Testing The Financial Apologists

Bullshit! The GOP voted more than $2 TRILLION tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and NOW they refuse to pay for it.

Do you realize trade deficit and budget deficit are not the same thing or related? What does a trade deficit have to do with brainpower?
You might want to make an appointment with your therapist. You seem to be in a manic state. Maybe they need to up your meds.

What do you mean "they"? We ALL pay for it. Granted you have an ideological argument that those tax cuts were wrong, but the other side will chide your side for dumping the oil and gas industry and spending trillions on green energy too quickly...all the while funding a war in Ukraine. Both sides spend money. Thats the bottom line. The debt needs to stop increasing. Once the rest of the world catches on that they won't get paid back, the Dollar is toast.

Kevin McCarthy's House Republicans are refusing to pay for the tax cuts they voted in, by threatening to cause the United States to default on it's debt (not raising the debt limit). That's who I mean by "they." Yep, and the Republicans ALWAYS raise the debt MORE than the Democrats when they control the Whitehouse and/or the U.S. Congress. Now when a Democrat is in the Whitehouse they are screaming for unspecified spending cuts and are threatening to cause a default while ignoring the specific cuts in Biden's budget. And the only reason the rest of the world won't get paid is if the Republicans refuse to raise the debt limit. This also means that no federal employees including the military will be paid, no Social Security or Medicare. Those fuckers are campaigning for the Democrats!This is all for show...the republicans haven't even got a fucking budget, you idiot!

Tanypterix writes: As the cartoon of the elephant in the shrinks office that's circulating around facebook captions it, the Republicans have Deficit Attention Disorder.

From the Washington Post: Move over, U.S. dollar. China wants to make the yuan the global currency.The gist: a rising number countries have become willing to use the Chinese yuan as a means of exchange. The prime reason some countries are permitting the yuan as a means of exchange are economic crises that result in a shortage of dollars. This is because good money flees uncertainty, and such countries and businesses face increased difficulty obtaining loans in dollars. But China is making credit terms easy for the yuan, and countries faced with a shortage of dollars have no other alternative.A key paragraph:

Washington Post:

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None of these are signs the yuan is going to dethrone the dollar any time soon, according to economists inside and outside China. This would require more countries to pay each other in yuan for large amounts of trade that doesn’t involve China, which isn’t yet happening.

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But the yuan does have certain advantages over the dollar. Unlike the dollar it doesn't float according to market demands, so it's more stable. Dollar stability, or lack thereof, is affected by western sanctions on Russia, the collapse of some major US banks, and the debt ceiling crisis that threatens a default on US debt.If and as the dollar becomes just one of many currencies used for international exchange, dollar borrowing costs internationally will increase, placing downward pressure on US trade. But being the supplier of the global currency is not a necessity for a country's economy to work. The vast majority of countries around the world are not home to the global currency, and most of them are doing just fine. Sixteen countries have higher standards of living than the US, including Slovenia, Oman and Estonia. Hosting the global currency ain't everything.--Percy

The reason the Yuan does not float is because the govt of China controls its value. The antithesis of a free market.
Phat does not understand any of this, and I fear never will because there is another tik tok video with slick production values to fall for.

I dont trust Tic Tok.Remember when jar used to talk about Source vs Content. Its the content of a message that is important...not so much the source. If the content is sound, I don't care whether Peter Schiff, Ray Dalio, or Paul Krugman said it. I care about the rationality of it.And I know bullshit from likely wisdom.Granted I tend to trust the Washington Post or the New York Times more than I do YouTube, but again, I evaluate the content.Go on listening and believing what you choose to listen to and believe in.You think im off my rocker and my meds, so im not going to waste much time with you.

You wouldn't know rational if it bit you on the ass. You have to have some knowledge of a subject to know what is rational. Your inability and unwillingness to engage in points brought up here exposes your utter and extreme ignorance.

Elephants never forget. Donkeys have been known to make an ass of themselves, but the press seldom reports it.

No, if anything it exposes my stubbornness. I know I wont change your mind, and dont have the time or energy to go to a lot of effort simply to make an obvious point. Go listen to your experts. I listen to many of them too, but I don't trust some of them simply because they have a title or a degree.In the end, its all a matter of trust.

