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Bernanke Says U.S. Economy Faces a ‘Wile E. Coyote’ Moment in 2020

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Re: Bernanke Says U.S. Economy Faces a ‘Wile E. Coyote’ Moment in 2020

#211

Post by bodi »

sykh wrote: post #200
bodi wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s sort of the divide and conquer strategy. Since we're discussing nothing short of the US government acting as an enemy to the citizens it is supposed to serve, I would suppose the next few prudent questions are: 1) What is the entity deploying this divide and conquer strategy? 2) Is this entity monolithic? Cellular? Organized or random? 3) What does this entity stand to gain and is it good for all?

Since we're discussing nothing short of the US government acting as an enemy to the citizens it is supposed to serve.... Your premise is incorrect. The "sort of" part of my statement is important. There are lots of forces at play that cause this. I see it as sort of an emergent phenomenon and not the design of some clever genius or powerful organization.

> sort of divide and conquer

Your assertion is not strong enough and your self referential call out to authority is suspect or at the least misplaced.

It is absolutely divide and conquer and it absolutely is an organized effort.

My assertions were posed as questions only to guide the light.

Anyone with eyes to see will know this. The problem is most of those eyes lack the courage and faith to speak.

Re: Bernanke Says U.S. Economy Faces a ‘Wile E. Coyote’ Moment in 2020

#212

Post by ohhellno »

salviasloth wrote: post #85
maxxxxx wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During Clinton's time there was a huge run-up in the stock market fueled b a lot of internet companies. Clinton got all the credit for the growth during that time and then Bush suffered through the predictable collapse.

He was making it sound like the bubble was caused by specific Clinton era policies. I'm pretty sure the dot com bubble was largely just a speculative bubble.

Al Gore invented the internet as part of that government.

Re: Bernanke Says U.S. Economy Faces a ‘Wile E. Coyote’ Moment in 2020

#213

Post by mhneu »

ravenscrow wrote: post #176
mhneu wrote: post #46

2020: policies put in place under this administration will come home to roost during the next administration, which will get the blame. This lag between economic policy and outcomes is a big reason the US has such a disingenuous public debate. Getting what you can in the short term, while being deceptive about long term effects, has become a good strategy. [1] [1] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/opinion/republi…

> “The essence of this strategy is to take tax policy out of the hands of experts and entrust it to activists. These campaigns do not usually have much credibility with card-carrying economists. ” When it comes to economics and religion, the "experts" and activists tend to be one and the same and neither seems to be credible. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/elec... One of our the "greatest exp…

No, there are actually experts that we should rely on. Of course no economist is a perfect predicter- predicting the future is hard.

Tom Nichols’ book The Death of Expertise is relevant here.

——

As for your specific points: - Paul Krugman, on his major predictions, has been incredibly prescient. He was talking about media bothsidesism, a major reason for this political moment, in 1999. He said America was being lied into war in Iraq in 2002. He predicted the effects of stimulus in America and Europe. The guy is a genius and so he becomes a target for his political enemies. (Re the stock prediction: he withdrew this in a few days. It was a minor prediction. The predictions above were long term predictions.) The issue is that conservative economics has been captured by the conservative propaganda machine which amplifies minor corrected predictions like this while ignoring the huge long term mistake that the right’s “economists” made about inflation in response to stimulus.

- The business cycle causes recessions, yes. Not sure what you mean by economic policy. But both monetary and fiscal (tax) policy has big effects on entry and exit from recession. And also public debt affects provision of public policies like the social safety net.

Re: Bernanke Says U.S. Economy Faces a ‘Wile E. Coyote’ Moment in 2020

#214

Post by mhneu »

sykh wrote: post #179
maxxxxx wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really regret making my comment. It was about presidents getting credit and blame for the consequences of whatever happened before they were in office. It just shows that people are not capable of discussing things without immediately going into their partisan positions.

It’s a sign of how bad things are in the U.S. State something obvious, like you did, that jives with someone’s attachement to a political party and you get irrational responses. The polarization is palpable. People don’t seem to rationally discuss policy. It’s about defending/justifying political parties. It’s the party that matters.

Mann and Ornstein predicted this and explain its causes.

Re: Bernanke Says U.S. Economy Faces a ‘Wile E. Coyote’ Moment in 2020

#215

Post by mhneu »

ben509 wrote: post #144
acjohnson55 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't validate the truth of that perspective, but there was the better part of a decade to correct this issue.

And the democrats fought tooth and nail to prevent corrections for that decade because those policies, in the short term, appeared to help their constituents. They wanted to get lots of new homeowners homes, but those homeowners often found they couldn't afford the mortgages in the long run, which is exactly why the banks hadn't been making those loans prior to government meddling. Those mortgage problems were, natur…

That’s not the story I heard from the finance people who were setting up the securitization.

