[RD] Clinton vs. Trump - USA Presidential race.

[Lexicus]

And, boy oh boy, was that Bill Clinton really stupid for creating a surplus. I mean, man, that guy was a real right-winger, let me tell you.

Yes, Bill Clinton's budget surplus was stupid, and I'm of the opinion that he was right-of-center.

Hmmmm, yes and no. Leftists don't set out to bankrupt the state on purpose. It sometimes happens, yes, but only in robber-states (Venezuela, Kirchnerist Argentina, Zimbabwe, etc.) do they actually set out to create chaos because they profit from it.

Currency-issuing governments can't go bankrupt, they can only inflate their currencies into worthlessness.

 

[El_Machinae]

I think people can rewatch this. See how all the warning signs are there. Even the warning about future anger from people who believed his con.
But really, all the symptoms are in evidence
(ignore the title. all youtube videos are posted by partisans, it seems)

 

[Sommerswerd]

I like short-hair Megyn Kelly

 

[Arakhor]

I'm sure that the usual suspects would call the NY Times biased (hey, maybe it is - I'm not American), but they're currently predicting a 93% chance of Clinton winning, which I think qualifies as overwhelming odds, even by Onejay's standards.

 

[El_Machinae]

The NYT is biased. A bit more than 'acceptable'.

Honestly, everyone should be biased against Trump by this point. If someone's past behaviour doesn't affect your impression of that person, then you're superhuman. How can a journalist give a person's statements a carte blance if the interviewee has shown very little consistency and a constant willingness to lie?

 

[Leoreth]

And, boy oh boy, was that Bill Clinton really stupid for creating a surplus. I mean, man, that guy was a real right-winger, let me tell you.

I mean, yes? The whole thing with the Clinton presidency is that it came about because he was willing to drop traditionally liberal ideas and adopt more typically conservative positions in the light of the political zeitgeist since Reagan. Democrats have still not turned around from that. Sanders was only the first sign in that direction.

I do have to say though that running a surplus in a booming economy is not quite the same as doing so during a recession or slow growth.

The NYT is biased. A bit more than 'acceptable'.

Honestly, everyone should be biased against Trump by this point. If someone's past behaviour doesn't affect your impression of that person, then you're superhuman. How can a journalist give a person's statements a carte blance if the interviewee has shown very little consistency and a constant willingness to lie?

Yes. I think this election has exposed some serious problems with the analytically blind (and dare I say it, politically correct) approach of being balanced and unbiased, and the idea that you have to present two options as equally valid in any given situation. It has come kind of late but I think a significant portion of journalists have learnt their lesson.

 

[Takhisis]

Currency-issuing governments can't go bankrupt, they can only inflate their currencies into worthlessness.

Which in effect renders their ability to pay negligible. Call it insolvent rather than bankrupt if you're going for technical terms.

I like short-hair Megyn Kelly

What a deplorable comment.

I'm sure that the usual suspects would call the NY Times biased (hey, maybe it is - I'm not American), but they're currently predicting a 93% chance of Clinton winning, which I think qualifies as overwhelming odds, even by Onejay's standards.

The NYT have openly stated their support for HRC in an editorial. Which is not the same as saying that they'll simply make up statistics. I don't know what methods they're using, but a key problem with Drumpf's aggressive strategy (when in doubt, insult or accuse) is that he's lowering the ceiling on himself all the time.

 

[El_Machinae]

Yes. I think this election has exposed some serious problems with the analytically blind (and dare I say it, politically correct) approach of being balanced and unbiased, and the idea that you have to present two options as equally valid in any given situation. It has come kind of late but I think a significant portion of journalists have learnt their lesson.

I don't know about that. The press has roundly turned on Trump. Now, they go a bit too light on Hillary, in general. And it's hard to figure out why. They clearly have tools to be harder on her than they've been. Each of them has to be subconsciously worried that riding Hillary harder made a Trump presidency more likely.

BvBPL is a good example. He's reasonably hard on Hillary. But he gets chastised for not excoriating Trump even worse. His insights into Hillary are useful, but are being perceived in a pro-Trump way.

