monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

not for much longer...

Only 5 more years.

lolz

You will be posting memes for the next year or so, when Trump wins, again, I bet we do not see much of you.

Even after Trump serves his full eight years as our President, the Republicans are going to hold the White House for at least another twelve years after that.

Even when election day rolls around in 2036 and we've had twenty years of Republican rule behind us, the voters will not be willing to contemplate a Democratic president again until the Democrats purge their party of leftist nutjobs and nominate a sensible moderate.

Змея моя!!!

2 Questions:

1) When TheRump goes to prison, will his security detail have to go there with him?

2) Then, will that security detail have to be sent with him when he is deported to Russia (MRGA)?

They say no question is stupid, hold on to that, it is all you got.

Да любовь, что думаешь о форуме?

Some serious stupidity floating around....

https://www.conservativedailynews.com/2019/02/most-hated-a-f-branco-cartoon/?utm_source=t

Trump Is Reportedly Considering Herman Cain for the Federal Reserve. That’s Sad on So Many Levels.
By JORDAN WEISSMANN

JAN 31, 20194:06 PM

Look, I don’t think this is really going to happen, because there still seem to be a few faint embers of rationality glowing within the White House, at least when it comes to economic decision-making. But Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the president is currently considering Herman Cain, of all people, for a seat on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.

Cain, you likely recall, is the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO who ran a gimmicky outsider campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2011 that briefly launched him to the top of the polls, before sexual harassment allegations forced him out of the race. Remember the 9-9-9 tax plan? Remember the smoking ad? He was a proto-Trump, the guy who made a lot of Republicans at least consider the idea of voting for a hucksterish former executive who tried sell a tax policy like it was takeout pie.

Cain, who stumped for Trump in 2016 (he called him a “shucky-ducky kind of candidate” and defended him from charges of racism), does not have many of the qualifications one would usually associate with this Fed position, such as a Ph.D. in economics, deep experience in financial markets, or a background in banking regulation. He did, however, spend several years chairing the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s board of directors. The title is more impressive than the role. Each of the Fed’s 12 regional banks has a board made up of local banking and business luminaries who meet monthly to chat about economic conditions and offer their on-the-ground wisdom to the Fed bank’s president. They also make recommendations about what the Fed should do with its discount rate—which is what it charges overnight for loans—that the board of governors can choose to ignore. Technically, regional Fed directors also get to search for and appoint their bank’s president, which is a significant responsibility. But Cain never really had the opportunity because the Kansas Fed was led by the same man for almost the entire 1990s. As David Weigel wrote for Slate years ago, “Cain’s role was chiefly as a charismatic guy who ran meetings well and corralled good advice. He was not an economist.”

One obvious reason why someone might hesitate to appoint Cain is that multiple women have accused him of committing sexual harassment during his time running the National Restaurant Association, an industry lobbying group. One alleged victim, Sharon Bialek, held a public press conference where she said that Cain had groped her in a car after a dinner together. She had asked him for help finding a job. Per Reuters:

Bialek, appearing with celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred, said that after the dinner in July 1997, Cain drove her toward the restaurant association offices, parked nearby and offered what Allred called his version of a “stimulus package.”

“Instead of going into the offices, he suddenly reached over and he put his hand on my leg, under my skirt and reached for my genitals. He also grabbed my head and brought it toward his crotch. I was very, very surprised and very, very shocked,” Bialek said.

“I said: ‘What are you doing? You know I have a boyfriend. This isn’t what I came here for.’ Mr. Cain said: ‘You want a job, right?’ I asked him to stop and he did. I asked him to take me back to my hotel, which he did right away.”

But is Trump, who has been accused of harassment by a small army of women at this point, going to hold that against Cain? Of course not. He defended the man in 2011, suggesting that Cain’s accusers were likely just looking for fame.

No, what makes this story extra bizarre is actually Cain’s past record on monetary policy. Trump has spent much of his term publicly fulminating at the Federal Reserve for hiking interest rates too quickly and rocking the markets and economy. The president has been so furious at the central bank that he’s asked staff whether it would be possible to take the unprecedented step of firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell. (Short answer to a complicated question: He can’t really.) I mean, he called the Fed “loco!”

