Powell's Fed Has NO Business Propping Up Trump Or The Markets - With Interest Rate Cuts

"Cripes, I don't know how to control this stupid asshole! I guess I'll just give in."


Barely 4 days ago, I was unable to believe my eyes as I read:

Web results

Fed Begins Debate on Whether to Cut Rate as Soon as June - WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/.../fed-faces-challenging-rate-decision-at-june-meeting-115598337...

Web resultThis was not a headline designed to inspire confidence among ordinary citizens - especially dedicated savers  not prepared to gamble their money in Maul Street's casinos.  Thus, we were not encouraged on reading (ibid.)Barel"A month ago, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell played down speculation of a rate cut this summer. Now officials at the central bank face a darker economic outlook and heightened trade tensions, making a rate cut possible—if not at their meeting on June 18-19, then in July or later."

"A month ago, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell played down speculation of a rate cut this summer. Now officials at the central bank face a darker economic outlook and heightened trade tensions, making a rate cut possible—if not at their meeting on June 18-19, then in July or later."

This was appalling news especially for dedicated savers. Worse, it portends an ill financial wind for all Americans if it helps to accelerate the economy toward recession rather than improve it. That happens as the Fed seeks to stimulate an economy already over leveraged (deeply in debt) and with employment near full capacity.   But the word is that Powell and others on the Fed Board are "puzzled as to why inflation hasn't risen more".  (Rising inflation would signal a need to raise interest rates.)  Well, there are two reasons: 1)Wages remain stagnant so the usual inflation driver of higher wages in flush times isn't there, and 2) The Fed continues to use an inflation index that's out of date, not factoring in food price increases or medical inflation, especially for meds.

 Barely two weeks earlier, one read ('Investors Expect Rates Cuts By Year's End Despite Data', WSJ, May 16, p. B 10):

"Federal funds futures suggest investors are more convinced than ever that the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates multiple times by the end of the year. Economic data suggest that is too drastic a bet."

Adding:

"Fed future data show the market pricing in a 26 percent chance of the Fed lowering rates twice by the end of 2019 and a 7.5 percent chance of the Fed doing it three times. That is up from 6.7%  and 0.3 % a month ago.

The numbers seems to stand at odds with economic data which overall have shown a strong labor market, inflation expectations that are tame, and modest profit growth well into the economic expansion.  After all, the last time the Fed cut rates was in 2008 - when policy makers were in the midst of grappling with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and financial markets were tumbling..

And more recently (June 10) our memories were refreshed (WSJ, 'Business and Finance', p. B8):  

"Then there was the Fed rate cut in September, 2007, which gave the DOW Jones Industrial Average its biggest one day percentage gain since 2003.  Fast forward one year and the U.S. was in the teeth of the financial crisis."


All of which shows me the Fed may be tempted to hit the 'chicken switch' before it's necessary and trigger what it's trying to avoid. Indeed, digging an unnecessary rate hole that may well be needed  (i.e. to really lower rates) if and when a recession does hit - as something like 70 percent of economists are forecasting now - by next year. 

Indeed, signs we're hurtling toward recession were amplified in the more recent article  ('Sluggish Jobs Data Push Treasury Yields Toward 2 Percent', WSJ,  June 8, p. A2) which ominously reported:

"Worries span the globe. The yield on 10 year German government debt Friday declined to record lows below negative  0.2 %.  Japanese government bonds of the same maturity traded below negative 0.1 %.  About $11 trillion of bonds around the world, concentrated in Europe and Japan, carry negative yields now accounting for about 20 percent of all debt world -wide according of Torsten Slok - chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities."

This debt bogeyman is for real and people would do well not to minimize it.  Indeed, as far back as two years ago The Financial Times reported on the IMF's growing concern about exploding global debt (April 17, ('IMF Sounds Alarm On Excessive Global Borrowing') :

"The world's $164 trillion debt pile is bigger than at the height of the financial crisis a decade ago, the IMF has warned, sounding the alarm on excessive global borrowing.  The fund said the private and public sectors urgently need to cut debt levels to improve the resilience of the global economy, and provide greater firefighting ability it things go wrong.

