Our President is completely illiterate when it comes to basic finance.
“These ridiculous interest rates, they’re ridiculous. Look, when our country is strong, interest rates should go down. When our country is weak, frankly they should go up. But this country is strong. They’ve never had, there’s never been in history the kind of money coming into a country as we have right now.”
QEInfinity accurately responds “It’s a shame our President is completely illiterate when it comes to basic finance.”
Interest rates are a reflection of inflation not military strength, not alleged money coming into the country.
Bessent Tries to Calm the Bond Market
Bessent Touts a Big Tool Kit
Please consider Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Speaks with CNBC’s Sara Eisen on “Squawk on the Street”
Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC exclusive interview with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” (M-F, 9AM-12PM ET) today, Thursday, August 20.
SARA EISEN: Let’s start, though, with this bond move. Yields are rebounding today after the Treasury increased its buyback limit on longer-dated securities yesterday. And joining us now, in a CNBC exclusive interview, to discuss is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Secretary Bessent, welcome back. It’s good to see you.
BESSENT: Yes, the, we’re trying to signal that we think that this is a thinly traded area of the market, that we’re in August, and there’s been a lot of corporate issuance that’s influenced the market. And we believe that there are many underlying factors in turn that the market is not looking at, and we are going to make a market the, in these. We routinely do buybacks, and we’re going to increase the size of the buyback. And, you know, Sara, I would note that it could be more than the $4 billion per issue.
EISEN: Yes, I was going to ask how big this could get. If the signal here is that you’re not happy with the direction of yields, you know, they have gone back the other way. We have erased most of the Treasury rally that you got yesterday with that big surprise. So how much more are you willing to do?
BESSENT: Well, again, we have a big toolkit, so we will see. And part of it is signaling here, and to show that we believe that the yields don’t reflect the underlying fundamentals. This Iran conflict, we will get on the other side of this. We don’t know when, and we can talk about the economic measures we’re going to be taking against Iran in a minute.
EISEN: Sure.
BESSENT: We believe that the liquidity, especially in the 30-year point, is very poor. And we are in the administration, we are, be announcing probably at the end of this week, beginning of next week an increased focus on fiscal consolidation. And it’s coming from President Trump. Russ Vought and myself will be examining both on the revenue side and the cost side what we can do.
EISEN: Yes, because that’s where I was going to go and where a lot of the analysis has focused, as you know, Mr. Secretary, which is strong signal from the administration on the buybacks, but the fundamentals are ultimately what is going to prevail here in the bond market. And the fundamentals are hard to ignore when it comes to the size of our debt, with public debt increasing to now $40 trillion.
BESSENT: Well, yes, I mean, look, Sara, there’s nothing magic about the $40 trillion number. And we can grow our way out of that. So, but what we do want to signal is, I think that there’s been a lot of misinformation in terms of what’s going on with the deficit, what’s going on with the deficit to GDP. … And one of the things that’s temporary here that’s influencing the deficit has been these tariff refunds. And we won’t have to do that again. And the, Ambassador Greer through the 301 process is reimplementing the same level of tariffs. And I would expect that our 2026 tariff income is going to be roughly what it was in ’25, and we’re going to be able to keep that in terms of the budget consolidation. The other big item in the budget that we’re seeing is the hit that we’re taking from, to revenues for the immediate expensing of factories and of equipment and farm structures. And I think that, if people sit back and think, that’s not government spending. That is actually an investment in the future and we’re increasing the tax base. And that’s how, that is what measures the wealth of a nation, is the ability to increase after-tax return on capital. So we’re pulling back the, think of it as pulling back the slingshot here. We have a lot of potential energy that will turn into kinetic energy during this year, next year, as these factories come online.
EISEN: So, do you think we have seen peak deficit during this administration?
BESSENT: I think the very, very good chance we have, that we are going to be laser-focused, as I said, OMB Director Vought, myself, the president, that, combined with the vice president’s Fraud Task Force, where I think we could save several hundred billion dollars.
EISEN: Yes, I mean, because you know, I mean, the funding needs, I think, are daunting to a lot of folks, the dependence on foreign bondholders, for instance. We saw the intervention in the Japanese yen, and that’s erased a lot of the progress there. And so there are kind of all these worries at once about what’s going to happen ultimately with these holders of Treasuries.
