[RedSpawn]

https://www.reuters....p-idUSKBN1FD2UU

Quote

Trump seeks $25 billion for border wall, offers 'Dreamer' citizenship
Roberta Rampton, Susan Cornwell
4 MIN READ

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday previewed his outline for an immigration bill that he will promote next week, saying he wants $25 billion to build a border wall and is open to granting citizenship to illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.

Trump said he was optimistic he could come to an agreement with both Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Congress that would appeal to hardliners seeking tougher rules for immigrants while also preventing the roughly 700,000 “Dreamers” from being deported.

“Tell them not to be concerned, ok? Tell them not to worry. We’re going to solve the problem. It’s up to the Democrats, but they (the Dreamers) should not be concerned,” Trump told reporters during an impromptu question-and-answer session at the White House.

Trump campaigned for president in 2016 promising tougher rules for immigration. In September, he announced he was ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program created by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, effective in March - unless Congress came up with a new law.

The program currently protects about 700,000 people, mostly Hispanic young adults, from deportation and provides them work permits.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the lead lawmakers in the immigration negotiations, said Trump’s comments signaled a major breakthrough.

“President Trump’s support for a pathway to citizenship will help us get strong border security measures as we work to modernize a broken immigration system,” Graham said in a statement. “With this strong statement by President Trump, I have never felt better about our chances of finding a solution on immigration.”

“COULD GO EITHER WAY”

Graham was part of a bipartisan group of three dozen senators who met on Wednesday on Capitol Hill to discuss moving forward on immigration legislation.

DACA recipients and supporters protest for a clean Dream Act outside Disneyland in Anaheim, California U.S. January 22, 2018. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
After the meeting, Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill expressed cautious optimism to reporters about Trump’s framework, saying “that could go either way,” when asked if it will be helpful to lawmakers.

Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, was slated to meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Thursday, a senior White House official said.

Trump so far has rejected bipartisan proposals to continue DACA, leading to the standoff between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate that resulted in a three-day government shutdown that ended on Monday.

People protest for immigration reform for DACA recipients and a new Dream Act, in Los Angeles, California, U.S. January 22, 2018. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
Congress agreed to extend funding to Feb. 8, but Republicans promised to allow debate on the future of the young illegal immigrants. Senators began meeting to discuss their proposals on Wednesday.

The White House plans on Monday to unveil a framework for immigration legislation that it believes can pass muster with both parties. Trump will deliver his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday night.

For immigration legislation to be enacted into law, the House of Representatives ultimately would have to pass a bill identical to whatever the Senate approves.

Trump said his proposal would include a request for $25 billion for the border wall, $5 billion for other border security programs, measures to curb family sponsorship of immigrants, and an overhaul of or end to the visa lottery system.

In exchange, he said he wanted to offer the Dreamers protection from deportation and an “incentive” of citizenship, perhaps in 10 to 12 years.

Addressing the status of the Dreamers’ parents, who brought them into America illegally, would be “tricky,” Trump said.

Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Writing by Makini Brice and Lisa Lambert; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Leslie Adler

So, can someone explain to me why the White House needs $25 billion ($25,000,000,000) for the border wall for Mexico if the campaign promise was that Mexico was going to pay for the wall?

Oh let me guess, I misinterpreted the campaign promise? President Trump didn't promise that. I just heard what I wanted to hear, right?

Source:
https://twitter.com/...1461504?lang=en

This type of hypocrisy or amnesia is just mind-numbing.

[ldrews]

 RedSpawn, on 2018-January-27, 12:50, said:

https://www.reuters....p-idUSKBN1FD2UU


So, can someone explain to me why the White House needs $25 billion ($25,000,000,000) for the border wall for Mexico if the campaign promise was that Mexico was going to pay for the wall?

Oh let me guess, I misinterpreted the campaign promise? President Trump didn't promise that. I just heard what I wanted to hear, right?

Source:
https://twitter.com/...1461504?lang=en

This type of hypocrisy or amnesia is just mind-numbing.