Fiscal stimulus to support demand  is no longer the priority the IMF said Wednesday in a report published at its spring meetings in Washington. "


But instead of heeding that warning, the Fed appears hell bent on ignoring it to placate and feed investors' addictions to the already senescent BULL market while appeasing Trump.  This is the swine who's berated the Fed incessantly about lowering rates,  going so far as  to try to tilt the Federal Reserve Board with two unqualified lackeys: Herman Cain and Stephen Moore.  Fortunately, after much media heat centered on their woeful and clown -like backgrounds both backed out. But Dotard never let up on his Fed attacks, and in previous posts I worried about Fed Chairman Jerome Powell bending to the fake Fuhrer's will.  

We also are well aware here - as Trump likely is - the only way we may see the end of this orange fungal infection is if the economy crashes. It's now on the verge of doing that (via a potential recession) but any Fed intervention will try to interfere to halt that.  Will the Fed deliberately be trying to help Trump stay in office? Not likely, because there's no way in hell Powell is eager to take 4 more years of Trump's temper tantrums than the rest of us. No, he'd likely want to try to avert a recession - with the best of intentions - except that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

However,  the very act of the Fed interjecting with  lower rates may well preordain two hellish consequences: 1) a Trump re-election,  and 2) Ultimately a much worse recession especially if a re-elected Trump  returns to his tariff terrorism - which has already wrought untold havoc. (See e.g. today's lead WSJ Editorial, 'Paying for  Mexico's Wall', noting: "Trump's use of tariffs as a bludgeon on migrants has economic costs. The threat of 25 % tariffs on Mexican exports is gone for now, but businesses can't be sure it won't come back."  )

Never mind the last minute phony end to the Mexican tariffs.  Which we now know Mexico had agreed to months ago, so Dotard manufactured this latest tariff crisis on his own. As usual,  employing chaos and threats to advance his feral agenda, while keeping businesses and American consumers off balance.  Former Obama CIA official Ned Price has this scum pegged perfectly, noting in a recent (June 9)  NY Times piece:

 "He manufactures a crisis, galvanizes his base around the challenge, leaves the definition of success undefined, pretends to play hardball and, lo and behold, finds a solution that entails little more than window-dressing, if that. For Trump, it’s a win-win. But the loser tends to be the American people, oftentimes Trump’s base first and foremost,” 

Why doesn't Trump's base see they are his tackling dummies, used for sport whenever he feels the urge?  Well, because they believe they are "in on the secret" and hence accept whatever drubbing he delivers so long as they might get to see the 'snowflakes'  cry.   Call it schadenfreude but with a nasty blowback.

As for the stock market, Powell wouldn't be doing it or investors any favors by jazzing it up with a rate cut. While it will temporarily boost share prices, it will he at the expense of a mammoth asset bubble. Also, an asset bubble leveraged into being by massive debt, creating an even more unstable financial system.

To fix ideas, let's note here that "support demand" (see FT  quote) refers to support of  "aggregate demand", i.e. getting citizens to spend more - which was the basis for the Trump-GOP tax cuts. This was an incredibly bad play given how much the tax cuts have already added to the debt, and the deficits going forward.

Economist and former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Reich warned on 'All In' Friday:

"With all the ancillary damage from these tariffs, and threatened tariffs (against Mexico) you could find the economy in recession before the election."

Chris Hayes then asked if the threats are large enough to knock us from an expansion into a recession, i.e. what's the case if it could.  To which Reich responded:

"Well, it's the interaction between the tariffs and the slowdown that's almost inevitable given how long this recovery has gone.  I mean recoveries don't go forever, they eventually slow down. Also American companies and American individuals are deep in debt, which is another thing that's not talked about very much.

But that debt is also a problem. Then, you have that tax cut for big corporations and for the very wealthy that did not trickle down. it just added two trillion dollars over the next ten years to our debt.

Now put all of that together and you get an economy that is very, very vulnerable."


Reinforcing this take, as The Denver Post noted (June 9. p. A):

"Recessions typically result when the Federal Reserve tightens monetary policy to cool an overheating economy. ..The past two recessions came on the heels of financial excesses, a massive stock market bubble in the early 2000s and an unprecedented housing bubble that triggered the financial crisis in 2008."

Yet now Jerome Powell's Fed seems intent on producing an even bigger bubble, by juicing stocks using interest rate cuts.  Has he been intimidated by Trump into choosing this unwise route? We don't know but the signs are not good. Following the track of the last eight months - and Trump's numerous eruptions - it really does look like Powell has caved. Both to greedy Maul Street investors pressing for more cheap money crack,  and to Dotard.

