Economy

Ah, the good old days. It seems forever, but was in reality only six short months ago that El Pendejo Presidente had the world by the old short-n-curlies. Unemployment was low, the world was at peace, and the stock market was setting record highs. And having absolutely no legislative accomplishments to run on, Trump counted on riding the economy to reelection. But then the damn coronavirus showed up and fucked everything six ways to Sunday. The coronavirus screwed Trump on two separate , fundamental levels. First, by forcing state after state to effectively shut down, it led to a total collapse of the Wall Street economic system. This Trump couldn’t tolerate, since he had long ago conned the sheeple into conflating the Wall Street economy with the Main Street economy.But word was yet to come. For while the stock market rebounded fairly quickly, the real economy was in the shitter. More than 40 million unemployed, Trump is the first President in living memory with a net negative job growth, and the pandemic largely unchecked, due to his diktat that GOP states reopen for business. Trump himself highlighted the insane distance between the Wall Street economy he was pimping, and the Main Street economy that everybody lives in. Bur since it’s all he’s got, Trump is sticking with it. His Treasury Suckretary, Steve Munchkin, went on TV to brag how the “blue chips” were up 17% so far in the third quarter. And Trump, in an interview on FOX, hinted that he would have a large surge in popularity, due to the fact that the 3rd quarter numbers would come out only a few weeks before the election, and they would be blockbuster numbers, showing the strength of the recovery he had engineered. There’s only one problem, it’s all bullshit, smoke and mirrors. First, as the pandemic rages through the Sun Belt states that Trump forced to reopen, more and more shops that reopened in response to the GOP Governor’s are closing every day, this time for good. That will put hundreds of thousands more right back onto the unemployment trolls, with no hope of returning to work at the same job. And second. California Governor Gavin Newsome just placed the state back onto a modified lockdown to control the virus. If California were a country, the republic of California would be something like the 7th largest economy in the world. If non essential businesses in California are forced to shutter again, that will have a chilling effect on the stock market. And here’s one more reason why Trump’s economic gambit will fail. The 3rd quarter that Trump is talking about is comprised of July, August, and September, which means that the numbers will be released late in the first week of October. With the increased use of early voting, as well as mail in voting during the pandemic, I’m guessing that somewhere between 40-50% of the vote will be cast before the numbers are released. If the numbers come up rosy, there is no way for those early voters to reach in and change their votes. And if as I expect, those numbers come up craps, then the late early voters and election day voters will be left with only Trump’s ultimate failure as their last consideration. Live by the sword, motherfucker, and you die by the […]

One of the most common misperceptions about the Republican Party is that it really wasn’t that bad until crazy far-right voters put Donald Trump into the Oval Office. That is not only a lie, it’s a dangerous rewriting of history that serves the purposes of a GOP that is starting to come to grips with the vision of their party after Trump is removed from power. Short version: if Trump loses in November, they plan to pretend that they had nothing to do with his career of catastrophic decisions and actions — hell, they barely knew the guy — and to go right back to the racism, misogyny, and insane economic policies they have pursued since most all of us have been alive. It’s on us not to let them do that. One of the best weapons in our arsenal is information. When you know your history, you are less likely to repeat it. Strap in. I’m going to take you on a brief history of Republican demagoguery. Skip down if you already know all this. “Tailgunner Joe” McCarthy The transformation of the GOP into an authoritarian, anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional party began in 1950, when GOP Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Nazi) told an audience that he had a list of “known Communists” working in the Truman State Department. No, he didn’t. It was a demagogue move, similar to the huge number of lies told by Trump (“Obama spied on my campaign!” No, he didn’t.) McCarthy is quoted as saying: The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205 — a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department. Well, that wouldn’t be hard to check. What did the Secretary of State have to say about it? Where’s the list? Let’s check those State Department employee’s backgrounds. The truth was, only 65 of the purported Communists on that list were still in the State Department at the time of McCarthy’s bloviating, and their background checks came back commie-free. McCarthy was a lying bastard. He had no idea who was actually a “Communist.” He lied about his brief and inglorious term as a district judge before running