BESSENT: Well, again, again, people have bad information. I have asymmetric information, so I think that the market should think, well, why would we have joined the Japanese in the intervention at this time? Do we know something the market doesn’t know that, in terms of being willing to do you know what I would call a Treasury twist here in terms of the bond market? What do I know that the market doesn’t know? So I think the market’s probably gotten a little ahead of itself, a lot of people not much to do in August.
EISEN: Got it. And what about on rates? What if they have to raise interest rates? Wouldn’t that be problematic?
BESSENT: That has nothing to do with the decision that I announced this week on the buybacks.
EISEN: So you, so that raises the question about what happens next in Iran. And you mentioned, the president last night said that there’s more economic pressure coming on Iran. I know you’re heavily involved in this in executing this. What can we expect here?
BESSENT: Yes, you’re going to expect, I will be holding a press conference on Monday to talk about exactly what we’re going to do. And, again, we have asymmetric information, and I’m not sure why oil has popped up on this, because this, for now, for now, and it is at the president’s discretion, if we are doing the maximum economic pressure, then that means that likely there will not be a large-scale kinetic restart. But I would emphasize that is for now. And, look, we do have control of the strait.
So it is time for our allies and the rest of the world to make a decision. And we are going to squash the economy of this murderous regime, which that will curtail their ability to project power through their proxies. It will, it will mean that they cannot pay the military.
And what we have seen, I see lots of reports that said, oh, well, this has never worked. It does work, because we have a combination. It is a one-two punch. We have the blockade, and we are going to have the toughest sanctions in history. And I will tell you, this will work. It worked in Venezuela once we put up the blockade. It is working in Cuba right now. And it is going to work in Iran, and we are going to collapse this regime.
EISEN: You know, I just wanted to get your read on the economy, as we see oil prices marching higher again. We have seen tremendous resilience, as you noted, from the consumer, but there are signs that the job market may be cracking a little bit. Got a weak job, job report last month. I’m curious about your assessment and as to how much we can handle all of this.
BESSENT: Yes, I think the jobs numbers are quite noisy. And, again, Sara, the other thing that’s important too is, like, the jobs that we’re seeing are going to Americans. After the deportations that we have seen during President Trump’s administration and the closing of the border, that, like, this unfettered migration, we don’t need to produce as many jobs. And what’s really important here is, we are seeing a manufacturing renaissance, and that has shown. We’re seeing construction jobs pick up, and that is morphing into manufacturing jobs. You know, some of these numbers, the manufacturing construction numbers are the highest they have been in 15 years, and that is a combination of the president’s trade policy, tax policy, and energy policy.
EISEN: Yes, I mean, growth solves a lot of problems, Secretary Bessent. Finally, I just – the big headline is going to be, of course, on the big bond announcement. So I just – you indicated at the top of the interview that you are willing to go bigger and do more if the market doesn’t cooperate. How far are you willing to go?
BESSENT: Well, again, it’s not if the market cooperates. It’s we will see what the conditions are, and we will analyze them then. But I am confident that once the market sees through and looks at the fundamentals – all we’re trying to do is get people to focus on the fundamentals and not trade the headlines during a quiet period in a thin market. So, we are trying to keep the market in equilibrium.
EISEN: Well, Secretary Bessent, we certainly appreciate the opportunity to ask some of these questions that we know that investors are asking and wondering about. So, thank you for coming on and clarifying.
BESSENT: Good. Good. Sara, thank you. Good to be with you.
EISEN: Yes, good to have you, as always. That is the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, joining us from outside the White House with a lot of information there, I thought, and a lot of news.
One-Word and Two-word Synopsis
- One Word: Lies
- Two Words: Lies, Hubris
Pack of Lies and Hubris Details
- Starting with the glaringly obvious, the US does not have control of the strait. If you are going to tell such obvious lies, why should anyone believe a word you say?
- There is no manufacturing renaissance. Jobs numbers prove that. There is a construction boom for power. But it is not spilling over into manufacturing as Bessent says.
- There has never been an economic blockade in history that resulted in a regime change. Economic sanctions on Venezuela did not work. The US invaded Venezuela. Even with that, the regime change is debatable.
- Bessent ducks a question and instead replies with a question of his own: Do we know something the market doesn’t know that, in terms of being willing to do you know what I would call a Treasury twist here in terms of the bond market? He has no answer. He pretends to know more than the market.