 

[Arakhor]

Well, according to the "likely/probably" tables listed further down the linked page, Clinton already has 272 EV just for likely and probable Democratic states, ignoring any of the battleground states. However, that chart does list Florida, Nevada, North Carolina and Nebraska as likely Democrat, so presumably strange things are already afoot.

 

[Leoreth]

That's a good point. I'm mostly frustrated with the previous practice of comparing things that do not need to be compared and trying to create equivalencies. Like back in September when there were actual factual proofs that Trump used his foundation to bribe the Florida state attorney, we had unsubstantiated deliberations about how the Clinton foundation "casts shadows on her campaign".

I agree though that the press is currently very generous to Clinton. Which is not good a) because she has a tendency for secrecy and needs strong journalism to oppose that and b) because it fuels Trump's charges unnecessarily, further eroding the role of free press.

My hope is that this is mostly because the press just had it with Trump, and the various ways he has abused the media over the last months, and we will return to critical journalism towards Clinton as soon as she is in office.

 

[Kyriakos]

That's a good point. I'm mostly frustrated with the previous practice of comparing things that do not need to be compared and trying to create equivalencies. Like back in September when there were actual factual proofs that Trump used his foundation to bribe the Florida state attorney, we had unsubstantiated deliberations about how the Clinton foundation "casts shadows on her campaign".

I agree though that the press is currently very generous to Clinton. Which is not good a) because she has a tendency for secrecy and needs strong journalism to oppose that and b) because it fuels Trump's charges unnecessarily, further eroding the role of free press.

My hope is that this is mostly because the press just had it with Trump, and the various ways he has abused the media over the last months, and we will return to critical journalism towards Clinton as soon as she is in office.

Lol. Yes, don't hold your breath. In fact one of the main (and likely very near the top one; likely only second to economic troubles for many) reasons that Trump has a voting base is just how appalling those media are. Without so many lies and corruption there would have been less people willing to go for an outsider, let alone one with this kind of tone.
If you actually think those media will "return to critical journalism", have a word with Ramsay Bolton, cause you clearly haven't been paying attention

 

[Lexicus]

Which in effect renders their ability to pay negligible. Call it insolvent rather than bankrupt if you're going for technical terms.

Insolvent would be closer, but it is still wrong. A currency-issuing government literally cannot be rendered unable to make payments in its own currency. The problem caused by inflating the currency into worthlessness is not that the government cannot meet its obligations, but that its ability to do so is rendered meaningless.

EDIT: Since people don't seem to get it, the Clinton surplus was stupid because he simultaneously was doing trade policy that dropped the bottom from the foreign trade balance.
These two things combined (government surplus, foreign surplus wrt to the US private sector) meant that private debt in the US mushroomed throughout the 2000s, with results that need not be spelled out in detail.

 

[Zkribbler]

I must agree. He utterly failed to include the opposition in his methodology. At best he had forced capitulation. It is the signature failing of his administration.

:

"He utterly failed to include the opposition??" This is so wrong. Obama always had a Republican in his cabinet. When Obama was putting together his stimulus package, he personally came to Capital Hill to meet with House Republicans; they refused to admit him. During the budget crisis, he offered $10 in cuts, including to Social Security and Medicare, for every $1 in new revenues agreed to by the Republicans. They refused to discuss agreeing to any increased revenue.

Most importantly, when he came into office, Obama faced three major problems. a short-term problem: the crashing economy; a medium-term problem: unemployment; and a long-term problem: budget deficits. His stimulus was successful in handling the short-term problem and he halted the crash, but then in late 2009, Obama pivoted away from solving unemployment and embraced Republican-touted austerity for solving the deficit problem. This concession strangled job creation, which was crucial for attacking the long-term problem of reducing the deficit.

As an added bit of irony, the Republicans used the lack of jobs creation along with their own false promise to create "jobs, jobs, jobs" to capture the House, to impose more austerity, to ****** the recovery even further, and then to blame the whole mess on Obama.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I do have to say though that running a surplus in a booming economy is not quite the same as doing so during a recession or slow growth.

Truth is that the economy in the nineties was growing too fast. While it was great for millionaire making if you timed your bubble to bubble jumps well it really turned mostly into wasted frivolity. Had Clinton been able to drag a little harder on the reins and put even more payment against the national debt we'd have been in a better position to deficit spend later when things inevitably slowed down.

