Progressives (Liberals)

I believe the likely consequences of pouring government capitol into the university education market were entirely predictable. The fact that they weren't seen by the previous Administration likely results from their inappropriate application of fixed beliefs about the perfection of human affairs through such "Progressive" government programs.

Businesses that make such errors go out of existence very quickly. Governments don't, They have the power to persist as long as their political rhetoric has the needed appeal, and their raw power enables them to withstand the emerging truths. As the lamentable history of the 20th century amply demonstrates, this can take a long time, even in democratic governments.

Plenty of companies **** up big time and pass on the bill to the tax payer, like those banks that are "too big to fail".

Sub-prime mortgages were pushed as a way of "helping" low-income minorities achieve the dream of home ownership. Many of these people lost not only their homes but their jobs as well when public sector jobs were cut in the recession.

That's true. However their failure is often in part a direct result of government actions to control the performance of various markets, as in the collapse of our Mortgage bubble in 2007. It turns out a number of banks also did their share in bring this event about, however they quickly went out of existence, while the government lives on. The "too big to fail" label is itself merely a government made label used to rationalize rather close regulation of the designated banks by the government that created the label.

Still, a lot of blame goes to the private banks and rating agencies for lying about the strength of their products. The sub-prime bonds would have easily been absorbed by the US economy had they not been packaged with other, non-junk products and sold worldwide as healthy (when they were not), in what was in essence a scam.

This discourse about private sector bekng more virtuous than the public sector is one big fat lie.

'Too big to fail" means that if they fail, the entire economy goes down. This is unacceptable a risk, and those mega-mergers should never have been authorized.

I have made no assertion of virtue. Instead I have simply noted the obvious fact that markets are far quicker to punish business that engage in harmful deception or offer poor products or services than are people their governments - even in democracies. The reason, of course, for this is the general lack of public agreement on the policies or parties that best suit their interests. In contrast, markets are merely the result of largely independent choices made in their self interest by the world of consumers acting in their immediate self interest.

I believe you have incompletely characterized the mortgage bond process that led to the 2007 collapse. It was the simple injection of additional subsidized government capital into the markets itself that brought about the sudden rise in real estate prices and the bubble that finally burst in 2007. Government directed issuance of sub prime (and less) mortgages added to the problem, but did not alone create it. Bankers (Including Freddy & Fannie) applied government established standards in the issuance of Mortgage securities. No one should have been surprised that they did this by distributing the high risk mortgages more or less uniformly over multiple securities to meet the established minimum standard. (These sub standard mortgages, required by the government had to find a home in some security).

The market would punish a company collectively, as a whole, but not the particular individuals who actually fucked up at the helm of said company. Similarly, countries who make policy mistakes usually pay some sort of collective price for them, but that price is rarely passed on their leadership. So the two work pretty much the same way.

I agree that leaders in both business and politics are often able to escape or delay the consequences for their errors (perhaps the best example here is the long term decay of GE under Jeff Immelt). However just a superficial look at some comparative data shows clearly that tenure in office is far more dependent on short & long term outcomes in businesses than it is in governments. (The Leninists in the USSR lasted much longer than did Immelt, and delivered immeasurably worse outcomes.)

Have you ever been CEO of a corporation?

Look at Trump for an obvious counterexample to your claim.

I looked and I don't see your point. Indeed he survives precisely because he is exposing and correcting the previously hidden failings of his predecessors.

Trump is a used car salesman who only survived as a businessman by passing on the price tag for his mistakes to others. He will do the same as a politician. The guy never took responsibility for anything; he's not gonna start now. All he needs is an audience to fool, with some money in their pocket. Seems like you qualify.

Like any of us Trump is many things; a somewhat narcissistic vulgarian, a seasoned pragmatist, a fairly astute judge of people ( though probably not as good as he claims to be), an experienced manager, and a leader with the courage to actually engage the challenges he promises to address. Importantly to me, his views of the principal economic and strategic challenges facing my country, conform well with mine and his willingness to deal appropriately with them far exceeds that of any alternative on the scene today.

Moreover the endurance and tenacity he has demonstrated in the face of a prolonged politically motivated attack initiated through illegal actions of the Previous administration is itself admirable.

The world is full of polished sycophants and poseurs, whose presentations are far more agreeable to the self appointed elites of the political world. I don't attach much value to either.

How do you think President Macron is doing?

Macron is doing okay i suppose. The yellow crisis is dying off (not because anything he did, but by slow attrition), economy looks like it's getting better, polls are heading up. He was elected to reform the country, precisely in the direction you would think is useful, and that's what he's trying to do.

Je lies he cheats he breaks agreements right and left he pulls out of treaties he reels frlomone self inflictled chaos to another he endangered the world by pulling out of the paris accords he pulled out of a working nuke deal with iran and. has us teetering on the brink of a stupid war hes tried repeatedly to tak away 20M peoples health care with no alternative a
Nd you support this monster.

That's an interesting point. However in the case of the United States our Revolution and the initial design of our constitution were both focused on individual freedom and limitations on the power of government (particularly central governments) to organize and rule the lives of the people. This was all in stark contrast to the more authoritarian ideas that emerged from the French Revolution, and it has so far proved itself to be more effective and enduring.

The checks and balances built into the structures of the three branches of our central government and their relations with the states were expressly intended to limit the reach of the Federal government. The design of the legislature and its relations to the Executive branch were similarly made to make intrusive laws difficult to pass.

A review of the debates and dialogues in the Federalist Papers amply confirms that the Founding Fathers had these limits expressly in mind.

The passage of time corrodes all things, and our Congress (and executive) have subverted and corrupted this system by delegating legislative and even judicial powers to bureaucratic structures created by Federal legislation. Happily a political resistance to that is developing today

Thanks. I'm not sure his desired political policies conform that well with mine. However I don't have standing to judge him.

I am concerned about (If I understand it correctly) his avowed intent to shut down the Nuclear power establishment that has served France so well for the past 50+ years, while at the same time eliminating the use of petroleum (and presumably coal as well) by 2050. That appears naïve (or perhaps merely cynical) in the extreme. I also don't believe the fairly longstanding French policy of heavy government involvement (and sometimes capital investment) in its major corporations is a particularly effective one: the results of it are evident in international markets.

Your founders were human beings, and they made mistakes too. Don't worship a piece of paper.

Macron is trying to reconcile the French with capitalism. It's a work in progress...

I see our economy is far too regulated, and yours far too unregulated. There's a sweet spot in the middle somewhere. To get there, America needs to steer left, and France right.

BTW, France is wedged to the hip with its nuclear industrial complex. We're not going to get rid of them anytime soon but they need some heavy restructuring and taming. AREVA did not serve France well at all with its EPR design, a white elephant of some proportion. They can't built it at the price they signed for, leading to long delays and massive cost overun. And they managed to sell it to Finland and the UK as well, saddling the French state and thus its people with billions in liability as a result.

I agree: it is good advice. Moreover, like the French, we have been flexible in our application of those founding principles.

I wrote that because I believe most of our current problems are, in major part, traceable to our departures from those original principles, and most of the remedies I think needed involve a (perhaps selective) return to them. Perhaps even more influential in my motivation is my concern that the emerging socialist left in our politics will seek to rapidly erode those founding principles even more, and that their principal advocates have cast them aside entirely.

We're a relatively young country, but our version of Democracy is older than most, and has served us well for a long time. My view of history is that human nature is complex and full of contradictions, but it doesn't change much over time. I believe our founding principles are adapted to that human nature, with all its contradictions, very well.