for the Senate. He lied about his war record to get elected. He smeared his Democratic opponent to get into the Senate. Sound familiar? A political party with a shred of integrity wouldn’t have let McCarthy get away with any of it. The party leaders would have shut him down immediately. But, even in the 1950s, this is the GOP we’re talking about. Already, that party had become fascinated with far-right, venom-spitting demagogues. So the party pushed him to the forefront, and for a few giddy years McCarthy, along with cohorts Roy Cohn (Trump’s first political mentor), Richard Nixon, and others, helped engulf the nation in a vicious roil of anti-Communist and anti-homosexual sentiment and repression. But by 1954, media figures like Edward R. Murrow and Leroy Gore, who started a “Joe Must Go!” recall movement, along with outraged U.S. Army officers, tanked McCarthy. The Senate censured him, the GOP turned its back on him, and McCarthy finished his Senate career in a sinkhole of irrelevancy. In […]

The problem with any natural disaster, whether it be wildfire, tornado, hurricane, or global pandemic, is that the immediacy of dealing with the disaster obviously commands all attention. And the longer the disaster persists, the longer attention is focused solely on the disaster. And things that would have been obvious at the time, if only we had a moment to consider, go by under the radar. As most of you know, my wife Teri was furloughed on St. Patrick’s Day. As such, we were able to benefit from the Democrat-forged unemployment bridge payment of $600 a week to cover the difference between her unemployment check and her full check. This really came in handy when meat prices started to go up due to the disruption in the supply chain. With Teri scheduled to return to work Monday part time, we were discussing how she will still continue to receive unemployment to bridge the shortfall, and how we may still qualify for any extension of the bridge payments. That being said, there has always been something that bothered me about that $600 a week payment. As explained, it was meant to help families and workers cover the shortfall between what they would receive from unemployment, and what their full paycheck was before being laid off. And if that was the purpose, then the program was far oversubscribed for what it set out to do. Now my wife works in retail, so she’s not making Brad Pitt wages, and still, that $600 a week was multiples above what was needed to make her whole. I know that the whole object was to render as much aid to as many people as possible, but I would guess that in a majority of cases, people were actually profiting from the program. The question that has bothered me every time I see that $600 in Teri’s account is Why $600 a week? The number can’t possibly be arbitrary, there has to be some kind of sensible reason behind it. It seems almost like the Democrats jammed it to the GOP because they had them over a barrel, which is fine by me, but that still doesn’t make sense. There has to be a reason why they settled specifically on $600 a week. And last night, while just idly discussing the topic with Teri, it whupped me upside the head. Let’s start with a little simple math. It has to be simple if I’m going to do it. Start with $600 a week. Now, divide that $600 by a 40 hour work week. What do you end up with? $15.00 an hour! Now that makes perfect, crystal clear sense. The Democrats have been pushing for a national $15 an hour minimum wage for at least the last three years. But there’s a problem with that, it’s purely conceptual. The Democrats talk about how great it would be, and everybody agrees that it would be great, but talk is cheap, and nobody had any way to know what it would feel like to make $15 an hour. So the Democrats took the bull by the horns and showed them what it feels like to make $15 an hour. Without saying a word to tip their mitts, the Democrats used the terrible unemployment shortfalls to show every American making less than $15 an hour what it feels like to […]

If you are one of the forty million unemployed, take heart. Daddy doesn’t have time to deal with such tackiness as the largest unemployment figures since the Great Depression, he’s too busy watching TV and running for reelection. But Princess Ivanka, the poster child of privilege, has figured out the answer to your problem — just go Find Something New. Seriously. This is a real thing that Ivanka just came up with. One line of work is like another, and if you lost your job at the Tastee Freeze, well, there are openings in aerospace engineering, so WTH is wrong with you, just go get that job. Ivanka is your personal cheerleader in this endeavor and she has put together the following “tools” to assist you. Here’s the website that will save you. And take a look at the meaningless platitudes in this PSA. Zero information, but you do get the impression that if you’re unemployed it’s your fault, don’t you? Remember, the GOP is the party of personal responsibility — except when they drive the economy over a cliff, again. Then it’s your fault and you fix it. And don’t bother any Republican lawmakers right now. They’re all too busy running for reelection, and their stock portfolios took a hit, and have a little class, will you, and