 

[Zkribbler]

Truth is that the economy in the nineties was growing too fast. While it was great for millionaire making if you timed your bubble to bubble jumps well it really turned mostly into wasted frivolity. Had Clinton been able to drag a little harder on the reins and put even more payment against the national debt we'd have been in a better position to deficit spend later when things inevitably slowed down.

I'm not to sure how much I agree. True, the economy was being powered by the dot.com bubble, but Clinton ended further borrowing by balancing the budget. s for paying down the debt faster, you only pay off bonds when they become due. "Faster" is not an option. Moreover, we were due to zero out the debt during the next administration. Unfortunately, Herr Bush brought into the lie that, if you cut taxes for the very rich, the economy will take off and more than pay for the tax breaks.

 

[Lexicus]

Paying down the national debt is stupid. Repeat after me: it is stupid, it is stupid, it is stupid. The deflationary forces it unleashes are far more damaging to the economy than any realistic level of deficit or public debt.

Like, literally every time the federal government has run surpluses and attempted to 'pay down' the national debt depression or panic has followed. And economists who knew what they were talking about (ie, understood the implications of the federal balance for the other sectors of the economy) predicted at the time that Clinton's surplus would not be able to last. Bush's tax cuts were not remotely part of this equation.

"Now, you might ask, "What's the matter with a negative private sector balance?". We had that during the Clinton boom, and we had low inflation, decent growth and very low unemployment. The Goldilocks economy, as it was known. The great moderation. Again, few economists saw what was happening with any degree of clarity. My colleagues at the Levy Institute were not fooled. Wynne Godley wrote brilliant stuff during this period. While the CBO was predicting surpluses "as far as the eye can see" (15+ years in their forecasts), Wynne said it would never happen. He knew it couldn't because the government could only run surpluses for 15+ years if the domestic private sector ran deficits for 15+ years. The CBO had it all wrong, and they had it wrong because they did not understand the implications of their forecast for the rest of the economy. The private sector cannot survive in negative territory. It cannot go on, year after year, spending more than its income. It is not like the US government. It cannot support rising indebtedness in perpetuity. It is not a currency issuer. Eventually, something will give. And when it does, the private sector will retrench, the economy will contract, and the government's budget will move back into deficit."

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-bill-clintons-balanced-budget-destroyed-the-economy-2012-9

 

[onejayhawk]

Yes, Bill Clinton's budget surplus was stupid, and I'm of the opinion that he was right-of-center.

Feel free to credit Gingrich.

Paying down the national debt is stupid. Repeat after me: it is stupid, it is stupid, it is stupid. The deflationary forces it unleashes are far more damaging to the economy than any realistic level of deficit or public debt.

The exception to the rule.

J

 

[El_Machinae]

The problem with most MMT cribbed notes is that they tend to lump corporate and household debt into the same category. But it's also important to remember that all of our intuitions regarding finance are merely that ... intuitions. A lot of people cannot easily modify their understanding of economics to see how the various rules change when talking about real vs nominal or fixed vs fiat. They're all 'economics', but require different intuitions.

Honestly, Trump's patterns are starting to really make me nervous. His dog-whistles to violence were our warning signs. We starting to conflate online polls with real polling. He using the wrong metrics when discussing voter fraud. Now he's doubling down on the General "that basically did the same crime as Hillary" by suggesting he's innocent.

This was the guy who kept lying about having 'secret evidence' of Birtherism, in order to maintain momentum past when the skeptics were sated.

He's really going scorched earth. He's leaving the country worse off than when he started.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Paying down the national debt is stupid. Repeat after me: it is stupid, it is stupid, it is stupid. The deflationary forces it unleashes are far more damaging to the economy than any realistic level of deficit or public debt.

Pretending that the growth rates of the 90s were sustainable forever was what was stupid. Growth is good so more growth is better is not something I buy into, personally. Obviously, you have a different opinion, which I don't think is stupid.

 

[Kozmos]

Our entire economy is based on the belief the future will be better. It will be a bad time for everyone when that ceases to be true, whether believed or based in fact.