In The Age of Anxiety

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Tuesday May 26, 2020 · 2:20 PM PDT

2020/05/26 · 14:20

We are now in a full-blown “Age of Anxiety”; not the first, of course. There was as much anxiety during the 1918-20 Spanish Flue pandemic that reportedly killed 50 million in a series of worldwide outbreaks lasting more than two years.

If we do not find ways to lessen anxiety in this pandemic, we might seriously experience what Dr. Rick Bright, who was recently transferred from his position as Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority director at HHS has described as “the darkest winter in modern history.”

“The mortality of the pandemic could be “unprecedented” and ultimately outstrip the 50 million casualties of the 1918 influenza epidemic," wrote Bright in his prepared testimony,“ without a science-based national response to the pandemic.”

There is much more to the current age of anxiety. New Deal economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote a book called The Age of Uncertainty in the 1970s that attempted to explain the general anxiety brought on by post-WWII institutions that were no longer stable.

“In it we contrast the great certainties in economic thought in the last century with the great uncertainty with which problems are faced in our time,” he said. “Little of this certainty now survives. Given the dismaying complexity of the problems mankind now faces, it would surely be odd if it did.”

This anxiety has been compounded by a record income inequality, the worst since the Great Depression. A 2018 PEW Research survey showed the wage stagnation of American salaried workers over almost two generations.

Its study found that today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers, the top 10 percent of income earners.

I have frequently cited Robert Shiller, a Nobel Laureate economist who says anxiety has reached such a level that it is becoming a second pandemic, an anxiety pandemic that is contagious because “stories of fear have gone so viral that we often think of them constantly,” which could delay the recovery because of the public’s irrational responses.

“Business closures, soaring unemployment, and loss of income fuel financial anxiety, which may, in turn, deter people, desperate for work, from taking adequate precautions against the spread of the disease…But, unlike COVID-19 itself, the source of our anxiety is that we are unsure what action to take.”

And that is already happening with news pictures of crowded bars and restaurants in states like Texas and Georgia, where they haven’t met the 14-day requirement of falling infection rates decreed by the CDC.

“Unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery economically is not going to happen,” says Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He goes on to say that “even if social distancing standards were relaxed, it wouldn’t restore the health of the economy as some protesters have implied it would.”

It is the economic health of Americans that most concerns Americans, which means remedies must be found to curb the rising anxiety, if there is to be something less than a Great Recession or Depression.

And it has to be a united focus of governing authorities on the scientific message that his pandemic is bringing; that we are all in this together.

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Daniel Kahneman On Thinking, Fast and Slow

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Monday March 16, 2020 · 7:22 AM PDT

2020/03/16 · 07:22

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Thinking, Fast and Slow; what else should Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman be noted for, the son of Lithuanian Jewish parents fleeing the Russian Empire in the 1920s who grew up with the terrifying sound of marching black boots during the Nazi occupation of Paris, if not to study human behavior in both wartime and peacetime?

I just heard him speak to an audience I’m sure was there because they were looking for some insight into how our species may react to the current coronavirus scare that some are characterizing as a ‘Black Swan’ event (mostly economists), meaning a very serious event with no predictable outcome.

Dr. Kahneman emphasized that our decision-making propensities come from different parts of the brain that cause us to both ‘narrow frame’ (fast process) and ‘broad frame’ (slow process) the information we take in. And we need both parts to reach a rational decision that is in our best interests.

We have a tendency, or bias, to come to a conclusion or make a decision quickly, but Dr. Kahneman says not so fast! We need the slower-thinking side of us to see the larger picture. He said it can be just a matter of closing one’s eyes for a few minutes that slows down our thought process while allowing us to process what we’ve just taken in intuitively.

We should take the time to collect all the pertinent, ‘cognitive’ facts, in order to slow down our first reaction to what is right in front of us. He used several examples of narrow vs. broad frame thinking, such as forecasting future events, or diagnosing the high rate of skin cancer among farmers.

I was particularly interested in his take on how we make economic decisions. He is at the foundation of behavioral economics, or how humans make financial decisions that are not always in our best interest; particularly if we allow so-called free, unregulated financial markets to make choices for us.

There are now at least three Noble prizes that have been awarded for information biases in how we take in information and make decisions on what to invest. And they are mostly Keynesian, or neo-Keynesian economists that believe governments must take an active role in regulating markets to prevent excessive speculation as happened with the Dot-com bubble in 2001, or housing bubble bust that resulted in the Great Recession.

Nobel economist Robert Shiller described in his best-selling book, Irrational Exuberance how many investors and homebuyers relied on rumor, hearsay, or word of mouth, rather than serious research to buy a home, or invest in the financial markets and thereby drive up asset prices (such as housing) to unsustainable levels.