And here’s the thing: Cain has always been an inflation hawk, the sort of guy who constantly wants to raise rates higher. “Inflation was always the big bugaboo,” one of his fellow board directors told the Atlantic in 2011, “and when it comes to monetary policy, he was an inflation hawk. I’ll tell you, that’s the most conservative bunch of guys I’ve ever met.” During his 2011 run, Cain’s comments about the Fed and monetary policy tended to be odd and conspiratorial. He said he would fire then-Chair Ben Bernanke, whom he said had been “politicized” by the Obama administration. (Trump later said much the same about former Chair Janet Yellen, before warming to her during his presidency). Cain has also fulminated about the soundness of the dollar and fumed that the Fed’s attempts to keep interest rates low had weakened the currency’s exchange rate—Trump generally likes a weak dollar, because it helps exports—and suggested Bernanke was doing these things in order to make it easier to pay interest on the national debt. Perhaps most importantly, he said he would jettison the Fed’s dual mandate, which requires it to maintain stable prices and maximum employment, in favor of a singular focus on keeping down inflation (which is basically the opposite of what Trump would like).

His views on central banking only seem to have gotten a bit weirder since. But the bottom line is that Cain has a public history of espousing monetary policy beliefs that are the exact opposite of what Trump would like.

So, why would Trump be interested in maybe picking him for a prominent Fed role?

One possibility is that Trump still can’t be bothered to do the basic due diligence necessary to find potential Fed members whose policy views align with his own, and he sees Cain as a friendly face with some tangentially Fed-related experience.

Another is that now that a Republican is in office, Cain has decided to let go of his hard-money views on monetary policy and has decided he can live with low interest rates. That’s what many conservatives, who were warning about hyperinflation and demanding the Fed increase rates during the early recovery years, seem to have done.

Or, finally, maybe Trump senses that Cain would just be a lackey willing to follow whatever instructions he tweeted on a given day, and he might as well interview the man. Hopefully, this doesn’t all end in a job offer.

Racist.

Trump’s Policies, Not His Insults, Contributed to the Fed’s Shift
President Trump appointed Jerome H. Powell, right, chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2017, but has attacked its policies as “crazy,” “wild” and “loco.”

Tom Brenner/The New York Times

President Trump appointed Jerome H. Powell, right, chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2017, but has attacked its policies as “crazy,” “wild” and “loco.”CreditCreditTom Brenner/The New York Times
By Binyamin Appelbaum
Feb. 1, 2019

WASHINGTON — President Trump in 2018 repeatedly urged the Federal Reserve to stop raising interest rates, warning that its “crazy” policies were jeopardizing the economic expansion.

This week, the Fed stopped. The central bank did not raise its benchmark rate at its first meeting of 2019, and said it had no plans to raise rates in the foreseeable future.

The Fed’s newfound patience delighted the White House, and Wall Street. It was seen as a concession to the Fed’s critics, and as a boost for an economic expansion that is on the verge of becoming the longest in the nation’s modern history.

“We have, by far, the strongest economy in the world!” Mr. Trump exulted Friday morning on Twitter.

But the details of the Fed’s decision suggest less cause for celebration.

Jerome H. Powell, the Fed’s chairman, said Wednesday that the Fed was pausing not because it embraced Mr. Trump’s argument that the economy was in ruddy health, but because the expansion faced growing threats, including from the impact of Mr. Trump’s own policies.

Among these, Mr. Powell listed the trade war with China and the risk of another government shutdown.

In effect, the Fed concluded the expansion might not survive the combination of more rate increases and Mr. Trump’s economic policies, so it pulled off the road to reduce the risk of a crash.

For the moment, of course, there is little practical difference between the White House view that rates should stay low because the economy is strong and the Fed view that rates should remain low because the economy is fragile. The tension will resume if growth revives.

The Fed’s shift also stopped well short of the president’s stated preferences.

The central bank still raised rates four times in 2018, in the face of Mr. Trump’s warnings, and Mr. Powell said Wednesday that he thought those increases were warranted. Friday’s report that the economy added 304,000 jobs in January suggests that the Fed hasn’t yet choked the economy.

