[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2016-November-25, 23:26, said:

Your lack of understanding of the mechanisms of Treasury auctions and the policies of the buyers makes it difficult if not impossible to have a discussion. I know it was written quickly, but the scenario you presented above is silly to anyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of monetary affairs.

Put simply, one cannot apply to countries and governments the same impulses that guide individuals and families as it applies to debt and monetary policies. Uncle Joe may fear that Bill's windmill might go broke so he won't lend him money; that fear does not apply to China buying U.S. t-bonds; China does not fear the U.S. going broke. It is a ludicrous idea.

I'll begin, as often, by confessing ignorance. But not total ignorance.

I accept that national debt and personal debt are two different things. It does not immediately follow from this that national debt is unimportant.

I brought up a wikipedia article

https://en.wikipedia...sks_and_debates


Yes I also know that wikipedia is not the leading source of economic research. But it's a start.


The graph at the top of the wik page, on federal debt held by the public, illustrates what I had understood to be correct: As a percentage of gdp, the national debt was very high during and just after WW II, it then dropped off substantially, and has since grown substantially.

We do not have to speak of personal debt to note that a short term peak in debt, caused by a crisis and dropping back after the crisis, is different from sustained debt growth that is accepted as the norm. So where are we?

A suggestion for caution, from the wik:

Quote

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke stated in April 2010 that "Neither experience nor economic theory clearly indicates the threshold at which government debt begins to endanger prosperity and economic stability. But given the significant costs and risks associated with a rapidly rising federal debt, our nation should soon put in place a credible plan for reducing deficits to sustainable levels over time."

Of course view vary. Krugman is quoted:

Quote

According to Paul Krugman, "It's true that foreigners now hold large claims on the United States, including a fair amount of government debt. But every dollar's worth of foreign claims on America is matched by 89 cents' worth of U.S. claims on foreigners. And because foreigners tend to put their U.S. investments into safe, low-yield assets, America actually earns more from its assets abroad than it pays to foreign investors. If your image is of a nation that's already deep in hock to the Chinese, you've been misinformed. Nor are we heading rapidly in that direction."

For me, about the only thing that is obvious is that the answer isn't obvious. If we go back to the public debt as a fraction of gdp chart, it appears that except for 1995-2000, the general trend has been upward for quite a while now. One might attribute the five year downward slope to the wise choices of Bill Clinton. Or one might note that the break up of the USSR made many things easier for us, at least temporarily. My guess is that it is a combination of these two items. Whatever the reasons for that decline, the rest of the trend is up.

Bernanke's rather mild claim seems to be that sooner or later we have to deal with this somehow. This seems right, well, obvious, to me. Does anyone disagree? But how to deal with it? Well, I don't know. I am sure Paull Krugman is a smart guy. He also strikes me as someone who has never entertained even for a moment the possibility that he could be wrong about anything. Wisdom suggests at least a bit of caution here. Generally speaking, I do favor investing money in the future. But really, who doesn't? The question is how to choose.

[jonottawa]

Ann Coulter: A Night to Remember

"In fairness, we Trump supporters don’t want to be sore winners, so we ought to set a time limit on our gloating. I propose three years."

[Vampyr]

jonottawa, on 2016-November-26, 11:37, said:

Ann Coulter: A Night to Remember

"In fairness, we Trump supporters don’t want to be sore winners, so we ought to set a time limit on our gloating. I propose three years."

Well, you had better gloat elsewhere, because well before three years have gone by, all forum members will have you on ignore. Doing it myself now.

[kenberg]

.

[mike777]

Granted 20 trillion in debt sounds like a lot.

I have never been a deficit hawk but ya...thats a lot.
I guess with Reps in charge we will hear a bit less whining about the deficit. I read stories that the tax cuts will result in a 30 trillion debt level in ten years. We can hope it is only 30 trillion in 2027.

As many others have mentioned see Medicare ....it is a mess today, it will be a holy mess soon and no one will dare cut it. The debate will be how to expand it...universal health care anyone?