Stock investors call it herd behavior when investors rush into a particular investment because others are doing the same, rather than researching the history of the company or index to see if it is overvalued.

Dr. Kahneman and his partner, Amos Twersky, found that humans have an optimistic bias in forecasting favorable outcomes that we must be aware of, when making decisions based on those forecasts. We therefore need to look at the broader picture.

How will the lowering of interest rates, as the Fed is currently doing, affect both poor and wealthy consumers, for instance? Should we save more and spend less in the event of an economic slowdown or recession?

Stocks are very highly valued in this 11^th year of the current recovery just by looking at the current price-to-earnings ratio of the S&P. Why? The record profits of those corporations cannot be sustained with slower population growth and labor productivity—the two main factors that determine economic growth. Their earnings, the denominator of the P/E ratio, will shrink causing the ratio to rise above historical levels, hence certain stock assets are overvalued and will eventually fall.

That is what happened during the 2001 Dot-com stock bubble and 2007-09 Great Recession. P/E ratios soared to levels last seen before the Great Depression, which means history does provide lessons, if heeded.

Here are two of behavioral economist and Nobel prize-winner Robert Shiller’s most memorable statements in Irrational Exuberance: “ 'It amazes me how people are often more willing to act based on little or no data than to use data that is a challenge to assemble.”…'The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence."

We know it’s best to slow down one’s thinking process, before making an important decision. But how often do we?

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Where Have All the Profits Gone?

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Friday March 02, 2018 · 11:09 AM PST

2018/03/02 · 11:09

I first wrote about the reasons for the huge stock selloff in early February when the DOW plunged more than 1,000 points in one day. It seems to be repeating itself this week, with the DOW losing almost as much over the past 2 days when the economic news was good—GDP growth averaged 2.3 percent in 2017, and both the manufacturing and service sectors are booming. Then why the selloff with new tax cuts that will put more money into people’s (and corporate) pockets as well?

The short answer is investors fear inflation and higher interest rates will kick in later this year with continued growth and a very tight labor market. But the longer answer is that investors are looking at the wrong economic model, if they believe inflation is about to rise even when it isn’t. Nor are interest rates rising, which is another indicator of incipient inflation with the 10-year Treasury security yield declining of late and still below 3 percent.

Core inflation with the PCE consumption index did rise 0.3 percent in January, but not enough to lift the year-on-year rate which holds at an as-expected 1.5 percent. Total prices, reflecting a rise in gas, rose 0.4 percent with this year-on-year rate also unchanged, at 1.7 percent.

That is barely a hint of inflation, folks, and certainly no reason for the Fed to move up its interest rate forecast, even with the good economic news. Then why the inflation fears? It’s really the Fed Governors, which are usually bankers, which means they listen mostly to business economists. Whereas, they should be listening to macroeconomists such as Nobelist Paul Krugman or the IMF’s Olivier Blanchard, that study what is behind the larger picture of national and international economic growth.

Macroeconomists look at aggregate demand, which is the sum of activity in the private and public sectors to predict economic growth. And they see weak demand, because average household incomes haven’t risen faster than inflation over the past 30 years.

In other words, average real household incomes have literally not grown at all when inflation is factored in. This has been happening since the 1980s when trickle-down economics came into vogue, which said that the owners of capital and industry should receive the lion’s share of national income (via lower taxes and regulations), and that would create more jobs and growth for everyone.

This is also when labor laws were weakened that has resulted in 25 red states having right to work laws that mean members of a union don’t have to pay union dues, if they don’t like their policies. Yet they enjoy the benefits. This has weakened the bargaining power of ordinary workers, needless to say. Several states like Wisconsin even ban most public service employees of the state from collective bargaining. So their salaries have actually declined, rather than grown.

Therefore, better-paying jobs and higher growth never materialized. This is something conservative economists don’t want to believe, because it means government regulations are needed to tame the greed of corporate and hedge fund managers who do very little to boost aggregate demand, so that very little trickles down to the 80 percent of our workforce that earns wages and salaries. And they are the drivers of real economic growth.

Shouldn’t the new Republican tax bill that repatriates overseas profits and lowers the corporate tax rate be helpful? Not really, because history shows most of those increased profits buy back stock to enrich their shareholders and corporate CEOs, rather than ‘trickle down’ to substantial pay raises.

The New York Times reported that historically, American companies had paid out profits with a quarterly check, known as a dividend. But after the S.E.C. changed its rule in 1982, companies started using more of their profits to buy their own shares, in the process giving their shareholders a bigger piece of the company.

“Buybacks soon soared,” reported the Times. “That was about 5 percent less than those companies spent on new plants, research and development and other investments. By contrast, 20 years ago, companies spent four times as much on such investments as they did on buybacks.”

And hedge fund managers are still taxed at the lower capital gains tax for carried trades on the 20 percent they earn from any profits their hedge funds earn, rather than at the higher personal income tax rate.

