Steve Mnuchin – Forecast: partly sunny with a chance of cataclysms

AMERICA FIRST. AMERICA FIRST. AMERICA ÜBER ALLES

Nominee for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that he intends to “put the swagger back into the State Department.” But just who swaggers? Bullies and braggarts, for two, plus others who want you to believe there’s more to them than meets the eye when usually there’s less. Look up “swagger” in any dictionary and you’re hard put to find anything positive about swaggering. Here’s definition #1 from Webster’s 11th: “To conduct oneself in an arrogant and superciliously pompous manner; esp: to walk with an air of overbearing self-confidence.”

That having a tone-deaf person take over the State Department actually looks like an improvement over the do-nothing leadership of Rex Tillerson, shows us the depths to which we’ve sunk in the Trump administration.

Continue reading “Swaggering Swamp Creatures?”

A Bad Joke in Search of a Punch Line

This post was prompted by an anecdote concerning a meeting top Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn had with a number of high-flying corporate executives. He asked for a show of hands of those who would use benefits from the corporate tax cut to reinvest in their business, or some other business, in the U.S. A few hands went up. Most did not. The administration’s heavy hitter asked (I believe these were his literal words), “Why aren’t there more hands up?”

The answer from execs who failed to raise their hands was, they already had plenty of money, there just weren’t many opportunities to invest in. And that’s because . . . (is this the punch line?) consumers weren’t spending!

Oops! Went a tiny voice in Gary Cohn’s shrinking brain.

Of course, what holds for corporations also goes for rich individuals who can only spend so much money until they are sated. After a certain threshold, they buy things not for use, but for bragging rights. Not avarice, but ego ego ego. My yacht is bigger than your yacht, and everyone knows that Size Matters.

I first heard this anecdote on NPR but unfortunately cannot find the segment where their sharp correspondent identified it (sheesh! – forgot her name too—sorry, sharp reporter!).

Continue reading “How to Cripple an Economy, Part 2: Taxes”