just take care of yourself. Now the beauty of this, is that Ivanka is directing you philosophically to self-improvement, when the fact of the matter is, it’s not a philosophical question and it’s not about self-improvement. The issue, to anybody but the completely oblivious, is that a lot of jobs were simply permanently wiped out in March and April when COVID-19 struck, and there are a great many more people needing a job than there are jobs right now. Therefore, the logical and sane solution would be a program to create jobs, perhaps along the lines of the WPA, an employment and infrastructure program, which over an eight year period starting in 1935 put over eight million Americans back to work during the Great Depression. In this administration the word “infrastructure” is a running joke and while Trump blatantly lies about Ivanka creating “15 million jobs” she hasn’t created a one. And now she’s doing the equivalent of telling you to look in the phone book to see what businesses exist in your area and just go “find something new.” Those are her words to you, verbatim. I think it’s a swell idea, personally. I think that if you were flipping pancakes a few months ago, you could now enter the world of high fashion design, maybe even design a few knock offs for Ivanka, what do you say? And if you were changing oil on cars, and got laid off from that, well, there’s always a shortage of brain surgeons. Maybe you could write a letter to Ben Carson and he could advise you. Ivanka and the Republicans want you to know, that it’s up to you, and if you’re starving, don’t blame Donald Trump’s egregious mishandling of coronavirus and don’t blame the complicit GOP-led senate for keeping him in power so it could happen. No, you need to get off your a$$ and Find Something New! Hey, if Ivanka can do it, so can you. She’s changed careers many times, from […]

These are people, I swear, when they put one foot forward, they have absolutely NO idea of what to do with the other foot   Tom Jimson   Drowned Hopes Welcome back. I swear, some nights the fun just never ends! As many of you already know, earlier this week the European Union announced that they are reopening their countries for travel from other countries, having successfully knocked down, and at least for the present, the coronavirus. But there’s a catch there. Having taken care of their own business, the EU is in no hurry to reintroduce the virus to their countries. And therefore, the United States is on an embargo list for travel to the EU. In other words, we ain’t traveling to the other side of the pond anytime soon. Let’s pause for just a moment for a brief review of recent global history. In late February heading into early March, the coronavirus was rampaging over the glove. At about the same time that most European countries were affecting draconian measures to try to stall the damage of the virus, many American states were instituting their own lockdown provisions to fight the virus. When I say many American states, feel free to read progressive Democratic Governors who trusted science. At that point, statistically, pretty much everybody was on a level playing field. Flash forward 4 months. The countries of the European Union, whose countries acted swiftly with a unified government response, have largely got the virus under control. Meanwhile, the United States is now the leading health crisis for the entire globe. What in the hell happened to have the European countries flattening their rate of infection, while the United States sets a new record every damn day? There are a couple of reasons for this. The European countries spoke with a centralized, unified response, putting their entire nations under the same, unified restrictions. The Trump administration refused to even consider the virus a national emergency, leaving 50 separate state Governors to deal with the problem through a hodge-podge of restrictions and regulations. And the European governments quite properly diagnosed the virus as a healthcare emergency, while Trump read it as a political issue with economic ramifications. This was a tragic miscalculation. But the worst miscalculation was Trump mandating that states reopen as quickly as possible, in order to juice up the economy, his only platform to run on. There was an ingrained fallacy in this. Following the initial collapse of the stock market as the companies tried to come to grips with the new world order, it turned out that the companies that occupy the Dow Jones 500 were well enough protected to rebound fairly quickly. While tens of millions of Americans filed for unemployment, the Dow made up almost half of its initial losses within a few weeks. But here’s the McGuffin. In a few days, the European Union will reopen for business. And the United States isn’t invited to the party! Most Asian countries have also flattened out their curves, and they’re ready to both travel, and receive travelers to get back to business as usual. The United States as  quickly as possible. And because they took the time and trouble to get their curve under control, they will be welcome visitors in EU. The EU reject list is actually rather ratified, but still includes countries like Russia, […]

