Category Archives: Trump presidency

6/2/21: Longer Trends in Economic Uncertainty

Quite dramatic trends in terms of rising economic uncertainty over the last 21 years:

And, not surprisingly, the rise of uncertainty in Europe, the U.S., and globally pre-dates the Covid19 pandemic. In fact, Europe has been experiencing dramatically elevated uncertainty levels since the start of the Euro area crisis, while the U.S. saw a virtually exponential rise in uncertainty from 2017 on. Global measures of uncertainty have been running high through 2016 and rose dramatically thereafter.

While amelioration in the Covid19 pandemic dynamics is likely to lower the levels and the volatility of the uncertainty in global economic systems, it is highly unlikely to return us to the pre-Global Financial Crisis state of affairs.

The failure of Republican leadership

It is truly stunning that the President of the United States has almost certainly given classified information to the Russians because he loves bragging and has no control over his tongue. He has himself pretty well admitted this in his latest tweets (here and here).

It is worth taking a moment to think about how extraordinary this is. The president of the United States gives intelligence to the Russians! This was the stuff of jokes not very long ago, or far fetched political thrillers. Now, it's real.

Now consider the reaction of the Republican leaders on the Hill, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. They hounded Hillary Clinton over her emails (though no significant information was ever discovered to have leaked) and set up numerous committees to investigate the Benghazi Embassy attack. They portray themselves as American patriots. With the exception of a half-hearted mention by Ryan, they have had nothing to say on this issue. No comment on the fact that the president has given classified information to a hostile power, endangering the intelligence relationship with an ally in so doing.

Ryan and McConnell have spent a long time demeaning themselves and placing party interests before country, but so far this is their nadir. It's ok to put intelligence lives at risk and betray your country's secrets if it means keeping a Republican in the White House. McConnell has already shown how little he regards America's once revered constitution with his party games over the Supreme Court. Ryan's whole mission in his political life has been to cut funding to any form of welfare programmes. Not exactly a couple of inspiring political heroes even before the Trump juggernaut exposed their self-serving, vindictive and malicious political dealing.

Donald Trump is a braggart and a moron who has little idea of the implications of his actions. His only defence is that no-one expected any better of him; his whole political adventure has been to extend the brand of Trump and give his barely thought through political beliefs a megaphone to the world. But Ryan and McConnell have come through political life. They have brains of a higher working order. Unlike Trump, they do know exactly what they are doing. And it is one of the most depressing political spectacles ever witnessed. Not since the days of Franz von Papen have we seen such naked political self-interest and cowardly retreat from morality give service to such an unspeakable populist power.

When the history of the decline and fall of the American Republic is written, Ryan and McConnell will have prominent roles. But why would they care? What is the future of the republic compared to their political careers?

Firing Comey won’t hurt Trump

President Trump's sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey, just after a former fired Justice Dept official, Sally Yates, had been giving damning evidence to Congress, is an extraordinary event. But not unprecedented in style.

Trump has fired Comey while Comey is overseeing an investigation into Trump's links with Russia. Back in 1973, Republican president Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox while Cox was investigating Nixon's links to the Watergate break-in. Reports have not been slow to raise the links, and Democrats on the Hill have quickly referred to the Comey firing as "Nixonian".

Nixon's actions led to his eventual impeachment. But enemies of Mr. Trump shouldn't be too keen to expect significant retaliatory action against him. Here's why.

1. Nixon's actions came after a slow-burning revelation of the internal paranoia of his presidency through initially unregarded reports in the Washington Post. By the time Cox was fired, the Nixon White House was already in a state of siege.

2. Nixon faced a Democrat controlled House and Senate ready to use their significant constitutional power to investigate him.

3. Trump faces a House and Senate controlled by virtually supine Republican leaders utterly in thrall to his presidency. Ryan, McConnell, Nunes, Grassley and others have all shown their willingness to roll over in front of Trump if it furthers their judicial or economic agenda.

4. Trump still retains a strong support from his voting core. This won't budge. He has already faced down public protest over a range of other unorthodox or unethical moves in his frist 100 days; this is simply one more.