Did you think Mexico was going to write a check? Given the trade flows and money flows between the US and Mexico I would imagine there are a number of ways that Mexico might eventually pay for the wall. Perhaps as a concession to keep NAFTA in place? Perhaps by imposing tariffs on Mexican imports. Perhaps by providing incentives for more companies to return from Mexico to the US, causing a $25 billion swing in the trade deficit with Mexico? Lots of possibilities if you don't insist on Mexico writing a check before construction begins.

[kenberg]

Oh for God's sake, of course Mexico isn't going to pay for it. If we are going to build a wall, we are going to pay for it.

Negotiations on NAFTA will be whatever they will be. It is of course possible that some aspect of negotiations about NAFTA will be favorable, or appear favorable, to the US. And, if so, then someone could say "See, they are paying for the wall". Whether you favor Trump or not, a little skepticism is occasionally called for. Sarah Sanders gets paid for maintaining that the obviously false is true, but let's not do it for free.

The wall is the wall, NAFTA is NAFTA. Maybe we can squeeze money out of Mexico, if that's what we really want to do, and maybe we can't. If someone steals my wallet then he has stolen my wallet. If he then buys a bottle of wine with the contents, this doesn't mean that I bought him a bottle of wine. .

[ggwhiz]

So much of this seems to be about voter demographics and from gerrymandering to GoP positioning on future legal immigration limits I'm betting there is a large dash of racism involved.

[ldrews]

 kenberg, on 2018-January-27, 14:18, said:

Oh for God's sake, of course Mexico isn't going to pay for it. If we are going to build a wall, we are going to pay for it.

Negotiations on NAFTA will be whatever they will be. It is of course possible that some aspect of negotiations about NAFTA will be favorable, or appear favorable, to the US. And, if so, then someone could say "See, they are paying for the wall". Whether you favor Trump or not, a little skepticism is occasionally called for. Sarah Sanders gets paid for maintaining that the obviously false is true, but let's not do it for free.

The wall is the wall, NAFTA is NAFTA. Maybe we can squeeze money out of Mexico, if that's what we really want to do, and maybe we can't. If someone steals my wallet then he has stolen my wallet. If he then buys a bottle of wine with the contents, this doesn't mean that I bought him a bottle of wine. .

Oh for God's sake, negotiations and relationships are far more complex than you seem to believe.

If I arrange for a loan and build a house, then rent the house to tenants for 20 years for enough to cover maintenance, taxes, and mortgage payments, who paid for the house? Not the builder!

If I win a free whatever but have to pay exorbitant shipping charges, then I have paid for the whatever.

If in some way there occurs a transfer of $25 billion from Mexico's side of the ledger to the US side of the ledger, then Mexico will effectively have paid for the wall. Of course, for face saving reasons, no one will mention that connection. Except maybe Trump!

Go wheel and deal in NY real estate if you want to learn the different ways to extract money from others.

[barmar]

 ldrews, on 2018-January-27, 14:56, said:

If in some way there occurs a transfer of $25 billion from Mexico's side of the ledger to the US side of the ledger, then Mexico will effectively have paid for the wall. Of course, for face saving reasons, no one will mention that connection. Except maybe Trump!

Yes, Trump has said on a number of occasions that his plan is to get Mexico to reimburse us in some way. But Mexico has also said that they have no plan to do this. How can Trump promise something like this? Should Congress really appropriate such a huge amount on this wish and a prayer?

Quote

Go wheel and deal in NY real estate if you want to learn the different ways to extract money from others.

Should we really run our country like Trump's dishonest business practices? He was notorious for reneging on deals with his suppliers.

Newsday Donald Trump stiffed me on $100G deal on pianos

Quote

At Monday night’s debate, Donald Trump was called out for stiffing the people who work for him.

Trump has been accused of failing to pay hundreds of contractors. And so far, he hasn’t seemed very sorry. When asked about failing to pay someone by Hillary Clinton this week, Trump replied, “Maybe he didn’t do a good job, and I was unsatisfied with his work.”

I take that attack personally. I’m one of the many small business owners who’ve been used by Trump, exploited and forced to suffer a loss because of his corporation’s shady practices.

