For once, I would like a GOP president to clean up their own economic mess

I understand your sentiments. I think a recession is due. I don't know if it is coming before or after the 2020 election. We got a bit lucky that the great recession hit in September /October of 2007 rather than in December and January and the downturn helped elect Obama and a Democratic Congress. It could have stalled a couple more months, and we don't really know whether McCain might have won or not without that recession. My gut says Obama still would have won, but I doubt that he gets the partisan sweep in the House and Senate without that recession hitting when it did.

You can't force Trump to clean up his mess. Hell he is not intellectually capable or emotionally mature enough to clean up anything so I don't want him in office when the recession comes. Our job instead is to teach Americans to ditch this 'on his watch' mentality we like to use to avoid actually having to think through what a President is or is not responsible for, and when he becomes responsible Inaugural Day is almost never the right answer. The answer for when to hold an administration accountable for what happens, foreign or domestic, during the four years, is that it has to depend on a ton of circumstances. The accountability will gradually grow, as an administration gains more control over the variables that he inherited. For an economy that will take years not weeks. He has to make changes in the Treasury dept, and the Economic Development commission etc, to begin to have an impact on these bureaucracies. He has to make some fed appointments, and see his priorities reflected in budget and spending policies that take years to implement. Over the course of two or three years, the ship of state can begin to change course and see the difference in the conditions reflected by that change in destinatiion

 

I fully agree. I would rather have a Dem dealing with the next recession than Trump. However, if that happens, the electorate will never learn their lesson.

 

Just a second here. I thought this was obama's economy? I guess it depends on what side of the bed lefties wake up on.

 

One of the lessons we need to teach is that an administration is often NOT responsible for the ebbs and flows of the global economy. These cycles happen and international episodes and patterns outside of our purview , are a big part of this. Maybe the President and Congress can mitigate here and there, soften the blow, qne they can certainly put us in a position to recover faster and earlier, but I doubt we should ever be so arrogant as to think our government controls a market economy in Asia , Africa, Europe, South America etc. The American people look for scapegoats, to blame when **** hits, and sometimes there is nobody but a cycle. It is a global economy after all.

 

Yawn, wake me up when you have something more to contribute than your usual one-liners.

 

try to grasp this idea. It does not become Trump's economy the day he gets elected, or even the first year he is elected. What is we say its 5% his economy the first six months he's in office, then 12% the second six months, then 26 % after a 18 months, and then about 40 in two years... The more time he has had to implement his own influence over more levers, the greater accountability. You see what I mean.

 

What if there is no recession?

 

Why would a recession be due....

In a colloquial sense, the person in charge gets the credit/blame for anything that occurs.

 

Really? Why?
Wanna compare the Republican handling of the 2001 recession to the Democrats to the 2008. Want to compare recoveries? UE numbers? Deficit numbers? GDP numbers? Tax revenues?

 

The general pattern has been of economic growth, since around 2009-2010. I think we are due from some testicular shrinkage after a cold bath. I understand the colloquial sense. Its simplistic, arbitrary and dumb, either in business or government. If you inherent little problems you can be expected to solve them soon enough after you get your people in place, after they have acclimated to the processes and policies, and have developed some alliances and loyalty in order to make the policy changes needed.

Big problems need a change in the very fabric of the institution you inherit. You may need to get rid of system wide biases, and retrain an entire bureaucracy, as well as your 'customer' base. You may need to see financial results before you can invest resouces sufficient to solve big problems.

 

Desperate? There are so many I don't know where to begin.
How about restoring basic decency, honesty, and integrity to the office of the POTUS.
How about a prez who does not rely on divisiveness as a political strategy.
How about one of the issues that brought about the blue wave......working to make healthcare better.
How about approaching climate change from a scientific rather than ideological standpoint.
How about treating immigrants humanely.
How about an admin that issues policy declarations based on fact based research and thoughtful consideration of their ramifications......not impulsive tweets that are walked back in 24 hours.

