An economics, investment, trading and policy blog with a focus on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We seek the truth, avoid the mainstream and are virulently anti-neoliberalism.
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Friday, November 18, 2016
Michael Wolff — Ringside With Steve Bannon at Trump Tower as the President-Elect's Strategist Plots "An Entirely New Political Movement" (Exclusive)
"With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks."
Cowboy Keynesian.... not very measured approach.... if they start to pay up for things then Fed will think "inflation" and raise...
Maybe it's the end of the civil rights era where race and social status predictably defined nearly every political identity and the beginning of the economic era where socio economic class defines votes.
1/3 the population are still fighting the last war and are continuing to scream racist, sexist, protectionist, xenophobe and 14 other names that are supposed to be game enders but they have lost their power. I don't know if Bannon is right, but fair to say something has changed.
There is so much unused capacity in the economy, I doubt a couple trillion will make much of a difference besides a few percent on inflation and gdp. But it is unfortunate that the people in power don't understand MMT which would help them to operate the system more effectively but... spending is spending and a bit of inflation wouldn't be the worst thing in the world
Maybe it's the end of the civil rights era where race and social status predictably defined nearly every political identity and the beginning of the economic era where socio economic class defines votes.
The appointment of Jeff Sessions questions that. He is a shoe in for confirmation since he is a senator, but I would expect the Democrats, progressives at least, to bring up his history. The firestorm is already starting over it.
Trump came across during the campaign as a law & order authoritarian candidate. I expect him to follow through on it and "clean up" America the way Rudy Guliani did NYC when he was mayor.
Trump tapped into the electorate waking up and realizing it's actually about us versus them.
Call it class struggle or whatever you like, it is the end of identity politics in the US. The remarkable thing is that a Republican (aka Trump) capitalized on this.
The Democrats are learning impaired. The DNC was run exclusively by the Clinton / WS gang with DWS at the helm for over 5 years where Identity politics was their modus operandi and look at the results.
Wow, a GOP House, Senate and White House. If that wasn't sad enough for the intelligentsia of the DNC, look at the State Legislatures et al.
Amid all of the hubbub and bubbub around the US election, I have to say – nothing has changed. For me, it’s just a continuation of the same old same old; just a rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic. I really don’t know why people are excited or think that it is worth analysing. Greed and hubris, unconsciousness, have changed cloaks – so what? You are sitting in the front row and excited???? When is the time to bail out?
Yes, I know it will affect people’s lives – on the outside. But I cannot see in human history, all 200,000 years of it, where anything on the outside has ever had anything at all to do with our existence. This where people’s minds go blank. Huh!!!!!
It is because we have exactly no clue as to what a human being is. It is bigger than flat earth theory.
I can say it in words, but words are only words.
That ‘identity’ you carry around in your mind that you think is you - is not you. It is an illusion; one you chase all day and one you try to fulfil. Stop and think about this for just 5 seconds if you can. Imagine if what I am saying is actually the truth – one that you saw clearly for yourself. Multiply this illusion by around 7B and you have the world today. That is why nothing has changed. Because the illusion has not changed. And that is what must change, if there is going to be any ‘education’ any ‘progression’ in our world. Human beings have to discover the Self and know and feel, what it means to be human. Otherwise, we are just greedy blind ‘moist robots’ (with university degrees, bank accounts, and trinkets). Man has an ego, and it makes of him, a puppet.
On the inside, life is very very simple; existence is very very simple; and the further we get away from it on the outside, the more complicated, the more bizarre, things get.
My words say we did not come to this earth for an election; or an economy or a political party; or for a religion, or even a family and relations. We did not come here to be poor or rich, suffer, or be graded into classes. The ‘opportunities’ you see on the outside are not opportunities at all (in terms of your existence – the one where you are born, live, and die). You are your only opportunity, and what you are here for is within you. You are the package that needs to be unpacked in the light of day. That is the only opportunity any human being has at their disposal that is real – because we are real. You get 70 laps around the sun to get it right. To understand; discover and uncover. All the rest, as they say, is just history that goes around and around, the wheel turning. The universe is the great recycler. If you could see what goes on this planet with clear eyes, you would see it as almost impenetrable, indefatigable, illogical, breath-taking illusion. And yes it has to be cleaned up, and no-one knows how. Certainly not the experts.