5. The presidency was still regarded as having to work by understood ethical and political standards under Nixon. He breached those, and thus began his downfall.

6. There has never been an understanding that Trump will use the presidency in a dignified or ethical way. Media and political opposition have failed to shift this narrative, due to Trump's continuing hard-line support from his activists and an extraordinary abdication by Republicans of any thought that they will offer independent scrutiny of the president.

7. Popular pressure is all, but it has to be seen to be large and widespread. After Nixon's firing telegrams and messages poured into Congress and the White House from concerned citizens. It suggested a general shift in the public mood away from the president. Trump can remain secure in the knowledge that the base which put him into office still would so again. Millions of opponents in Calfifornia or New York will have no impact on him.

8. The Democrats have colluded in undermining Comey, notably Hillary Clinton herself. She has consistently blamed him for her own election defeat and been supported in this view by supporters such as Chuck Schumer. This makes any opposition they now express to Comey's firing extremely suspect. They should have kept quiet and understood the need to coalesce around an independnet minded Director who was, after all, appointed by a Democratic president.

No-one can tell how this latest abuse of presidential power will run. Trump is still at the beginning of his presidency, he enjoys support where it matters, and neither the media nor Democrats have yet found a way of seriously challenging him. They may still not have managed to do so in four years' time.

The certifiable lunacy of the Trump White House

Has the White House had a certifiable lunatic as its resident in previous years? Here we are in the second day of the Trump presidency and the most important thing on the mind of the most powerful individual in the world is how big his crowds were at the inauguration.

As he addressed his intelligence community - or part of it - you might have thought he could have come up with slightly more pressing topics of consideration for his speech. But nope. Crowd numbers and the mendacity of the press were his highlights.

We know Trump cares about his ratings. During his bizarre transitional period he found time to lambast Arnold Schwarzenegger for his low ratings as the new host of the "Apprentice". He even gave himself a nickname. "Ratings Machine DJT". So this stuff is important.

The two picture above have had wide circulation. The top one shows the crowd for Barack Obama's first inauguration in 2009. The second shows the crowd for Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017. There is a bit of a difference. Even a casual observer can see that. Whatever the numbers were in 2009, they were considerably lower by the looks of it the other day.

This would normally be a matter of inconsequential comment before moving on. But partly because Trump bigs himself up so much, the photos received wide publicity across various media. Cue the statesmanlike White House response.

Not only does Trump major on this to the intelligence officers, but his new press secretary, Sean Spicer, indulges himself in an extraordinary rant at the media in his first press conference. Both Trump and Spicer show-cased their infrequent relationship with the truth. Trump could apparently see that there were around 2 million people in the crowds from his perch at the podium. Spicer ranted first that there were no official numbers available and then, without batting an eyelid, announced that this had been the largest inauguration crowd ever. Period. So there. He also misrepresented a comparison of DC metro numbers, claiming that there were over 500,000 journeys on Friday compared to a mere 3000,000 on the day of Barack Obama's second inauguration. Washington Metro actually reported 193,000 metro rides just after 11am on Friday, compared to 513,000 on Obama's first inaugural. The figures for Friday seemed to be the lowest of any inuagural travel since 2005.

Spicer- surely the most comic figure to ever stand in that press room - then had to go further. When Trump addressed the intelligence officers, so the press were told, there over 500 people there, and over 1,000 had applied to be present. The officers were ecstatic in their joy at having Trump as their new president. They love him and he's got their back.

The problem is I'm not actually sure they were lying. There is a serious danger that they actually believed their own nonsense. Trump is delusional enough to convince himself that he can accurately assess 2 million people standing in front of him. The raging Spicer could not even maintain a basic consistency for two sentences.

Pathological liars or delusional maniacs. Either way, the lunacy in the White House became more palpably certifiable just two days in to the administration.

The New York Times report of the press conference is here. The opening part of the press conference from old loony-bag Spicer is below.

Slate fact-checked the lies in Spicer's statement - 4 in 5 minutes.