Recessions are a natural part of the business cycle. They are not necessarily the fault of the sitting admin. But it becomes especially problematic when the admin, as we are seeing now, tries to distort the market in a desperate attempt to forestall the timing of a recession in order to maintain power. It results in economic dislocations that are exceedingly hard to correct and typically cause more damage than would have occurred otherwise.

 

By all means lets do. But only if you are willing to examine the relative conditions in context. For instance, the severity of the 2008 recession as compared to that in 2001.

 

But not in any realistic way. It depends on the balance of power. For instance Democrats try to blame Bush for the FY2009 $1,400B deficit. The fact is they didn't get as much spending as they wanted for FY2008 because Bush threaten to veto any higher spending, that deficit was $400B then they cut him out completely for FY2009 not passing a budget until Obama had been elected, inserted his spending request and was signed by President Obama. It's folly to think the economy and government policy especially budgets turns solely on who is President. It is quite humorous though that the Democrats try to blame Bush for not stopping them from passing their budgets.

 

Let's see.... to qualify, Trump would simply need go for free medical, free college and free income, and send the bills to wall street. That would "clean up" the economic mess he has created by objecting to free stuff.
And you thought we wouldn't understand your message!
Sounds like you are on the fence, tho.

Of course, he will get another term- but what is really important is that the president who follows him will be a lot like him. When it's working and it ain't broke, you shouldn't "fix" it.

 

That is correct if you talk about tax cuts for the middle class. Not so for corporate taxes or tax cuts for billionaires, which is what Trump did.

The middle class spends, thereby increasing consumption, production, GDP, ... all the good stuff. Corporations use them to increase their market value. And billionaires use them to... just being more billionaire.

 

Would you like some vinaigrette on that word salad?

 

Deficits are the least of our problems. However, the rank hypocricy of Republicans who used to "worry" about deficits amuses me.

 

UE a one month 6.5% then rapidly falling under Republican policies. UE blowing past the 8% Obama said his stimulus would hold it to hitting 10% and staying over 8% for over four years.

Who would you rather have in control?

You pick one now.

We elect congresses to pass policies to help mitigate slowdowns and the depths of recessions and their length and get us into a full recession. That's their job. We are discussing the differences in those polices and the results. The relative condition, the economy was fine when the Democrats took back the Congress, it was up to them to pass such policies as the Republicans did in 2000 and 2001. That it got as bad as it did is not an excuse for their failed policies it is in part a result.

 

Sorry it's over you head.

 

Rarely do I see a disingenuous argument so transparent as that. Explain to me what Congress could have done in 2008 that would have stopped the impending tidal wave of bank failures already unfolding due to the laissez faire approach by the Bush admin with respect to the conditions that caused the collapse.

 

If you think this is over my head you've got the wrong guy. You picked the wrong guy to debate with on this brother.

 

Would you like to discuss how increasing the reserve ratio for investment banks to 33:1 effected their ability to deal with covering margin calls on CDS' once the RMBS (residential mortgage backed securities) began to fail?

 

I don't know what you're talking about.The 28, 25, and 15 percent tax marginal brackets were lowered to 24, 22, and 12 percent respectively for single and joint filers. That is a tax cut on anyone making anywhere from $10,000 to $157,000. The middle class definitely falls within that range.

You're not saying anything meaningful right now.

 

Sure, there are politics involved; however, none of this is relevant. If you are a leader, you take the blame when things occur under your watch is either your fault or your benefit. Anything else is merely an excuse.

 

So you are saying the Democrats were just totally helpless? What do think was their job to just sit there with their thumbs up their arse's as the economy started slowing, they were just along for the ride. Hey let us know when it is over then maybe we'll do something. How ludicrous. Well here is what they did say they were going to do, raise taxes, increase business regulations, increase the cost of employment and take over the healthcare system. Do you think that may have helped contribute to a loss of business confidence and consumer confidence? How about had they instead said we're making the Bush tax rates permanent, pass an acceleration of depreciation schedules, put a moratorium on new business regulations, tell the EPA to fast track jobs creating approvals, put Obamacare and all it's taxes and cost on the back burner............that's just a few things off the top of my head.

We had the worst recovery and unemployment in modern history under their policies why on earth would you want to go back to them?