- Trying to keep the market in equilibrium is sheer hubris. Bessent, like Trump, believes he knows where interest rates should be. Only fools, charlatans, and sycophants do this.
- A “big tool kit” is why we are in this mess. Instead of fixing any fundamental problems, Congress, the Fed, and the Treasury repeatedly attempt to paper over them.
- Peak deficit is idiotic. Bessent knows full well how much additional military spending the administration seeks.
- The idea that $40 trillion is just a number is also idiotic. But Bessent has to say that. The requirement to work for Trump is to be a fools, a charlatan, and a sycophants.
Cream Puff Interview
Sara Eisen should be embarrassed by this creamiest of cream puff interviews.
There was not a single follow-up question to obviously Bullsheet answers by Bessent.
Curve Watcher’s Anonymous
Bond Watcher’s Anonymous (BWA), a subsidiary of Curve Watcher’s Anonymous (CWA), both me, notes that the yield on the 30-year long bond is back up to where it was before Bessent announced intervention to keep the market in equilibrium.
Side note for long-term readers: I used to frequent post yield curve charts by Curve Watcher’s Anonymous. Not realizing that was me, several readers asked “where can I follow CWA?”
I have been remiss. Apologies offered. Expect a Curve Watcher’s Analysis report soon.
What Is Leading US Construction Spending? Hint, It’s Not Manufacturing
Construction spending details are a real eye opener.
As a direct rebuttal to Bessent’s incredible lie regarding manufacturing, please see What Is Leading US Construction Spending? Hint, It’s Not Manufacturing
Construction spending details are a real eye opener. [Four charts and discussion]
Announcing Diesel Watcher’s Anonymous
Yesterday, I commented Good Morning Farmers. Diesel Is Only 27 Cents from a Record High
And crude is soaring again so Diesel rates to jump again tomorrow.
Today, Diesel Watcher’s Anonymous (DWA) reports that diesel is only 23.96 cents from a new record high.
Stay tuned for more DWA updates as we close in on record diesel prices.
But that’s OK because Trump Says “I’ll Never Apologize, You’re Just Paying a Tiny Bit More”
“Trump: For you to pay a TINY little bit more for your gasoline, you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have a nuclear weapon. Remember that when you’re paying $4. I’ll never apologize.”
Related Posts
August 19, 2026: Debt topped $40 trillion today. But let’s discuss what really matters.
What market manipulation is next? Diesel crack spreads?
August 20, 2026: Treasury Bond Manipulation Is Failing Already. What’s Next?
Also, we have a severe clash between fed policy and Treasury bond manipulations.
August 20, 2026: Bessent Says He Doesn’t Understand Oil Prices. I Can Help
He should read this blog, or ZeroHedge, or OilPrice. Here’s a 10-point cheat sheet.
Very few of the sentences uttered by Bessent were grammatically complete sentences. I thought he was supposed to be smart.
He used to be. Now he’s just obsessed with Big Tool Kits.
he is the president not our president. anyone that belives other wise is economicly illeterate by default. its the economy , not our economy .
the economy and the government is not plural possesive. the 2 are phenomenons, are not tangible, not collective entities . they , like money itself are phenomenons.
It , not our matters.
Sara Eisen should be removed by her employer. She was nothing but an accompliss for 100% pure BS lies.
Disgusting.
most miss the obvious, though ugly truth. democracy works. always has, since the greeks and iroquouis invented it thousands of years ago. the people elect representatives of themselves. when an empire of assholes vote, the elect assholes to do asshole things. ugly but true. the answer to the problem is not in DC, it is in the mirror and your friends neighbors and families………….plenty of democracies on planet earth in 2026 don’t elect assholes to do asshole things. because they are not assholes. amerikans are assholes. about 98% of the uniparty voters and non voters. the 2% who vote libertarian and greens i give a pass. they promote peace and prosperity.
The ‘iroquouis’ did not have even a semblance of a state.
Greek democracy was not electoral, they chose representatives by random chance.
Now you’ve got it!
I finally found my Digital Version of the Oxford English Dictionary, Mish, and “Bullsheet” is in there with a New Picture of Trump, Bessent and Hegseth. ALL three were shown in a picture and they had HUGE NOSES and Jackass Ears.