Unfortunately, this means the siphoning of profits to nonproductive uses will continue, and stagnation of household incomes will depress any potential for higher growth and wages.

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

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Shutdown vs. “S***hole” Countries?

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Tuesday January 23, 2018 · 7:25 AM PST

2018/01/23 · 07:25

Popular Economics Weekly

The just ended government shutdown has little to do with 9 million children’s health insurance under the CHIP plan, or extending the Dreamers protection under DACA. It really has to do with President Trump’s insistence on shutting down immigration from non-white countries; as was evident from Trump’s “S***hole” comments that he wanted to limit immigrants from African and other non-white countries.

What is so shocking about Trump’s comments is they repeat those of one who he claims not to admire. Adolf Hitler in 1928 openly admired America’s racist policies of that time that excluded non-whites and Jews from immigrating to the U.S.: “The American Union feels itself to be a Nordic-German state and by no means an international porridge of peoples. This is revealed by its immigration quotas ... Scandinavians … then Englishmen and finally Germans have been accorded the largest contingent,” said Hitler even before the Nazi’s took power.

Specifically, Hitler admired the US Immigration Act of 1924 – also known as the Johnson-Reed Act – “which had erected openly racist barriers to immigration on the basis of a “national quota” system,” according to Yale Law Professor James Whitman.

“It was not until the 1965 US Immigration and Nationality Act that the US began to separate itself from the worst aspects of its racist past. And, as Trump’s presidency makes clear, that past has yet to be permanently overcome,” said Professor Whitman in a Project Syndicate article.

There is a reason why US immigration laws became more open. The US has always suffered from a labor shortage, so that newly arrived immigrants were needed to fill the labor deficiency.

PEW Research states that More than 41 million immigrants lived in the U.S. as of 2013, more than four times as many as was the case in 1960 and 1970. By comparison, the U.S.-born population is only about 1.6 times the size it was in 1960. Immigrant population growth alone has accounted for 29 percent of U.S. population growth since 2000.

That is the most glaring sign that new workers are needed to maintain economic growth. US population growth cannot keep up with our demand for new workers. There is no other way to fill the 6 million job openings reported each month by the Labor Department’s JOLTS report.

Debate on the current House bill that doesn’t include an extension of the Dreamers’ protections was continued for 3 weeks, in the hopes a bi-partisan bill keeping open the door for immigrants from what President Trump considers to be “S***hole”, non-white countries will be passed.

So it is important for economic reasons; as well as recognizing that America has always been a land of immigrants; that we keep a flow of qualified immigrants and their families coming from countries that can provide the workforce America has always needed to grow.

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Who Needs a Tax Cut?

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Sunday October 01, 2017 · 1:42 PM PDT

2017/10/01 · 13:42

Popular Economics Weekly

It turns out very few of us need a tax cut. Marketwatch economist Rex Nutting calculates that those in the 60 percent middle-income brackets—from $32,000 to $140,000 per year—pay just an average 2.5 percent in income taxes. It’s only the richest 0.1 to 1 percent income earners that pay more, andso want the huge tax cuts congress and the Trump administration are proposing.

Their rationale? That it will boost GDP growth to 3 percent from the current 2 percent average since the end of the Great Recession. But guess what? Q2 GDP growth was already 3 percent in Q2 and just revised to 3.1 percent, the highest growth rate in 2 years. Businesses are already investing in expansion—business investment in structures rose a stronger 7 percent instead of 6.2 percent in the revision. So, why not pay down the huge budget deficits accumulated since then, instead of cutting tax revenues?

“A bill that cuts federal income taxes for middle-class families makes absolutely no sense, except as a sad way of camouflaging the real intent of the bill: Giving millions of dollars to the very wealthy, who happen to be the only people who are really benefiting from our uneven economic growth,” said Nutting.

Top this off with another record for corporate profits, up 7.4 percent in a year, and there is no reason to be cutting their taxes. They haven’t been using their profits for productive purposes, so what’s needed is for them to pay higher taxes so government can use that money to invest productively in the $2 trillion plus in outmoded infrastructure that badly needs replacement.

As a bonus, any such investments in new airports, power grids, better water treatment facilities (such as Detroit’s), alternative energies, roads, bridges—you name it—will increase labor productivity that has been cut in half since 2000.

And increasing labor productivity is the only real ticket to higher economic growth; as well as increasing the take-home pay for those middle-income wage earners.

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Why The Greater Lawlessness?

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Saturday August 19, 2017 · 4:31 PM PDT

2017/08/19 · 16:31

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) (L) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speak to reporters after meeting with President Trump at the White House in Washington, U.S. February 27, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

We knew as far back as Nixon’s Watergate that the Republican party harbors a lawless tendency when it suits them. Why else would President Reagan engineer an illicit Iran contra arms deal with the Ayatollah Khomeini, or, President GW Bush invade Iraq when UN inspectors already knew Saddam Hussein had destroyed his weapons of mass destruction a decade earlier?

