Shot in the Dark

“What’s The Difference Between The GOP And Democrats?”

The short answer: whille the GOP on the national level capitulates on spending and allow all sorts of government scope creep the chips are down, the Democrats take the gas pedal of power and jam it to the firewall:

Democrats are increasingly lining up to support a “Green New Deal,” which, while vague on details, could end up being the largest expansion of government in decades.
As it stands, the “Green New Deal” is more aspirational than actual policy. Indeed, it takes its name from the New Deal of the 1930s, and its main backer, incoming Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, compared it to the Great Society of the 1960s.
More than 40 Democratic lawmakers support the “Green New Deal” as part of a broad plan to fight global warming and bring about what they see as “economic, social and racial justice.” A poll found most Americans supported the deal, but knew little about it.
But the big question is when Americans find out what’s in the “Green New Deal,” will they be willing to pay for it?

After a few months or years of media alarmism and emotional logrolling from an in-the-bag media?

Is that even a serious question?

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Mitch Berg

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44 responses to ““What’s The Difference Between The GOP And Democrats?””

  1. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Get your yellow vests now before supplies run out.

  2. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    This successful Republican businessman, who never held public office, became President of the United States. He launched a great trade war with 890 tariffs increased, and deported 1.8 million people and slashed American immigration by 90%. This is not Donald Trump, but Herbert Hoover. He took office in 1929, then the stock market crashed leading to the Great Depression of 1931-1933. He was the last Republican President for the next 2 generations.

  3. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    You are right, Emery. Only windmills can save the economy.

  4. J. Ewing Avatar
    J. Ewing

    Somehow we have got to END this idea that CO2 is something that needs to be controlled! It is NOT! If you look at the actual data from the IPCC and the EPA, it says that man-made CO2 has a near-negligible effect on “climate,” while their mouthpieces shout the Big Lie that it is the principal driver. The truth will set us free, but the Liars still rule the airwaves.

  5. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Greg: There is always the option to invest in Catastrophe bonds. CAT bonds are a decent option to de-correlate portfolios from broader markets, however, when catastrophes actually do strike they can precipitate a sharp rise in intra market correlations. If you prefer a bit more “diversity” in your portfolio: Greek Small Cap Index. Up 15% for 2018. Yes you read that right!

  6. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Emery, why should I dabble in esoteric investments when I can toss my money to the wind(mill)s and reap handsome profits even when they sit idle?

    We are talking the Green New Deal here, an opportunity to spin our economy down the same vortex to hell that the Germans did with their highly praised energiewende.

    Now to be honest, the “energy way” in Germany failed to produce much more than a hasty retreat to high sulfur coal but it did make a lot of uber-liberals uber-rich….which of course is what it was meant to do.

  7. mjb003 Avatar
    mjb003

    The only thing that I understand the Green New Deal to do would be to increase poverty. That would not be green at all. The US has reduced carbon emissions more than any other country since 1992. Part of that has been use of natural gas versus coal. Much of it is because capitalism thrives on efficiency. Higher efficiency generally leads to less waste.

  8. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    “. . . pay for it?”

    What is this “pay” of which you speak? It’s a government program. You don’t pay for government programs, government programs pay you.

  9. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    20 years is “two generations”?

  10. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Ha! MP, “Emery math, is a lot like toilet paper math – it’s hard to follow.

  11. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    It’s like when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, bosshoss. Forget it. He’s rolling.

  12. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Current cover the NRA’s American Rifleman:

    Guns & Gold: “Personal Security in Uncertain Times”

    When you’ve lost the NRA…..

  13. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Who has lost the NRA, Emery?
    Make sense please.

  14. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    It seems that our educashin system has failed Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. The US unemployment rate, in 1940, after 7 years of the New Deal, was 15%, and nominal GDP was almost, but not quite, what it had been in 1929.
    Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has a degree in Economics from Boston University.
    My advice is that you do not send your children to Boston University.

  15. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Getting nervous, Emery?