My relationship with Trump began in 1989, when he asked me to supply several grand and upright pianos to his then-new Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. I’d been running a music store for more than 30 years, selling instruments to local schools and residents. My business was a family affair (my grandsons still run the store). And I had a great relationship with my customers — no one had ever failed to pay.

I was thrilled to get a $100,000 contract from Trump. It was one of the biggest sales I’d ever made. I was supposed to deliver and tune the pianos; the Trump corporation would pay me within 90 days. I asked my lawyer whether I should ask for payment upfront, and he laughed. “It’s Donald Trump!” he told me. “He’s got lots of money.”

But when I requested payment, the Trump corporation hemmed and hawed. Executives avoided my calls and crafted excuses. After a couple of months, I got a letter telling me that the casino was short on funds. It would pay 70 percent of what I was owed. There was no negotiating. I didn’t know what to do — I couldn’t afford to sue the Trump corporation, and I needed money to pay my piano suppliers. So I took the $70,000.

Losing $30,000 was a big hit to me and my family. The profit from Trump was meant to be a big part of my salary for the year. So I made much less. There was no money to help grow my business. I had fewer pianos in the showroom and a smaller advertising budget. Because of Trump, my store stagnated for a couple of years. I felt like I’d been taken advantage of. I was embarrassed.

Trump keeps saying that it’s time we got a businessman to run the country. Of course, I think it’s important to find someone who can bolster the economy, but I also think we need a president who cares about small-business owners, and about honoring his commitments. That’s not Trump.

J. Michael Diehl is the retired owner of Freehold Music Center in Freehold, New Jersey. He wrote this for The Washington Post.

[ldrews]

 barmar, on 2018-January-27, 15:49, said:

Yes, Trump has said on a number of occasions that his plan is to get Mexico to reimburse us in some way. But Mexico has also said that they have no plan to do this. How can Trump promise something like this? Should Congress really appropriate such a huge amount on this wish and a prayer?

Should we really run our country like Trump's dishonest business practices? He was notorious for reneging on deals with his suppliers.

Newsday Donald Trump stiffed me on $100G deal on pianos

I do not know all of the details of the referenced case. We have laws to enforce contracts. If the contract was valid, the individual has recourse through the courts. Did he avail himself of the rememdy?

The real world of government, business, and international relations is not nice, it is not pretty. If the person running the organization does not know what they are doing or does not have the competence to deal with real world conditions and adversaries, bad things tend to happen. Venezuela is a current case in point. Because of mismanagement, ideology, political favouritism, who knows what, the Venezuelan public is starving.

So yes, if Trump's "dishonest business practices" is what it takes to generate a prosperous economy so that people don't starve, then I support those practices. I would much rather have a dishonest, competent manager than an ideologically pure idiot running the country. But I suppose you would prefer the latter.

However, if Trump's business practices were, in fact, dishonest, he would have been nailed in court and would be spending time in jail rather than running the country. Unethical or unsavory are not the same as dishonest.

[kenberg]

Quote

Go wheel and deal in NY real estate if you want to learn the different ways to extract money from others.

The answer here is simple. I do not want to learn such things.

Quote

Yes, Trump has said on a number of occasions that his plan is to get Mexico to reimburse us in some way. But Mexico has also said that they have no plan to do this. How can Trump promise something like this? Should Congress really appropriate such a huge amount on this wish and a prayer?

Certainly Congress should do no such thing. If, for whatever the reason, we grab some money from Mexico then we can, if we wish, revel in this success.I am not so sure I would join in the celebration.
Basically, any negotiation that we plan to use to get Mexico to give us some money can be done whether or not we build a wall. So they are two separate things. Should we pressure Mexico to give us some money, should we build a wall. We can do either without doing the other.

Quote

However, if Trump's business practices were, in fact, dishonest, he would have been nailed in court and would be spending time in jail rather than running the country. Unethical or unsavory are not the same as dishonest.

Maybe, maybe not. But it reminds me of something a Republican friend suggested during Watergate. He thought people in the Nixon circle could wear NYI badges, Not yet Indicted.
But cute buttons aside, this goes pretty much to the heart of my objection to Trump. I don't think I am all that naive. I know many people walk very close to the legal line and have high-powered lawyers to keep them out of jail. I would prefer that such people stay in real estate or somewhere else so that I can avoid them .

