Edward Harrison — Supply-side economics likely to dominate Trump’s economic agenda

Same old trickle down.

Overall though, I see Trump as having been elected due to voters angry about declining income growth and job security, particularly in the rust belt states that had voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. That means Trump needs to appeal to this group in some discernible way to be successful. He even said so himself on election night, talking of having only two years to make his mark. He might be able to appeal to them on cultural grounds the way Republicans have done in the past. I don’t see that being effective though given the angst still evident after seven years of recovery. But supply side isn’t going to do it either unless Trump can create enough growth that it reaches deep into the rust belt where all the manufacturing jobs have been lost. His interventions against individual companies like Carrier can only go so far. At the end of the day, he has to deliver jobs and income.

Credit Writedowns
Supply-side economics likely to dominate Trump’s economic agenda
Edward Harrison

Wrong as usual, that fool David Stockman doubles down...

That clown otherwise known as David Stockman, former Reagan budget director, is out once again with another over the top, gloom and doom, dumb ass prediction that is based on nothing other than his own, sheer, misguided ideology and frustration.

Stockman is now predicting a stock and bond market crash because "the Fed has reflated the bubble to an even more gigantic proportion."

Here's some more of what he says...

On CNBC's " Futures Now " Thursday, the former OMB Director said that excessive monetary policy has forced central banks all over the world into a corner, and as a result, "the markets are going to be in for a huge, nasty morning after as people begin to look at where we really are." Read more. 

"Begin to look at where we really are?" What the hell does that mean, anyway?

I had several run-ins (here and here) with Stockman in the past when I was still working at Fox. He's a total moron and a ball of contradictions.

Actually, I don't know who is more pathetic, Stockman or that joke of a network, CNBC, for constantly parading losers like Stockman and Schiff around on their air and not ripping them a new one for their years of bad advice and ridiculous predictions. (Hyperinflation, surging gold, spiking interest rates, foreigner dumping Treasuries, depressions, etc.)

WTF is wrong with you, CNBC? Nik Deogun?

The Fed may raise interest rates soon and then it's feasible that bonds will tank although some of that discounting is probably going on now. The interesting thing, however, is what will happen to stocks and the economy if rates are increased? That's a fiscal injection.

What if rates are raised and GDP accelerates? And stocks climb?

What will Stockman and other idiots like Schiff say then? I'm sure CNBC will have them on to "explain."

Stay tuned.

David Stockman — History In the Balance: Why Greece Must Repudiate Its “Banker Bailout” Debts And Exit The Euro by David Stockman

You read that right, David Stockman and not Bill Mitchell or Michael Hudson. And, yes, it is that David Stockman.

Now and again history reaches an inflection point. Statesman and mere politicians, as the case may be, find themselves confronted with fraught circumstances and stark choices. February 2015 is one such moment. 

For its part, Greece stands at a fork in the road. Syriza can move aggressively to recover Greece’s democratic sovereignty or it can desperately cling to the faltering currency and financial machinery of the Euro zone. But it can’t do both. 

So by the time the current onerous bailout agreement expires at month end, Greece must have repudiated its “bailout debt” and be on the off-ramp from the euro. Otherwise, it will have no hope of economic recovery or restoration of self-governance, and Syriza will have betrayed its mandate. 

Moreover, the stakes extend far beyond its own borders. If the Greeks do not take a stand for their own dignity and independence at what amounts to a financial Thermopylae, neither will the rest of Europe ever escape from the dysfunctional, autocratic, impoverishing superstate regime that has metastasized in Brussels and Frankfurt under cover of the “European Project”. 

Indeed, the crony capitalist corruption and craven appeasement of the banks and financial markets that have become the modus operandi there are inexorably destroying the EU and single currency. By fleeing the euro and ECB with all deliberate speed, therefore, the Greeks will give-up nothing except the opportunity to be lashed to the greatest monetary train wreck ever recorded. 

So Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has the weight of history on his shoulders as he makes the rounds of European capitals this week. His task in not merely to renounce the ham-handed “austerity” dictated by the Troika. Apparently even the French are prepared to acknowledge that the hideous suffering that has been imposed on Greece’s less fortunate citizens must be alleviated. Yet the latter is only a symptom of what’s wrong and what stands in the way of a real solution.

File under OMG!

David Stockman's Contra Corner
History In the Balance: Why Greece Must Repudiate Its “Banker Bailout” Debts And Exit The Euro
David Stockman |  former Congressman from Michigan, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, and former partner at The Blackstone Group

More Crazy

Fox attempts to fix its plunging ratings and look what happens.

