Author Topic: The Donald Trump Thread  (Read 150083 times)

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Offline Blueblood

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Re: The Donald Trump Thread
« Reply #210 on: February 26, 2017, 08:03:19 pm »
You seem to be contradicting yourself.

You say Obama was wrong to leave...   why was Canada right to leave Afghanistan before we won the war?

Based on the parameters of how the war was going to be fought, they shouldn't have used ground troops in the first place.  The problem with using ground troops and then immediately retreating when some losses happen is that it takes the perception of strength away and emboldens enemies such as what happened in Somalia. 

The problem with nation building in that part of the world is that they weren't as far along as Germany South Korea and Japan.  There's fighting a war to sack the government and quickly getting out which is what should have been done and then there is waiting around doing the nation building which puts soldiers not on initiative and leaves them liable to insurgency.  Had the goal have been just sacking the government in Iraq and Afghanistan and saying if we get messed with the next government gets sacked - that would have been far better than trying to install a puppet government.

Offline Omni

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Re: The Donald Trump Thread
« Reply #211 on: February 26, 2017, 08:41:21 pm »
Based on the parameters of how the war was going to be fought, they shouldn't have used ground troops in the first place.  The problem with using ground troops and then immediately retreating when some losses happen is that it takes the perception of strength away and emboldens enemies such as what happened in Somalia. 

The problem with nation building in that part of the world is that they weren't as far along as Germany South Korea and Japan.  There's fighting a war to sack the government and quickly getting out which is what should have been done and then there is waiting around doing the nation building which puts soldiers not on initiative and leaves them liable to insurgency.  Had the goal have been just sacking the government in Iraq and Afghanistan and saying if we get messed with the next government gets sacked - that would have been far better than trying to install a puppet government.
Could you repeat all that in English?

Offline kimmy

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Re: The Donald Trump Thread
« Reply #212 on: February 26, 2017, 09:11:10 pm »
Obama was also starting to take an axe to things republicans were doing

Like what?

Iraq war, passing Dodd frank, passing obama care for starters.

I don't get how passing Dodd Frank or ObamaCare were "taking an axe to things Republicans were doing".

Dodd Frank and ObamaCare were both responses to things that Republicans weren't doing.

Regarding ObamaCare, the Republicans steadfastly refused any sort of changes to the healthcare system. They knew that many people wanted it, but didn't care. They only cared when they realized the issue had a lot of traction with voters. They decided that promising to take everyone back to "law of the jungle" insurance policies wasn't a winning election platform, so in 2012 Mitt Romney promised a plan that would somehow keep parts of Obamacare that people liked, without the parts people didn't like, like the "individual mandate" which is vital in funding the whole thing.  In 2016 Trump campaigned promising a "beautiful" plan that would be "so much better" than Obamacare and "much less expensive".  And the Republicans clearly don't actually have a plan, and the plan is apparently to return to the law of the jungle, which was probably the plan all along. Somewhere around 20 million people are going to lose their insurance, and that's going to come home to roost.

Regarding Dodd Frank,  Dodd Frank was actually a response to Wall Street deregulation, which was actually a bipartisan effort, with the Glass-Stegall act being near the end of Bill Clinton's second term.  Clinton, under the advice of Alan Greenspan, also steadfastly opposed placing any regulation on "derivatives", which was one of the main causes of the financial collapse of 2007-8.

The Glass-Stegall act was enacted in response to the stock market collapse of 1929, and when it was repealed in 1999, it was just 8 years before the biggest financial collapse since 1929. Coincidence? Maybe? Who can say?  The consensus among economists seem to be that the repeal of Glass Stegall was a minor contributor while the lack of regulation on derivatives was the major factor.


Republicans seem to believe that financial institutions can be trusted to regulate themselves, but clearly they can't.


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Offline Blueblood

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Re: The Donald Trump Thread
« Reply #213 on: February 26, 2017, 11:10:16 pm »
Like what?


Iraq war, passing Dodd frank, passing obama care for starters.


I don't get how passing Dodd Frank or ObamaCare were "taking an axe to things Republicans were doing".

Dodd Frank and ObamaCare were both responses to things that Republicans weren't doing.