That’s the news we should be printing.
But I know, it’s like drawing a line through water and wishing it could somehow, remain.
I think it's cute y'all think this is the end of "identity" politics. After 200,000 years, humans have decided to give up on the various forms of tribalism?
When Obama took office he had a change to secure for the Democrats another fifty years of office as did FDR. But, instead of becoming an FDR Obama played to Wall Street. Now Trump has the opportunity that Obama had and I think that he will do a better job because I don't think that he is a liar like Obama. And Bannon is right to go after the disgusting, disgraced media. It needs to broken up.
Tom the only thing Trump has said about rates is that he thinks they should be higher... he was chastising the Fed for helping Hillary by keeping rates low for so long...
I dont know how much cred we can give this interview with Bannon here but from this it doesnt sound like they are going to be very measured...
This was just like Rummy's DoD in the GWOT/Iraq redux.... created huge run ups in material prices and labor which were immediately ratified by OFHEO property prices were going up like crazy... everybody was high five-ing ...
Much more savings out there at this time though (morons "debt to gdp!" higher) ... leading flow from Interest Income is in a position to be much higher as a % of what all is going on...
I think it's cute y'all think this is the end of "identity" politics. After 200,000 years, humans have decided to give up on the various forms of tribalism?
It's a change on the focus of tribalism, not an end of tribalism. Class warfare is 100% tribalism.
We're in a way the definition not something to define...
The purpose of life is to realize experientially (and not just understand) the import of, "Man is created in the image and likeness of God," which is a summary of perennial wisdom in a nutshell. This realization is not found by either the senses or the mind, although both are preliminary means for unfolding it through "knowledge of the heart."
"Tom the only thing Trump has said about rates is that he thinks they should be higher... he was chastising the Fed for helping Hillary by keeping rates low for so long..."
I think he was confused, Matt. He thinks "they should be higher" AND he thought lower rates "helped Hillary". These two positions seem at odds with each other.
Bob even within baseball (or more broadly sports...) there are those who seek to teach/coach via rote methods vs. those who apply active methods...
In baseball look at all the shifts they are putting on first with LH batters and now even increasingly with RH batters, and some will say, "well just hit it the other way" and then you see the players seemingly unable to do this...
I think he was confused, Matt. He thinks "they should be higher" AND he thought lower rates "helped Hillary". These two positions seem at odds with each other.
I think he gets that low rates are stimulative and therefore help the party in power. His criticism of low rates is that they did not translated into economic stimulus as assumed but rather into financial stimulus, raising asset values without creating jobs.
Where C is future value, i is the RATE of return, and n is the periods...
PV of something worth C at Zero rate one year from now is C/(1+0)^1 = C so its doesnt go up just based on a zero rate... there still has to be a non-zero flow associated...
The flow is from leverage that is light to carry at low rates. Equities are margin driven, for example.
The Fed actually planned on increasing the "wealth effect" this way and admitted it. The "wealth effect" is not spill over into increased spending based on "animal spirits" as the Fed had expected.
But if you look at the Case-Shiller indexes they still havent reached their pre-GFC levels and we have been at ZIRP for 8 years...
If it was interest rates alone, then they should have immediately shot back up once the Fed went to 0... they didnt...
However, flows have increased over the same time frame substantially and these prices are working their way back up with the flows as the interest rates have remained static....
“...we can look at man in order to seek to understand God”
Exactly. But everyone is too busy with their stock portfolio – because ‘reality’.
When the Titanic went down, the band played on: - was that heroism, stoicism, rote active comprehensive learning, desperation, resignation - or our signature tune?