The questions then become: a) Is it better to cut rates now and in so doing create an asset and debt bubble with even worse effects later, or b)  allow financial destiny to unfold as it will, which may mean a recession - but it will effectively help get rid of the disease called Trump.  I vote for the latter out of plain common sense.

I mean, as NY Times columnist Michelle Goldberg put it on the same 'All In' show, how much more can we take?  Millions of citizens are already tuning out, and despairing that nothing can remove the national disease emanating from the White House.  This is especially after Trump's despicable and dishonorable performance for the D-Day commemoration on Thursday (insulting a real warrior, former Marine Robert Mueller, as well as disparaging Nancy Pelosi - in the shadow of the grave markers at Normandy. This from a coward who used 'bone spurs' to escape from the draft at least 5 times.)

And then we learned in the aftermath that this preening orange, 2-legged maggot wants to insinuate himself into the Independence Day celebrations!  Where does it end? Has Dotard not yet learned Presidents are to be seen and only occasionally heard - generally in their State of the Union spiels?  Four more years of this fuck-turd! Give me a recession anytime!  We need a total disinfection and fumigation of the country. 

So no,  Fed chairman Powell, no rate cuts! Stay your hand and allow the course of history to do what it will. If it means Trump's lone re-election benefit has evaporated, so be it. If it means investors are crying in their beer, we can live with that.  


See also:

P.M. Carpenter

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Donald Trump | Mexico | Trade

Trump's Mexico/Tariff Scam

And:

Economic Policy | Foreign Policy | Trade

Trump’s Mexico Tariffs Are About White Nationalism, Not Trade

Yes, The Tariffs Are Hitting Home - And Even A "Strong Economy" Won't Halt The Expanding Trade Deficit

Seasonally-adjusted trade deficit over the last two years.

"Stand up and do something about it! Say something! "

"These tariffs are taxes on the working people!"

Remarks shouted out to SC Reepo Rep Tom Rice Saturday, in a Spartanburg, SC cafe.

"I'm terrified of this trade thing. I  lose sleep over it." Andy Fedge, a farmer in Rugby, N.D., quoted today in the WSJ

The news this morning that BMW's Spartanburg, SC  plant may have to raise prices on their fork lift components (made with Canadian steel)  by 15 percent or more, thanks to Trump's tariffs should come as no shock. But it has the local hoi polloi screeching and running for cover. Even the SC Chamber of Commerce chimed in, as reported on CBS this a,m., sending a letter to lawmakers e,g,

"We urge you to do whatever it takes to inform the administration of the jobs at risk due to rising tariffs."

Does Trump the angry monkey care? Of course not. He's only interested in hurling his feces at anyone he regards as getting the better of him - even though it's HIM grifting on his pathetic supporters. And SC's monkey see,   monkey do lawmakers are not much better, given five of six are sticking with Dotard's suicidal plan. Never mind their state could lose up to 60,000 jobs if the trade war goes on into the new year.

It is difficult to tell Trump and his Trumpers that they are fighting a losing battle in their trade war, but the numbers don't lie. According to the Commerce Department the trade deficit in goods and services expanded in June at the fastest rate since November, 2016.  It increased 7.3 percent in June to a seasonally adjusted $46.35 billion.  (Exports had fallen 0.7 % from May while imports increased 0.6% - from the same report issued last Friday,  Aug. 3rd). 

We also learned, e.g.  U.S. Trade Gap Widened in June - WSJ

"The data confirmed economists' expectations that a narrowing trade deficit earlier this year was likely to reverse, despite a renewed focus on trade policy from Trump".

But as I pointed out in previous posts, the problem is that Trump doesn't grasp the nature of global trade or how conducting a no holds barred trade war cuts at his own supporters, including Midwest farmers, and now Maine fishermen.  In June, for example, Trump barked at one point, highlighting his abysmal ignorance:

"Why should I allow countries to make massive trade surpluses as they have for decades?"

Well, because those  trade surpluses mean more Americans are able to buy those goods because they are cheaper!  More cheap goods =  more items bought, i.e. from the Chinese, so the Chinese run up a trade surplus.   Trump, senseless buffoon that he is, can't seem to appreciate that lower income Americans (i.e. the Trump base) benefit from competitively priced Chinese electronics, or Mexican produce, Japanese cars and Canadian steel.