[y66]

Guest post by R. Derek Black:

Quote

I could easily have spent the night of Nov. 8 elated, surrounded by friends and family, thinking: “We did it. We rejected a multicultural and globalist society. We defied the elites, rejected political correctness, and made a statement millions of Americans have wanted to shout for decades.”

I’d be planning with other white nationalists what comes next, and assessing just how much influence our ideology would have on this administration. That’s who I was a few years ago.

Things look very different for me now. I am far away from the community that I grew up in, and that I once hoped could lead our country to a moment like this.

I was born into a prominent white nationalist family — David Duke is my godfather, and my dad started Stormfront, the first major white nationalist website — and I was once considered the bright future of the movement.

Continue reading the main story
In 2008, at age 19, I ran for and won a Palm Beach County Republican committee seat a few months before Barack Obama was elected president. I received national media attention and for a while couldn’t go out without being congratulated for “telling them what’s what.”

I grew up in West Palm Beach across the water from Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, and he was always a loud presence in the neighborhood. I would drive a pickup truck with a Confederate flag sticker past his driveway each morning on my way to the beach and my family would walk out into the front yard to watch his fireworks on New Year’s Eve.

It surprises me now how often Mr. Trump and my 19-year-old self would have agreed on our platforms: tariffs to bring back factory jobs, increased policing of black communities, deporting illegal workers and the belief that American culture was threatened. I looked at my white friends and family who felt dispossessed, at the untapped political support for anyone — even a kid like me — who wasn’t afraid to talk about threats to our people from outsiders, and I knew not only that white nationalism was right, but that it could win.

Several years ago, I began attending a liberal college where my presence prompted huge controversy. Through many talks with devoted and diverse people there — people who chose to invite me into their dorms and conversations rather than ostracize me — I began to realize the damage I had done. Ever since, I have been trying to make up for it.

For a while after I left the white nationalist movement, I thought my upbringing made me exaggerate the likelihood of a larger political reaction to demographic change. Then Mr. Trump gave his Mexican “rapists” speech and I spent the rest of the election wondering how much my movement had set the stage for his. Now I see the anger I was raised with rocking the nation.

People have approached me looking for a way to change the minds of Trump voters, but I can’t offer any magic technique. That kind of persuasion happens in person-to-person interactions and it requires a lot of honest listening on both sides. For me, the conversations that led me to change my views started because I couldn’t understand why anyone would fear me. I thought I was only doing what was right and defending those I loved.

I think the “Hamilton” cast modeled well one way to make that same connection when they appealed to Vice President-elect Mike Pence from the stage: “We, sir — we — are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us.” Afterward, the actor Brandon Victor Dixon explained, “I hope he thinks of us every time he has to deal with an issue or talk about a bill or present anything.” I’m sure Mr. Pence believes his policies are just. But now he has heard from individuals who are worried about those policies. That might open him to new conversations.

I never would have begun my own conversations without first experiencing clear and passionate outrage to what I believed from those I interacted with. Now is the time for me to pass on that outrage by clearly and unremittingly denouncing the people who used a wave of white anger to take the White House.

Mr. Trump’s comments during the campaign echoed how I also tapped into less-than-explicit white nationalist ideology to reach relatively moderate white Americans. I went door-to-door in 2008 talking about how Hispanic immigration was overwhelming “American” culture, how black neighborhoods were hotbeds of crime, and how P.C. culture didn’t let us talk about any of it. I won that small election with 60 percent of the vote.

A substantial portion of the American public has made clear that it feels betrayed by the establishment, and so it elected a president who denounces all Muslims as potential conspirators in terrorism; who sees black communities as crime-ridden; who taps into white American mistrust of foreigners, particularly of Hispanics; and who promises the harshest form of immigration control. If we thought Mr. Trump himself might backtrack on some of this, we are now watching him fill a cabinet with people able to make that campaign rhetoric into real policy.

