threshold (can he talk / golf / ignore his way out of this?) lie. Or he might just decide on a war to distract everyone - that would be the next thing on the aspiring authoritarian checklist.
Anyway, whatever will be will be I suppose. I understand people are suffering, I just don't get why they don't see how the golden age they crave to have back was defined by high tax rates for the super rich and different laws about maximising shareholder value. There's no way a billionaire president and a cabinet of billionaires and super loyal non-entities is going to fix that. If you're going to crash the stock market for anything, do it for that IMO.
The Dominican Republic needs to watch out. They paid the price for the poor away form shown in Vietnam so it could be their turn again.Quote:
Originally Posted by drillerpie
Has anyone actually told the American public that the reason goods can be made cheaper elsewhere is that many of them are paid far far more than their counterparts in the rest of the world. And, whilst there are some fantastically clever people in the US, there are a huge number who find critical thinking (a key to improvement) nigh on impossible.
I want to know the 'concessions' they'll be asking from the 50 nations who they say wish to negotiate.
The US will reduce the tariff if Country X does.....
Whatever it is, it's likely to be pitting countries against each other or compromising their sovereignty in some way. We're seeing gangster tactics play-out at the very highest level. What's needed in response is solidarity of nations around the world and courageous, honest leadership. The US is banking on both of these being absent.
Spot on.Quote:
Originally Posted by the_anticlough
Another obvious question to ask is what will Treasury Secretary Bessent do with the estimated 6 trillion of tariff revenues?
He's a Trump man appointed for a reason. Remember when he asked Georgia to 'find' him the extra votes he needed to win? He'd ask anything of anybody. Even commentators on the right say we've entered the Golden Age of Corruption. Those revenues won't all be offset by tax cuts.
The tariffs will fill the Treasury's coffers to the brim and it will be ordinary people paying that through the higher prices passed on.
No serious analyst ever said planes would fall out of the sky with Y2k. Yes, the press blew it out of proportion. But guess who was calling it a hoax already by end of January 2000? Yeah, the same press. Meanwhile those of us who worked in IT 1999 spent many months actually fixing the problem. IIRC it cost many billions to fix, globally. The reason nobody noticed anything serious is that all the high impact systems were patched in time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lullapie
Hussein had WMD. He used them on his own civilians (this is well documented) and there was a genuine fear during gulf war one that he would use them on both Israel and the allied troops. By 2003 he had destroyed them all.
The GFC caused huge damage to the global economy. I don't think any serious analyst said it would lead to a permanent collapse?
Who said ISIS would take over the developed world? Where do you get this BS from?
Brexit has hurt the UK economy as every economist said it would.
Covid had a calculated fatality rate never higher than 2% in the worst-case analyses I saw in the early days with extremely poor data coming out of China. This ultimately dropped to something more like 0.5% of unvaccinated with the early strains once we actually had reliable data.
Climate change is unlikely to wipe out humanity, but if we don't slow it down a lot it is definitely a risk factor for civilisation which is a lot more fragile than the survival of our species. More fragile still are our economies, and generally people regard economic catastrophe as a bad thing.
Yeah, the 24 hour news cycle blows stuff out of proportion. Like every robot is terrified of transgender people now, and bangs on about DEI as though these are the critical issues of our time. But that doesn't mean that genuine crises don't exist.
Which brings us back to the Trump "presidency"... As a matter of fact collapsing international trade and causing stock market crashes globally is, in fact, a crisis. As is deleting all of the USA's soft power and betraying all of its principles and alliances. "It can't be bad if Trump does it" has no basis in fact or logic.