Is Donald Trump an economic genius?

Mayne

Diamond Member
Apr 13, 2014
8,820
1,358
126
Apparently he is. Who would of thought. I'm glad the U.S.A is making a turn around.
 

Hayabusa Rider

Admin Emeritus & Elite Member
Jan 26, 2000
50,879
4,265
126
Apparently he is. Who would of thought. I'm glad the U.S.A is making a turn around.


I hope this is sarcasm or the OP wins the "least educated about economics" award. Next up, OP says Trump is Jesus.
 

IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
68,855
26,648
136
If you go dumpster diving for my previous posts concerning tariffs, you'll find that I'm actually a fan of them, when applied with some thought to desired outcome. Slapping tariffs on finished goods that compete with domestic goods where there exists an uneven playing field, I'm good with. Using tariffs to promote domestic employment can be a very good idea. Economic efficiency is not the only metric that matters.

Slapping tariffs on feed stocks to high dollar/high employment U.S. manufacturers? Well, that's just Trump level stupid.
 

Bitek

Lifer
Aug 2, 2001
10,647
5,220
136
Of course he is. This is the guy that lost more money than any other taxpayer in the USA in the 80s, for sport!

#1 baby. Big league.

When The Donald decides to do something, by god he will do it more than anyone has ever seen before.
 

brycejones

Lifer
Oct 18, 2005
25,992
23,792
136
Op, Trump is an idiot and a liar. Our latest trade dust up appears to at least in part have been triggered by his attacks in the fed leading the Chinese to conclude they had more power than they do. Trump undercut his own negotiations by running his mouth about a related subject.
 

tweaker2

Lifer
Aug 5, 2000
14,478
6,901
136
So now what branch(es) of gov't is gong to have to risk losing their jobs by going to Trump and fill him in on what actually happens when he plays tariff war with the Chinese?

Hannity the champene Trump suck ass ain't going to do it because it'll make him look like an idiot and get Trump riled up at him. McConnell ain't gonna do it because he's too busy packing the courts with conservative stoolies that will be beholden to him well after he goes to hell and the rest of those cowardly Repubs up on the hill won't say damn thing for fear of getting primaried out by Trump's herd of raving ranting disciples that vote for anybody wearing a red MAGA hat who declares what a genius top shelf golf player Trump is.
 

blackangst1

Lifer
Feb 23, 2005
22,914
2,359
126
Of course he is. This is the guy that lost more money than any other taxpayer in the USA in the 80s, for sport!

#1 baby. Big league.

When The Donald decides to do something, by god he will do it more than anyone has ever seen before.

edit: apples and oranges
 
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sportage

Lifer
Feb 1, 2008
11,493
3,159
136
Tariffs are really hurting farmers.
Most if not all farmers are republican. Small business. Etc etc.
It will be very interesting to see which farmers prefer, their livelihood or Donald Trump?
I'm still looking for that line in the sand where Trump supporters realize, "maybe Donald Trump wasn't a good idea after all".
Knowing Donald Trump he's probably going after those family farms. Trying to wipe them out. Turn family farming into a national industrialized operation. Then have Goldman Sachs run them.
Wouldn't surprise me.
 

BoomerD

No Lifer
Feb 26, 2006
62,681
11,024
136
Tariffs are really hurting farmers.
Most if not all farmers are republican. Small business. Etc etc.
It will be very interesting to see which farmers prefer, their livelihood or Donald Trump?
I'm still looking for that line in the sand where Trump supporters realize, "maybe Donald Trump wasn't a good idea after all".
Knowing Donald Trump he's probably going after those family farms. Trying to wipe them out. Turn family farming into a national industrialized operation. Then have Goldman Sachs run them.
Wouldn't surprise me.


Trump's tariffs are actually sheer fucking genius. The farmers who will be hurt the most by this will lose their farms to bankruptcy...where Donnie's big AG corporate pals can buy them for pennies on the dollar...Making America Great Again! (for the uber rich)
Trump could not care less about the farmers or the working class who get hurt by his policies.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
15,699
1,448
126
The answer to the question is "No."

The man is abundantly and cravenly ignorant, in addition to his serial performance as a Liar.

