Trumps: White Angry Middleclass

[Ultralight]

I can see him moving us back to the dark ages.

Americans need to learn a tough lesson about doing dumb stuff and how it has consequences. Maybe this would ultimately lead to a bright, shiny new age!

[jp1]

Americans need to learn a tough lesson about doing dumb stuff and how it has consequences. Maybe this would ultimately lead to a bright, shiny new age!

But doing dumb stuff doesn't have consequences. We all saw what happened to the bankers after they crashed the economy and needed $5 trillion in bailouts. They all got bonuses and kept their jobs and lived happily ever after.

[LDAHL]

But doing dumb stuff doesn't have consequences. We all saw what happened to the bankers after they crashed the economy and needed $5 trillion in bailouts. They all got bonuses and kept their jobs and lived happily ever after.

Pro Publica does a regular update on the status of the bailout. They say that thus far the Feds paid out $618 billion (of which the banks accounted for about 40%) and have collected $683 billion for a profit to the Treasury of about $65 billion.


https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/

[jp1]

Pro Publica does a regular update on the status of the bailout. They say that thus far the Feds paid out $618 billion (of which the banks accounted for about 40%) and have collected $683 billion for a profit to the Treasury of about $65 billion.


https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/

And QE was $4 trillion of purchases of bad debt from the banks.

[LDAHL]

And QE was $4 trillion of purchases of bad debt from the banks.

And the feds have made about $500 billion on that program since 2008. The "bad debt" they bought were largely securities the government had already guaranteed, or in the case of agency issues formally accepted the "moral hazard" at the outset of the crisis. I do think QE has some shortcomings from a monetary policy standpoint that we will pay for in future years, though.

There were plenty of private and public players in the 2008-2009 crisis. Simply identifying "banksters" as the scapegoat may play well politically, but it falls short as an explanation of what happened. I don't think you can reduce it, as Bernie Sanders has, to a sort of morality play.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...109-story.html

[ApatheticNoMore]

And QE was $4 trillion of purchases of bad debt from the banks.

Yes Federal Reserve QE money is different than the money the article is talking about which is just TARP plus Fannie/Freddie money. Oh you hear a lot of arguments about QE, how it's not really money being given, it's money and not money, it's not just QE but Quantum Mechanics money, who can really say if it is or isn't money being given, all I can conclude is it seems to me someone had to have gotten that money (not all the banks although to a large extent, wasn't global QE also bailing out major corporations like Caterpillar?).

My husband works for the hwy dept and 90% of them are for Donald Trump. They are the angry, white (for the most part) middle class. They long for the days when life was more simple, when Dad worked (not mom) and supplied the family with all they needed. No ISIS, no terrorists, there were jobs you could stay with for a lifetime and retire. Health care was affordable.

this I do not get, isn't the highway dept government work and isn't government work about as stable a job as you can possibly have? (or is it different in Tennessee?). Ok I know nothing about the job conditions, but it seems those workers might actually know much LESS economic insecurity than pretty much everyone else. Have vast privilege they can't see (and I don't mean white privilege) This DOES NOT seem to be the angry white people falling out of the middle class or with precarious jobs, but people who have as much middle class job stability as anyone in the U.S. now. But it does make some sense, we want to see the Trump followers as those who are really suffering in this economy (and many white people are too, and some might have been middle class at one time, and they might be angry about it ...), but fascist collations are more often made up of more stable middle class types.

Americans need to learn a tough lesson about doing dumb stuff and how it has consequences. Maybe this would ultimately lead to a bright, shiny new age!

well there are several problems with this:


1) Cruz is NOT the obviously dumb choice as Cruz is NOT the one saying the most obviously dumb stuff of the R's by far. My first if imperfect path to get a handle on these dozens and dozens of Rs was the debates (which I often read). In the debates the most reasonable sounding R to me was Rand Paul, but he dropped out. And the runner up may be Cruz. I don't like to say that but .... perhaps it's a reality best acknowledged. So we have to analyze more than just what they say in the debates: Cruz makes the most reasonable points does not equal Cruz is a good choice. Cruz is SLICK, slick as an oil spill, he will SAY ANYTHING to get elected, but if you investigate his background he seems to be a serious theocrat and deeply personally dislikable and ethically questionable (just the "Carson dropped out" scandal alone). So you can't just believe what a politician says. Yes, yes, you would have thought that the Obama administration would have taught people that, but I don't think we're talking about the same voting pool I think it did teach some of the Obama voting pool that and they are trying to find a guy that seems incorruptible (Sanders).

2) I don't think bad consequences lead to people becoming smarter. W was reelected twice. The first W administration was about as bad a consequence as anyone could have wished and he got reelected (yes Kerry is an idiot but he was NOT W - that alone should have got him elected as the W administration was as much of a disaster as anyone could have wished for). I think if anything at the voting booth will lead to people becoming smarter it's electing better and better people, then the overall political environment will improve and the electorate will follow and become smarter (yes of course it also has to lead to some degree). I don't necessarily believe in a strict punishment model here so much as I believe in viscous and virtuous circles, viscous circles continue dragging downward, virtuous circles build upward.

[ApatheticNoMore]

And the feds have made about $500 billion on that program since 2008.

even those who paid back money were allowed to do dubious stuff, like get money from the feds at a lower interest rate, invest it right in treasuries at a higher interest rate, and keep the difference. If the masses of Americans in debt were given that kind of deal maybe they could pay back their loans easier as well .... by the magic of free money.

[jp1]

And the feds have made about $500 billion on that program since 2008. The "bad debt" they bought were largely securities the government had already guaranteed, or in the case of agency issues formally accepted the "moral hazard" at the outset of the crisis. I do think QE has some shortcomings from a monetary policy standpoint that we will pay for in future years, though.

There were plenty of private and public players in the 2008-2009 crisis. Simply identifying "banksters" as the scapegoat may play well politically, but it falls short as an explanation of what happened. I don't think you can reduce it, as Bernie Sanders has, to a sort of morality play.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...109-story.html

So, by my math and that stories' numbers the fed earned approximately 2.19% on all the QE purchased debt, at least for the year 2014. It'd be interesting to know what the face rate was on all the QE debt so that we could learn just how much of it actually went bad. In other words, if the average rate on all the QE debt was 4.38% then half of it, or $2 trillion really was garbage and in fact a gift from the fed to the banks. If, on the other hand, the rate on all the QE purchased debt was close to the 2.19% that the fed earned then there wasn't much of a gift to bankers, but that would also beg the question, what exactly was the point of QE.

[LDAHL]

So, by my math and that stories' numbers the fed earned approximately 2.19% on all the QE purchased debt, at least for the year 2014.

That yield isn't all that bad in the current environment. Ten year treasuries, for instance, are yielding about 1.76% at the moment.

QE, for all it's faults, was instituted for monetary reasons when the Fed ran out of rate-setting ammunition.

And I'm not saying the banks are completely blameless. I'm saying the crisis was a perfect storm of bad decisions by government, the financial industry and the great American public. Scapegoating one particular group adds nothing to an understanding of what happened. No villains are required, unless you've got a political agenda to sell.

Who was it who said "Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity"?

[jp1]

If the bankers are just as stupid as the naive public who took out loans they can't afford, that would seem to be a good reason for better banking regulations.