Flop Sweat

What Me Worry?  Though Trump insists that the economy is very strong, he’s obviously starting to get very nervous that it’s about to tank. His tweets are the tell.  Yesterday he once again attacked Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and the entire Federal Reserve Board as well as the Democrats who he tweeted are “trying to ‘will’ the economy to be bad for purposes of the 2020 election, very selfish!”  He also tweeted that “interest rates, over a fairly short period of time, should be reduced by at least 100 basis points, with perhaps some quantitative easing as well,”  while at the same time complaining that the strong dollar was hurting the other world economies, dragging ours down too.   That last tweet was notable for a few reasons.  First, there is no way he wrote it, neither Trump nor his base, nor most of the rest of us have a clue what “quantitative easing” even means, simplistically it’s shorthand for asking the Fed to pump more money into the economy to weaken the dollar. Second, and more importantly, you don’t dramatically drop interest rates or pump money into a booming economy, both are steps taken when trying to urgently address a slumping economy (think 2008) and at least with regard to interest rate cuts, it’s important to leave room to make more gradual cuts when they are actually needed.  This weekend it was reported that no one in the Trump administration even had a plan for what to do if the economy takes a turn for the worse.  Not entirely surprising given that Trump mostly surrounds himself with sycophants, would you want to be the one to tell him, the “emperor” with no clothes, that his economy was shedding attire?  The NY Times now reports that while still refusing to admit that there is a significant risk that the economy will turn downwards,  the White House is scurrying to develop a plan to “help bolster” the economy to prevent it from falling into a recession. Implementing a payroll tax cut and reversing some of Trump’s tariffs are among the items under consideration. Trump hasn’t signed off on either strategy, he may not even know that a plan is in the works.  In any case, while futzing with the tariffs is something he could do on his own, he would need Congress’ help with the payroll tax cut, and it’s unlikely that he would get it during the run up to 2020.  There’s always a chance that all those economists predicting an economic slowdown are wrong, they frequently are, but if they are correct expect lots of flop sweat, frantic tweeting and more slurred but upbeat reports from economic advisor Larry Kudlow, who for the record is almost always wrong.

Privates:  The NRA appears to be going through tough times.  They keep losing board members; they are engaged in a legal battle with Ackermann McQueen their long time advertising company/partner in gun promotion; they’re being tortured by New York’s Attorney General who is questioning the validity of their tax-exempt status; and you can’t pick up a paper without learning more about CEO Wayne LaPierre’s  NRA funded shopping sprees.  Despite all that, or maybe because of it, they are working really hard and still seem to have Trump by his private parts.  He seems to be running away from gun restrictions, in addition to blaming all the recent mass shootings on mental health problems and the closure of all those old style mental institutions, the ones where lobotomies and strait jackets were de rigueur, he’s now wants us to know, or at least his gun toting base to know that he’s  “very, very concerned with the Second Amendment, more so than most presidents would be,” and by the way “people don’t realize we have very strong background checks right now.” For substantive gun legislation to pass, Trump will have to take the lead and twist some arms, starting with those of Moscow/NRA Mitch and it’s looking less and less likely that he will go there.  Sadly, the NRA isn’t the only institution under the gun so to speak, Planned Parenthood is also going through tough times.  The Trump administration may be unwilling to curb gun ownership, but limiting access to reproductive care is something they are depressingly good at.  Yesterday, in response to a new Trump administration rule that forbids family planning organizations receiving money under the Title X federal family planning program from making referrals to doctors who perform abortions, Planned Parenthood decided to withdraw from the program.  That means, that at least until a court rules in their favor, assuming one ever does, Planned Parenthood will give up about $60 million annually, funds that “enabled the group to provide more than 1.5 million low-income women each year with services like birth control and pregnancy tests, as well as screenings for sexually transmitted diseases and breast and cervical cancer.”  Though Planned Parenthood needs the money, they’ve decided that refusing to provide appropriate referrals would be unethical because people expect their doctors to tell them where to go for care!

Other News:  In the wake of the recent explosion at its missile testing facility, the one that killed at least seven people, Russia appears to have disabled several of its nuclear monitor stations because one way of hiding nuclear leaks is to stop measuring radioactivity.  And why not, that’s the approach that the Trump administration takes to climate change, if you don’t measure things, doesn’t that mean that they are really happening?   Jeffrey Epstein may be gone but his story continues to reverberate.  Yesterday, while admitting that he knew that the federal prison system was suffering from acute staffing shortages due to administration imposed hiring freezes,  Attorney General Barr reassigned the Acting Director of Prisons, replacing him with Dr. Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, who served in that role during Barr’s first stint as Attorney General.  Though we still don’t know who Epstein left his $550 million plus fortune to and it probably doesn’t matter because it’s fair to assume that his victims, beneficiaries and the government will be fighting over his money for a long time to come, we now know he had a will, one that he signed just two days before his apparent suicide.  It was filed in the Virgin Islands.  Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer who used the controversial chokehold that resulted in the death of Eric Garner during an arrest for selling single cigarettes in 2014 was fired by NYC’s Police Commissioner yesterday.  With the support of his union, Pantaleo is already appealing his dismissal. Not so fun fact, while chokeholds were illegal in NYC at the time of Eric Garner’s death, they are now allowed under “exigent circumstances,” whatever that means.