Much has been made of the incoherence of Mr. Trump’s proposals, but what really matters is who does — and doesn’t — need to fear them. None of the ideas that Mr. Trump has put forward would endanger me, and I once enthusiastically advocated for most of what he says. No proposal to put more cops in black neighborhoods to stop and frisk residents would cause me to be harassed. A ban on Muslim immigration doesn’t implicate all people who look like me in terrorism. Overturning Roe v. Wade will not force me to make a dangerous choice about my health, nor will a man who personifies sexual assault without penalty make me any less safe. When the most powerful demographic in the United States came together to assert that making America great again meant asserting their supremacy, they were asserting my supremacy.

The wave of violence and vile language that has risen since the election is only one immediate piece of evidence that this campaign’s reckless assertion of white identity comes at a huge cost. More and more people are being forced to recognize now what I learned early: Our country is susceptible to some of our worst instincts when the message is packaged correctly.

No checks and balances can redeem what we’ve unleashed. The reality is that half of the voters chose white supremacy, though saying that makes me a hypocrite. I was a much more extreme partisan than a vast majority of Trump voters and I never would have recognized that label.

The motivations that led to this choice are more complex. I have no doubt many of his supporters voted thinking he’d soften his rhetoric, that his words didn’t really matter. The words were not disqualifying for them because they don’t see, or refuse to see, what the message of hate will reap.

Most of Mr. Trump’s supporters did not intend to attack our most vulnerable citizens. But with him in office we have a duty to protect those who are threatened by this administration and to win over those who don’t recognize the impact of their vote. Even those on the furthest extreme of the white nationalist spectrum don’t recognize themselves doing harm — I know that because it was easy for me, too, to deny it.

That is the opening for those of us who disagree with Mr. Trump. It’s now our job to argue constantly that what voters did in elevating this man to the White House constitutes the greatest assault on our own people in a generation, and to offer another option.

There are millions of Americans who don’t understand why anyone might worry about the effects of this election. They see it as “feelings” versus their own real concerns. Those of us on the other side need to be clear that Mr. Trump’s callous disregard for people outside his demographic is intolerable, and will be destructive to the entire nation.

If I had not changed, I would have been jubilant after this election and more certain than ever that anxiety from a shrinking white majority would result in the election of more people who tap into this simple narrative. Now I’m convinced this doesn’t have to be our destiny.

Mr. Trump’s victory must make all Americans acknowledge that the choice of embracing or rejecting multiculturalism is not abstract. I know this better than most, because I’ve followed both paths. It is the choice of embracing or rejecting our own people.

[mike777]

y66, on 2016-November-26, 21:59, said:

Guest post by R. Derek Black:

Never heard of Mr. Black or stormfront....Y66 you read weird internet sites.

[onoway]

mike777, on 2016-November-26, 22:17, said:

Never heard of Mr. Black or stormfront....Y66 you read weird internet sites.

I don't remember the name for sure, but 99.9 % sure it was this guy: He was raised and groomed to take over the leadership of white supremecy groups, and grew up surrounded by people who shared those values with his parents. He was very active and dedicated to promoting the cause through an internet site, and was highly successful in his proselytizing. When he left home and went to university it was basically the first time he had been the odd man out, in surroundings with people who had a very different point of view,and very different values. He gradually began to rethink the values and ideas he had so fervently and successfully been preaching. Through friendships and interactions and observations he made there he eventually came to be the person who wrote the letter that y66 posted. A remarkable young man to be able to shed his conditioning, and it was not without a lot of anguish, especially in regard to his family.

[hrothgar]

mike777, on 2016-November-26, 22:17, said:

Never heard of Mr. Black or stormfront....Y66 you read weird internet sites.

This was an Op Ed piece from the New York Times.

While I have never heard of the author before now, I have most certainly heard of Stormfront...

[kenberg]

Going back, at least, to high school when a teacher suggested I write a term paper on Freud and I said "Who's Freud?" I continue to stun people with my lack of knowledge. Cherdano said I had to read more TNC and,as with Freud, I had no idea what he was talking about. Cherdano suggested my superficial knowledge of Huma Abedin might be sexist. When Trump said "Ask Hannity" I had only the vaguest idea of who Hannity is. And now Black. Never heard of him. never heard of Stormfront. Mea very culpa. I also don't know how to say very in Latin.

