Peter Schiff discusses how the Federal Reserve plays an integral role in the economic recessions of the past. Peter covers cause and effect, and how different functions of the markets, politics, national debt, and central banks influence and shape the future of the world economy. He also gives insight on where he sees the economy heading, and how his prediction is likely to pass in the near future. Las Vegas MoneyShow 10/13/2019
How to Steal the Populists’ Clothes
The continued electoral success of populists in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and in the United States shows that while their policy proposals may be fanciful, their mode of conducting politics is effective. To win at the ballot box, mainstream politicians should apply three lessons that populists have mastered.
.. Rather than complaining about populist successes, established political parties should take a page from the populist playbook. Three lessons, in particular, cry out for attention.
The first lesson is to connect to the people you wish to represent by learning about them and winning their trust.
.. The complacent assumption that people will always vote along party or class lines is obsolete.
.. After a decade of economic malaise, voters are skeptical of mainstream politicians who offer rote promises of growth and improved standards of living. In the eyes of disenchanted workers, those in power have simply been feathering their own nests. Even in many of the world’s strongest economies, workers are earning less in real terms than they did ten years ago.
.. the twin threats of automation and outsourcing have made employment more precarious, and sapped workers’ bargaining power.
.. Who is to blame for this state of affairs? Those who vote for populists clearly hold establishment politicians responsible
.. Contrary to popular belief, recent research finds that technology is not the primary driver of labor’s declining share of income. Rather, the worsening plight of workers is due to
- lost bargaining power and union density,
- welfare-state retrenchment,
- offshoring, and the
- growth of the financial sector as a share of the economy.
the effective tax rates “paid by the world’s 10 biggest public companies by market capitalization in each of nine sectors” have fallen by nearly one-third since 2000, from 34% to 24%.
since 2008, personal income-tax rates across all countries have increased by 6%, on average.
Against this backdrop, the emergence of populist parties and politicians should come as no surprise. When a majority of people becomes poorer, there will be stark consequences at the ballot box. And yet, in one country after another, the political establishment has been remarkably slow to recognize this.
.. Meanwhile, the populist presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, proposes giving every Brazilian a gun so they can defend themselves. To the elites, this sounds (and is) preposterous. But for Brazilians who worry about their own safety, he is at least showing that he understands their top concern.
.. Before winning the French presidency and a parliamentary majority last year, Emmanuel Macron .. sent volunteers across the country to listen to voters’ concerns.
.. populists is to use simple, intuitive messaging to signal your goals. Yes, slogans like “I’ll protect your jobs” and “Make America great again” sound simplistic. But where are the sophisticated alternatives?
.. In the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum, the Remain campaign, phlegmatically led by then-Prime Minister David Cameron’s government, argued that leaving the European Union would result in lower GDP, lost trade, and disruption to the financial sector.
.. Such arguments completely missed what concerned most voters. By contrast, the Brexiteers promised to “take back control” of the UK’s borders and claimed – falsely – that the National Health Service would enjoy a windfall of £350 million ($490 million) per week.
.. Academics, pundits, and political, business, and civil-society leaders have been far too slow to articulate new economic and social policies that have broad-based appeal.
.. it takes a commitment of time and energy to understand the plight of the electorate and to frame solutions in a clear, simple way.
.. The third lesson from the populist playbook is to be bold.
.. people are seeking a transformational vision of the future, not slight improvements. After 30 years of pragmatism and incremental change, it is time for a new tone.
.. Recall that in 1945, Winston Churchill, having delivered victory for Britain in World War II, lost the general election.
The winner, Clement Attlee, promised what was effectively a new social contract for war-weary Britons still living under rations. His government went on to provide free universal health care, unemployment insurance, pensions, decent housing, and secure jobs in nationalized industries. And all this was done with the national debt still at 250% of GDP.
Who Will Be Trump’s Pick to Lead the Fed? We Asked Experts to Rate the Odds
Ms. Yellen has a possibility of being renominated, according to this consensus, but it is only 22 percent; experts think that Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor with deep Republican ties, has a slightly better chance at 23 percent.
.. The case for renominating Ms. Yellen is straightforward.
She has presided over four years of steady economic expansion and rising financial markets. She moved cautiously toward raising interest rates even though the economy seemed to be approaching full employment. By contrast, some more conservative contenders for the job have indicated they want to raise rates more quickly, which could endanger the economy as President Trump approaches midterm elections in 2018 and a potential re-election battle in 2020.
.. Moreover, as President Trump dabbles in making deals with Democrats, reappointing Ms. Yellen could serve as an expression of good faith to Democratic senators. As administration officials focus on tax legislation and other priorities on Capitol Hill, it might be helpful to them to nominate someone who might sail through confirmation, rather than demand a bruising, time-consuming battle.
.. The case against Ms. Yellen is similarly straightforward: She is a liberal economist in a government dominated by conservatives. She is a cerebral academic serving during the presidency of a bombastic businessman. And she is a staunch defender of the work the Fed and other bank regulators have done to try to limit risk in the financial system — including in a high-profile speech last month — amid an administration focused on deregulation.
Kevin Warsh: well connected, but with baggage
He has a law degree, but no advanced degree in economics.
.. Mr. Warsh has been a skeptic of the Fed’s efforts to boost the economy through quantitative easing and has advocated raising interest rates more quickly. He also has a regulatory philosophy more in line with the administration’s.
.. Mr. Warsh’s father-in-law is Ronald Lauder, of the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune, a major Republican donor with longstanding ties to Mr. Trump.
.. If Mr. Warsh is nominated, expect significant blowback during the confirmation process from Democrats, who are likely to accuse the 47-year-old Mr. Warsh of being underqualified, of being responsible for the 2008 bank bailouts and inclined to regulate banks too lightly now, and of being too overtly political for the traditionally nonpartisan Fed chairmanship.
.. Democrats would be eager to criticize the administration for naming a recent top executive at Goldman Sachs to be the nation’s most powerful financial regulator. Some populist Republicans might join them... Foremost among them are several of the names we would probably be hearing about if a conventional Republican president were in the White House.. John B. Taylor is a respected economist at Stanford who worked in the George W. Bush administration and has been an influential voice among congressional Republicans who want to see the Fed bound by stricter rules governing its actions.Glenn Hubbard was a top economic adviser to Mr. Bush who is dean of Columbia Business School.
Larry Lindsey was another top adviser to Mr. Bush and a former Fed governor with an economics doctorate from Harvard.
.. Their doctorates and affiliations with top universities may actually be downsides in an administration that has shown disdain for academic expertise.
.. other names has emerged in various reports, including the F.D.I.C. vice chairman Thomas Hoenig and John Allison
End of Global Warming Debate: By the most qualified real climatologists
1. Scientific consensus is not proof of global warming, just publication and funding bias.
2. It is fundamentally mathematically impossible for climate models to predict climate.
Chaos Theory’s Butterfly Effect is usually described as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Japan resulting in a hurricane in the Atlantic. This is not artistic hyperbole, this is mathematical reality.
Climate is a quintessential example of this phenomenon.
Unless climate models do the absolutely impossible and account for even a butterfly’s wings flapping, particularly when they are initialized, and then calculate with infinite precision, they can not predict climate.
.. 3. Climate proxies are far too inaccurate, unreliable, and sparse to prove anything about past global climate, e.g. that it was colder.