Posted on 11/07/2017 4:57:21 AM PST by Kaslin
Time magazine's cover story for the week of Nov. 6 is a classic. It blares: "The Wrecking Crew: How Trump's Cabinet Is Dismantling Government As We Know It." The New York Times ran a lead editorial complaining that team Trump is shrinking the regulatory state at an "unprecedented" pace.
Meanwhile, last week the stock market raced to new all-time highs; we had another blockbuster jobs report with another fall in the unemployment rate; and housing sales soared to their highest level in a decade.
Are the editors at Time and the Times so ideologically blinded that they are incapable of connecting the dots?
The U.S. economic revival of 3 percent growth has already defied the predictions of almost every Donald Trump critic. I vividly remember debating Hillary Clinton's economic gurus during the campaign: They accused Trump and advisers such as myself of "lying" when we said that pro-growth policies would speed up economic growth to 3 to 4 percent.
Jason Furman, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama, told reporters earlier this year that the chances of reaching 3 percent growth over a decade were about 1 in 25 -- which is what many political experts said was Trump's chance of winning the election. Another Obama economist, Alan Krueger, called the 3 percent growth forecast "extremely rosy."
Larry Summers, a top economic adviser to Obama, questioned the "standards of integrity" of the Trump economic team's forecast for 3 percent (or more) growth. "I do not see how any examination of U.S. history could possibly support the Trump forecast as a reasonable expectation," he wrote in The Washington Post.
Congress weighed in, too. "This budget relies on absurd economic projections and pretend revenues that no credible economist would validate," Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., announced at a House budget hearing.
The sharp-penned Paul Krugman of The New York Times declared Trump's growth forecast an act of "economic arrogance." He said that the productivity improvement necessary for faster growth was as likely as "driverless flying cars" arriving "en masse."
Admittedly, we shouldn't read too much into six months of very good economic data (with 3 percent growth) or the booming stock market. These trends can always reverse course quickly. Trump's more restrictive policies on trade and immigration could harm growth potential.
But so far the Trump haters have missed the call on the economy's trajectory. Doubly ironic is that the same Obama-era economists who are trashing Trump's increasingly realistic forecast of 3 percent growth are the ones who predicted 4 percent growth from the Obama budgets. Obama never came anywhere near 4 percent growth, and at the end of his second term, the economy grew at a pitiful 1.6 percent.
Under Obama, free enterprise and pro-business policies were thrown out the window. What was delivered was the weakest recovery from a recession since World War II, with a meager 2.2 percent average growth rate. Middle America felt it, which is why Trump won these forgotten Americans.
One reason that economist Larry Kudlow and I and others assured Donald Trump that 3 to 4 percent growth was achievable was that Trump could capitalize on the underperformance of the Obama years. Under Obama, business investment fell almost two-thirds below the long-term trend line -- thanks to higher taxes on investment. Now, partly in anticipation of the tax cut, business spending keeps climbing.
Maybe the liberal economists and their shills in the media should show some humility. They should acknowledge they were dead wrong about how much Obamanomics was going to grow the economy and about how Trumponomics would crash the economy and the stock market. Or better yet, maybe the rest of us should all just stop listening to them.
In a word..YES!
The liberal secretary in my office always talked about how Omuslim gets credit for the stock market increase during his residency. When I ask her the other day, when she was criticizing President Trump for everything, I ask her about how he made the stock market do even better. She quickly says, well that is because of obama too. Can’t win with these people.
I call that winning!
I foresee “wiser regulation” which also won’t need as much effort or staffing.
I can’t see Trump going for arrant nonsense. Not a fellow who knows how to both earn money and put up and keep real estate that’s productive for its own sake.
Harry Truman said, “I want an economist with only one hand. That way he can’t say, ‘On the other hand.’”
There are lies, damned lies and economic projections.
What I see around me is a housing boom the likes of which I haven’t seen since the bubble burst. Housing construction is nowhere near where it was then, but it seems sustainable and universal in my two-county wanderings.
Each time I have been to Walmart and Costco I see people buying major items, unlike Obama’s eight years when people just bought necessities.
The biggest difference between Trump and Obama’s economy is Obama took away the rule of law, with the GM restructuring. That removed an estimated $15 trillion dollars from the table as businesses contracted to wait out the lawlessness. Trump gave them back rules and laws they could believe in...and invest under. Trump didn’t need TARP. All he needed was to guarantee the rule of law.
It’s part of a win.
The other part is to keep otherwise relatively free entities honest.
It is a conspiracy to overthrow the Trump administration. Editors of New York Times, Time Magazine, and CNN should be indicted by the Justice Department.
And remember why there was law: to keep free entities honest.
Ignore anybody like pom-pom boy Steven Moore (yes I talked smack about him for years before Trump was President) breathlessly correlating stock market action to the current President, unless you want to give Obama credit for DJII going from 8,000 on Feb 1, 2009 to 21,000 by Feb 1, 2017.
Oh let them yack. Our failures to make cogent cases in their face aren’t their fault. They are ours.
It’s their hatred against President Trump that makes them blind and deaf.
I do fear a lot of that is whipped up fluff that Trumpian doctrine hasn’t caught up with.
The best thing is to ignore them.
Big fans of big government, funny how corporations in thier infancy are steadfast entrepreneurial capitalists but when they reach the pinnacle of enormous success world wide they go communist socialist and fascist. I guess now the completion is who will enjoy the bliss of government favoritism using socialist and communist tactics pushing out all the other competion
She is very hard to ignore, she is loud and obnoxious.
Let’s excrete some of our worst modern politicians (politically)
Your secretary is correct. The market is growing because of the downward pressure Obama put on it for 8 long years. With the pressure released by Trump it is fairly exploding.
Or they could help.
I would bet on help.
JMHO.
It’s difficult to find huge fault in businesses that curry favor with the spirit of the age, if we limply tolerate that in our government.
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