Bob Bryan — Bob Woodward book: Gary Cohn was 'astounded at Trump's lack of basic understanding' about the federal debt

Funny. Trump gets some of the basics of MMT, which the article mentions. Gary Cohn, not so much.

Business Insider
Bob Woodward book: Gary Cohn was 'astounded at Trump's lack of basic understanding' about the federal debt

Bob Bryan

Trump picks Kudlow. I am going to make a fortune.

Tom put it correctly a short while ago when he called it a descent into farce.

Larry Kudlow is a moron, there's no two ways to put it.

From his goofy "Free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity," chants to his jingoistic, "King Dollar" slogan, the guy is a quack.

Kudlow got everything wrong in the crash.

1) He predicted hyperinflation from the Fed's monetary policies.
2) He said the dollar would crash. (Also from the Fed's policies.)
3) He said that interest rates were going to skyrocket because "creditors" wouldn't "lend" to us anymore.

I will say this about him, though...the guy seems to have nine lives. He was Chief Economist at Bear Stearns, but got fired because he was a coke addict.

Then he bounced around and eventually got hired by CNBC. They gave him a show which got canceled because of lousy ratings, but they kept him on and still paid him a 7-figure salary.

Now this.

The guy is a joke. He is supply-side zombie. A fool.

One thing I can tell you: he's going to pump up inflation like crazy with more tax cuts. And rates WILL skyrocket this time as the Fed reacts and then hikes and hikes and hikes.

Oh, Mr. King Dollar? He will end up crashing the dollar even faster than Trump has been able to do so far.

I'm gonna make a fortune.

Not a day goes by where Trump doesn't show that he's got no idea what he is doing.

Pam and Russ Martens — Has Former Goldman Sachs President, Gary Cohn, Gone Rogue on Glass-Steagall?

Backgrounder on former Goldman President Gary Cohn, who is becoming increasingly influential in the Trump administration domestically, just as Generals James Mattis and H. R. McMaster with respect to international affairs.

Wall Street On Parade
Has Former Goldman Sachs President, Gary Cohn, Gone Rogue on Glass-Steagall?
Pam Martens and Russ Martens

Reuters — Wall Street banker Cohn moving Trump toward moderate policies

Heritage Foundation's Stephen Moore out; ex-Goldman CEO Gary Cohn in. 

Cohn is a Democrat. Conservatives are not happy.

Reuters

Wall Street banker Cohn moving Trump toward moderate policies

James Oliphant and Svea Herbst-Bayliss

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

Pam and Russ Martens — Still Unprosecuted for its Frauds in the Crash, Goldman Sachs to Be the Financial Brains of the Trump Era

Steve Bannon, who at one time worked in Mergers and Acquisitions at Goldman, will be Trump’s Senior Counselor and Chief White House Strategist.

 Although a Goldman alumnus, Bannon did not play a decisive role there and he was long gone by the time of the financial crisis. His association with Goldman is probably not much of a matter for eyebrow raising. However, Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn are another matter, and Cohn especially since he was at ground zero when the GFC almost blew up the world.

Steve Mnuchin, who joined Goldman in 1985 and worked there for the next 17 years, has been nominated by Trump to serve as U.S. Treasury Secretary. That post also entitles Mnuchin to Chair the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a body that frequently meets in secret to deliberate if the U.S. could be looking at another 2008-style meltdown. Yesterday, an article at Bloomberg News raised questions about Mnuchin’s qualifications to serve in one of the most important cabinet posts in government, writing that shortly after Mnuchin had made a windfall last year from the sale of OneWest Bank, problems emerged: “The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development opened an investigation into foreclosure practices in a division that handles loans to senior citizens. Accountants determined the unit’s books were a mess. Eventually, the bank’s new owner, CIT Group Inc., discovered a shortfall of more than $230 million.”

Mnuchin, at least, was not at Goldman Sachs in the leadup to the greatest financial crash since the Great Depression. He left in 2002. The same cannot be said for Gary Cohn, the current President and Chief Operating Officer of Goldman, whom Trump has picked to lead the National Economic Council and be his chief strategist in developing his economic policy. It’s convenient that Cohn’s new position does not require Senate confirmation since exactly what he knew about Goldman selling bogus investments to its clients while the firm made billions of dollars betting the instruments would fail might be raised in Senate questioning of Cohn’s fitness to serve.

In the two years leading up to the epic 2008 financial crash on Wall Street, Cohn was Co-President of Goldman. Cohn became a multi-millionaire from the business done in those years, earning $27.5 million in restricted stock and options just in the year 2006. However, as Greg Gordon of McClatchy Newspapers would report in 2009, a key part of Goldman’s business in the years before the crash operated like this: “In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.”

It was a foregone conclusion that Goldman or Citi would have been in the driver's seat if HRC had won. As Sen. Dick Durban said, "The banks own the place."

Populism only goes so far and stops at the door of the big banks that control US financial and economic policy.

Wall Street On Parade

Still Unprosecuted for its Frauds in the Crash, Goldman Sachs to Be the Financial Brains of the Trump Era

Pam Martens and Russ Martens