We can look at a drop, but will that reveal to us the Ocean. You know that Michelangelo painting ‘Creation of Adam’ where man reaches up with his limp finger to touch the finger of GOD (old man with glowing eyes and grey flowing beard and hair)? Right there you have all the arrogance and ignorance of the human being, painted by a master artist. Showing no clue as to the distance or relation between the two; and no clue as to the nature of the Divine. And yet it is true we are a part of that Ocean and the Ocean is within the drop.
Prem started talking about ‘peace’ within at his father’s meetings at the age of four – addressing with absolute confidence thousands of people. Think about what we were doing at the age of four. Here he is in an 11min. interview on the Lite Breakfast Show explaining how it was: The Lite Breakfast with Prem Rawat
Housing is dependent on ordinary folks borrowing from banks. That hasn't happened because credit standards are still tight. I know this from friends who have been in RE for years. Used to be that all that was required was a warm pulse. Now the scrutiny is tight and the requirements more stringent. In addition, many ordinary folks can't show the income and already have too high debt to income and debt to asset ratios.
Its dependent on what the govt will or what the govt will let its fiscal agents lend you against housing....
Government did not imposed limits on bank lending for housing either during the crisis nor is it doing so now. This can be tied to excessive lending against increasing value of collateral during the crisis, but not to tight credit standards now. Regulators are encouraging lending but they cannot force creditors to do so.
This is the typical cycle of loose standards leading to a credit blowout and implosion, followed by a tightening of standards after the crash. This is the inverse of what should occur to promote stable growth.
In principle government could intervene in this regard, but no one should hold their breath waiting for It. This would require a reversal of POV.
Rag Rajan's "let them eat credit" thesis holds up after 6 years. Loose credit standards put a band aid on pervasive income inequality that left too few families in a position to buy a house under any sort of prudent mortgage system. It was easier to just give everyone a mortgage and make them feel rich than to have a painful political fight to redistribute a sizable chunk (whether by regulatory or tax policy) of producitvity gains since 1970s from high income (especially capital income) families to middle and low income families. Just describing the problem sounds like socialism, if not Marxism so no politician during Bush Administration and very few during the Obama Administration were willing to address the underlying issue. So now we have a more prudent morgage system and surprise surprise, too few families qualify for a home mortgage.
Trump understood there was a problem and even if he hasn't quite grasped the scope of the economic problem (certainly trade/immigration policy is a big part of it but isn't everything), the fact he was the only candidate in the GOP primaries and, more astonishingly, the only candidate in the general who recognized there was a problem was enough for him to win the White House. It still blows my mind, Democrats didn't nominate Bernie Sanders. He was the only Democrat running (well, Jim Webb too) who was even playing on the same field as Trump.
I think the left became confused about solving the symptoms of the disease rather the disease itself. Inequality and collapse in finance happened because globalisation proceeded more quickly than labor could adjust. Given frailties of humans to move to new places, adapt and learn new things, new cultures, 30 or 40 years isn't long enough.
Bringing up the labor force participation rate, bringing back wage growth above inflation rates is the real problem to solve to reduce inequality and souring financial commitments. The political neo-left would argue we will slow down the pace of change and pervert the course of markets, inevitable change, but that is sort of the point. Put equilibrium off for a decade or three.
"With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks."
ReplyDeleteCowboy Keynesian.... not very measured approach.... if they start to pay up for things then Fed will think "inflation" and raise...
Maybe it's the end of the civil rights era where race and social status predictably defined nearly every political identity and the beginning of the economic era where socio economic class defines votes.
ReplyDelete1/3 the population are still fighting the last war and are continuing to scream racist, sexist, protectionist, xenophobe and 14 other names that are supposed to be game enders but they have lost their power. I don't know if Bannon is right, but fair to say something has changed.
if they start to pay up for things then Fed will think "inflation" and raise...
ReplyDeleteIf the Fed doesn't toe the Trump mark, then Trump will take Fed independence to the people. I don't see the Fed winning that one.
There is so much unused capacity in the economy, I doubt a couple trillion will make much of a difference besides a few percent on inflation and gdp. But it is unfortunate that the people in power don't understand MMT which would help them to operate the system more effectively but... spending is spending and a bit of inflation wouldn't be the worst thing in the world
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's the end of the civil rights era where race and social status predictably defined nearly every political identity and the beginning of the economic era where socio economic class defines votes.