The Fed similarly stopped short of accepting Mr. Trump’s advice that it should “stop with the 50Bs,” referring to its policy of reducing its bond portfolio by about $50 billion each month.

While saying it would continue reducing its holdings for now, the Fed was at pains to reassure investors that it stands ready to adjust the policy as necessary and that it is likely to stop sooner than previously expected.

Mr. Trump picked Mr. Powell to serve as the Fed’s chairman. But last year, as interest rates rose and the stock market declined, the president repeatedly attacked Fed policy as “crazy,” “wild” and “loco.” He fretted to aides that Mr. Powell would “turn me into Hoover,” a reference to the president during the early years of the Great Depression, and he asked aides whether he could replace the chairman.

Mr. Trump’s attacks on the Fed are not easily assembled into a coherent critique. But some lieutenants have advanced the argument that the administration’s economic policies are expanding the labor force and increasing productivity, resulting in economic growth without inflation.

In this view, the Fed should leave interest rates at a low level to allow the expansion to continue.

“My hope is that the Fed, under its new management, understands that more people working and faster economic growth do not cause inflation,” Larry Kudlow, the head of the National Economic Council, said last year. He added that the Fed should increase interest rates “very slowly.”

Administration officials also blamed the Fed’s policies for causing the wobbles in financial markets last year.

Mr. Powell, by contrast, said on Wednesday that the economic outlook was deteriorating for reasons unrelated to the Fed’s policies. He pointed to storm clouds including economic weakness in China and Europe and tightening financial conditions, as well as the impact of Mr. Trump’s policies.

He made the nuanced point that the Fed still regards solid economic growth as the most likely outcome for the coming year but that result is now somewhat less likely.

“At such times, common-sense risk management suggests patiently awaiting greater clarity,” he said.

The persistent sluggishness of inflation, which has remained below the Fed’s preferred 2 percent annual pace since the 2008 crisis, also played a role. Mr. Powell said the Fed had the luxury of being patient because the risk of higher inflation “appears to have diminished.”

“It seems to me that what’s happened is the Fed is saying, ‘We’re more concerned now about the secular stagnation issues than inflation at this moment,’” said Lewis Alexander, the chief United States economist at Nomura. “And I think to be perfectly frank that’s a perfectly reasonable place for them to be.”

Analysts said the negative reaction of financial markets after the Fed’s previous meeting, in December, was a particularly important factor. The Fed raised rates and predicted two more increases in 2019. Mr. Powell also emphasized the Fed’s commitment to reducing bond holdings, which some investors saw as overly aggressive.

“They were planning on roaring forward with this balance sheet roll-off, and the market is like: ‘Oh, my God! That will crush the economy!’” said Julia Coronado, a former Fed economist and the president of MacroPolicy Perspectives. “And so they recalibrated. Good.”

Mohamed A. El-Erian, chief economic adviser at the financial firm Allianz, said the Fed’s decision Wednesday “came as absolutely no surprise.” Since the global financial crisis, he said, the Fed has backed down each time investors objected to the tightening of monetary policy.

Among those moments: the 2013 “taper tantrum” and the decision to postpone rate increases in 2016.

“It’s watching the same movie over and over again,” he said.

The question, Mr. El-Erian said, is whether the Fed should be listening to the markets.

“If you believe that the market is signaling something genuine about the economy that the Fed has not yet understood, then it’s not a bad thing,” he said. “If, however, you believe that the market has gotten used to having the Fed as its rich uncle, then this is a bad thing.”

Some Fed officials appear more receptive to the kind of arguments advanced by Mr. Kudlow, notably Richard Clarida, who became the Fed’s vice chairman in September and said in a November speech that he saw some signs of a stronger trend in productivity growth.

Other Fed officials said last summer, when there were fewer risks to the economic outlook, that the central bank should keep raising rates into restrictive territory to slow what they saw as unsustainable growth.

Mr. Powell has sought to push the question into the future, suggesting he is open to either possibility. He has said the Fed will not respond to wage growth as a sufficient sign of inflationary pressure. Similarly, he said Wednesday that evidence of inflation would be a “big part” of any case for more rate increases.