For instance, he says that his administration has "turned the economy around", despite the fact that it was an economy with trends beginning with Obama's early actions after the recession. And -- no -- presidents and neither Obama nor Trump "create jobs". The economy follows a well-proven and documented cycle known as the "business cycle", and presidents can do some things that may make the upswings more pronounced and the downturns more shallow. But presidents and their followers have traditionally tried to own credit for a healthy economy and distance themselves from the causes of an economy in suffering. Sometimes, presidents can enhance the economy through prudent management of government spending, sometimes tax policy and monetary policy in conjunction with the Federal Reserve. Trump's tax policy has done nothing but for a few 2-percenter chuckleheads at the top of the socio-economic ladder. The delusional base says to the contrary that he as done "Gurr-eat Thingks", but nobody with any sense thinks that their nickel-and-dime tax cuts made any difference to their lives; there hasn't been any extraordinary growth in manufacturing or anything else.

If I'm not mistaken, Trump took Economics as an undergrad. But he's no economist. Trump, for instance, would be at a loss to explain something like "the Kinked Oligopoly Demand Curve". I can. I know more than Trump.

Trump went to grad school at Wharton, likely because his father bought his ticket there. If he graduated at all, indications are that he scored in the lower half of his class. Given his behavior in the game of golf, he probably cheated in college every chance he could. He didn't learn anything much. His father likely told him he'd inherit the family business if he finished at Wharton. But he has absolutely no understanding of how to run a corporation. He runs a family business, which, in turn, carrying on the criminal practices of his father the tax fraud, housing discriminator and shyster, is a criminal enterprise. He has no understanding of delegation. He takes no advice. He discourages and eliminates independent and creative thinking by squelching dissent in a quest to obtain perfect personal loyalty from those around him. He has no idea of human relations as might be explained in the Harvard anthology book on human relations. His personality disorder would disqualify him for management positions in a major corporation, and it would disqualify him for even minor assignment as a CIA employee.

He has the reading skills of a 10th or 11th grade high-school student, and the writing skills in the same category. This is not only evident from his need to hire two other people to ghost-write his books, but from his presentations behind the podium in public. He can only speak impromptu, without preparation, with language primarily acceptable to those who are similar in being intellectually challenged -- it's all stream of consciousness and stream of thoughtlessness. When he prepares a speech at all, he uses a teleprompter, and his breathing, sneering and snorting between sentences. This shows him laboring to read the teleprompter to vocalize what he sees.

Trump's GOP has no professional economists, and they particularly have no Nobel Laureate economists serving them -- when they could if they wanted. They've got Larry Kudlow, a media hack. They have Stephen Moore, equally bereft of economic achievement or serious understanding. They have their Base.

Trump reflects his Base. He is the most disgusting piece of filth every to appear on TV since the first TV live broadcast of the 1936 Berlin Games.

The owner of my car-repair shop is a better business-man than Trump. He's not wealthy. He makes a living. He only has a junior-college degree, but I've seen him work. If he only makes a living, it is because he chose a feasible business on the chess-board of life that has limited potential for wealth generation. The idea that a person's bank balance is an indicator of their smarts or their business acumen is a totally misleading myth, based on the assumption that people only have a goal in life of becoming fabulously wealthy, or that choosing a less lucrative field in which to make a living is somehow a "bad decision". Trump is a multi-millionaire only because his father was a billionaire, and he either lost more money over a ten-year stretch than any single person in the US of A, or he was a monstrous criminal tax fraud for under-reporting his income zillions of degrees beyond the threshold that gives IRS the option of charging the taxpayer with felony fraud.

So -- 99 years in the electric chair, and -- no -- genius at anything he is not. I know all sorts of people of humble and limited means whose brains function at levels way above the Con-Man-in-Chief.

Is this "political"? Do I hate Trump? Am I a "hater"? With some other MBAs I know, concluding that he was a fraud after watching "Apprentice" is not political. Determining that he was a rabid, hypocritical racist after he spun the Birther Frenzy is not political. Looking at the evidence and what he has said in news interviews, concluding that he's a tax fraud and criminal is not political. Suspecting that he sold out his country to Russian oligarchs -- based on the indications so far -- is not political.

Do I hate him? Certainly, I despise him. Am I jealous? How could I be jealous of a silver-spoon baby who has violated just about every norm of decent conduct imaginable? And when I was confirmed at 9 years old -- the Catholic Sacrament of Confirmation -- I was asked "Do you reject Satan?" Certainly, I said that I did. And now -- I see that I do.

Not "political" -- this is just common sense, and objective moral judgment.

99 years in the electric chair! Next case!
 