ReplyDeleteThe appointment of Jeff Sessions questions that. He is a shoe in for confirmation since he is a senator, but I would expect the Democrats, progressives at least, to bring up his history. The firestorm is already starting over it.
Trump came across during the campaign as a law & order authoritarian candidate. I expect him to follow through on it and "clean up" America the way Rudy Guliani did NYC when he was mayor.
Trump tapped into the electorate waking up and realizing it's actually about us versus them.
ReplyDeleteCall it class struggle or whatever you like, it is the end of identity politics in the US. The remarkable thing is that a Republican (aka Trump) capitalized on this.
The Democrats are learning impaired. The DNC was run exclusively by the Clinton / WS gang with DWS at the helm for over 5 years where Identity politics was their modus operandi and look at the results.
Wow, a GOP House, Senate and White House. If that wasn't sad enough for the intelligentsia of the DNC, look at the State Legislatures et al.
Amid all of the hubbub and bubbub around the US election, I have to say – nothing has changed. For me, it’s just a continuation of the same old same old; just a rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic. I really don’t know why people are excited or think that it is worth analysing. Greed and hubris, unconsciousness, have changed cloaks – so what? You are sitting in the front row and excited???? When is the time to bail out?
ReplyDeleteYes, I know it will affect people’s lives – on the outside. But I cannot see in human history, all 200,000 years of it, where anything on the outside has ever had anything at all to do with our existence. This where people’s minds go blank. Huh!!!!!
It is because we have exactly no clue as to what a human being is. It is bigger than flat earth theory.
I can say it in words, but words are only words.
That ‘identity’ you carry around in your mind that you think is you - is not you. It is an illusion; one you chase all day and one you try to fulfil. Stop and think about this for just 5 seconds if you can. Imagine if what I am saying is actually the truth – one that you saw clearly for yourself. Multiply this illusion by around 7B and you have the world today. That is why nothing has changed. Because the illusion has not changed. And that is what must change, if there is going to be any ‘education’ any ‘progression’ in our world. Human beings have to discover the Self and know and feel, what it means to be human. Otherwise, we are just greedy blind ‘moist robots’ (with university degrees, bank accounts, and trinkets). Man has an ego, and it makes of him, a puppet.
On the inside, life is very very simple; existence is very very simple; and the further we get away from it on the outside, the more complicated, the more bizarre, things get.
My words say we did not come to this earth for an election; or an economy or a political party; or for a religion, or even a family and relations. We did not come here to be poor or rich, suffer, or be graded into classes. The ‘opportunities’ you see on the outside are not opportunities at all (in terms of your existence – the one where you are born, live, and die). You are your only opportunity, and what you are here for is within you. You are the package that needs to be unpacked in the light of day. That is the only opportunity any human being has at their disposal that is real – because we are real. You get 70 laps around the sun to get it right. To understand; discover and uncover. All the rest, as they say, is just history that goes around and around, the wheel turning. The universe is the great recycler. If you could see what goes on this planet with clear eyes, you would see it as almost impenetrable, indefatigable, illogical, breath-taking illusion. And yes it has to be cleaned up, and no-one knows how. Certainly not the experts.
That’s the news we should be printing.
But I know, it’s like drawing a line through water and wishing it could somehow, remain.
I think it's cute y'all think this is the end of "identity" politics. After 200,000 years, humans have decided to give up on the various forms of tribalism?
ReplyDeleteFor this Canadian, these events are pure schadenfreude.
ReplyDeleteWhen Obama took office he had a change to secure for the Democrats another fifty years of office as did FDR. But, instead of becoming an FDR Obama played to Wall Street. Now Trump has the opportunity that Obama had and I think that he will do a better job because I don't think that he is a liar like Obama. And Bannon is right to go after the disgusting, disgraced media. It needs to broken up.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete"It is because we have exactly no clue as to what a human being is."