The lawlessness of Republicans’ hunger for power has now reached such a point that they have selected and continue to support a president who has lied and cheated his whole adult life; from Trump Casinos to Trump Towers, from stiffing bankers and his workers to cooking the books. This has been documented in many of the 3,500 plus lawsuits Trump has been involved in, and the reason he settled the Trump University lawsuits, one of which alleged he ran a fraudulent enterprise under RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

The sins of Hillary or Bill pale, yet Republicans impeached Bill for lying about a sexual encounter and continue to hound Hillary over lost emails. So why aren’t they impeaching Donald Trump who hasn’t divested himself of his assets to avoid conflicts of interest and continues to profit and even solicit favors from foreign governments in direct violation of the constitution?

His current 34 percent Gallup popularity rating is testimony that his support is now only restricted to those that would support him, even if, ““I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” said at a January 2016 Iowa campaign rally.

And now we have President Trump condoning the lawlessness of his neo-nazi and white nationalist supporters holding a torchlight parade in Charlottesville, Virginia, Jefferson’s hometown.

CNN commentator David Gergen, advisor to four presidents, chastised Trump yesterday in commenting on the Charlottesville riot and death of a counter-demonstrator. “He said he wants to bring love, not hatred to the country,” Gergen said. “Good. We need to deal with hatred, but he needs to deal with the hatred in his own heart if he wants to bring more love to the country.”

When will the Republican party stand up to such blatant lawlessness? Only when they can deal with the lawlessness in their own hearts. In selecting an autocrat to further their agenda, they are in effect saying freedom means anarchy, rather than living within a democracy of laws based on the world’s first constitution that guarantees equal rights for all of its citizens.

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Let’s Make America More Equal Again!

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Saturday February 18, 2017 · 8:08 AM PST

2017/02/18 · 08:08

Portrait of a group of smiling coworkers standing in an office

As defeated Democrats mull over what slogan can equal or overcome President Trump’s “Make America Great Again”, I have a suggestion, one that might even enthuse populist Republicans. Let’s make American more equal again, just as it was in the 1960s and 70s, when we had a thriving middle class in which its children could hope to exceed their parents’ station in life.

After all, it was our thriving middle class that kept the more extreme elements of both political parties and persuasions at bay, so that Republicans and Democrats actually talked to each other. And a middle class will only thrive where there is less income inequality, something that most well-meaning Americans support.

But that was then and we live in now, when most children of the baby boomers now retiring do not hope to do better than their parents. Household incomes have stagnated since the 1970s, and the top income earners since the Great Recession now have garnered almost all of the increase.

That is why two out of three Americans are dissatisfied with the way income and wealth are currently distributed in the U.S. This includes three-fourths of Democrats and 54 percent of Republicans, according to a recent Gallup poll.

The Great Recession was brought on by Wall Street’s excesses, and the deregulation boom of the Clinton and GW Bush presidential reigns. So why not create programs that Make America More Equal Again?

Overall, the share of Americans living in middle-class households has declined from 61 percent in 1971 to 50 percent, reports a recent Pew Research study. The hollowing out of the middle class has been a source of consternation among many economists, politicians and the public at large, says those surveyed. They say as Americans move toward the economic extremes it is harder to find common ground, and a common sense of what it means to be an American.

Much of that inequality is in the Midwestern rust belt states that lost those blue collar manufacturing jobs during the globalization and multi-nationalization of US corporations that President Trump promised to bring back again.

So President Trump was no dummy in recognizing this fact. Then how could Democrats be so blasé and oblivious to this fact among their former supporters? Everyone saw it coming; the disenfranchisement of whole segments of working class voters that had descended into depression and drug use in those formerly blue and Democrat-voting states.

There have been many suggestions of how to bring back higher-paying jobs, but candidate Trump seems to have fastened on just three—building more infrastructure, destroying multi-lateral trade agreements like the TPP and NAFTA, as well as limiting immigration inflows to make more jobs available to those suffering American workers.

The first suggestion has been backed by both Democrats and Republicans, and now that President Trump wants it Republicans will stop opposing infrastructure spending, even if it busts the federal budget.

However, building more immigration and trade barriers won’t create greater equality, nor will opposition to minimum wage laws, such as advocated by the Trump pick for new Labor Secretary—CEO of fast food chains Andrew Puzder. Because most immigrant jobs are low-paying, jobs that Americans don’t want anyway. And higher trade barriers for the purpose of bringing jobs home will raise the prices of imported goods, cancelling out much of the income boost from higher-paying jobs.