This ability to purchase at lower cost is now even more important as we've since  learned e.g.
Rising U.S. Consumer Prices Are Eroding Wage Gains - WSJ

So the strong U.S. economy  is pushing up inflation and American paychecks are barely keeping up. Add on the higher costs of goods (e.g. fish, electronics, etc.) on account of the responses to Trump's tariffs. and working citizens as well as unemployed are behind the proverbial eight ball. As the article cited above notes:

"Rising  prices are now eating up much of Americans' wage gains, restraining their ability to spend in the future. "

Add on Trump's tariff "tax" - which is what it is - and his supporters, as well as the rest of us are now paying for his folly in trade as well as the idiotic tax cuts from last year - which according to a GAO report have now increased the budget deficit 21 percent since January. 


 The other aspect is that Trump and most Trumpkins fail to process that trade deficits are neither good or bad. Indeed, the WSJ's Greg Ip  answered the question of why the US. itself runs a continuing  trade deficit:

"Because it consumes more than it produces while its trading partners collectively do the opposite.. Another way of saying this is that the U.S. invests more than it saves while other countries save more than they invest."

Let's parse those words a bit because they may seem inscrutable or counter intuitive to many. Why not invest? Save? Aren't you saving when you invest? Well, no.  Saving means stashing money, capital into fixed income instruments like CDs, money markets (not funds), and regular bank savings accounts, as well as in immediate fixed annuities. Anything which is unlikely to be perturbed, affected or lost in a stock market correction or crash.

"Investing" means plowing money into regular stocks or into mutual funds - say as offered in your IRA or 401(k).  These stocks or funds are tied to actual products or services, say Apple Iphones, or Musk's Tesla, or even Chipotle - as incredible as that sounds.  The investor puts his or her money into investment devices and instruments which he believes will offer a return on the investment because the product will grow in share value, or in actual distribution- which ultimately leads to higher market valuations.

The problem is that growth can generate many expensive products (like $999 Iphones) that too many  Americans with lower  (or stagnant) wages will not be able to afford. So they will instead tend to buy cheaper Chinese smart phones. But as they consume more and more of these cheaper Chinese electronic wares they wittingly (or unwittingly) drive up the trade deficit, i.e. the Chinese trade surplus.  In retrospect then, it would have been better to save the money - stash it away in savings vehicles- then when enough is available, use it to purchase U.S. made products if such are around.

Even if one personally doesn't go into debt - say from a stock loss-  and buys shares with "found" money or disposable income, a net loss in share prices before redemption translates to a loss in that savings.  Also, your 401k or IRA may be tied to big institutional investors who do the leveraging for you.  In the Business & Investing section   WSJ piece 'In Selloff, A Trading Strategy Is Faulted' (Feb. 9th,  p. B11) we learned:

"Risk parity funds aim to reduce the danger from a collapse in any one market by limiting bets on more volatile assets like stocks and commodities, and use leverage to load up on safer assets such as government bonds."

Tax cuts - like the Reepo ones passed in 2017 - are also not the lower wage worker's friend because: 1) he's getting barely  a chump change (say $38 a month for a Walmart worker) tax cut to use, and 2) the higher  salaries for the bigger spenders will drive up inflation.

Greg Ip in a previous WSJ piece, e.g.
Tax Cut to Widen Trade Gap That Riles Trump - Wall Street Journal  )

explained how the tax cuts will now increase the trade deficit as well, approximately $35 for each $100 increment in the budget deficit.  Since the tax cuts are now conservatively estimated to add $1. 5 trillion to the deficit, you can do the math for the trade deficit using Ip's ratio, which will come to $525 b.. 

William Galston in his (8/8, WSJ) op -ed aptly observed:

"In effect, President Trump has issued a large promissory note to the American people: After I bust up existing arrangements I'll replace them with something better"

Well, he also said that about health care (e.g. "Well have the best health care in the world!")  and look how that one turned out!  In this case the evidence thus far is that his promissory note on trade amounts to more bullshit. But what would you expect from a lowlife, low class Queens' real estate grifter?   So no surprise he's already had to make way for a  $12b bailout, e.g. 
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/07/sorry-trumpies-if-you-take-dotards-12-b.html

But that only applies to farmers, i.e. certain ones inhabiting Trump land who never should have pinned their hopes on Dotard in the first place..