Reading that interview was much like listening to President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho ramble on about restoring the economy in the movie, Idiocracy.
i always said idiocracy was our generations greatest documentary.
It’s more like Trump is ignorant of the Kondratiev cycle, a nominal 54 year cycle. In the US it’s 60 years long for all cycles going back to President Washington’s first term in office. Russians had the privilege of discovering it, but silenced the analyst because the data didn’t fit the narrative.
They asked Trump about “Kondratiev” and he said that he did not want to talk about “that Russian Military Man!”
https://www.reddit.com/r/agedlikemilk/comments/1vt7kaw/donald_trump_calling_himself_the_king_of_debt/
Donald Trump calling himself “The King of Debt”
The country is quickly going the way of an autocratic country. I expect some emergency to cancel elections. The remaining 30% that are still supporting Trump will soon see how crazy he is. God help us all come this fall. Republicans must be being paid off by Putin or something to keep Trump in power. I’ve heard from the sources inside government there is some type of cyberattack coming around election day. If that happens, you will know the GRU owns our government now.
Been waiting for the Reichstag Moment for a while now. I believe by keeping it on the lips and in the ears it helps keep it from happening. If polls look bad though he might be tempted to intervene. Just have to make sure he understands the cost.
Apparently Bessent is not a believer in and perhaps has never even heard of the efficient market hypothesis.
He wants us to believe that he and Trump are smarter than the markets? what a joke.
From the look on Trumps face he must have bought long bonds prior to Bessent’s announcement hoping to cash in as yields crashed. Not this time Donny.
Trump and Bessent seek to avoid a debt crisis until after the midterms.
After the midterms are held (or canceled), they do not care what happens.
“What market manipulation is next? Diesel crack spreads?”
Direct manipulation, like Wednesday? Nothing big. Instead, they are going to focus on doctored government statistical releases from all agencies, maybe even including the Fed. They will manipulate the market through words (aka lies), rather than actions, because it is their only option, as there are now too many plates to keep spinning without catastrophic failure. The data has been getting increasingly suspect, starting two or three months ago, and is becoming increasingly more erratic/sketchy when compared against reality.
My translation: The market’s all wrong. We’ll wave some tools at it, and it will behave. So, bondholders will just forget their self-interest, and patriotically lose money. We can grow our way out of the little $40 trillion kerfuffle. As the boss suggested about trade wars, it’s easy, it’s smooth, no big deal. The flimsy tariffs of last year can be blamed, but the shiny new ones will set everything right, alongside the accelerated write-offs we gave our better-heeled constituents. We’ll collapse Iran like some bankrupted carpet bazaar tent. A few more snaps of the fingers and all this will straiten (sic) out.
government needs to tell the market how to behave and when ?
Soon critiquing won’t be needed. Observations of the fall out of failure will replace critiquing. Soon.
Bessent is a big tool, alright
Off topic but germane to Trump. Both major parties need to go back to the so called bad old days of the smoke filled rooms when idiot candidates were filtered out. Trump was never a Republican and he couldn’t same a single core belief of the old party’s platform. The Democrats are no better. Anyone using socialist as a moniker should automatically be disqualified to run in their party. That’s what third parties are for. When you let stupid people run stupid people will vote for them
Oh no, not the scary socialism… sheesh.
Welfare exists. It’s good. Read Aristotle.
The rest is just a debate over how much, to whom.
Labor has been robbed for decades in this country
Skynet’s robot dogs will clean up the human labor problem. I’m sure there is a loophole to revoke citizenship of them Bolsheviks, and drop them in Kamps in Liberia.
Love how this implies voters were happy with the two pathetic old parties being good old boys clubs in shady back rooms. It’s almost as if that exact behavior is what got that system killed dead.
Turns out, voters would prefer a party that at least pretends to do what it was voted in to do. Both old parties telling their voters to shut up or else resulted in voters choosing or else. No one liked ineffective pre Trump Republicans, and no one likes whiny ineffective establishment Democrats. So now both are headed to the trashcan of history for betraying this nation.
Establishment Democrats especially deserve to bite the pavement. We’ve watched a pedophile run rampant with our nation while they organize celebrity dinners and do nothing else. In my view that makes them every bit as bad as MAGA, not counting Joe Biden’s absolute dry fart of a presidency that handed Trump the office on a silver platter.