What won’t work either is the blatant voter and collective bargaining-suppression laws enacted, or about to be enacted in the 25 all-red states with absolute Republican majorities. Such a blatant suppression of minority voters and the wages of working class Americans will suppress their wages, hardly the road to greater equality.

What also won’t work are the attempts to destroy Obama’s Affordable Care Act that have boosted the buying power of at least 20 million working class voters by reducing overall medical costs, as well as Dodd-Frank regulations that have suppressed some of the excessive profit-taking of Wall Street at the expense of State Street.

The same poll updated a long-time Gallup trend, finding that 54 percent of Americans are satisfied, and 45 percent dissatisfied, with the opportunity for an American "to get ahead by working hard." This measure has remained roughly constant over the past three years, but Americans are much less optimistic about economic opportunity now than before the recession and financial crisis of 2008 unfolded. Prior to that, at least two in three Americans were satisfied, including a high of 77 percent in 2002.

So there are many reasons for Democrats and even truly populist Republicans to support programs that increase income equality. But they can’t be about building more walls. A robust and more politically temperate American middle class can only include Americans of all nationalities and ethnicities.

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

President Trump’s Bully Mentality

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Friday January 27, 2017 · 7:44 AM PST

2017/01/27 · 07:44

Popular Economics Weekly

President Trump’s first days in office were alarming for several reasons. He immediately began attacking the press, while intentionally stating falsehoods such as he would have won the popular vote, but for “3 to 5 million” fraudulent votes. Or, maybe they weren’t intentional falsehoods? Since most of those falsehoods are easily debunked, such as the size of the crowds at Friday’s Inauguration and Saturday women’s march.

Then you have the CIA meeting, where he stated that it was the lying media that made up his dispute with the intelligence community, whereas it is easy to check Trump’s speeches and Twitter messages for all to see he was the one that criticized the intelligence community for their findings that Vladimir Putin’s intelligence services wanted him elected.

So could it be that he is delusional, the words of Mother Jones’ David Corn? Or is it possible that he only listens to news from the likes of Breitbart, The National Inquirer, Fox, and Russ Limbaugh that cater to his voters, not the mass media that reports to the rest of US?

No, it is far more likely that he believes his success in business, such as it is, was due to his bullying tactics, tactics that browbeat investors and lenders to such an extent that he can no longer rely on U.S. investors and banks to finance his projects. So he doesn’t care—and may even have contempt for—facts or truths or any kind that don’t further his agenda.

A New York Times reporter on Lawrence O-Donnell’s MSNBC Last Word said it reminded her of the behavior of dictators, such as the current Russian and Chinese autocrats who considered all news as grist for their propaganda mills.

I have written about the bully mentality several times that has led to increased bullying in school, and even gun violence. It is a mentality that attempts to impose a bully’s version of reality on the real world for the sole purpose of domination. President Trump has always acted the bully, which is the reason for his history of lawsuits and bankruptcies, so that facts are only useful in so much as they support his positions.

Evidence of Trump’s bullying tactics also comes from his words on Twitter and elsewhere, reports Groff Beattle, a professor of Psychology at Edge Hill University who specializes in gestures, has discussed how Trump uses the body language and mannerisms of a bully, such as the exaggerated use of his hands.

Also comments such as “mentally sick”, “dummy”, “looser” or “looked disgusting” are all examples of bullying language on Trump’s Twitter. Trump’s bullying tactics include calling President Obama the founder of a terrorist organisation and insinuating that Clinton took drugs prior to a debate. Furthermore, he has mocked the disability of reporter Serge Kovaleski, portrayed immigrants and foreigners as dangerous people, rapists or “criminal aliens”, and demonstrated a significant lack of respect for women generally.

How does one oppose such destructive behavior? First, remember that bullies have to prey on the weakest, and avoid confrontation with those stronger because of their own insecurities. Trump preyed on naïve students and the elderly in his Trump University scam. And he stiffed workers and employees when building his Trump Casinos either by paying them less than was contractually agreed to, or not at all.

Combine it with his case-study narcissism that requires he be constantly in the limelight. So standing up to such a bully means the news media should ignore his tantrums, rather than commenting on them. Remember that he makes such outrageous lies to gain even more attention.

Psychology Today has posted a list of bullying behavior, a list that fits President Trump like a glove:

– Uncontrolled anger and unpredictable irritability, frequently directed at the weakest people (‘safe targets’) or those perceived as a future threat

– A sociopathic ability to control their own image – the selective ability to look like a different person to different audiences – for example, being aggressive to ‘subordinates’, while being charming and helpful to others

– Having little status outside of work, bullies wield the power that their job gives them with vicious zeal

– Running ‘witch-hunts’

– Gratuitous domineering behaviour – sometimes physical

– The ability to make the unreasonable seem reasonable, even to the victims

--Projecting their own inadequacies onto others

– Making irrational accusations

– Publicly putting people down

– Sadistic enjoyment in humiliating others

The list is endless of President Trump’s bullying tactics, and the responses are well known. There is even a government website, www.stopbullying.gov to help understand what the bully mentality is all about.

