Get ready for the YUUUUGE, "classiest" version of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act II - and that's just for starters:
Donald Trump’s about-face on the relevance of a ballooning U.S. debt continues his campaign’s hallmark of zigging and zagging on policy issues, landing him now on economic proposals favored by economists to the left of Bernie Sanders. [emphasis added]
Buckle your seat belts, batten down your hatches, and make sure your trays are in the upright and locked position, folks, because you're all absolutely going to LOVE this.
The [m]illionaire businessman has advocated for the federal government to take advantage of cheap interest rates by boosting spending on initiatives such as rebuilding infrastructure -- a position shared by traditional Keynesian economists and skewered by budget hawks who say his numbers won’t add up. Now, Trump’s post-Keynesian approach is throwing out budget balancing, and declaring American immunity to a default.
“This is the United States government. First of all, you never have to default because you print the money, I hate to tell you, OK?” he said in an interview Monday on CNN.
In other words, if you don't have a budget, it can't get unbalanced, and nobody knows what the debt is or even if there is one. Throw out the books! Fire all the accountants! Let's "wing it"! And, of course, "SPEND! SPEND! SPEND!" How much? Who cares?! WHEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! And if U.S. debt-holders come to collect, we just tell them there isn't any national debt, it's a figment of their stupid-ass imaginations, because the LORD Trump says so (right, Ann Coulter)? And if they don't buy that explanation, hell, they're all "losers" anyway and will be torn limb from limb on Himself's Twitter feed. Right?
Counter-question: Isn't this pretty much what Ken Lay and Enron did in the private sector fourteen years ago? How'd that one turn out?
That has exacerbated dislike of the candidate’s positions among the Republican establishment....
It has? Not judging by the capitulation blast wave sweeping across its elected office-holder ranks this week. Which is why Charlie Cooke scolds them today for failing to "keep their powder dry".
....while garnering new fans in a movement that even Sanders, a self-proclaimed Democrat socialist, has deemed too far to the left.
Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks didn’t immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment. [emphasis added]
I don't wonder. Think about that for a moment and let it sink in, Trumplicans and #NeverHillary-ers: Trumpnomics is now so far to the left that even Bernie F'ing Sanders won't touch it.
The movement in question is called Modern Money Theory and it has fantasist global economic cataclysm written all over it:
Modern Money Theory has gained converts amid sluggish global demand in recent years by arguing that while running up the deficit does eventually have limits, there’s plenty of room to spend without triggering inflation. Instead of worrying about balancing the budget, policy makers should focus on putting the unemployed back to work, for instance. [emphasis added]
Just like that. All ya gotta do is wave the magic wand, make water run uphill, plant those money trees, and get that perpetual motion machine patented.
And Trump can do it, too! Because, I guess, he's the "right socialist". Or "God". Right, Ann Coulter? Somebody really does need to do a full chemical analysis of that Kool Aid.
“This is a Nixon-goes-to-[Red] China moment,” Randy Wray, an economics professor at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College in New York and one of the doctrine’s founders, said in an e-mail about Trump’s latest comments. There will be “a Republican far to the left of the Democrat party apparatus who wants to promote rising living standards of Americans.” [emphasis added]
With what? Fiat currency? Wastepaper? Fairy godparents? Magic hammers? Ghosties and beasties? It sounds, to my experienced ears, like a seamless continuation of the Obamanomics that is propelling the U.S. and the world towards economic disaster.
And Donald Trump is now its champion.
Oh, and by the way, if you were one of the Trumplicans (and now #NeverHillary folks) who creamed themselves when The Donald said this....
....you'd better start preparing yourselves for Trump's version of this...
....because he's becoming awfully squishy on the subject all of a sudden:
Well I assume [newly elected London Muslim Mayor Sadiq Khan] denies there is Islamic terrorism. There is Islamic radical terrorism all over the world right now. It’s a disaster what’s going on. I assume he is denying that. I assume he is like our president that’s denying its taking place.
O's not denying it's taking place; he's denying that it's Muslims that are doing it.
Here's the money passage:
We have a serious problem, it’s a temporary ban, it hasn’t been called for yet, nobody’s done it, this is just a suggestion until we find out what’s going on. We have radical Islamic terrorism all over the world, you can go to Paris, you can go to San Bernardino, all over the world, if they want to deny it, they can deny it, I don’t choose to deny it. [emphases added]
Trump's Muslim ban didn't start out "temporary"; it soon shifted to that status, though, as his hallmark of making brash, outrageous statements designed to make his noodleheaded followers jizz themselves in ecstasy was quickly walked back. This is a reiteration of this particular one - although that part about it being "just a suggestion" is new. Sounds like the Coiffed Crusader is getting a little weak in the knees to me.
But has anybody stopped to ponder that last part? "Until we find out what's going on?" He said what's going on three times in that one quote: Islamic terrorism. So why do we need a Muslim ban to "find out what's going on" if we already know what's going on? Isn't the point of a Muslim ban to do something about what's going on by trying to stop it? And if that's the case, why make it temporary? Why not make it permanent, or at least indefinite?
Either Trump, yet again, has never thought through this idea, just like all his others, or he doesn't mean a single, solitary word of any of it and just used it to steal the primary votes of gullible "angry" "Republicans".
Exit irony: I guess The One was right about to whom the future wouldn't belong after all - and to whom it might.
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