The parties gave up their power in 1968 and the new primary rules took effect in 1972. All your comments apply to the post 1972 era. Not saying it was perfect, but it kept the crazies out of power.
The problem is still the same though: Shady political machines running the government free of any pesky ideas like “democracy” or “popular representation”.
Third parties never had a chance because the system of government in the US favors two parties and two parties only, both of which collude to stonewall competition. Just look at how desperate corporate owned Dems are to shut out Dem-Soc candidates who promise to actually do something for a change. Anathema! All candidates must love Israel, accept truckloads of corporate money, and swear fealty to Epstein’s buddies or else they’re radical left/right/center lunatics hell bent on destroying the thriving, idyllic wonderland we currently live in.
“Dry Fart” is a form of Flattery in my circles.
Evilest of the evil, criminal minded from DNA, from both parties, took over GOP conservatives party that is today’s MAGA, these are the criminal minded that calls decent minded folks demonrats and RINO
Why do you think Republicans allowed Trump in anyway? They thought they could handle him. A useful idiot. A stooge with money. He’s better than having to promote a substandard candidate. He brought his own base and money. If they wanted to get rid of him they could have impeached him. They’re all just greedy. What would have changed things, and can still change things, is rank choice voting. In 2016 there were more “never Trumpers” than Magats. But the 16 competitors at the start of the primaries got diluted out and Trump gained momentum as more dropped out. Rank choice voting could also give third party candidates a real chance of winning.
Trump is a Republican through and through and his complete capture of that party is all the proof needed.
Puff piece is putting it nicely. I love how she says ‘got it’ when he provides a totally convoluted nonsensical answer.
I also love how he claims to have ‘asymmetric information’ that the market somehow doesn’t have, and is just waiting for the market to adjust to his reality. Why not share that asymmetric information, since you clearly want the market to conform to your reality as soon as possible?
What an arrogant, smug ass of a person. The only reason he is front and center is that he is the best option of any of the slavish toady mouthpiece scumbags that drumpf has at his disposal. The sycophants of drumpf 2.0 make me miss the garbage bag of adminstration toadies from drumpf 1.0. Sigh.
She said, “got it”, because she understood he was making it clear he wanted to move to the next topic.
A somewhat off topic comment, but the headline “An Economically Illiterate Trump” reminded me just how illiterate most of the population is about economics and finance. Few people even get the basic concept that when interest rates rise, the value of a bond you own goes down. It seems crazy that high school students and even some college students are still required to take 2 or more years of a foreign language. That era should be over. Instead, everyone should take a year of economics and a year of personal finance. It won’t explain Trump, who after all has a BS in economics, but maybe it would help our population overall.
And just as a follow-up I checked on the educational background of Sara Eisen. She has a BA in journalism and a MS in broadcast journalism. I suppose it is to much to ask for business reporters to hold some degree in something like, oh I don’t know, economics or finance? Geeze.
There’s education, and there’s gate keeping
You sound like you want the latter
Especially because most economics majors are dumb as a sack of bricks. Go read ZeroHedge for a dose of how utterly deprived of grey matter the “pro” crowd is. Economics is best learned through logistics and sociology, everything else is fluff.
economics is a very soft science. always was. used to be in philosophy departments of universities for centuries. rightfully so.
Softer than butter. The philosophy has been knocked out and now it’s just propaganda for the powers that be, TINA, and a lot of jargon, rituals, poor stats and analysis, and mathy gobbly gook thrown in. Virtually no fixed principles, agreed facts, historical depth.
I like to call it Applied Psychology.
Economics was at least a field of study until Keynes came along. Valid economics is today called the “Austrian school.” Ludwig von Mises, in one of his books, described Keynesian economics as a
“concoction,” which I think is a fair comment.
You have to understand that fields of study tend to get falsified as time goes on. It began in the nineteenth century when Freud falsified psychology. Economics came next with Keynes in the early twentieth century. Next was biology with the “environmentalist” movement in the mid-to-late twentieth century.
I think the reason for this is simple enough: a breakthrough occurs, and a lot of old nonsense isn’t believed any more. Then gradually the people I call priests take over the field of study again. Ordinary people are inclined to believe what they are told, especially when it caters to their prejudices and emotions. The priests don’t do it for any grand purpose: they just do it because they want to make a living by posing as knowing things.
