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.
Pages
▼
Pages
▼
Monday, February 27, 2017
AP — Trump is Planning These Cuts to Make Way for a Military Spending Surge
Doesn't mention that the debt limit extension expires on the Ides of March.
Trump's planning to take a chainsaw to US soft power, especially in Africa, thereby handing the developing world on a silver platter to China! Do There's going to be a good deal of pushback on this by the foreign and defence policy elites, who naturally think this is as dumb an idea as there is. The defence community are particularly alarmed because a few bucks of soft power saves a good deal of blood and ludicrous amounts of money in hard power later. Ordinarily you'd be amazed by the stupidity of all this, but having watched Trump stupidly bitch and moan about getting money back for Europe's defence, it's not unexpected.
Dan, you're right but maybe not in the way you think. This has Art of the Deal written all over it! Unless he's babbling about golf advice, Trump can't write. Tony Schwartz rewrote Trump's garbled gibberish into a bestseller. Likewise Trump will have to get someone in to make his spluttering Act One into a more workmanlike Act Two.
Bannon's too much of a headbanger and is probably behind a lot of the past month's malfunctioning "fine-tuned machine", so he doesn't fit the bill and may not last long enough. There'll be a James Baker-style figure who'll come in eventually to steady things. How much damage Trump and his wrecking crew will do until then is an open question, not that any of today's "mainstream" Republican fixers will be anything to write home about...
Trump's planning to take a chainsaw to US soft power, especially in Africa, thereby handing the developing world on a silver platter to China! Do There's going to be a good deal of pushback on this by the foreign and defence policy elites, who naturally think this is as dumb an idea as there is. The defence community are particularly alarmed because a few bucks of soft power saves a good deal of blood and ludicrous amounts of money in hard power later. Ordinarily you'd be amazed by the stupidity of all this, but having watched Trump stupidly bitch and moan about getting money back for Europe's defence, it's not unexpected.
ReplyDeleteMeh, this is Act One in the Art of the Deal. Don't take it too seriously.
ReplyDeleteDan, you're right but maybe not in the way you think. This has Art of the Deal written all over it! Unless he's babbling about golf advice, Trump can't write. Tony Schwartz rewrote Trump's garbled gibberish into a bestseller. Likewise Trump will have to get someone in to make his spluttering Act One into a more workmanlike Act Two.
ReplyDeleteBannon's too much of a headbanger and is probably behind a lot of the past month's malfunctioning "fine-tuned machine", so he doesn't fit the bill and may not last long enough. There'll be a James Baker-style figure who'll come in eventually to steady things. How much damage Trump and his wrecking crew will do until then is an open question, not that any of today's "mainstream" Republican fixers will be anything to write home about...