AlterNet
Tea Partyers Boycott Fox News for Being Too “Left”
Jillian Rayfield | Salon.com

DS: "The new deal was a political gong show, not a golden era of enlightened economic policy. It shattered the foundation of sound money and inaugurated a régime of capricious fiscal and regulatory activism that inexorably fueled the growth of state power and the crony capitalism which thrives on it. But it did not end the Great Depression or save capitalism from the alleged shortcomings which led to the crash. In fact, the New Deal introduced a severe dose of economic nationalism and autarky at a time when the only hope for speedy recovery was a reopening of world trade and reestablishment of a stable international monetary régime.... in reality, the notion that the New Deal had pioneered a road map to recovery by means of countercyclical fiscal policy is mostly a postwar academic legend."

Zero Hedge
David Stockman On The New Deal Myths Of Recovery

John Aziz — On Stockman & Liquidation

Everyone is piling on David Stockman as the cranky old man he is, but John Aziz observes that there's good — Stockman's analysis of what's wrong with Wall Street and its cozy relationship with government — with the bad — debt and deficit hysteria. Stockman is one of the people on the right that is not blaming everything on government, anyway.

Azizonomics
On Stockman & Liquidation
John Aziz

Introducing the $1 Trillion Ronald Reagan Platinum Coin

As part of their never-ending campaign to canonize President Ronald Reagan, conservatives three years ago proposed replacing Ulysses S. Grant on the 50 dollar bill with the likeness of the Gipper. But while his hagiographers mercifully failed in that quest, a new and altogether fitting denomination has emerged to memorialize Reagan. The much-discussed one trillion dollar platinum coin, the unfortunate gimmick that may be needed to circumvent the Republicans' dangerously real gimmick on the debt ceiling, would be a perfect home for Reagan's image. After all, President Reagan didn't merely triple the national debt in his eight years in the White House and establish budget-busting tax cuts as a permanent fixture in Republican politics. As it turns out, Reagan excoriated those in Congress who would jeopardize the full faith and credit of the United States by refusing to increase the nation's debt limit.

Reagan came to the Oval Office in 1981 promising to slash taxes by 30 percent, boost Pentagon funding and balance the budget. But as most analysts predicted, Reagan's massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget deficits. Combined with his rapid increase in defense spending, Reagan delivered not the balanced budgets he promised, but record-setting debt. Even his OMB alchemist David Stockman could not obscure the disaster with his famous "rosy scenarios."

Forced to raise taxes eleven times to avert financial catastrophe, the Gipper nonetheless presided over a tripling of the American national debt to nearly $3 trillion. Federal spending grew several times faster than under President Obama, while the public sector employment expanded much more quickly than any time since. By the time he left office in 1989, Ronald Reagan more than equaled the entire debt burden produced by the previous 200 years of American history. It's no wonder that, almost 30 years after he concluded "the supply-siders have gone too far," former Arthur Laffer acolyte and Reagan budget chief David Stockmanlamented:

"[The] debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."

Perrspectives
Introducing the $1 Trillion Ronald Reagan Platinum Coin
Jon Perr

While you are at Perrspectives, also check out Jon Perr's Polls Show GOP Duping Americans on Debt Ceiling Hike Again

Now, thanks in large part to Republicans grandstanding and misinformation, a dangerous new veil of confusion is once again enveloping the American people. (It should be noted that Americans' confusion is even more profound than the recent CBS numbers show; other polls show that the public rejects cuts to entitlements and wants federal spending increased in most areas of the budget.) Once again, almost 70 percent believe the debt ceiling, the borrowing authority which must be raised, should not be increased. Or to put the Party of Lincoln's strategy another way, you can fool some of the people all of the time, and that's their target market.

Austerity is "working" — politically for the GOP.

"Starve the Beast"

Since the 1970s, the Republican Party has fallen increasingly under the influence of radical ideologues, whose goal is nothing less than the elimination of the welfare state — that is, the whole legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society. From the beginning, however, these ideologues have had a big problem: The programs they want to kill are very popular. Americans may nod their heads when you attack big government in the abstract, but they strongly support Social Security, Medicare, and even Medicaid. So what’s a radical to do?

The answer, for a long time, has involved two strategies. One is “starve the beast,” the idea of using tax cuts to reduce government revenue, then using the resulting lack of funds to force cuts in popular social programs. Whenever you see some Republican politician piously denouncing federal red ink, always remember that, for decades, the G.O.P. has seen budget deficits as a feature, not a bug.

The New York Times | Opinion
The G.O.P.’s Existential Crisis
Paul Krugman | Professor of Economics, Princeton University

David Stockman admitted this back in 1985, as reported by Tom Wicker in "Stockman leaks 'real' reasons for budget deficit."

...it now appears that the deficit was created by Reagan to do away with Democratic social programs dating back to the New Deal.

Who says so? David Stockman, the departing budget director, at second hand, and Friedrich von Hayek directly....

(h/t JK via email)

The best thing Ronald Reagan ever did...fire David Stockman

Ronald Reagan will always be remembered for many things--Winning the Cold War, bringing back pride in America and calling her the "Shining City on a Hill," comforting a grieving nation following the Challenger disaster--but the BEST thing Reagan ever did was to fire his incompetent budget director, David Stockman.