Dusting is a great example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has just been established   George Carlin You’ve heard me say it before, the old adage for a guy with incredible luck that He could fall into a shit house and come up with a ham sandwich. But thanks to the incredible incompetence and stone cold indifference of Traitor Tot and his merry band of freebooters, it has been necessary to update it into He could wander into Aladdin’s cave, and fall into the shit house. If there has ever been an example of the unified mishandling of multiple national crises by the same administration at the same time, I have yet to see it in my 63 years of life on this planet. They ignored an impending pandemic in order to prop the stick market, Trump’s only path to reelection, at the risk to the health of millions of Americans. And when the pandemic hit shores, he continued to treat it as a political messaging problem rather than a public health crisis, in order to prop up the stock market. And when the markets tanked, he blamed it on the pandemic, and then rushed stated to reopen in order to bring the stock market back up, and the consequences to American citizens be damned. Which was a grand illusion. Because there are actually two economies in this country, the Wall Street Economy, and the Main Street Economy. The Wall Street Economy was versatile and well entrenched enough to be able to adapt and even thrive in the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic. But the Main Street Economy had not seen a real wage increase in years, and suffered the loss of 45 million jobs as a result of the pandemic. And it all came a cropper. The Wall Street Economy went into the shitter today, dropping more than 7%. It went down the flusher for one simple reason. Because Trump’s forced early reopening was an abysmal failure. How many times have I said that you can force a store to open, but you can’t force consumers to shop? Trump forced GOP Governors to rush to reopen these states for business, but he can’t force consumers to go out and risk a nasty death just to shop in them. And now the Wall Street Economy has figured out that their house of cards is sitting next to an open window in a hurricane. Donald Trump is boned. Sideways. His own Federal Reserve Board is now predicting that, rather than a great economic 3rd and 4th quarter, the US economy is actually going to contract by an estimated 6% this year, and likely a similar result next year. His own chief economic advisor now admits that unemployment will remain over 9% for at least the next year. And his egotistical hammering at the Federal Reserve Board to slash interest rates to 0 when times are good have taken that hammer out of their tool box. But what did you expect? When you hire an egocentric, self indulgent, narcissistic Twitter troll to un the country, did you honestly believe that he would ever care about you Trump is on the wrong side of the coronavirus, with cases spiking in every state that he hurried to open, more people will die. Trump is on the wrong […]

El Pendejo Presidente is so funny when he’s desperate! And you can always judge the degree of desperation by just how over the top he goes with his hyperbole, and how far afield he ranges with it. That being said, only a total and complete imbecile could sit in the Rose Garden and proudly proclaim that George Floyd is actually happy that he was choked out by a troglodyte in a uniform, so that he could enjoy the protests in his honor, and revel in the jobs report. There’s a special room in hell for this kind of blatant stupid. And it’s right between the elevator and the noisy ice machine. No doubt about it, the Republicans are doing a victory lap over the May jobs report. But if you look at then closely, you’ll notice that they’re doing it the way most guys head up the stairs to the gallows, Pissing in their pants with a brave smile on their faces. Every economist qualified enough to not work in the Trump White House is already warning that one report does not a recovery make, and there are already rumblings that the unemployment number will be adjusted due to faulty calculating. *Spoiler Alert* It’s going up. And the number is fudged anyway, since any small business using the PPP program is paying their employees even though the place hasn’t reopened. Basically they’re unemployed, just not counted. My explanation is the old Wall Street phrase, Even a dead cat will bounce once if you drop it from high enough. But it’s still fun to watch these 98 lb weakling gorillas pound their chests about how strong they are, and how they saved the world. To listen to Trump tell it, he, failed CNBC hack Larry Kudlow, and The Munchkin Man wrought an economic miracle that will be the subject of legend and song down through the ages. There’s just one small problem with this. They’re all so full of shit that they slosh when they walk. Cast your mind back to the dark early days of the meltdown of the economy, as the coronavirus took a serious stranglehold. What was Traitor Tot’s master plan? Order everything kept open until all of the workers died from the virus. And Moscow Mitch’s genius contribution? Have Munchkin fire up the printing presses to keep large corporations awash in ready cash. In other words, same old GOP bullshit. You know, there’s a reason why they call it