    Baby Boomers have most of their retirement money in the stock market. Some of those investment vehicles have mandatory withdrawal ages. When Boomers must begin taking withdrawals, the fund managers will begin to sell stock to raise the cash. Computers seeing falling prices will trigger Sell orders, depressing prices further. Can you say “death spiral?”

    All it would take is one North Korean official mis-understanding a command and boom – the world economy could disappear. Someone should write a book about it. Oh wait – someone did!

    https://www.amazon.com/Trulbert-Comic-Novella-About-World-ebook/dp/B00YL2UBLQ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

  16. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Since women and children are shorter than men, rising seas will hit them hardest, which is why we need socialism.

  17. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    I imagine a “Green New Deal” is very popular with the hard left voters who sent Ocasio-Cortez to congress.
    More sensible people, some of them even Democrats, know that the idea that you can save the planet by redistributing wealth using South African style race-based plundering might be a hard sell to the average voter.

  18. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    To put things into perspective. The S&P500 has now lost all its gains for 2018 (in 2 short months) and is now back to March 2017 levels.

    And let’s be honest with ourselves. The Fed’s mandate is around 2% inflation in the medium term and full employment. If both conditions are not met the Fed can lower rates. There is no reason for the Fed to leave rates as is. Moreover the Fed’s FOMC has been very open and very consistent with its communications. This month’s rate increase was communicated and was expected.

    What wasn’t expected is that Trump would initiate trade wars against both friends and foes (save perhaps Russia), withdrawing from multilateral trade agreements disrupting smooth supply lines to US businesses (hence the softer economic data for 2018-Q3) and shutting down the government because Congress wouldn’t slavishly agree to waste taxpayers’ money on his pet project (the Wall).

    Trump is currently the most dysfunctional institution in the US. Once he is out we will all exhale a sigh of relief, including the markets.

  19. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    No, Emery. Your elected Democrat heroes, have proven, continually, that they are economically illiterate. Each time they gain power, they revert to Keynesian policies, believing that this time, they will work. What that means is taxes on everything they can get away with, ala idiot Walz and his gas tax.

    So, if you think anyone besides you drooling left wing sycophants is going to rejoice a Democrat/socialist POTUS, I’ve got some beachfront property on the western border of Arizona that I want to sell you.

    By the way, since you are such a big supporter of open borders, please enlighten us when you sponsor one of those poor, illegal immigrant families, that are just looking for better lives, by paying their way to citizenship, helping them become productive citizens.

  20. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Good Lord, bosshoss429!

    Did you just ask our resident liberal Emery to PERSONALLY do good works (like take in a “refugee” family and put an American family out of work by finding them jobs)?

    EGADS, liberals don’t do good works PERSONALLY. That is the job of government, not people, and on a broader scale, that is the job of history.

    So sing it, Emery!

    Brothers, sisters and the non-cis-gendered, Raise your voices in The Internationale

    Stand up, all victims of oppression
    For the tyrants fear your might
    Don’t cling so hard to your possessions
    For you have nothing, if you have no rights
    Let racist ignorance be ended
    For respect makes the empires fall
    Freedom is merely privilege extended
    Unless enjoyed by one and all

    Chorus:
    So come brothers and sisters
    For the struggle carries on
    The Internationale
    Unites the world in song
    So comrades come rally
    For this is the time and place
    The international ideal
    Unites the human race

    Let no one build walls to divide us
    Walls of hatred nor walls of stone
    Come greet the dawn and stand beside us
    We’ll live together or we’ll die alone
    In our world poisoned by exploitation
    Those who have taken, now they must give
    And end the vanity of nations
    We’ve but one Earth on which to live

  21. jimf Avatar
    jimf

    “Wouldn’t slavishly agree to waste taxpayers money on his wall…”. You mean the main theme of his campaign? You start with the false premise that it’s “waste”, and forget that walls work.
    But let’s see- 150 billion to Iran- Ok. 5 billion for a protecting wall- Bad

  22. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Let me explain to you how rational people think, Emery.
    “Rational people” meaning people possessed of the power of reason, people who do not believe that the world revolves around Trump.
    Market up over 1,000 today. Trump did not call for an end to “trade wars.” Therefore Trump’s use of “trade wars” are not moving the market in a major way.
    Trump wants to negotiate trade deals that protect his citizens’ jobs & make his country’s corporations money. Every country on this planet does this. Tariffs are a way to push people to the bargaining table.
    It ain’t rocket science.