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hal2kilo

Lifer
Feb 24, 2009
23,331
10,238
136
Tariffs are really hurting farmers.
Most if not all farmers are republican. Small business. Etc etc.
It will be very interesting to see which farmers prefer, their livelihood or Donald Trump?
I'm still looking for that line in the sand where Trump supporters realize, "maybe Donald Trump wasn't a good idea after all".
Knowing Donald Trump he's probably going after those family farms. Trying to wipe them out. Turn family farming into a national industrialized operation. Then have Goldman Sachs run them.
Wouldn't surprise me.
More real estate for golf courses.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
15,699
1,448
126
By the way -- to all posters and members here, and even for the benefit of those members in "the Base".

Here is some personal financial advice I offer to you. I cannot tell how much sooner or later you should take action. But I warn you to take your money out of stocks and indexed stock funds. Sometime -- perhaps over the next year, perhaps sooner given Trump's trade war and other aberrations, the business cycle will turn down from Bull to Bear. If you leave your money in something like an S&P 500, it may take a few years or more to recoup your loss.

Now I have this insight from my personal understanding to a minor degree, confirmed by practicing economists and investment wizards to a major degree. The other day, I went to the bank to consult with a Merrill-Lynch advisor about my mother's estate. I was concerned that her savings were not earning enough. She's old, so risk-taking is an unfavorable choice. I mentioned putting so many thousands of dollars into an indexed fund, such that they could be moved to other financial instruments in the event of either a short-term blip, or long-term downturn. His advice was emphatic, based on the signs he'd seen about people "wanting to get in" and the trends in the market. Merrill-Lynch expects this downturn to occur -- as I said -- sooner or later.

Trumpies might then blame Democrats for it if Trump is out of office, but with no real empirical justification. Of course, some of us hope that it happens by summer, 2020, so the chuckleheads will have spurious but materially explicit indications to conclude what a massive mistake they've made. They no doubt made a mistake; they're so clueless, and the mistake was so costly and profound, it's just as well to allow a coincidence to make them aware of it.
 
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BurnItDwn

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
26,067
1,550
126
By the way -- to all posters and members here, and even for the benefit of those members in "the Base".

Here is some personal financial advice I offer to you. I cannot tell how much sooner or later you should take action. But I warn you to take your money out of stocks and indexed stock funds. Sometime -- perhaps over the next year, perhaps sooner given Trump's trade war and other aberrations, the business cycle will turn down from Bull to Bear. If you leave your money in something like an S&P 500, it may take a few years or more to recoup your loss.

Now I have this insight from my personal understanding to a minor degree, confirmed by practicing economists and investment wizards to a major degree. The other day, I went to the bank to consult with a Merrill-Lynch advisor about my mother's estate. I was concerned that her savings were not earning enough. She's old, so risk-taking is an unfavorable choice. I mentioned putting so many thousands of dollars into an indexed fund, such that they could be moved to other financial instruments in the event of either a short-term blip, or long-term downturn. His advice was emphatic, based on the signs he'd seen about people "wanting to get in" and the trends in the market. Merrill-Lynch expects this downturn to occur -- as I said -- sooner or later.

Trumpies might then blame Democrats for it if Trump is out of office, but with no real empirical justification. Of course, some of us hope that it happens by summer, 2020, so the chuckleheads will have spurious but materially explicit indications to conclude what a massive mistake they've made. They no doubt made a mistake; they're so clueless, and the mistake was so costly and profound, it's just as well to allow a coincidence to make them aware of it.
It can be almost impossible to time the market ... But, warning signs are all there ...
I'm tempted to pull half my 401K assets and IRA assets from index funds and put them into something low risk until the market crashes/corrects by ~30%. I read that they are predicting up to a 60% drop when it happens ...
 

hal2kilo

Lifer
Feb 24, 2009
23,331
10,238
136
It can be almost impossible to time the market ... But, warning signs are all there ...
I'm tempted to pull half my 401K assets and IRA assets from index funds and put them into something low risk until the market crashes/corrects by ~30%. I read that they are predicting up to a 60% drop when it happens ...
Did that over a year ago, when numb nuts started going hard on this idiocy. Sure I lost some potential gains but I sleep a lot better at night.
 

senseamp

Lifer
Feb 5, 2006
35,786
6,188
126
He's running a $1T fiscal deficit and his supposedly robust economy still can't handle 2.5% interest rates, so he's whining about Fed.