Anyway, it was an interesting enough article but not fascinating. Pam (Onoway) got more at the sort of thing that would interest me. My own migration from religion came with a fair amount of emotional stress. I look back with interest and curiosity as to just how it came about,. No short explanation would do. And I have come to realize how much my general way of looking at life was at least influenced by early experiences, family and otherwise. For me, that would have been a more interesting piece.But of course he gets to write the piece he wants to write.

Hamilton: Had I been in the audience, I would not have booed Pence. Hey! Black wrote a paragraph about Hamilton and never got to that level of specificity about himself. He speaks of what Dixon the actor did, he does not say if he would have done it. For a fairly long article, he says little about himself.. My view of what Dixon did: He singled out a member of the audience and, to all intents and purposes, announced "You are not welcome here". Not phrased exactly that way, but really it was the same message as the boos. Of course the audience and the actors have a right to send that message. I would have declined to do so. Again, I am saying more about myself in this paragraph than Black said about himself in a whole article. Mostly, the article was a lecture. I get tired of listening to lectures. In college, I skipped a lot of classes. An awful lot of classes.

Anyway, I learned a bit.

[y66]

WaPo ran this story about Derek Black last month. It's one of the most fascinating stories I've read this year. Love the part near the end where his old man got thrown out of his own birthday party because he wanted to invite his son in. That was heartening. Quisque ad sua gustus.

[barmar]

kenberg, on 2016-November-27, 07:44, said:

My view of what Dixon did: He singled out a member of the audience and, to all intents and purposes, announced "You are not welcome here". Not phrased exactly that way, but really it was the same message as the boos. Of course the audience and the actors have a right to send that message. I would have declined to do so.

I don't see it like that.

Pence has voluntarily chosen to be a political figure, and criticism from the public is part of the job. While Dixon could have tried to communicate with the Trump administration privately, like any other citizen, those requests are easily ignored. The administration can't easily ignore such a public display as this.

Does this mean that POTUS, VP, and their families can't go out in public without being in danger of being accosted like this? Yes. They're also in danger of being assassinated, so we should put this in perspective.

[ggwhiz]

I saw a documentary on Derek Black when there was nothing on TV and the first few minutes hooked me.

It's an extraordinary look at the time/effort and dumb luck that turned a rabid radical and a sobering insight into what it will take to bring radical islamists to heel when the quick fix of just kill them all (with "acceptable" collateral damage) has way too much appeal for my liking.

ps. Is that not the most ironic last name of all time?

[kenberg]

y66, on 2016-November-27, 08:59, said:

WaPo ran this story about Derek Black last month. It's one of the most fascinating stories I've read this year. Love the part near the end where his old man got thrown out of his own birthday party because he wanted to invite his son in. That was heartening. Quisque ad sua gustus.

A much ore interesting (article, for me anyway. I recall that I saw this in the Post, but the title pretty much marked it as the sort of thing I didn't read. "White Fight of Derek Black"? Oh how cute. White (race) and Black (surname) cleverly mixed together. Ugh. But you can't tell a book by its cover, I have now read it nd found it interesting. How do we become who we are? A good question indeed.

He went to New College. And I gather his parents actually sent him there. Astounding. It would be like me sending a kid to Liberty University. When I was going to the University of Minnesota I was asked if any of the courses there were tempting me toward atheism. I was dating their daughter at the time so I fudged a bit, that horse had left the barn quite a while back. (We soon broke up, religion had nothing to do with it.)

I wish him well in his struggles.

[kenberg]

barmar, on 2016-November-27, 09:25, said:

I don't see it like that.

Pence has voluntarily chosen to be a political figure, and criticism from the public is part of the job. While Dixon could have tried to communicate with the Trump administration privately, like any other citizen, those requests are easily ignored. The administration can't easily ignore such a public display as this.

Does this mean that POTUS, VP, and their families can't go out in public without being in danger of being accosted like this? Yes. They're also in danger of being assassinated, so we should put this in perspective.