  23. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    And when it was up it was up, and when it was down it was down, and when it was only half way up it was neither up nor down.

    Cynicism should be reserved not so much for stock markets but for those who claim that they are efficient.

  24. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Yea, Greg, I think that I ODd on egg nog yesterday. 😀

  25. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Efficiency is a matter of degree and comparison.
    here was a time, back in the 90s, when standard economic textbooks explained that free markets had demonstrated that they were superior to command ecnomies in producing value.
    I hate to think at these textbooks say today. The facts are the same as they were in the 1990s, but the academy — all of it — has taken a hard turn to the Left, and grown more ideologically pure.
    In the 1990s, economic textbooks usually had a chapter on alternate means of measuring macro-economic value. There was a happiness undex and a few others.
    In 2012 I took an undergrad geography course. The authors devoted a chapter to finding a replacement for GDP as a measure of economic growth.
    I hate the way that we talk about trade. Free trade agreements aren’t hundreds of pages long, and they don’t require months or years of negotiation.
    All the so called “free trade agreements” we have signed are political documents that favor certain groups inside and outside the united states at the expense of other groups.
    If you had truly free trade, you would never have a carbon tax, since adopting a carbon tax is a competitive disadvantage. The country that treats its workers the worst would have a competitive advantage as well. So would a nation that ignored IP laws. No one is actually in favor of free trade other than hard core Libertarians. What people want is a trade regime that favors people like them and disfavor people that they do not like.

  26. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Woolly wrote: “Market up over 1,000 today. Trump did not call for an end to “trade wars.”

    All of that is well and good, and any bottom starts with a rally, but don’t forget that today’s rally only got back the losses from the prior two days of trading. The strongest rallies can be seen during bear markets. Today is a textbook example.

  27. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    The point is that you could not have predicted today’s rally using your “reasoning” Emery.
    I tend to ignore prognosticators who do no better than random guesses. They pretend to know the underlying reasons behind events, but they really know nothing.
    Historicism is the belief that the present is caused, in its entirety, by the past.
    The problem with historicism is that its adherents are not very good at predicting the future.
    Note that I make no predictions.

  28. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Now the question is whether this rally can be trusted, and can it be added on to, has a low in this bear market been made? Anyone wondering where to invest their money? I suggest booze. I mean where else can you get 40%. ;^)

  29. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    ‘It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.’ – Yogi Berra

  30. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Biggest one-day gain ever. Miraculous comeback. Those are odd headlines for the market tanking. Oh, wait, it’s not tanking. It’s almost as if big players are manipulating the market to generate profits just in time for year-end. Weird.

  31. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    JD for the win!

  32. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Trump supporters blamed Obama and Democrats for the cratering of the Dow in December.

    Yesterday Dow up 1000 points. Congratulations president Trump!

    Today — Dow futures down 400 points.
    Democrats are destroying the economy.

    Not much will change until Trump’s Trade Wars are resolved.

  33. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    Trump’s Trade Wars are resolved.

    Excuse me?

    They are China’s, Canada’s, Mexico’s, Japan’s and the EU’s trade war. It took Trump to start fighting. Clinton, Bush and Obama were our Neville Chamberlain’s, Trump is our Churchill.

    Hey Emery, what is your address? I’ll be right over with a contract written along the lines of “our trade deals”. You can be the U.S. and I can be everyone else.

  34. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    I just bought a whole lot of Keystone pipeline (and more) via TRP. I luv market drops. And I’m pretty happy about Trump too.