A few posts back I approvingly noted a post by PassedOut that gave a supposed response of Nikki Haley to allegations that she had had an affair with Trump "Have you seen the man?! The very thought of it makes me want to vomit!". I am skeptical that she said this. Not skeptical that she thinks it, just skeptical that she said it. It perfectly captures my thoughts of any interaction whatsoever on any level with Trump. I have yet to hear any woman express any sexual attraction to him whatsoever, and I think anyone would have to be nuts to work for him or do business with him.

But back to business.

Trump won the election. Republicans are in the majority in the House and the Senate. Elections matter. We might well build a wall. We should then build it as we see fit, as high as we see fit, out of whatever materials we think are best, and so on. And we pay for it. We can, if we see fit, also try a money grab from Mexico. Or we can try to grab some money from France. Or Thailand. Wherever the grabber in chief thinks there is some loose money that we can grab. If that's really what we want to do, I guess we will do it. Or try to do it. This has absolutely nothing to do with whether we build a wall.

[ldrews]

 kenberg, on 2018-January-27, 18:04, said:

The answer here is simple. I do not want to learn such things.



Certainly Congress should do no such thing. If, for whatever the reason, we grab some money from Mexico then we can, if we wish, revel in this success.I am not so sure I would join in the celebration.
Basically, any negotiation that we plan to use to get Mexico to give us some money can be done whether or not we build a wall. So they are two separate things. Should we pressure Mexico to give us some money, should we build a wall. We can do either without doing the other.



Maybe, maybe not. But it reminds me of something a Republican friend suggested during Watergate. He thought people in the Nixon circle could wear NYI badges, Not yet Indicted.
But cute buttons aside, this goes pretty much to the heart of my objection to Trump. I don't think I am all that naive. I know many people walk very close to the legal line and have high-powered lawyers to keep them out of jail. I would prefer that such people stay in real estate or somewhere else so that I can avoid them .

A few posts back I approvingly noted a post by PassedOut that gave a supposed response of Nikki Haley to allegations that she had had an affair with Trump "Have you seen the man?! The very thought of it makes me want to vomit!". I am skeptical that she said this. Not skeptical that she thinks it, just skeptical that she said it. It perfectly captures my thoughts of any interaction whatsoever on any level with Trump. I have yet to hear any woman express any sexual attraction to him whatsoever, and I think anyone would have to be nuts to work for him or do business with him.

But back to business.

Trump won the election. Republicans are in the majority in the House and the Senate. Elections matter. We might well build a wall. We should then build it as we see fit, as high as we see fit, out of whatever materials we think are best, and so on. And we pay for it. We can, if we see fit, also try a money grab from Mexico. Or we can try to grab some money from France. Or Thailand. Wherever the grabber in chief thinks there is some loose money that we can grab. If that's really what we want to do, I guess we will do it. Or try to do it. This has absolutely nothing to do with whether we build a wall.

I agree, building the wall and getting money from Mexico are two different, if related, things. Getting money from Mexico is just a fit of spite. Granted, Mexico does not seem that interested in helping stem the flow of illegal entrants.

And I just read a report that indicated that only about 35% or so of the arrests of illegal entrants are Mexican. The remainder come from over 180 countries with most of them from Central America. So Mexico is just a conduit for people around the world who have noticed that our border with Mexico is porous.

[y66]

From Presidents and the U.S. Economy: An Econometric Exploration by Alan S. Blinder, Mark W. Watson

NBER Working Paper No. 20324

Quote

While economists, political scientists, and even lay people have known for decades that macroeconomic variables like GDP growth and inflation influence elections, this paper makes a landing on a previously-dark intellectual continent: How, if at all, do election outcomes influence subsequent economic performance. What have we learned from this exploration?

There is a systematic and large gap between the US economy’s macroeconomic performance when a Democrat is President of the United States versus when a Republican is. While other macroeconomic indicators largely agree, we have concentrated on real GDP growth over the full sample, which is 1.8 percentage points higher under Democrats--a stunningly large partisan gap relative to the sample mean of 3.3 percent. The growth advantage is correlated with Democratic control of the White House, not with Democratic control of Congress. A similar partisan growth gap appears in Canada, but not in the UK, France, or Germany.