Regarding ObamaCare, the Republicans steadfastly refused any sort of changes to the healthcare system. They knew that many people wanted it, but didn't care. They only cared when they realized the issue had a lot of traction with voters. They decided that promising to take everyone back to "law of the jungle" insurance policies wasn't a winning election platform, so in 2012 Mitt Romney promised a plan that would somehow keep parts of Obamacare that people liked, without the parts people didn't like, like the "individual mandate" which is vital in funding the whole thing.  In 2016 Trump campaigned promising a "beautiful" plan that would be "so much better" than Obamacare and "much less expensive".  And the Republicans clearly don't actually have a plan, and the plan is apparently to return to the law of the jungle, which was probably the plan all along. Somewhere around 20 million people are going to lose their insurance, and that's going to come home to roost.

Regarding Dodd Frank,  Dodd Frank was actually a response to Wall Street deregulation, which was actually a bipartisan effort, with the Glass-Stegall act being near the end of Bill Clinton's second term.  Clinton, under the advice of Alan Greenspan, also steadfastly opposed placing any regulation on "derivatives", which was one of the main causes of the financial collapse of 2007-8.

The Glass-Stegall act was enacted in response to the stock market collapse of 1929, and when it was repealed in 1999, it was just 8 years before the biggest financial collapse since 1929. Coincidence? Maybe? Who can say?  The consensus among economists seem to be that the repeal of Glass Stegall was a minor contributor while the lack of regulation on derivatives was the major factor.


Republicans seem to believe that financial institutions can be trusted to regulate themselves, but clearly they can't.


 -k

For obamacare, I think yes Cruz articulated what was the issue, which was business owners having a gun to their heads to provide insurance when they hit 50 employees.  They hold at 49 and stop growing.  Sometimes profit margins are too small to afford it.  Speaking of affording it, premiums have shot up.  The problem is that since healthcare is so heavily regulated it makes it expensive vs laser eye surgery which keeps coming down yet has more doctors entering that field among other cosmetic surgery.  The USA is slowly running out of money to fund entitlements which includes healthcare.  And then government funded healthcare isn't much better as taxes increase and rationing occurs.  Pick your poison.  Perhaps people will need to start becoming more and more healthy.

As for Dodd frank, a knee jerk reaction which has yielded the USA not achieving 3% growth for more than 8 yrs.  how has Dodd frank helped, it just let a lot of people sit on a lot of bailout money as the corporate community is going to sit on their money when the government unpredictably passes regulations that stifle growth.  Another example of government over regulating which means they will bailout companies for making bad decisions when said companies should fail.  Fear checks greed and if government is trying to keep fear in check, greed runs rampant.

Offline JMT

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Re: The Donald Trump Thread
« Reply #214 on: February 26, 2017, 11:18:36 pm »
For obamacare, I think yes Cruz articulated what was the issue, which was business owners having a gun to their heads to provide insurance when they hit 50 employees.  They hold at 49 and stop growing.

Now back that up with actual facts.

Offline Blueblood

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Re: The Donald Trump Thread
« Reply #215 on: February 26, 2017, 11:44:50 pm »
Now back that up with actual facts.

https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/individuals-and-families/find-out-how-aca-affects-employers-with-fewer-than-fifty-employees

For some companies that would be a big expense and decisions have o be made on expansion.

Offline kimmy

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Re: The Donald Trump Thread
« Reply #216 on: February 27, 2017, 12:31:27 am »
For obamacare, I think yes Cruz articulated what was the issue, which was business owners having a gun to their heads to provide insurance when they hit 50 employees.  They hold at 49 and stop growing.  Sometimes profit margins are too small to afford it.  Speaking of affording it, premiums have shot up.  The problem is that since healthcare is so heavily regulated it makes it expensive vs laser eye surgery which keeps coming down yet has more doctors entering that field among other cosmetic surgery.  The USA is slowly running out of money to fund entitlements which includes healthcare.  And then government funded healthcare isn't much better as taxes increase and rationing occurs.  Pick your poison.  Perhaps people will need to start becoming more and more healthy.

Why is the richest nation on earth having such trouble funding healthcare for so many of its citizens when other western nations seem able to handle the issue without leaving millions without healthcare?


As for Dodd frank, a knee jerk reaction which has yielded the USA not achieving 3% growth for more than 8 yrs.  how has Dodd frank helped, it just let a lot of people sit on a lot of bailout money as the corporate community is going to sit on their money when the government unpredictably passes regulations that stifle growth.  Another example of government over regulating which means they will bailout companies for making bad decisions when said companies should fail.  Fear checks greed and if government is trying to keep fear in check, greed runs rampant.