  35. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    If you’ve ever read a copy of The Economist, you will understand where Emery gets his economic ideas from. The Economist is the go-to mag for people with a dim understanding of the complexity of economic questions and answers. It is usually considered to be a flagship neo-liberal publication. It likes free trade and open open borders, and places supreme trust in international institutions and international agreements to carry us all to the Isles Melodious. Its economic viewpoint is that of the upper bourgeois. If educated managers, selected by a meritocracy (not democracy) are given a free hand, all of our problems will managed well, even global warming (The Economist is obsessed with AGW. It needs to managed by an educated elite!).
    There are many, many problems with POV of The Economist. I would rank dishonesty at the top. It claims to be in favor of free trade, yet its editors have no problem with “free trade” agreements that lay onerous burdens on its signatories. Obligations to reduce carbon output, obligations to educate children without regard to sex, “reproductive freedom” obligations, and of course, protections for the LGBT community. The Economist will look at a monstrosity like the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement (hundreds of pages long, with no less than 4 annexes) and call it a great example of free trade.
    https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-full-text

  36. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Whatever President Trump may have said about guarding national security or creating steel jobs, the tariffs were never about military strength or American workers. Their purpose was to enrich steel firms. They succeeded—but at an exorbitant price. ~ Peterson Institute
    https://piie.com/blogs/trade-investment-policy-watch/steel-profits-gain-steel-users-pay-under-trumps-protectionism

    US steel producers gain 8700 jobs.

    US steel users pay $650,000 per job created.

  37. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    If you doubt what I wrote in my 2:06, look at the about page of the PIIE Emery references.
    Free trade (that isn’t really free trade), Gender consciousness, praise for international institutions, inequality, and, of course, praise for the TPP, which was rejected by both Hillary and Trump as providing insufficient protection for American jobs and industries.
    The one thing that PIIE is on record as not caring about is protecting American industries and jobs.

  38. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Annualized growth of business investment in US is now lower than it was before the Ryan-Trump “pro-growth” tax cut one year ago. https://www.ft.com/content/4b20cad6-021f-11e9-99df-6183d3002ee1

    A simpler take is that Trump and the Republicans have managed a massive tax cut that has caused markets to go down by raising expectations about inflation and interest rates when leaving well enough alone was probably the superior strategy. In short, just letting the Obama economy run was the smart play. 

  39. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Sorry, again Emery. The Obumbler economy was held up by billions of fiat currency printed by the Fed, as well as their keeping interest rates artificially low. Inflation is now creeping up, because of that fiat currency.

    In case you haven’t noticed, the U.S. dollar has had its’ lowest exchange rate against the Canadian dollar in years.

    Obama’s chickens are coming home to roost and I believe that Trump is working toward auditing the Fed, then shutting it down. If one looks at his past comments on central banks, they would realize, like millions of Americans, that he views the Fed as the huge problem that it is. This is true of the citizens of other countries now, too. They are rejecting the crushing influence of the central banks on their lives.

  40. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    The people who know the least are willing to opine the most.
    Your record as a prognosticator is dismal, Emery, going back way before your prediction of a massive Hillary landslide the day before the 2016 election. I can think of no reason why any person would pay attention to your analysis.
    On the other hand, here is something interesting: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/27/world/facebook-moderators.html
    Seems like you’ve got trouble if you either try to export American values to the world, or import world values into the US. Huh. Maybe something like national sovereignty is the answer?

  41. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    From the article linked above: The Facebook employees who meet to set the guidelines, mostly young engineers and lawyers, try to distill highly complex issues into simple yes-or-no rules.
    It is inconceivable that human discourse will be improved by following speech codes designed by young engineers and lawyers. It is inconceivable that an intelligent person would believe that human discourse will be improved by following speech codes designed by you engineers and lawyers. Our elites, the people who believe that they are leading us into a new future of a connected world, are idiots.

  42. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    If you’re not following some people you dislike, you’re doing it wrong. I’m happy to help.

  43. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    Dislike but respect would be my requirement, but you be you.

  44. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    The rise in the markets was based on an illusion Trump created with a debt financed tax cut. The drop is a return to reality.

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