On the spending side, much of the D-R growth gap in the United States comes from business fixed investment and spending on consumer durables. And it comes mostly in the first year of a presidential term. Yet faster growth under Democrats is not forecastable by standard techniques, which means it cannot be attributed to superior initial conditions. Nor does it stem from different trend rates of growth at different times, nor to any (measureable) boost to confidence from electing a Democratic president.

Democrats would no doubt like to attribute the large D-R growth gap to macroeconomic policy choices, but the data do not support such a claim. If anything, and we would not make too much of small differences, both fiscal and monetary policy actions seem to be a bit more stabilizing when a Republican is president—even though Federal Reserve chairmen appointed by Democrats preside over faster growth than Federal Reserve chairmen appointed by Republicans by a wide margin.

It seems we must look instead to several variables that are mostly “good luck,” with perhaps a touch of “good policy.” Specifically, Democratic presidents have experienced, on average, better oil shocks than Republicans (some of which may have been induced by foreign policy), a better legacy of productivity shocks, more favorable international conditions, and perhaps more optimistic consumer expectations (as measured by the Michigan ICE).

These factors together explain slightly more than half of the 1.80 percentage point D-R growth gap. The rest remains, for now, a mystery of the still mostly-unexplored continent. The word “research,” taken literally, means search again. We invite other researchers to do so.

[y66]

The Answer to Whether Trump Obstructed Justice Now Seems Clear to Jeffrey Toobin at the New Yorker:

Quote

Most white-collar prosecutions turn on the issue of criminal intent. These cases involve behavior that would, in ordinary circumstances, be totally legal—if not for the intent of the defendant. Consider, for example, the entrepreneur who sells stock in a company whose value goes down. If business conditions turn sour, or the competitive environment changes, the loss is simply part of the risks of capitalism. There’s no crime. But if the entrepreneur knows that his company has no value, or has lied about its assets, then he has committed fraud. Insider trading is another example. It’s only criminal to sell stock if you had improper knowledge of the status of the company. In both kinds of cases, the key question regards the defendant’s state of mind. That’s why lawyers refer to “intent cases”; the outcome turns solely on the motivation of the defendant.

The issue of whether President Trump obstructed justice centers on his decision to fire James Comey, the F.B.I. director, last May. This is a classic intent case. The President clearly had the right to fire Comey, but he did not have the right to do so with improper intent. Specifically, the relevant obstruction-of-justice statute holds that any individual who “corruptly . . . influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice” is guilty of the crime. “Corruptly” is the key word. Did Trump act “corruptly” in firing Comey?

It is this question of corrupt intent that makes the Times’s recent blockbuster scoop so important. According to the article, the President tried to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel, last June, but he stopped when Don McGahn, the White House counsel, threatened to resign if Trump insisted on the dismissal. Trump apparently offered three justifications to fire Mueller—that Mueller had left one of Trump’s golf clubs in a dispute about dues; that Mueller’s former law firm had represented Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law; and that Trump had interviewed Mueller as a possible interim replacement for Comey as F.B.I. director. McGahn’s threat to resign shows that he saw these purported reasons as pretexts. The golf-dues matter was obviously trivial; the law firm’s representation of Kushner, which did not involve Mueller at all, could only have biased the special counsel in favor of the President’s family; and Trump’s willingness to interview Mueller for the F.B.I. position showed how much the President trusted Mueller, not that he believed the former F.B.I. director harbored any animosity toward him.

McGahn recognized the key fact—that Trump wanted to fire Mueller for the wrong reasons. Trump wanted to fire Mueller because his investigation was threatening to him. This, of course, also illuminates the reasons behind Trump’s firing of Comey, which took place just a month before the President’s confrontation with McGahn regarding Mueller. Trump and his advisers have offered various tortured rationalizations for the firing of Comey—initially, for example, on the ground that Comey had been unfair to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. Trump himself came clean in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt and in a meeting with Russia’s foreign minister. In both, Trump acknowledged that he fired Comey to stall or stop the Russia investigation—that is, the investigation of Trump himself and his campaign.