trickle down economics. Because that’s what happens when you don’t shake well enough when you’re through. In fact, everything in the economic miracle that Trump is currently touting was a Democratic idea! It was Pelosi and the Democrats who used the veto power of the House to force Yertl the turtle to double the size of the stimulus package, in order to make sure that small businesses at least got a fighting chance. You know, the fucking PPP that His Lowness is bragging about right now? It was the Democrats who fought tooth and nail to extend unemployment benefits, in preparation for the long haul, and provided the bounceback fund that ensured that workers on unemployment received full paychecks instead of the standard 60-70%. And it was the Democrats who pushed for a version of Andrew Yang’s Universal Income plan that got those $1200 checks into everybody’s hot little mitts. Mitt Romney just started touting it later when […]

This is a quick follow-up to my article of yesterday about GOP Republicans in the Pennsylvania Legislature testing positive for COVID-19 and refusing to tell their Democratic colleagues. For a week. Yes, really. State House Democrat Brian Sims was as shocked as any other decent American would have been. Yesterday, he took to Facebook Live to express his outrage, his indignation, his disgust, and, yes, his fear that he, his family, and so many others had possibly been exposed to the hellbug by Republicans who knew they themselves had been exposed, had been tested, had been “quarantining” to some degree, but decided not to tell the Democrats in the legislature. Watch the video here. It’s 12 minutes long. It is NSFW. Watch it anyway. Sims, the first openly gay member of the Pennsylvania State Legislature and who is quite outspoken about his disgust with the crop of Republican plague rats infesting state and federal government (see the photo above, from 2018, when Sims “welcomed” Mike Pence to Philadelphia), did not mince words in the video. Sims was shocked by the plague rats’ deliberate decision to expose Democrats to the virus without telling them, “for as much as a week if not longer” while they were being tested, contact tracing, and self-quarantining (such as they did). He notes that the legislature has been the most active in the nation, and the Government Committee, on which he sits, has been the most active in that body. So for a week, plague rat Andrew Lewis (R-Vermin), who tested positive, and others like Russ Diamond (R-Sewer Rat), who was sort of quarantining because he had been in proximity to Corona Andrew, had sat in committee with Sims and other Democrats, not masked up and not telling them that they were possibly infectious. What were they doing that was so important? Passing legislation urging Governor Tom Wolf (D-Sane) to reopen the state, because in their infected minds, it was safe to do so. The virus wasn’t such a big thing, they wailed, and what about the economy?!? Now, Sims said, his Democratic colleages had just finished taking part in a panicky teleconference with doctors with the State Department of Health about what to do to keep themselves and their families safe after being exposed to the virus for a week by their verminous colleagues — and, of course, going home every night to kiss their kids and hug their spouses. As Sims spoke, some of them were on the phones to their families, explaining why they might not be coming home for a while. Sims revealed that in January, he donated a kidney, rendering himself immunocompromised. Another Democrat’s wife is also immunocompromised. Now they were deliberately exposed to the hellbug by the Republican plague rats in the legislature. Sims demanded the immediate resignation of Speaker Mike Terzai (R-Plague Bearer) and any other member of the Republican legislature who knew that their caucus members had been compromised and refused to tell their Democratic colleagues. He wants the Pennsylvania Attorney General to open an investigation. And he wants prosecutions. They belong in jail, he says. Pennsylvania is one of 30 states that prosecute individuals for deliberately exposing others to HIV/AIDS. I imagine Sims is aware of this; I remember it quite well. It is not a stretch to […]

Watch what they do, not what they say, is always sound advice. If you look at the way Republicans are behaving right now with respect to saving the economy, actions are definitely speaking louder than words. Republicans say they are worried about the deficit and the key to dealing with deficits is to have a thriving economy. Stimulating the economy and getting it back up and running will not only address the deficit in the long haul, but in the short term, it’s necessary to make sure that Donald Trump gets reelected — unless it’s already been decided by the rank and file GOPer that Trump probably isn’t going to get reelected and they’ve already accepted that fact. Paul Waldman of the Washignton Post makes the argument that this might in fact be the case. We won’t be able to turn the economy back on like a light switch. There are untold numbers of businesses that can hang on for a few weeks or months after their customers disappeared, but many have already closed their doors or will soon. There are ripple effects across the economy, in sectors such