Alan Greenspan's theory was that danger of financial losses would keep financial institutions from taking excessive risks.

Dick Fuld pocketed in the neighborhood of $400 million in salary and bonuses in the years leading up to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the 150 year old investment bank he was CEO of.  Do you think he gives a **** that he ran Lehman Brothers into the ground? Why would he? He made $400 million in salary and bonuses by putting Lehman Brothers on the risky path that sent it slamming face-first into the ground. He didn't have to give that money back.   Did Dick Fuld act the way he did based on the belief that the government would bail out Lehman Brothers? No. Dick Fuld acted the way he did based on the belief that Dick Fuld would walk away with $400 million in his bank account.

The insurance writers at American International Group didn't get paid based on the long-term health of AIG. They got paid based on how many policies they sold.  Did the policy writers at AIG issue so many insurance policies for credit default swaps and other shady "derivative"  products based on the belief that the government would bail out AIG if the insurance payouts killed the company?  No. They wrote all those risky insurance policies based on the premised that they would pocket a bunch of money.

Angelo Mozilo made Countrywide the most aggressive issuer of subprime mortgages in America. Do you think Angelo feels bad that Countrywide corkscrewed into the ground just as hard as Lehman brothers? Angelo Mozilo made $470 million dollars by slamming Countrywide into the ground. Do you think he cares whether the government bailed them out afterward?

These guys invented a system-- derivatives, credit default swaps, mortgage-based securities-- that let them issue as many bogus mortgages as possible (google the phrase "anybody who can fog a mirror" for details) and pass the risk along to suckers.  Simple process.:
 1) Issue mortgages to literally anybody who applies.
 2) Bundle shitty mortgages into securities called "mortgage based securities".
 3) Strong-arm bond rating agencies like Standard & Poors and Moody's into giving A+ ratings to your shitty MBSs.
 4) Sell MBSs to suckers, so that when the mortgages tank, somebody else is on the hook.
Easy.

So they had invented a machine that turns straw into gold, and they needed a whole lot of straw to feed the machine. So they knowingly issued mortgages to people they knew full well were deadbeats, put them in pools, bundled them into securities that they could sell, and sold them to suckers.

(Suckers-- anybody who bought mortgage-based securities as an investment-- suckers like me and probably you as well, who had RRSPs that included mortgage-based securities as a component.) 

The system worked great... up until 2007 when investment fund managers started noticing that mortgage-based securities were tanking (which is what happens when you issue mortgages to "anybody who can fog a mirror".)  Suddenly people weren't buying Mortgage Based Securities anymore. Suddenly companies like Countrywide and Lehman Brothers had a problem.  Mortgage originators (like Countrywide) had all these mortgages they couldn't sell to mortgage securitizers (like Lehman Brothers.) Mortgage securitizers (like Lehman Brothers) had all these mortgage-based securities that they couldn't sell to suckers anymore.  Countrywide and Lehman Brothers and all the other companies in the industry had spent all this money buying straw to turn into gold, and then found themselves in serious trouble when the machine wouldn't turn straw into gold anymore.


You say that fear is supposed to keep greed in check.  Ok.  But what caused these financial institutions to lose their fear and let greed run while wasn't the idea that the government would bail them out if they messed up.  What caused them to lose their fear was their belief that they had invented a scheme that let them gamble as much as possible and pass the risk along to suckers. And that should never have been allowed to happen.  That's why there needs to be regulation.

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Offline JMT

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Re: The Donald Trump Thread
« Reply #217 on: February 27, 2017, 12:51:12 am »
https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/individuals-and-families/find-out-how-aca-affects-employers-with-fewer-than-fifty-employees

For some companies that would be a big expense and decisions have o be made on expansion.

Right, so I'm asking for proof that companies that could have expanded beyond 50 employees didn't because of the ACA.

Offline TimG

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Re: The Donald Trump Thread
« Reply #218 on: February 27, 2017, 03:00:44 am »
You say that fear is supposed to keep greed in check.  Ok.  But what caused these financial institutions to lose their fear and let greed run while wasn't the idea that the government would bail them out if they messed up.  What caused them to lose their fear was their belief that they had invented a scheme that let them gamble as much as possible and pass the risk along to suckers. And that should never have been allowed to happen.  That's why there needs to be regulation.
The trouble with regulation is you can have dumb regulation which can be more harmful than the problem that you are trying to prevent.