The problem for Mr. Powell is that monetary policy exerts a gradual influence on economic conditions, meaning that policymakers must calibrate policy based on forecasts.

Sooner or later, Mr. Powell will need to decide what he thinks about Trumponomics.

Got to keep an eye on Europe. We need to prevent making the same mistakes. If this is true or not someone is lying. Is it the posters from Europe or this guy?

Fed pause validates market fears about U.S. growth
Trevor Hunnicutt

NEW YORK (Reuters) - While the U.S. Federal Reserve’s indication it is done raising interest rates - for now - has fueled stock gains, investors worry the U.S. central bank’s pledge is a double-edged sword and implicit confirmation of the markets’ lingering anxiety about growth.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said on Wednesday that U.S. economic growth is “solid” and expected to continue. But in a sharp reversal of their stance just six weeks ago, Powell said the Fed has “the luxury of patience” in deciding whether to raise rates again.

The Fed’s soothing message sent the S&P 500 up 1.6 percent on Wednesday and extended into Thursday, helping the benchmark index post its biggest January percentage gain since 1987.

But investors acknowledge that the Fed’s strongest signal yet that policymakers may have reached the end of its latest series of interest rate increases could reflect slower economic growth.

“Both the stock and bond markets applauded the Fed for its more dovish tone,” said Michael Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Global Advisors. “If you take a step back and evaluate why they’re doing it, it’s because they’re concerned. So why shouldn’t investors be concerned?”

The U.S. bond market never fully bought into the enthusiastic tenor to risk markets, including equities, year-to-date given signs of cracks in the consumer and peaking corporate profit growth.

U.S. 10-year government bond prices are trading around the elevated levels they commanded during last month’s stock sell-off, with yields at 2.63 percent today compared with 2.69 percent on Dec. 31.

U.S.-based bond funds pulled in $16.7 billion in January, according to early estimates from the research service Lipper. Investors took $944 million out of domestic stock funds over the same period.

“The bond market always gets it before the stock market,” said Chuck Self, chief investment officer at iSectors LLC. Stocks’ sure-footedness this year may end up like 2018’s hot January rally only to peter out and end in the negative.

Three- and 5-year yields are poised to dip below the 2.4 percent effective Fed funds rate for the first time since 2006, before the global financial crisis, noted Crescat Capital LLC analyst Otavio Costa on Twitter.

Powell said there were “conflicting signals” about the economy - many of them negative - including sharply slower growth in China and Europe, Britain’s chaotic exit from the European Union, U.S.-China trade negotiations, effects of the U.S. partial government shutdown and rougher markets.

The Fed acknowledged that some market gauges of inflation have fallen in recent months, a trend more typical of growth slowdowns rather than an economy on fire.

The International Monetary Fund predicted the global economy will grow at 3.5 percent in 2019, down 0.2 percentage point from last October’s forecasts, citing weakness in Europe and some emerging markets. It puts U.S. growth at 2.5 percent this year and 1.8 percent in 2020, in both cases likely slower than 2018’s figures, which have not been finalized due to the government shutdown.

“We’re not favoring the U.S. market, but we’re happy to own Treasuries,” said Schroders Plc portfolio manager Angus Sippe. He said he does not see a recession on the horizon and gives the Fed an “A-plus” on its management of the economy. But he would rather take risk in emerging markets and wait for more evidence of U.S. corporate earnings growth.

Financial research service Refinitiv expects 14.9 percent earnings growth for the final quarter of 2018, but just 5.1 percent for all of 2019, leaving less margin for error if consumer and business fear translates into lower spending and investment.

Still, oil producers are working to stabilize prices, China is aggressively stimulating its economy and, as Bank of America Corp analysts said in a research note on Thursday, the Fed has shown that its commitment to supporting markets is alive and well. Those factors mean market pessimists are getting it wrong, according to Michael Jones, chairman at RiverFront Investment Group LLC.

Some investors appear to be positioning for the worst.

Futures contracts tied to Fed rates imply the Fed’s next move will be a cut. Markets are pricing in a higher probability of two cuts by next January than of a single rate hike.

You think someone is reading that crap?