as real estate and energy. We don’t know how long it will be until people feel comfortable flying and going to movies and eating out — but if you think it’ll all happen in the next couple of months, you’re almost certainly fooling yourself. This is something that Republicans, like everyone else, are coming to understand. So some of them may be looking ahead to when Trump is no longer president. That means, perhaps above all, resuming the deficit fear-mongering that was such an effective tool to hamstring Barack Obama’s presidency. It also means adjusting their policy and spending agenda to the defensive. They aren’t bothering to talk much about new tax cuts or anything else they’d like to pass. Instead, the focus is shifting to cutbacks and constraints. “Automatic spending cuts as the economy improves” is something a Republican would want only if there’s a Democrat in the White House. It shows that that’s precisely what at least some of them are anticipating. […] And as for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, he’s nothing if not practical. If you think Trump’s chances of reelection are dwindling, why would you try to save the economy now? Imagine if you passed measures that made the recovery easier but Trump lost anyway. Then Biden wouldn’t have such a hard time, and Republicans getting a huge backlash win in 2022 would be less likely. Better to keep everyone miserable for a couple more years. McConnell can just confirm as many hard-right judges as possible between now and January, and consider his work done. Think about it. If they really thought Trump could win, the emphasis would be on a giant short term boost, spend spend spend, the sky’s the limit. As Waldman points out talking about “automatic spending cuts as the economy improves is something a Republican would want only if there’s a Democrat in the White House.” And take it a step further: if there really was wide spread belief in the GOP that Trump was a slam dunk for reelection, what better way to ensure that, then by massively supporting aid programs and boosting the economy so that Trump can claim that yes, indeed, he did […]

Remember ever seeing a home video on a television show, with either a baby or toddler, or a really cute puppy doing the same stupid thing over and over again, even though it leads to the same disastrous result? Yeah, me too. And don’t even get me started on what kind of people publicly humiliate their children and pets just to get on television. But it’s turning out that His Lowness actually is that drooling toddler or mentally disadvantaged puppy. In the past, you have heard me, along with many other sage people, categorically state that while every president lauds the positive effects of a strong economy, the first lesson of Oval Office 101 is that you never take credit for the goddamned thing. That’s for the simple reason that the market, and the economy in general are ruled by forces and circumstances far beyond any president’s direct control. What were you, like 5 years old when you were taught that what goes up, must come down? Donald John Trump, a man who has never balanced a checkbook in his life, and who considers chapter 11 bankruptcy to be the business version of a mulligan in golf, is much smarter than that. Being an economic savant, Trump latched onto the surging stock market like a drowning sailor grabbing onto a floating piece of wood. But being Trump, he didn’t just ride that wood to the shore, the silly bastard tried to tow the stupid thing up the side of the mountain with him. And when it got too heavy, both Trump and his stock market plank went flying back down into the water again. Trump is paying a steep price for his arrogance. 30 million unemployed. The worst one month surge in 1st time unemployment claims in recorded history. An unemployment rate not seen since the Great Depression. And it’s only going to get worse from here. Trump’s popularity numbers sleep with the fishes, and Biden’s lead in polling continues to grow, not only nationally, but in battleground states critical to Trump’s reelection. One would think that even a stupid 7 week old puppy would figure out to drop the stick if he can’t get through the doggie door with it in his mouth, but El Pendejo President is down with one more tilt at the windmill. Although it is sad to say, it must be said, a 6 week old puppy is smarter than the President of the United States. Following his election, and presented with a gift wrapped bull economy by President Barack Obama, Trump made a not uncommon, but often fatal miscalculation. He confused the Stock market economy with the Main Street economy. And the two have little to do with each other, and Trump knew it. At every rally he bragged about the record highs of the Dow by bragging about people’s 401k’s, money they couldn’t immediately access, while ignoring the fact that most of them hadn’t seen anything even approaching a meaningful raise in almost a decade. And the con worked, until the coronavirus sent the economy spiraling out of control. But now the 6 Week Old Puppy In Chief is chasing his presidential tail again. When the economy went down like the Titanic, rather than try to swim away from the impending vortex, Trump climbed on top of the smokestack instead. For the first two […]