ReplyDeletejr consider it is intended to work the other way, iow we can look at man in order to seek to understand God...
"For a man, indeed, ought not to be covering his head, being inherently the image and glory of God" 1 Cor
We're in a way the definition not something to define...
"If the Fed doesn't toe the Trump mark,"
ReplyDeleteTom the only thing Trump has said about rates is that he thinks they should be higher... he was chastising the Fed for helping Hillary by keeping rates low for so long...
I dont know how much cred we can give this interview with Bannon here but from this it doesnt sound like they are going to be very measured...
This was just like Rummy's DoD in the GWOT/Iraq redux.... created huge run ups in material prices and labor which were immediately ratified by OFHEO property prices were going up like crazy... everybody was high five-ing ...
Much more savings out there at this time though (morons "debt to gdp!" higher) ... leading flow from Interest Income is in a position to be much higher as a % of what all is going on...
I think it's cute y'all think this is the end of "identity" politics. After 200,000 years, humans have decided to give up on the various forms of tribalism?
ReplyDeleteIt's a change on the focus of tribalism, not an end of tribalism. Class warfare is 100% tribalism.
We're in a way the definition not something to define...
ReplyDeleteThe purpose of life is to realize experientially (and not just understand) the import of, "Man is created in the image and likeness of God," which is a summary of perennial wisdom in a nutshell. This realization is not found by either the senses or the mind, although both are preliminary means for unfolding it through "knowledge of the heart."
"realize experientially "
ReplyDeleteThat might be characterized in methodology as 'active learning' type method Tom, as opposed to a 'rote learning' type method Tom...
I think it is also important to understand these different methodologies and when/to what purpose they are being applied...
It's like reading a book about baseball and claiming you're a baseball player.
ReplyDelete"Tom the only thing Trump has said about rates is that he thinks they should be higher... he was chastising the Fed for helping Hillary by keeping rates low for so long..."
ReplyDeleteI think he was confused, Matt. He thinks "they should be higher" AND he thought lower rates "helped Hillary". These two positions seem at odds with each other.
Bob even within baseball (or more broadly sports...) there are those who seek to teach/coach via rote methods vs. those who apply active methods...
ReplyDeleteIn baseball look at all the shifts they are putting on first with LH batters and now even increasingly with RH batters, and some will say, "well just hit it the other way" and then you see the players seemingly unable to do this...
Six that was before the election...
ReplyDeleteConventional wisdom is that a better economy helps the incumbent party....
So Trump was implying via the 0 rates (to him) the Fed was trying to boost Democrat Hillary...
Now that he won the election he wil just reverse field and go the other way....
I think he was confused, Matt. He thinks "they should be higher" AND he thought lower rates "helped Hillary". These two positions seem at odds with each other.
ReplyDeleteI think he gets that low rates are stimulative and therefore help the party in power. His criticism of low rates is that they did not translated into economic stimulus as assumed but rather into financial stimulus, raising asset values without creating jobs.
Well he is of course wrong in that asset values will not increase without an associated USD flow (rate) tied to the asset to discount to PV...
ReplyDeleteThis is the equation:
ReplyDeletePV = C/(1 + i)^n
Where C is future value, i is the RATE of return, and n is the periods...
PV of something worth C at Zero rate one year from now is C/(1+0)^1 = C so its doesnt go up just based on a zero rate... there still has to be a non-zero flow associated...
The flow is from leverage that is light to carry at low rates. Equities are margin driven, for example.
ReplyDeleteThe Fed actually planned on increasing the "wealth effect" this way and admitted it. The "wealth effect" is not spill over into increased spending based on "animal spirits" as the Fed had expected.
But if you look at the Case-Shiller indexes they still havent reached their pre-GFC levels and we have been at ZIRP for 8 years...
ReplyDeleteIf it was interest rates alone, then they should have immediately shot back up once the Fed went to 0... they didnt...
However, flows have increased over the same time frame substantially and these prices are working their way back up with the flows as the interest rates have remained static....
“...we can look at man in order to seek to understand God”
ReplyDeleteExactly. But everyone is too busy with their stock portfolio – because ‘reality’.