How sad it is that this US President, the most powerful person on earth, is setting such an example of his own weakness and insecurity.

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What, Now A Trump Recession?

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Saturday November 12, 2016 · 8:50 AM PST

2016/11/12 · 08:50

Economists are already warning that if President-elect Trump’s policies are enacted, such as initiating trade wars, or the wrong tax cuts, or even cutting back on social security and Medicare benefits, we could see another recession, similar to the Great Recession that occurred during GW Bush’s term.

Whether his policies can be enacted depends on several things, including his unpredictable behavior, and perhaps the outcome of his November 28 RICO trial in San Diego for running Trump University as a criminal enterprise. Judge Gonzalo Curiel has just ruled that Trump’s inflammatory campaign statements can be admitted as evidence in his trial.

The Bush recession was caused by too lax regulations that caused the housing bubble (by allowing excessive bank leverage), tax cuts that increased the budget deficit while we were fighting two wars, and then Greenspan’s Federal Reserve decision to raise interest rates 16 consecutive times to bust the housing bubble.

It’s terrifying what President-elect Trump will be able to do when he controls all three branches of government (as soon as he appoints a ninth Supreme Court Justice) and carries out his campaign pledges.

Carrying out his pledge to deport all aliens when there is already an outflow of immigrants will devastate agriculture, construction, and any other industry that relies on low-cost labor, for instance.

His promise to ‘fix’ Obamacare (or abolish it outright) will endanger health benefits for the 20 million now covered by it. This makes healthcare much more expensive, since it puts the uncovered back in Emergency Room care for serious illnesses, which puts the cost of their care back on the hospitals.

And as the New York Times reports, “This is going to be a president who will be the biggest regulatory reformer since Ronald Reagan,” Stephen Moore, one of Mr. Trump’s economic advisers said in an interview on Wednesday. “There are just so many regulations that could be eased.”

It could be everything from repeal of Dodd-Frank, the successor to the Glass Steagall Act that protected federally insured depositors from risky investment banking, to repealing environmental regulations that combat global warming, and not only abolishing Obamacare, but the current Medicare system as House Speaker Paul Ryan is threatening to do.

And we are reaching full employment levels, which will surely mean the Fed will begin to raise short term rates in December. This is happening already in the bond markets, as evidenced by rising longer term interest rates in anticipation of a soaring budget deficit, if Trump’s plan to increase both infrastructure and military spending while cutting taxes is implemented.

The central issue, though, maybe Trump’s misbehavior in dissing those elements that made American great. “Trump’s bigotry, dishonesty and promise-breaking will have to be denounced,” said David Brooks today. “We can’t go morally numb. But he needs to be replaced with a program that addresses the problems that fueled his ascent.

“After all, the guy will probably resign or be impeached within a year. The future is closer than you think.”

But President-elect Trump’s destruction of almost all decency in his grab for overwhelming power has let that Genie of discontent out of the bottle. We know what happened in the 1930s and even earlier when such ruthless tactics were used.

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: twitter.com/...

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Why is Donald Trump Acting Like A Russian Oligarch?

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Saturday November 05, 2016 · 2:55 PM PDT

2016/11/05 · 14:55

It’s becoming clear why Presidential Candidate Trump and Russian President Putin have been so chummy with each other. Trump has become dependent on Russian oligarchs to fund his real estate ventures, since U.S. banks no longer will because of his various bankruptcies and history of failure to pay his debts.

One of his sons even admitted so. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump’s son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008, according to an account posted on the website of eTurboNews, a trade publication. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

And the FBI has nothing to say about the fact that Donald Trump has become so dependent on Russian oligarchs. Yet what looks like blatant collusion in illegal activity between Trump and Russian oligarchs has been documented in lawsuits, and much more since the Donald has been unable to borrow from U.S. banks.

He has had to depend on Russian oligarch monies, many of them either Russian Mafia figures or close associates of Vladimir Putin, to fund his real estate empire. And he has repaid them by adopting their playbook—discredit NATO and U.S. alliances, call for hacking of Hillary’s emails, and lauding Putin as a stronger leader than President Obama..

That is why the latest FBI fiasco—Director Comey’s refusal to discuss their ongoing investigation into Donald Trump’s Russian connections—is so damaging to our national security, even though he had no problem discussing their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s “extremely careless” use of a private email server. It means the FBI has lost credibility as a transparent and impartial institution.

Trump’s Russian connections have been well documented. Let’s ignore the possible link to Vladimir Putin, which he claims to never have met, though he did invite him to a meeting when Trump brought his 2013 Miss Universe pageant to Moscow.