I understand, and of course listening to criticism is an essential part of the job. I kept it to how I would react in a specific situation. And even here, it depends. If a big show was made of Pence nobly attending this provocative theater event, demonstrating that he, Pence, is a great and magnanimous figure, then fine, boo him. He would be the one who politicized his appearance. Of course it is probably not possible (unfortunately) for Pence to just go out for an evening of entertainment without it being An Event. But as far as I am concerned, if he wants to go to the corner bar and have a beer, let him. Skip the cheers, skip the boos. Not that anyone would ever vote for me anyway, but I would never ever absolutely never take a job as President or Vice President or any such thing. If I go out for an evening and nobody knows who I am, that is a very good thing.

[y66]

David Frum: Can the Establishment Strike Back?

Quote

“People jump on bandwagons—that is the nature of politics,” David Frum, a Canadian-American and a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, says. “Every day, every hour, you see people who had been previously opposed to Donald Trump who are prominent intellectual names making some kind of peace with him.” Frum refuses to make that peace. While he was initially “Trump-curious” about the candidate’s policy ideas, Frum believes that, as President, Trump will fundamentally undermine American institutions and the rule of law. He seeks to make common cause with the Democrats to defend basic rights and keep order in government.

[jonottawa]

To me the Hamilton thing was much like the 'We didn't vote for Bush' thing. They had the right to do what they did, but it was inappropriate in that venue. If someone had done the same to Obama in December 2008, the backlash would have been monumental. Generally what folks on my side stress is intellectual honesty & consistency. And the other side seldom gives us that, because they know they lose the argument the moment that they do.

As for the Black kid, those who surrender their allegiance to ANY cause and join the other side always make for interesting stories but those stories seldom prove anything. Millions of lifelong Democrats voted for Trump, but we're not reading stories about them for some reason.

Anyway, here's a good story in Breitbart why Trump would be nuts to choose Romney for State.

Interesting: Obama urged Clinton to concede on Election Night

[PassedOut]

jonottawa, on 2016-November-27, 12:38, said:

Generally what folks on my side stress is intellectual honesty & consistency.

How does that square with the constant use of fake news as evidence?

[Winstonm]

double post

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2016-November-26, 09:06, said:

I'll begin, as often, by confessing ignorance. But not total ignorance.

I accept that national debt and personal debt are two different things. It does not immediately follow from this that national debt is unimportant.

I brought up a wikipedia article

https://en.wikipedia...sks_and_debates


Yes I also know that wikipedia is not the leading source of economic research. But it's a start.


The graph at the top of the wik page, on federal debt held by the public, illustrates what I had understood to be correct: As a percentage of gdp, the national debt was very high during and just after WW II, it then dropped off substantially, and has since grown substantially.

We do not have to speak of personal debt to note that a short term peak in debt, caused by a crisis and dropping back after the crisis, is different from sustained debt growth that is accepted as the norm. So where are we?

A suggestion for caution, from the wik:

[/sup]Of course view vary. Krugman is quoted:



For me, about the only thing that is obvious is that the answer isn't obvious. If we go back to the public debt as a fraction of gdp chart, it appears that except for 1995-2000, the general trend has been upward for quite a while now. One might attribute the five year downward slope to the wise choices of Bill Clinton. Or one might note that the break up of the USSR made many things easier for us, at least temporarily. My guess is that it is a combination of these two items. Whatever the reasons for that decline, the rest of the trend is up.

Bernanke's rather mild claim seems to be that sooner or later we have to deal with this somehow. This seems right, well, obvious, to me. Does anyone disagree? But how to deal with it? Well, I don't know. I am sure Paull Krugman is a smart guy. He also strikes me as someone who has never entertained even for a moment the possibility that he could be wrong about anything. Wisdom suggests at least a bit of caution here. Generally speaking, I do favor investing money in the future. But really, who doesn't? The question is how to choose.

What I would gather from reading the opinions of Bernanke and Krugman, two of the smartest people I know on monetary issues, is that the histrionics about the immediate threat of the debt is totally unfounded.

I also noticed something else - when I ask for specifics instead of generalized claims of doom I am met with silence. From that I can only conclude that the doomsters are repeating someone else's claims else they would understand the arguments behind the claims - if there are any arguments, that is.