When the Titanic went down, the band played on: - was that heroism, stoicism, rote active comprehensive learning, desperation, resignation - or our signature tune?
We can look at a drop, but will that reveal to us the Ocean. You know that Michelangelo painting ‘Creation of Adam’ where man reaches up with his limp finger to touch the finger of GOD (old man with glowing eyes and grey flowing beard and hair)? Right there you have all the arrogance and ignorance of the human being, painted by a master artist. Showing no clue as to the distance or relation between the two; and no clue as to the nature of the Divine. And yet it is true we are a part of that Ocean and the Ocean is within the drop.
Prem started talking about ‘peace’ within at his father’s meetings at the age of four – addressing with absolute confidence thousands of people. Think about what we were doing at the age of four. Here he is in an 11min. interview on the Lite Breakfast Show explaining how it was: The Lite Breakfast with Prem Rawat
But if you look at the Case-Shiller indexes
ReplyDeleteHousing is dependent on ordinary folks borrowing from banks. That hasn't happened because credit standards are still tight. I know this from friends who have been in RE for years. Used to be that all that was required was a warm pulse. Now the scrutiny is tight and the requirements more stringent. In addition, many ordinary folks can't show the income and already have too high debt to income and debt to asset ratios.
"Housing is dependent on ordinary folks borrowing from banks."
ReplyDeleteIts dependent on what the govt will or what the govt will let its fiscal agents lend you against housing....
govt/banks start lending $1M against mobile homes on Monday morning the price of a mobile home goes directly to $1M by lunch time....
ReplyDeleteIts dependent on what the govt will or what the govt will let its fiscal agents lend you against housing....
ReplyDeleteGovernment did not imposed limits on bank lending for housing either during the crisis nor is it doing so now. This can be tied to excessive lending against increasing value of collateral during the crisis, but not to tight credit standards now. Regulators are encouraging lending but they cannot force creditors to do so.
This is the typical cycle of loose standards leading to a credit blowout and implosion, followed by a tightening of standards after the crash. This is the inverse of what should occur to promote stable growth.
In principle government could intervene in this regard, but no one should hold their breath waiting for It. This would require a reversal of POV.
Rag Rajan's "let them eat credit" thesis holds up after 6 years. Loose credit standards put a band aid on pervasive income inequality that left too few families in a position to buy a house under any sort of prudent mortgage system. It was easier to just give everyone a mortgage and make them feel rich than to have a painful political fight to redistribute a sizable chunk (whether by regulatory or tax policy) of producitvity gains since 1970s from high income (especially capital income) families to middle and low income families. Just describing the problem sounds like socialism, if not Marxism so no politician during Bush Administration and very few during the Obama Administration were willing to address the underlying issue. So now we have a more prudent morgage system and surprise surprise, too few families qualify for a home mortgage.
ReplyDeleteTrump understood there was a problem and even if he hasn't quite grasped the scope of the economic problem (certainly trade/immigration policy is a big part of it but isn't everything), the fact he was the only candidate in the GOP primaries and, more astonishingly, the only candidate in the general who recognized there was a problem was enough for him to win the White House. It still blows my mind, Democrats didn't nominate Bernie Sanders. He was the only Democrat running (well, Jim Webb too) who was even playing on the same field as Trump.
Tom they have had he conforming cap at $417k for 8 years... and are talking of lowering it....
ReplyDeleteSecond homes or investment properties forget it.... better have cash....
I think the left became confused about solving the symptoms of the disease rather the disease itself. Inequality and collapse in finance happened because globalisation proceeded more quickly than labor could adjust. Given frailties of humans to move to new places, adapt and learn new things, new cultures, 30 or 40 years isn't long enough.
ReplyDeleteBringing up the labor force participation rate, bringing back wage growth above inflation rates is the real problem to solve to reduce inequality and souring financial commitments. The political neo-left would argue we will slow down the pace of change and pervert the course of markets, inevitable change, but that is sort of the point. Put equilibrium off for a decade or three.