The real connections are with those Russian oligarchs that surround Putin, which number some 120 billionaires that own most of Russia’s assets, according to a former Russian hedge fund manager. Many have invested in Trump properties. The fact that Trump won’t disclose his taxes is almost proof in itself that he doesn’t want those connections revealed.

Why wouldn’t Trump want to reveal the extent of those connections, if legal? Because much of it coould be laundered money that Russia’s plutocrats have stolen from Russians, and their own government.

A Times Magazine article detailed this. As major banks in America stopped lending him money, the Trump organization was forced to seek financing from non-traditional institutions. Several had direct ties to Russian financial interests in ways that have raised eyebrows. What’s more, several of Trump’s senior advisors have business ties to Russia or its satellite politicians, such as former campaign manager Paul Manafort..

It also explains why Russia has been hacking DNC email accounts, including that of Clinton Campaign Chief of Staff John Podesta.

“The Trump-Russia links beneath the surface are even more extensive,” Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in the Los Angeles Times. “The Russians have every reason to sabotage the Democratic candidate. Her opponent, Donald Trump, is more pro-Russia than any previous presidential candidate. As far back as 2007, Trump was telling CNN that Russian President Vladimir Putin was doing a “great job.” In 2013, Trump tweeted: “Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow - if so, will he become my new best friend?”

“In 2015, Trump told MSNBC that Putin was a real leader, said Boot, “unlike what we have in this country,” and that reports of Putin killing political opponents didn’t bother him — “Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also,” he said..”

Trump has become so popular with Russian oligarchs because he is willing to aid and abet the laundering of their money, in pother words, mostly obtained by criminal activity.

Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, has written and testified extensively how President Putin and his cronies have milked the Russian economy in his best-seller, Red Notice, A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice.

In Browder’s case, Putin, et. al. were able to obtain a refund of Hermitage Capital’s last $230 million tax payment to the Russian Government in 2005 by simply raiding their Moscow offices and changing corporate ownership documents, then altering the corporate tax returns for that year so they would show a loss of $230 million, which was then refunded to the new ‘owners’, who were revealed to be members of the FSB, Russia’s FBI and Secret Service, and government officials that aided in the tax fraud.

This was all revealed in testimony before the U.S. Congress and European Parliament, and has resulted in the seizure of foreign assets and travel bans for 38 of those implicated in the scheme.

We therefore have to ask why the FBI won’t reveal details of their ongoing investigation of Donald Trump’s Russian connections that have already been so damaging to our election process, and could cause even more damage to our national security in the future?

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: twitter.com/...

The Bully Mentality—Part II

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Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday November 02, 2016 · 6:47 AM PDT

2016/11/02 · 06:47

PHILADELPHIA, PA - JULY 28: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton delivers remarks during the fourth day of the Democratic National Convention at the Wells Fargo Center on July 28, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. An estimated 50,000 people are expected in Philadelphia, including hundreds of protesters and members of the media. The four-day Democratic National Convention kicked off July 25. (Photo by Paul Morigi/WireImage)

I wrote several years ago about the bully mentality that has pervaded so much of our society and is now part of our political system. I wrote then: “The result has been more teenage suicides, horrendous school shootings by students who felt bullied or belittled, and now a whole political party that opposes anything that smacks of aiding the poorest, seniors, and less educated.”

The latest example is FBI Director James Comey revealing to Republican heads of congressional committees that his investigators had discovered Huma Abedin’s emails on husband Anthony Weiner’s laptop in a separate investigation that may be relevant to his recently closed investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

This seems to be in direct violation of the Hatch Act that bans federal officials from attempting to influence an election (especially a presidential election just 11 days away), which former Bush Administration chief ethics lawyer Richard Painter has characterized as an abuse of power and grounds for Comey’s termination of employment.

So why would Comey dare to do so, if you take at face value that he wasn’t attempting to influence this election? The ethical (and professional) course of action would be to first ascertain if those emails were in fact relevant to the recently closed investigation.

He must have given in to the bullying tactics of congressional Republicans who have made no secret of their desire intention to convict the Clintons of a crime, any crime, for more than 30 years without success.

That is how bullies work, and that is what congressional Republicans have done in insisting that Comey send them all the notes of the Clinton email investigation, as well as notify them of a future developments. They disregard facts, as their presidential candidate Donald Trump has done all his life. He continually claims that crooked Hillary should be convicted of a crime without any evidence she has committed one, when he has been indicted and is scheduled to go to trial in San Diego under RICO, or The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act for operating a criminal enterprise.

Another clue to the bullying tactics of Director Comey’s Republican compatriots is his original announcement that she had not compromised security by receiving classified emails on her server. Though Hillary Clinton was not guilty of misuse of classified emails, he said she was “extremely careless” in her use of a private server.