This is true, but comprehending and interpreting the content is equally important. I think coffee was snorted up noses across multiple nations when you wrote this. If by this you mean selecting which experts to trust then no. That would be the fallacy of argument from authority. But established experts with a history of reliability can be the quickest route to trustworthy information. That doesn't mean it *should* be trusted. At best you've been granted a head start in establishing the trustworhtiness. Your whole MO is picking who to trust based on questionable criteria, usually a slick video that to everyone but you fairly screams "used car/snake-oil salesman." The best path to understanding is fact gathering and analysis, not picking who to trust. Information becomes trustworthy after it has been confirmed and verified. The least trustworty information begins with "someone said." But sources that have a history of providing trustworthy information can be very helpful in reducing the amount of effort required to establish that information is trustworthy. For example, the Post reports today that Zelensky plans to attend the G-7 summit in Japan (Zelensky to attend G-7 summit in Japan in person). Can I trust that information, or should I begin investigating? Usually I would just trust it, but today I checked it out to see if my trust was well placed and I found that the New York Times, the BBC, Newsweek, Axios, the Financial Times, The Daily Beast and even the South China Morning News are reporting the same thing. I think it's a safe bet that Zelensky will be attending the G-7 in Japan.But Brietbart reported uncritically on a statement by the New York City Mayor that nearly half of NYC hotel rooms are now filled with migrants (Mayor Eric Adams: Nearly Half of NYC Hotel Rooms Now Filled with Migrants). Breitbart even tried to cite evidence supporting the mayor's comments. But a quick check reveals that the mayor's comments were widely interpreted by other news outlets as a gross exaggeration, including the conservative New York Daily News. A common comment was that the math just doesn't add up. Hotels rooms are being used to house migrants, but so are other facilities like gymnasiums. I just checked Travelocity and had no trouble finding pages and pages of hotel rooms that I could check into later today. Virtually no one except Breitbart granted the mayor's comments any credibility.Over time I've come to trust the Post's reporting, but were I to pay attention to Breitbart I expect that over time I would become increasingly skeptical.A very useful skill is the ability to start with initial information and drill down to establish whether it's actually trustworthy. Over time you develop a sense of who deserves trust, a useful shortcut. What people are telling you, over and over, is that you simply do not possess these skills. You are doomed to forever march from charlatan to charlatan because unable to assess substance you are left making your judgments based solely on the veneer.--Percy

From Border crossings down, but many migrants released to U.S. to ease crowding in today's Washington Post:

Washington Post:

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More quietly, however, border authorities have been trying to alleviate crowding inside jampacked detention cells and processing tents along the border by releasing thousands of migrants while their immigration claims are pending in U.S. courts — a practice that for years has been a major driver of illegal entries.

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Is that very last part true, that releasing migrants with pending hearings into the country is a "major driver of illegal entries"? I'd accept it uncritically because it's a long article and it's not practical to check every little fact, but it's the opposite of what I've heard from time to time, namely that he vast majority of migrants show up for their hearings, so I'm checking out this claim.From Vera, which says it ain't so:

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Irrefutable evidence shows that over the past two decades the majority of immigrants have shown up for immigration court hearings. Rates of appearance increase when people have legal representation, calling into question the logic of detaining people in prison-like conditions when representation is a viable alternative to ensure court appearances.

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Who says the opposite? People like Mike Pence, for example:

Mike Pence:

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Ninety percent of the people never show up for their hearing in the months ahead. ... The overwhelming majority, plus-90 percent, don’t show up.

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The full article (How many migrants show up for immigration court hearings?) gave Pence 4 Pinocchios, but the correct answer is complicated because there are so many paths through the immigration system that involve multiple court appearances. I concluded that a fair general answer is that 85% of migrants show up for all their scheduled court appearances, and those with legal representation show up for 99%.I could dig more, but this is consistent with what I've read in the post. If someone casts doubt on this I will dig more, but for now it would appear that today's Post article was wrong to claim that release is a major contributor to illegal entry.And *that* is how you figure out whether information can be trusted.--Percy

It is real hard to become an economic powerhouse when the world's financiers are afraid to do business in your country.
Wall Street's Biggest Banks Face a Harsh Reality Check in China

I remember him saying that China was going to take over the world. Something about we have too much socialism or some other
sort of bullshit. Who knows? Hard to tell because all he spouts is gibberish.
Seems China is in a world of hurt. Another paper tiger like the Muscovites?China's industrial profits tumble, deepening economic gloom | Reuters

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Annual profits at China's industrial firms extended a double-digit decline in the first five months as softening demand squeezed margins, reinforcing hopes of more policy support to bolster a stuttering post-COVID economic recovery.

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The 18.8% year-on-year slump in profits came on top of the 20.6% contraction in January-April, and added to evidence of an economy that was losing steam on many fronts in May including retail sales, exports and property investment as youth jobless rate scaled a fresh high of 20.8%.

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