Sorry, Mr. President. You can't fire the Fed chairman
By John O'Neill Jan 10, 2019

It seems that President Donald Trump is still in his television show mode (when he would prophetically tell contestants that they were fired). As of late, the president is reported to be contemplating firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over the latter's policy of raising interest rates.

The problem is that the president can only fire a Fed chair for good cause. And whatever such cause may be, it does not include a hike in interest rates.

Recent reports indicate that the White House desires a face-to-face meeting between the president and the Fed chair. But observers insist such a meeting would undermine the established principle that the Fed is to remain apolitical.

Of course, never has the Fed been apolitical. And there is recent precedent for a president to conduct face-to-face meetings with the Fed chair. Presidents George W. Bush and Barak Obama both met face to face with the Fed chair. But these meetings were not set up for the president(s) to influence Fed policy, much less criticize Fed policy. These meetings were just courtesy appraisals by the Fed to inform the president(s) as to near future policy.

That being said, cool relations between the White House and the Fed are not new. President Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Volker as head of the Federal Reserve in 1979, despite the latter cautioning the former that he would maintain tight monetary policy which in the short run would have ill political effects. And Carter was indeed left with a recession.

But Carter accepted Volker's policies with grace. President Ronald Reagan was not so generous. His cool relationship with Volker was well known to Fed observers. Reagan even encouraged members of Congress to criticize the Fed (and Republicans like Sen. Trent Lott obliged). It is true that Reagan re-appointed Volker in 1983. But that was only due to Volker's popularity. Ditching Volker would have been politically about as wise as was Walter Mondale's vow to raise taxes 1984.

Back to Trump, he blames the Fed chair for the volatile market reactions on Wall Street and traces these reactions to slight hikes in interest rates. But most economists and Wall Street observers insist that the volatile market is for the most part a reaction to President Trump's bellicose protectionist rhetoric and the pending trade war with China.

In other words, it would seem that if the president would like to face the cause of market volatility on Wall Street, he only needs to look in the mirror. Perhaps then he will issue his famous television rebuke: You're fired.

How can the Federal reserve be apolitical when they are controlling the largest domestic economy on the planet? Fuckin ridiculous.

I'm glad you asked...

The Federal Reserve needs to remain independent of the whims of politicians
July 23, 2018 6.23am EDT

Sheila Tschinkel
Visiting Faculty in Economics, Emory University

Disclosure statement
Sheila Tschinkel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

President Donald Trump recently attacked the Federal Reserve’s policy of gradually raising interest rates, breaking with decades of precedent respecting the U.S. central bank’s independence.

This isn’t the first time the Fed’s cherished independence has been threatened. Some conservative lawmakers have been arguing for years that Congress should audit the central bank and take a more active role overseeing monetary policy.

Arguments that the Fed needs direct oversight or that it should do what the president wants it to do betray a misunderstanding of what it means for a central bank to be independent and how monetary policy is crafted and carried out.

In my 20 years working at the Fed, first in New York where I helped implement monetary policy and then in Atlanta as the senior officer in charge of research, I learned that dealing with the unexpected is the day-to-day reality of the job. And it’s best if your hands aren’t tied.

If the Fed loses its independence, then its policy will become less sensitive to what’s going on in the real world and more of a hostage to people who know far less about designing and implementing monetary policy. I believe that would be a significant step backward and could run the risk of outright disaster.

What Fed ‘independence’ really means
Social scientists of all political persuasions no longer even debate the question of whether a country’s central bank should be independent.

They recognize the term refers only to how policy is implemented – free of political pressure – and that independence does not give the central bank the ability to set its own goals, as some lawmakers seem to think.

In fact, Congress has set various mandates for the Fed to follow since the latter’s creation in 1913. And central bankers place public interest at the center of their deliberations.

At present, the Fed follows a dual mandate of keeping inflation within a target range of around 2 percent while maximizing employment. Congress outlined these goals, but the Fed itself needs the freedom to choose which instruments it employs to meet them.