A part of the meltdown story which never gets reported because it illustrates how bad regulation was really the problem - not NO regulation.

Under the the international Basel capital requirements, banks had an incentive to buy mortgage  backed securities because mortgage  backed securities allowed them to reduce the amount of reserve capital they needed to maintain. When these securities went bad the banks lost their *reserve capital* which is why we had an international banking crisis on our hands. There would have been no crisis if the stupid regulation allowing mortgage backed securities to be used as bank reserves did not exist.

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-banks-bought-so-many-toxic-mortgage-bonds-2009-8

You should also note that that the Basel regulations are NOT solely under the control of the US government so you can't simply blame the republicans for these short comings. Nor does a removal of the Frank Dodd necessarily mean a repeat since the updated Basel regulations are still in effect.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2017, 03:25:16 am by TimG »

Offline Peter F

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Re: The Donald Trump Thread
« Reply #219 on: February 27, 2017, 06:50:08 am »
Quote
Under the the international Basel capital requirements, banks had an incentive to buy mortgage  backed securities because mortgage  backed securities allowed them to reduce the amount of reserve capital they needed to maintain. When these securities went bad the banks lost their *reserve capital* which is why we had an international banking crisis on our hands. There would have been no crisis if the stupid regulation allowing mortgage backed securities to be used as bank reserves did not exist.

Mortgage backed securities are fine ... unless the ratings don't reflect the actual make-up of the MBS. When those banks subject to Basel capital requirements don't even bother to do any homework for the sole reason that if they did then they wouldn't be able to lend as much and it turns out that the MBS's were really **** and they go broke, well the Basel Capital requirements don't really mean much for regulation.
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Offline wilber

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Re: The Donald Trump Thread
« Reply #220 on: February 27, 2017, 08:47:59 am »
Mortgage backed securities are junk if the only requirement to get a mortgage is a pulse.
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Offline SirJohn

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Re: The Donald Trump Thread
« Reply #221 on: March 01, 2017, 09:54:49 pm »
The real problem with the government bail-outs, aside from the cost to taxpayers, is that most of the institutions which engaged in risky and even illegal activities should have been pushed into bankruptcy and their owners, including shareholders, where they were public institutions, should have lost everything. This would have incentivized the shareholders of other companies to make damned sure that the people running the companies followed rules meant to protect the company, and didn't simply go for maximum short term profit to maximize their bonsuses.

The second problem, of course, was that those guys who made millions or even hundreds of millions walked away Scot free. They should have been shot, or at the very least forfeited every last dime they owned. That didn't happen. There was no punishment at all. There is therefore no reason why executives of the major US banks won't engage in precisely the same sorts of activities if the financial regulations are withdrawn. As Kimmy said, why shouldn't they? And as we've seen recently from Wells Fargo, the bonus systems still in place incentivize people at those banks to do whatever makes their numbers look good.
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Offline msj

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Re: The Donald Trump Thread
« Reply #222 on: March 04, 2017, 10:25:05 am »
3 days ago Trump was getting accolades for being able to read a speech.

Now he is tweeting about Obama putting the wiretaps on him.

Either:

1) Obama, or someone else, broke the law or

2) An agency had a warrant to tap Trump for a good reason (good enough to convince a judge for the tap).

I think #2 is more likely but #1 is possible.



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Offline cybercoma

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Re: The Donald Trump Thread
« Reply #223 on: March 04, 2017, 10:30:33 am »
I see no evidence for it, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised. You've got to remember that it was already established that his campaign was involved with Russia and that Russia hacked the DNC. If Obama did wiretap Trump Tower, it was almost certainly under the advice of the intelligence community for the security of the state and the safety of the American people. Donald Trump and his entire team are enemies of the state and frankly should be up on treason charges.
« Last Edit: March 04, 2017, 01:48:53 pm by cybercoma »

Offline Omni

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Re: The Donald Trump Thread
« Reply #224 on: March 04, 2017, 01:21:14 pm »
Trump should either put up or shut up. He has so far failed to produce a shred of evidence for what is a very serious charge. Personally, I hope he shuts to F up because I am getting tired of his BS, although it is a tad entertaining.