UPDATE: Beating Trump

In addition to the crippling personal faults listed below is his ABSOLUTE INCOMPETENCE:

INCOMPETENCE - He is unable to fulfill the duties of POTUS in all areas; here are some examples:

ADMINISTRATIVE FAILURE - He has a very high rate of appointee and employee turnover while many of the critical positions in the Federal government are vacant or occupied by temporary placeholders.

CRIMINAL APPOINTEES - Many of his former senior administration and campaign staff are in prison.

AGENCIES CRIPPLED - Many of his appointees to critical agencies are lobbyists for the companies they now regulate with resulting harm to the country.

FOREIGN WARS - His policies have brought the United States to the brink of war in North Korea, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and possibly others.

INTELLIGENCE SERVICES - The National Security of the United States depends on accurate and unbiased information from our intelligence services. He has fired many of the top officers in those agencies and harmed the morale of the agents who place their lives in danger every day. Some of our spies have been outed and probably killed.

TRADE WAR - He has escalated a discussion of foreign trade imbalances into a trade war; that war has damaged several of our economic sectors, notably American agriculture.

There are others, but the narrative below returns to the personal flaws -

Experience in defeating David Duke in a statewide election shows that Dems should attack the candidate personally as a threat to the very existence of our American government and way of life.

He will likely attack any Dem personally and relentlessly and Dem policy arguments likely will not overcome those attacks. Even if there is an effective impeachment, the apathetic voter may not be motivated.

Any attack should be repeated endlessly at every opportunity; there should be no room for doubt.

FLOUTING THE RULE OF LAW - He thinks and acts as if he is above the law. If re-elected he will simply ignore the law; He has already shown that behavior. The Constitution won't survive his attacks.

PEDOPHILE - He has a history of raping underage girls. He will continue this shameless behavior if given cover of darkness from the press.

FELON - His acts of obstruction in the Mueller probe would result in a felony conviction for any other person. He escapes only because he is President.

RAPIST - There are many documented cases where he has raped women.

TRAITOR - He has repeatedly placed the interests of Russian oligarchs above the interests of the American people.

DEADBEAT - He has used the court system to defraud vendors and customers repeatedly.

RAMPANT CORRUPTION - His appointment officials and his family have all used the office for personal enrichment.

CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE - His campaign officers and personal attorney are in jail for various criminal acts. This will only get worse if he stays in office.

PHILANDERER - He has used his authority over employees to seduce their wives by telling the wife the husband complains about her at work.

Only by demonstrating his evil nature and acts can the apathetic voter by motivated and only then can he be defeated.

Is There Too Much Capital ?

Most economists recognize that income inequality is too high and problematic for the well-being of the population.

That is true today regardless of which country is considered.

One of the secondary effects of high income inequality is a rise in savings; people with high incomes have extra cash to save or invest.

The ratio of Bank Deposits to GDP is about 60% for Brazil and over 80% for the USA. The St. Louis FED has prepared charts which are available at these links:


USA - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DDOI02USA156NWDB

BRAZIL - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DDOI02BRA156NWDB

There is so much cash floating in the banking systems that interest rates have fallen to just about zero. It can be argued that interest rates this low obscure the real cost of projects and encourage marginal investments.

Interestingly, the marginal income tax rate in the US was cut from 70% in 1984 to under 30%. The current USA marginal tax rate is about 39%

The ratio of bank deposits to GDP peaked at about 70% then, fell to historical levels of about 55% in 1995 and then rose to current levels.

Family Love Letter to a Trump Supporter

[No offense is intended here, it's just an effort to reach the widest possible audience; so don't go getting your panties in a bunch.]

Hey Cuz - Hope Betty and your family are doing real well. Haven't heard much from you recently, and you know me and my big mouth.

Anyways, it seems you're hard to talk with these days and also you seem to have got a case of bad attitude recently and, well frankly it's beginning to worry us all out here.

We're all family you know and, well, we are really worried about you. We stand or fall together. We ARE family and you are always welcome; but, the welcome comes with a little bit of advice, for free.

It's no secret these times are hard for you, and for us too, truth be told. But that orange headed grifter stayin with you, well you know he is up to no good.

I know you say he's your bud and that you really like him, but Cuz, we are seeing some real problems.

First off, he's raping your 14 year old little girl. Maybe you don't know that. You better look into it. If he knocks her up, he'll take off like a scared rabbit. Then his buddies in church, well they have run all the abortion docs out of town. Gonna leave you and your girl with a big problem. Maybe you thought that family planning was a settled issue and help was easy to get, but think again. Your darlin girl will be left to fend for herself with no help at all.

And, his drug dealin buddies are just ruining your town with the prescription pain meds. Another thing, you know that national park you like to hunt and fish in, well he sold that to an oil company and they gonna rip it up real soon. There won't be any jobs though - all the jobs will go to foreigners and out of towners. Some of his Wall Street buddies want to take your Social Security too. He's a real piece of work alright.

I know the orange grifter says he'll take care of you, but mostly he is taking care of his buddies, of which you are not one. Your water well will be ruined when the new oil company starts pumping crap into the ground to force up the oil and, ooops, also ruins the aquifer.

Here's another thing - that guy has installed a bunch of dog cages around your property and he's locking up children in there. Hard to believe, but it's true. On top of that, some of the guards are raping and beating the kids. This is all on your land and some of us are real upset about it. That's another thing you better be looking at.

I know he says that those foreign kids are taking your jobs, but, Cuz, the only people taking your job is the corporation you work for. The ones taking your jobs sure as hell ain't no helpless kids or desperate immigrants. As for immigrants, well we're them too; our grandparents came from Europe and Africa. It's a lot harder to get here now than it was. The stuff they have to go through is unbelievable. They know more about America than you or I combined. Those folks are just looking for a safe place to raise their kids, after all.

You can go ahead and hate on them if you want to; your hate just shows your fear. But, if you harm anyone of them, you'll go directly to jail, just as sure as anyone of them will go to jail if they harm any one of us.

I could go on, but you get the idea. We love you and we are in it together. We all make mistakes and it just proves we are human after all.

We want to help you, really help you. There a lot of folks working real hard to help you.

But this orange grifter is in the way, You gotta help us get rid of him so we can make your life better.

If you don't help us get rid of him, we'll be in for a world of hurt.

Your Cuz

Modern Monetary Theory, a Primer

There is some discussion of MMT, or Modern Monetary Theory as a way to pay for social programs.

The essential idea is to install a new program and then expand the deficit and debt by borrowing money through Treasury Bills to pay for the new program.

The logic appeals - if Republicans can use that mechanism to pay for tax cuts, then perhaps Democrats can use it to pay for new social programs.

It's like paying for a new car with a credit card - you hope that the new job you may get will give you the income to make the monthly payments for the car.

But Republicans use the discredited Laffer curve to hope that tax cuts will pay for themselves through increased economic activity and new tax revenues. But, it doesn't work.

It's possible that a Democrat program might actually raise economic activity so much that it would pay for itself, but right now I can't think of any program that might do that.

Perhaps it is better to just do things because they are right for the country and figure out how to pay for them later. That idea seems to work for most Nordic countries. It can work here if we are brave.

In the meantime, the critical question arises of our debt, interest payments and GDP levels.

Investors are willing to buy Treasuries and fund our deficits because they seem safe. And, they will continue to appear safe IF we can maintain the current percentage ratios among GDP, debt as a percentage of GDP and interest payments as a percentage of federal expenditures.

Once we blow up that delicate balance, then investors may ask for higher interest rates on T-Bills.

Then, our party will be over and we'll be just like Greece.