Trump’s apparent economic acumen is so vacant, I have to wonder what happened with him at the Wharton school. He certainly had ghostwriters for his books, so … ?
His early career displayed salesmanship and a fixation on flashy real estate projects (central to this day). That got him the credit to proceed to throw together, and soon capsize, his bloated, absurd 1980’s empire. His name game charmed too many at Citi and elsewhere. Later he just found new suckers and played the game again. His depravity, shamelessness, and other signal traits have been in front of us for decades, showing him as a living index of American mass stupidity.
Life Styles of the Rich & Famous!!!
The “personal finance” classes in high school teach you how to apply for various types of debt, not how to think about money. Classes with bogus content are a detriment. I know because I took one. What a disappointment and waste of time that was.
correct. tax cows and debtors and consumers and cannon fodder. amerikan finance education. imagine being a w2 employee all one’s life. how can one be that stupid?
No ever offered that in my HS days.
The name of the class at the time was, “General Business”. Ha! What a joke that was.
schools are just indoctrination camps to make the future employees and consumers not to be able to think. just work and borrow and buy and watch sportsball and become tax cows. their owners, and betters set it up this way long long ago. read ominous parallels if you want a high brow peak into the history of this. amerikans are reared to be nihilist consumers. and cannon fodder.
28% of Usonian adults are functionally illiterate.
Bad idea. Learning a language opens your mind to how ways of thinking are embodied in language, how much variation there is, how much of a choice articulation is. Yes. It’s mind broadening, and most people have a lot of trouble thinking out of the box, and it usually does not pay to do so.
But thinking out of the box pays usually on a civilizational scale, even if only a few individuals actually do so.
Oh, he has a BS in Economics alright.
You can’t fix MAGA level of stupid It reigns from high above. It can’t be done.
He graduated at the very very top of his class.
Yeah, kindergarten
..
And there were a million people that came to watch him get his diploma.
As with Trump’s encounters with Roy Cohn, one can ponder his take-aways (that we now live with). This one (Trump quote below) must have thrilled to the marrow every bad boy who wants to pay no taxes, follow no norms, and do no pesky compliance. It’s a funny quote, for a guy who swears as his current job to take care that the laws be faithfully executed:
“I took a lot of finance courses at Wharton, and first. they taught you all the rules and regulations. then they taught you that those rules and regulations are really meant to be broken.”
– Donald Trump (1987)
(as accessed October 6, 2019 at forbes.com, at:)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2017/09/19/trump-decades-old-quotes-sound-lot-like-current-day-tweets-1982-2000/
This at least suggest to me that standards and norms can be casually discarded when it is personally expedient to do so.
What Trump said seems to be the norm. I noticed when I had a small sales business that one more-or-less government agency would tell you the latest bright idea for increasing sales (usually with a fraudulent element) and then another government agency would tell you that you would go to jail if you tried to do it. These people are just there for their own benefit, not for business and not for the consumer.
One bright idea I had once was to assign each individual business to a single bureaucrat as his own bureaucratic property. The problem for business is the “tragedy of the commons,” which is an old expression for what used to happen in English villages to common land that did not belong to any particular individual or family: everybody used and abused it, and nobody looked after it. Every business is the common property of all bureaucrats, and they use and abuse it for their own purposes. If one bureaucrat owned the businessman as his personal property (let’s face it: we are all really the property of government, which means that we are the property of the gang of scoundrels that is in power for the time being – and I don’t just mean politicians, I mean bureaucrats and teachers), then the other bureaucrats could submit their insane demands to him, and he could decide whether his serf could really afford to obey. There would still be misjudgements, but the bureaucrat would have an incentive to preserve his property for future consumption.
It has become the norm in recent decades that if it comes out of the mouth of DC officialdom, chances are very high that it is a lie. It is the Swamp’s default setting.
Come on now…
There is nothing normal about Trump or his henchmen…
King Chaos the Shit Talker takes the cake…
and tells everyone else to eat it.
Granted, Trump takes it to another level, but it is the norm for officialdom to lie. Just a few at random:
–Dems and Republicans equally lied throughout the 20 years of the Afghanistan disaster.
–Everything officialdom said about Ivermectin was a lie: it is extremely safe and very effective against Covid, but had to be suppress in order for the Epstein class to make billions on the Emergency Use Authorization toxic jab. –WMD destruction was a lie that killed hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent people.