I agree with your broader point: government policy is complex, we need a regulated market system because completely free markets don’t work, so we need a high skilled government that tries hard to get things right — and a legislative system that cares about the government functioning well.

Re: Bernanke Says U.S. Economy Faces a ‘Wile E. Coyote’ Moment in 2020

#216

Post by mhneu »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #190
sykh wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s sort of the divide and conquer strategy. Pit groups against each other whilst the looting occurs. While people fight over who is the true snowflake and that kind of stuff all sorts of shitty policies get enacted. Things didn’t just suddenly get unbearable because just got elected. If one thinks this then the problem was already there and one's lack of awareness of it is the real problem.

It's also convenient for maintaining a grip on power and something I'm certain both parties have internally considered. Think about the most recent election. How many people voted for Hillary thinking, "I think this person truly and accurately represents my views and beliefs." And similarly for Trump? By contrast how many voted for one or the other thinking, "This person is trash... but, my god, the alternative is ju…

Yes America would probably be better off with more than two parties. First you need to ditch the first past the post system.

Re: Bernanke Says U.S. Economy Faces a ‘Wile E. Coyote’ Moment in 2020

#217

Post by mhneu »

mywittyname wrote: post #178
creaghpatr wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree, I'd put the blame on the Fed before Trump, Obama, Bush, or Clinton. If I had to choose it would be Bush for being president when TARP was passed but really the blame there falls on the Congress.

TARP would have been signed by Obama (or McCain). The fact that the US has enjoyed a economic boom post 2008, while the rest of the world struggled for several more years (especially Europe), can be considered evidence that it was the correct action to take at the time. The current expansion is the second longest in modern history.

Yup. This was an incredibly consequential decision in the US to use stimulus. And it validates the idea that Keynesian stimulus has value.

(And it’s useful to go back in 2008-2011 and see what different economists were saying about stimulus and inflation. There was a big partisan divide.)

Re: Bernanke Says U.S. Economy Faces a ‘Wile E. Coyote’ Moment in 2020

#218

Post by ebbv »

xyzzyz wrote: post #154
ebbv wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pensions are not inherently a problem any more than any other form of retirement account is. HN should be above this kind of ignorant rhetoric.

Of course they are more of a problem, just like a mortgage is more risky than saving up to buy a house with cash upfront — pensions create a long term liability in a way that putting cash in employee 401k doesn’t. Even more importantly, with pensions you’re taking a mortgage that is deferred for a few decades, and someone else than you will be responsible for paying it off — by the time the pension benefits come to m…

This is nonsense. Pensions should be and used to be funded when they were set up. The issue is that greedy, irresponsible politicians (many of whom claim to be conservatives) plundered them like piggy banks.

Re: Bernanke Says U.S. Economy Faces a ‘Wile E. Coyote’ Moment in 2020

#219

Post by sykh »

bodi wrote: post #211
sykh wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we're discussing nothing short of the US government acting as an enemy to the citizens it is supposed to serve.... Your premise is incorrect. The "sort of" part of my statement is important. There are lots of forces at play that cause this. I see it as sort of an emergent phenomenon and not the design of some clever genius or powerful organization.

> sort of divide and conquer Your assertion is not strong enough and your self referential call out to authority is suspect or at the least misplaced. It is absolutely divide and conquer and it absolutely is an organized effort. My assertions were posed as questions only to guide the light. Anyone with eyes to see will know this. The problem is most of those eyes lack the courage and faith to speak.

I didn’t make any self referential call out to authority. I provided no authority whatsoever. I posited beliefs and spoke in such terms. I just stated how I see things. As I said, I believe the problems are emergent phenomena. Of course I could be wrong. It could be an organized effort as you say. It seems reasonable that it would become organized even if the origin isn’t.

Re: Bernanke Says U.S. Economy Faces a ‘Wile E. Coyote’ Moment in 2020

#220

Post by espeed »

bradyseason wrote: post #106
smallnamespace wrote: post #5

The combination of tax repatriation, tax cuts, and large-scale deficit spending (fiscal expansion) late in the economic cycle (recessions typically happen every 8 years or so, and the current expansion has been going on for ~10 yrs now) while the Federal reserve is raising interest rates (monetary 'contraction') is more or less unprecedented (we've never seen it happen in modern times in the US or any other large dev…

Bernanke is the fed chairman so he obviously knows something that most of us don't. But from some analysis, it seems that US will be in good shape for the next 10-20 years. US is currently in capable hands economically since it is lead by a businessman and surrounded by financial experts from wall street. (I don't approve of Trump's character). Some factors for US's continued growth: healthy demographics - due to imm…

> Bernanke is the fed chairman

NB: Bernanke [1] is not the fed chairman and hasn't been since 2014 when he was succeeded by Janet Yellen [2].

Jay Powell [3] is the current fed chair.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Bernanke

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Yellen

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Powell

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