Stockman thankfully disappeared from public view for a long time after that, but he has since come back with a vengence, spewing forth all this hysterical, nonsensical, crap about the debt and deficits. Every time I see him I literally want to puke. This guy is an absolute moron.

Some of you may remember a run-in I had with Stockman at Fox Business last year. It was very eye-opening, to say the least.

Stockman's been all over the news again lately, saying things like we'd be "better off" if we just jumped off the fiscal cliff, and that we are "living beyond our means" (how's that with 20 mln unemployed?).

Stockman argues, with a straight face, that "thowing the economy into recession," would allow us to "come out with some better fiscal balance on the other side." Nevermind that we've seen this prescription applied in Europe with exactly the opposite consequences.

Stockman is really one dumb jackass, but sadly, there are many "Stockmans" out there in the real world. Let us all acknowledge that Moody's has recently joined that list.

Richard Reeves — Stockman Redux

As he became president in 1981, Ronald Reagan called in a 34-year-old congressman from Michigan named David Stockman, considered by many to be the most articulate and intellectually imposing Republican of the moment.

Stockman had impressed the new president by humbling the old man in practice debates before Reagan took on President Carter back in September.

“Dave,” said Reagan, “I’ve been thinking about how to get even with you for that thrashing you gave me in the debate rehearsals. So I’m sending you to the OMB (Office of Management and Budget).” Commented David Brinkley of NBC News: “He’s so fast with big figures that he scares old Washington hands.”

Stockman had only days to come up with a balanced budget that fulfilled Reagan’s campaign promises to cut taxes and build up the military. He was fast, but not necessarily accurate or truthful. Not by a long shot. What he did was use a pre-Reagan-projected budget with a $75 billion deficit the first year. But he already knew the real figure would be more than $600 billion after totaling Reagan’s new programs. On the revenue side, he used asterisks instead numbers. Lots of asterisks.

Stockman retired after four years, wrote a book, a confessional of sorts, went to Wall Street and made a lot of money. He turned down interview requests and kind of faded away.

Until last week, when he wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times. The headline was: “Paul Ryan’s Fairy-Tale Budget Plan.”

truthdig
Stockman Redux
Richard Reeves

As they say, "it takes one to know one.

David Stockman's reluctant and embarrassing admission

I ran into David Stockman at Fox yesterday. Several months ago I bumped into him as well and we got into a conversation about the debt. Stockman was Reagan's budget director until he got fired, probably because he protested too much against the huge deficits that Reagan ran (which created an economic boom). After he left the White House he disappeared for quite a long time, but has since resurfaced as the new "debt Cassandra," warning everyone who will listen that the debt is going to bankrupt the country unless we get it under control, yada, yada, yada.

The last time I met Stockman I asked him what would happen if we didn't get the debt under control? He said interest rates would spike and it would be impossible for us to service our debt. I said that interest rates wouldn't spike, necessarily, so long as the Fed kept them low and even if rates did go up, the U.S. would have no inability to pay the debt service becuase it was simply a matter of the government crediting bank accounts in U.S. dollars, which it does all the time.

He took issue with my assertion that the Fed set the rates.

I asked him about Japan, which has a debt almost three times that of the U.S. yet yields on 10-year Japanese gov't bonds were only 1.0%. (Back in March 10-year U.S. Treasury yields were about 3.6%.) He said that Japan was "different" because it was "internally financed" as opposed to our problem of having external finance. When I countered that the U.S. was also "internally financed" because it's all in dollars, he got annoyed and basically walked out in a huff, shaking his head the whole time as if I was some ignorant fool.

Well, yesterday, Stockman was on Cavuto and he started in with his usual debt rant--unsustainable debt, bankruptcy, etc. But then he said this: "We should abolish the Fed."

Neil Cavuto looked at him and said, "Abolish the Fed? Why?"

He said, "Because the Fed is keeping interest rates artificially low and that is bad."

I couldn't believe my ears. Just a few months earlier this guy was arguing adamantly that the Fed did not control rates and that rates would spike and we wouldn't be able to pay the debt service. Meanwhile, over that short period of time, deficit spending has continued and the U.S. even had its credit rating dowgraded and interest rates had fallen even further. It was obvious that none of the things he had been predicting were coming true.

When he came back to the green room from his segment I said to him, "David, I thought you said in our last discussion tht the Fed didn't control rates and now you just said that it is keeping rates down?"

His face froze for a second and I could see he was trying to collect his thoughts and think of a comeback. Then he just said, "Yeah, but eventually rates are going to spike up. They have to. They can't stay low forever. The Fed will have to raise them to attract capital." (Notice, he says, again, the FED WILL HAVE TO RAISE THEM...)

Unbelievable. These are our policymakers. Clueless, arrogant, people who are so full of themselves and so deep into their club of false beliefs that it is mindboggling. If they weren't so destructive these guys would be truly laughable.