–BLS has revised the CPI 8 times and every time they revise it so that it detects less inflation. CPI consistently lies in undermeasuring inflation.
I’m sure any of you reading this blog could come up with many, many more instances. And it is true regardless of which wing of the Uniparty has its snout in the trough.
Mish, I’ll say this again here, because you probably won’t see it below the article I was querying. When you said that “every single dollar of this $32.26 trillion must be actively financed on the open market,” you surely meant that every single dollar must either be financed on the open market or it must be created out of nothing by the Fed?
Oh, great. Another “The Fed is going to monetize the entire debt” sub-thread. Do you people ever get tired of being wrong all the time?
(Hide)
I mean it’s just an exercise in accounting – just create offsetting entries in a spreadsheet and POOF those unseemly deficits just dissapear. In the limit, you can run infinite deficits, with no unforeseen consequences…because excel says so, right?
BTW in drumpfs defense, he’s not doing anything new. Literally every administration for the past 30 years or so has done this. drumpf (and Biden before him, and drumpf 1.0 before Biden) have just taken this to a whole new level. GO BIG OR GO HOME!
We’re effing doomed.
Good point. I will do a post on this because “debt held by the public” includes Fed monetization.
It all has to be rolled over either short-term or long-term.
The debt consists of already existing dollars, and that stock must be held by someone. The debt also represents (by definition) the savings of the private sector. After all, somebody has to buy those bonds by handing over their dollars.
To The Contrary
I opine and surmise
Donald Knows EXACTLY what he is doing
and that is lying and deceiving the Fox Viewers
He knows interest rates – He has staff explain it
but he does not want you and I to know
Everything has gone wrong for Donald
Tariffs to China Rare Earths to Iran to Ukraine/Russia
To Palestine Cleansing
Only success Stealing Oil from Venezuela
and his long touted Look at the Stock Market
Donald will spend spend spend to keep the stock market up
it is the only thing Fox Viewers understand – look at the stock market
Well unwittingly or with some intent ( Palestine Iran desire to build a Gaza Riviera )
Trump has significantly harmed the United States Financially but more importantly credibility and respect
it took MILLIONS of Lives in WWI and WWII and YEARS
for the US to be known as the protector of good the bright shining light
\the MORAL COMPASS
Trump has destroyed that in one term
Now lets go take Greenland Canada and Cuba !
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Trump has no idea. None – he says and acts on impulse
No One Knows who he is
But Everyone Knows him for what he admitted
Former European Commission President and Eurogroup chief Jean-Claude Juncker stated that
“when it becomes serious, you have to lie”
—-> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10874230/Jean-Claude-Juncker-profile-When-it-becomes-serious-you-have-to-lie.html
WRONG. he’s a great showman and con man. do you think a moron can have a hit reality teeeeveeee show for over a decade and make that into a successful us presidential run. trump might be impulsive. but he’s no moron. he’s the king of debt. heads he wins and tails the bank loses. an old buddy of mine who owned hotels in hawaii and pac rim taught me that old wisdom decades ago.
“Reading the room”, some call it.
But he does have a storied legacy of leading into bankruptcy.
I don’t think so because Trump self defeats an awful lot for a guy who secretly knows what he’s doing. Methinks the more convenient explanation is that he is an idiot who has been spoiled rotten and bailed out time and time again.
Chauncey Gardiner’s evil twin.
Not American lives. The millions were other populations.
I would be willing to bet that taco can’t spell economics.
Not sure he can spell “USA” at this point.
Sure he can. Haven’t you heard? The Strait of Hormuz is now the Straight of USA.
Trump was sensed by many clever predators to be a conduit, a path of centralized attention and, increasingly, power, ways and means, to grab stuff. I would rate such operators, visible all around him including his own family members, as the type who might pilfer your wallet while you were on an operating table. They would snatch valuables from a burning house. And Trump is that type too, of course. These slimy creatures are slithering into the banking system, digital assets, defense procurement, inside trading in prediction markets, foreign side deals adjacent to conflict areas, etc.
So what words or principles mean, in Trump’s mouth and mind, are merely expedients. Like narcotics, they are here to make the sale to the suckers of whatever impulsive grandiose folly he is up to at the moment.
He mostly makes boom boom for Natalie now.