This was an improper purpose, and McGahn clearly saw that the same improper purpose underlay Trump’s determination to fire Mueller. So McGahn issued the ultimatum that prompted the President to back down.

Mueller and his team surely have evidence on obstruction of justice that has not yet been made public. But even on the available evidence, Trump’s position looks perilous indeed. The portrait is of a President using every resource at his disposal to shut down an investigation—of Trump himself. And now it has become clear that Trump’s own White House counsel rebelled at the President’s rationale for his actions.

Abundant questions remain about Trump’s fate in the Mueller investigation. Can or will a sitting President be indicted? What, if anything, will the House of Representatives do with respect to its impeachment powers? In what forum and format will the public see the full range of the evidence against the President? But on perhaps the most important question of all—whether the President of the United States committed the crime of obstruction of justice—the answer now seems clear.

[y66]

What has two thumbs and created ISIS?

Spoiler

This guy: https://www.youtube....eature=youtu.be

Sorry if that is off-topic.

[PassedOut]

Donald Trump appears to misunderstand basic facts

Quote

When asked if he believed in the existence of climate change, however, Mr. Trump’s answer did not chime with the scientific consensus.

“There is a cooling, and there’s a heating. I mean, look, it used to not be climate change, it used to be global warming. That wasn’t working too well because it was getting too cold all over the place,” he said.

Tillerson's description of Trump was right.

[kenberg]

 y66, on 2018-January-27, 21:43, said:

From Presidents and the U.S. Economy: An Econometric Exploration by Alan S. Blinder, Mark W. Watson

NBER Working Paper No. 20324

I suspect that it takes some work to see just what to make of this paper in its entirety, but it has potential.

The claim that research means to search again suggests we look at a poem by Gene Weingarten in today's WaPo Magzine:

Quote

A medical researcher went to her shrink

And said that her co-workers all seem to think

That she is too literal, and that it's a flaw,

"At me they laugh and they grin and guffaw."

"And how do you feel?" he inquired of her.

"Why, through monoamine neurotransmitters, sir."

https://www.washingt...m=.9aee71c1ee22

[Winstonm]

The money quote from a new Atlantic article:

Quote

From both the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, vast disclosures illuminating previously hidden offshore accounts of the rich and powerful worldwide, we can see the full extent to which corruption has become the master narrative of our times. We live in a world of smash-and-grab fortunes, amassed through political connections and outright theft. Paul Manafort, over the course of his career, was a great normalizer of corruption. The firm he created in the 1980s obliterated traditional concerns about conflicts of interest. It imported the ethos of the permanent campaign into lobbying and, therefore, into the construction of public policy.

And while Manafort is alleged to have laundered cash for his own benefit, his long history of laundering reputations is what truly sets him apart. He helped persuade the American political elite to look past the atrocities and heists of kleptocrats and goons. He took figures who should have never been permitted influence in Washington and softened their image just enough to guide them past the moral barriers to entry. He weakened the capital’s ethical immune system.

Helping elect Donald Trump, in so many ways, represents the culmination of Paul Manafort’s work. The president bears some likeness to the oligarchs Manafort long served: a businessman with a portfolio of shady deals, who benefited from a cozy relationship to government; a man whose urge to dominate, and to enrich himself, overwhelms any higher ideal. It wasn’t so long ago that Trump would have been decisively rejected as an alien incursion into the realm of public service. And while the cynicism about government that enabled Trump’s rise results from many causes, one of them is the slow transformation of Washington, D.C., into something more like the New Britain, Connecticut, of Paul Manafort’s youth.

[y66]

 Winstonm, on 2018-January-28, 10:41, said:

The bitcoin quote from a new Atlantic article:

fyp

[Winstonm]

 y66, on 2018-January-28, 11:46, said:

fyp

[kenberg]

 Winstonm, on 2018-January-28, 10:41, said:

The money quote from a new Atlantic article:

I am working my way through the article. It's interesting to see names pop up, Roger Stone for example, where I think oh yeah I seem to remember him. The history in this goes far beyond Manafort and I hope it gets picked up and thoroughly discussed.