No professional investigator should use words that editorialize the results of an investigation—i.e., give his or her own opinion of the results. It just isn’t done, and therefore revealed that Director Comey had to have been bullied by the strategy of congressional Republicans that wanted Hillary convicted of something—anything to keep her from becoming the next (female) president.

Another example of bullying is Republicans opposition to expanding voters’ rights, even social security and Medicare, because Repubs fear being outvoted by those very same immigrants, minorities and seniors that depend on those services to improve their circumstances. The Republicans’ only answer is to restrict voting hours and pass draconian voter ID laws in the red states. It is restricting citizens’ voting rights, even though sacrosanct and protected by the constitution.

A most recent example of Republican attempts to bully minority voters was just last week. The New York Times Editorial Board reported the Democratic National Committee asked a federal judge in New Jersey to hold the R.N.C. in contempt for once again violating the terms of that supervision — known as a consent decree — by coordinating with and supporting the Trump campaign’s efforts to intimidate minority voters, who tend to vote Democratic, and keep them from the polls. If the R.N.C. is found liable, the decree, which is set to expire next year, will be extended for eight more years.

When will it stop? Only when we stand up to the bullying as Director Comey wasn’t able to do. It is destroying his own reputation, as well as feeding the distrust of voters, and the voting process in general.

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: twitter.com/...

Trump the Terrible Demagogue

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Saturday October 08, 2016 · 8:50 AM PDT

2016/10/08 · 08:50

States Percentage felons banned from voting

Many Republicans as well as Democrats are now horrified at the possibility of a Trump Presidency. It’s not only because of his blatant racism, which he makes no attempt to hide. Or his complete ignorance of foreign policy. He has advocated the arming of Japan and Korea with nuclear weapons—which coupled with his unstable personality that a biographer has labeled psychopathic, makes him a dangerous psychopath.

No, it is because with his slogan Take Back America, he wants to disunite the United States of America. This is when America is already divided—by race and economic opportunity, for starters. Trump seems to want to take America to a time when we were a divided country—to the Civil War.

He is taking advantage of the fact the U.S. Civil War is still being fought in many, particularly southern states, where African-American and other minorities are dis-proportionally prevented from exercising their voting rights—be it with voter ID requirements, or the even more pernicious felon disenfranchisement laws in many states.

For instance, Iowa, Kentucky, and Florida permanently ban any convicted felon from exercising their right to vote. Only Maine and Vermont give everyone the right to vote, even still imprisoned felons. The rest of the states allow for reinstatement in some form, once their time has been served.

The Sentencing Project in a just released study found:

As of 2016, an estimated 6.1 million people are disenfranchised due to a felony conviction, a figure that has escalated dramatically in recent decades as the population under criminal justice supervision has increased. There were an estimated 1.17 million people disenfranchised in 1976, 3.34 million in 1996, and 5.85 million in 2010.
Approximately 2.5 percent of the total U.S. voting age population – 1 of every 40 adults – is disenfranchised due to a current or previous felony conviction.
Individuals who have completed their sentences in the twelve states that disenfranchise people post-sentence make up over 50 percent of the entire disenfranchised population, totaling almost 3.1 million people.
Rates of disenfranchisement vary dramatically by state due to broad variations in voting prohibitions. In six states – Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia – more than 7 percent of the adult population is disenfranchised.
The state of Florida alone accounts for more than a quarter (27 percent) of the disenfranchised population nationally, and its nearly 1.5 million individuals disenfranchised post-sentence account for nearly half (48 percent) of the national total.
One in 13 African Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, a rate more than four times greater than that of non-African Americans. Over 7.4 percent of the adult African American population is disenfranchised compared to 1.8 percent of the non-African American population.

It is therefore easy to see why majorities in four states are in the Take Back America column. Florida (21 percent), Kentucky (26 percent), Tennessee (21 percent), and Virginia (22 percent) have the largest percentage of disenfranchised voters—more than one in five African-Americans.

But what if another such demagogue with the thirst for absolute power—both Trump and Veep Pence have said Vladimir Putin and even N. Korea’s Kim Jong Un are stronger leaders than President Obama—is able to disguise the racism and divisive politics that demagogues must utilize to achieve and keep power?

It’s terrifying just how close Trump seemed to come to the White House before his latest blunders. But what would be even more terrifying is the possibility another, much more polished demagogue, might stir up the Take Back America crowd in future election cycles.

African-Americans now comprise 50 percent of our 2.3 million prison population when they are 12 percent of our population. There are many states that restrict many other rights (mainly red states), including abortion rights, immigration, even the collective bargaining rights of workers that are no longer able to negotiate for their own living wages.

Preventing another Donald Trump is why our political leaders must to find a way to re-unite the Divided States of America.

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: twitter.com/...

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