A good analogy is building a house. The owner takes part in drafting the plans but doesn’t worry which type of hammer is used. Similarly in an operating room, the surgeon must be able to quickly choose which scalpels and other instruments will help her save the patient. While she follows the guidelines learned in medical school and past clinical experience, there is no time for excessive deliberation when someone’s life – or the U.S. economy – is on the line.

Monetary policy is neither simple nor fixed
Some lawmakers’ demand for an audit or direct oversight rests on the notion that there is a simple way to carry out monetary policy, as if there was one rule to follow. In the economics profession, the discussion of sticking to policy rules has quieted down as economists learned, over and over, that constant changes in the way people and companies behave and continuous innovation undercut the foundation for rigid rules.

For example, during parts of the 1970s and 1980s, the Fed tried a “money supply rule” that aimed to keep the expansion of currency in circulation and bank deposits to a range of growth rates.

At first it looked as if this would work well. That is until everyone could “create money” on a whim using a credit card. Whenever you use credit to buy a new computer or pay for groceries you’re getting a bank to lend you “money” that did not exist a second ago but suddenly does.

It did not make sense to target something that could not be controlled with any precision, so that rule was fortunately phased out in the 1990s. Similar rules such as the gold standard and fixed exchange rates had already bit the dust.

Revise and rewrite
In fact, the way central banks carry out monetary policy in financially developed economies needs to be constantly revised. Or more accurately, rewritten, as demonstrated by the deliberations of Fed officials during the financial crisis of 2007-2009.

That unfolding situation threatened economic and financial stability and drove unemployment higher. In its wake, the Fed brought its target interest rate down to zero and greatly enlarged its purchases of longer-term mortgage-backed and government bonds. As a result, unemployment fell substantially and growth turned around. By the end of 2015, the Fed was able to begin very gradually raising rates. And last October, it began reducing the size of its greatly enlarged balance sheet.

Fed documents show long debates and a lot of disagreement about these very unconventional and untested policies. Arguably thanks to the Fed’s flexibility and policymakers’ willingness to adapt to new and unexpected circumstances, the U.S. economy has been growing steadily since 2009 and the unemployment rate hit an 18-year low in May.

Would results have improved had the Fed been subject to regular congressional audits of its procedures in real time? Or if the Fed had been subject to presidential or political pressures to change its decisions?

This is the worst idea of all.

Political tug of war
There’s always been a tug of war between politicians who typically want to juice up the economy in the short term to improve their polling numbers and central bankers who must think about long-term growth and financial stability. President Trump, for example, is attacking rising short-term interest rates – which, over time, may slow economic growth – just a few months before midterm elections.

Economists, political scientists and historians have reminded us that political interference with a central bank can lead to bad results. One such consequence is hyperinflation, such as in 1930s Germany or Zimbabwe in recent decades.

They urge us to keep central banks independent of political meddling so that their purchases of government debt in financial markets are their own decisions and not the result of pressure to finance a growing government deficit. In the U.S., the Fed is not even permitted to buy debt directly from the U.S. Treasury, a department of the executive branch.

They also remind us that even in our age of transparency, it is not a good idea to broadcast information about banks or other financial institutions that may be close to failure. This is something that could easily result if the Fed were subject to congressional scrutiny because politicians have a history of leaking sensitive financial and other information for political gain.

Americans learned too much about panic during the Great Depression.

When your house is on fire
The Fed, certainly, could do a better job communicating what it does to the public and helping it understand how and why forecasts change as well as how ongoing innovation may affect its decisions.

But relying on politicians who worry mainly about getting re-elected is not the way to do this.

The Fed uses many different models of the economy and also assesses a ton of anecdotal information on evolving conditions in making policy decisions. Relying on an elected official like the president to make these decisions would not work. Nor would observing the Fed at work in real time or having Congress audit its policy procedures.

These are frightening proposals. On the latter, Americans should be well aware by now that Congress is not known for its flexibility and responsiveness.

If your house is on fire, would you appoint a study group to examine the causes and search for who may be at fault before you call 911? Similarly, in response to those who want to weaken the Fed because they’d like less regulation, do you think requiring smoke detectors when the public is at risk amounts to unnecessary government interference?

Our house would still be ashes from the last crisis if Congress or the president oversaw monetary policy. Let’s pray that never happens.