One thing that this article makes clear to me, probably not its main purpose, is how totally unable I am to understand the world of power politics. I simply don't think that way, I never have. I am not claiming moral superiority here, I think it is in fact more substantial than that. It's as if the people engaged in this are a different species. I could no more become like them than I could become a frog.

[rmnka447]

 RedSpawn, on 2018-January-27, 09:21, said:

Your statistics are overlooking the fact that President Obama was handed an economy that was on the precipice of failure. In October 2007 - January 2009 -- Let the record show:

• Washington Mutual Bank failed (largest savings and thrift) and was acquired by Chase Bank in fire sale.
  
• Lehman Brothers failed.
  
• Indymac Bank failed and was put into FDIC receivorship. It was the 4th largest bank failure in U.S. history.
  
• Merrill Lynch was acquired by Bank of America to avoid bankruptcy.
  
• Wachovia Bank was acquired by Wells Fargo to avoid a ruinous bank failure.
  
• The FDIC fund was practically drained dry and was wheeling and dealing with big banks to avoid having to finance another big bank failure to prevent its own insolvency.
  
• The U.S. Treasury guaranteed ALL money market funds from September 2008 to September 2009 to reduce the enormous amounts of capital flight occurring in the capital markets.
  
• AIG, the largest insurer of credit default swaps, was bailed out to avoid bankruptcy -- especially since $3.6 trillion of the money market fund industry was invested in AIG debt.
  
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed into federal conservatorship to further reduce market panic.
  
• Citibank was loaned billions of dollars by the federal government to avoid bank failure.

Exactly how many years should a President be allowed to get the economy back on track given THESE type of cataclysmic events occurring before his Presidency?

Some place between 6 months and forever? You raise a very good question. I think if you want to claim that it took the full 8 years of the Obama administration that would be too long. But it would be also be unfair to expect a full recovery and be back on an even keel in a year or two. If you want to set that period at 3 or 4 years I have no problem with that.

But there's a problem with the way some pundits wax on about the economy. When their person is in charge, good economic news is always portrayed as the result of that person's effort. But when a switch occurs and the opposition gets in, any good news isn't portrayed as the result of the person in charge, but a carryover from the previous administration under their person. That's trying to have it both ways and basically being dishonest.

[Winstonm]

 rmnka447, on 2018-January-28, 15:11, said:

Some place between 6 months and forever? You raise a very good question. I think if you want to claim that it took the full 8 years of the Obama administration that would be too long. But it would be also be unfair to expect a full recovery and be back on an even keel in a year or two. If you want to set that period at 3 or 4 years I have no problem with that.

But there's a problem with the way some pundits wax on about the economy. When their person is in charge, good economic news is always portrayed as the result of that person's effort. But when a switch occurs and the opposition gets in, any good news isn't portrayed as the result of the person in charge, but a carryover from the previous administration under their person. That's trying to have it both ways and basically being dishonest.

On the length of time for a recovery, Japan's lost decade is a better gauge of how long it takes to overcome such a vast collapse.

Quote

The Lost Decade or the Lost 10 Years (失われた十年 Ushinawareta Jūnen) is a period of economic stagnation in Japan following the Japanese asset price bubble's collapse in late 1991 and early 1992. The term originally referred to the years from 1991 to 2000,[1] but recently the decade from 2001 to 2010 is often included,[2] so that the whole period is referred to as the Lost Score or the Lost 20 Years (失われた二十年, Ushinawareta Nijūnen). Broadly impacting the entire Japanese economy, over the period of 1995 to 2007, GDP fell from $5.33 to $4.36 trillion in nominal terms,[3] real wages fell around 5%,[4] while the country experienced a stagnant price level.[5] While there is some debate on the extent and measurement of Japan's setbacks,[6][7] the economic effect of the Lost Decade is well established and Japanese policymakers continue to grapple with its consequences. It took longer to recover from the impact of these events because the conditions imposed by the new environment were not favorable to the Japanese management style at that time.