Further,  his import tariffs are now adding thousands of dollars to the cost of rebuilding homes reduced to cinders by one or other of the 14 California wildfires. According to one building associated official quoted in an AP report (D. Post, Aug. 12, p. 22A). "the tariffs could raise the price of a typical new home by up to $20,000."   Meanwhile, the California Building Industry Association estimates from $8,000-10,000 higher costs to rebuild a home.  This is based on Trump's import tariffs having raised the cost of lumber, dry wall and other construction materials.

Even more pain has also been noted by Galston (ibid.):

"But manufacturers that depend on affordable imports of steel and aluminum will be priced out of their markets. Caterpillar Inc. expects that metal tariffs will raise its material costs by $200 million in the second half of this year alone, forcing it to raise prices. Beijing is prepared to match each round of U.S. tariffs with painful countermeasures. Where does this end?"

Well, possibly in another recession or even depression. Here, Trump and his band of merry finance loons and buffoons might do well to study the effect of the 1929-30 Smoot-Hawley tariff in making the Great Depression much worse.  E.g.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Smoot-Hawley-Tariff-Act

As another similar site on Smoot -Hawley noted:

"What exactly was Smoot-Hawley? Its stated purpose sounds eerily similar to the goals that Trump has espoused. It was, said its title, “an Act to provide revenue, to regulate commerce with foreign countries, to encourage the industries of the United States, to protect American labor, and for other purposes…”

But in the end, the act of so-called "protection" ended up roasting most American workers even more badly in the Great Depression. Do people ever learn from history? Not Donald Trump. As Galston ended his op -ed:

"President Trump risks leaving Americans with a flattened barn and in need of a new carpenter"

This after referencing former Speaker Sam Rayburn's famous quote:

"Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a carpenter to build one."

Is Donald Trump a jackass or a "carpenter"?  Voters will be able to decide long before the 2020 general election.

See also:

"Trump tariffs could reduce US exports, says Fed"  (FT)

Excerpt:

"The brewing transatlantic trade  war could result in fewer U.S. imports and exports and do little to redress the trade deficit  Donald Trump has railed against in recent months, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York."

Do Americans REALLY Want Big Government? If So, Are They Willing To Pay With Higher Taxes?

In the last week three WSJ pieces commanded my attention, motivating me to combine them in a blog post. The first ('Government Spending Discourages Work')was an op-ed column (Feb. 27, p. A15)  by Edward Lazear - a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business - and more importantly, a "Hoover Institution Fellow". To remind readers - one and all - it was under the illustrious  President Herbert Hoover that the infamous stock market crash of 1929 occurred - in large part because of Hoover's policies vis-a-vis Wall Street. That crash incepted the Great Depression.

No surprise that Lazear as a fellow of the Hoover Institution recycles much of their claptrap. Among which we see (ibid.):

"..Over time high spending necessitates high taxes and high taxes reduce work and restrains growth. Economic trends in developed nations show that low taxes and hard work are linked to robust growth.."

And:

"Tax and spending rates correlate highly across the 35 OECD countries. Higher spending goes hand in hand with higher taxes, higher deficits, fewer worked hours and less growth."

But then there is another piece that pretty well refutes that bollocks.  'Germany, Awash In Money, Shies Away From Tax Cut'' (WSJ,  Feb. 21, p. A11) . focused on Germany posting a projected, consolidated budget surplus of 50 million euro ($62 billion) between now and 2021, The writer adding in typical sardonic WSJ fashion:

"The German government never had so much money or so many ideas of how to spend it,  The one thing that isn't discussed is giving it back to the taxpayers".

Which, of course, is a flat out incorrect interpretation, but let's admit the earlier cited Edward Lazear would be content with that take,. But let me clarify that for Germans that money   IS given back, but as extended unemployment insurance, paid family leave and free child care, higher education (free) and medical care. Not to mention generous pensions.

This was again made clear to us when we saw our German friends Reinhardt and Elli in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in May 2013, e.g.

At the time we discussed with Reinhardt -in one of many conversations -  the relative merits of the German and American work forces. I mentioned promotion specifically and he'd been emphatic that the idea that promotions were "worth more" in the USA was nonsense. "Workers have just as great an incentive here in Germany", he said, because seniority is based on the quality of one's work and "that same seniority determines one's pension."  When I pressed him further he agreed that Germans aren't ruled 'by the buck' (or euro), "Jawohl, it is true that we do not consider the money to be the main determinant of our lives. We treasure time to be with family also to travel and see the world later on."

He did agree also that higher taxes are part of it and enable benefits like higher pensions, more widely distributed social insurance and child care provisions  as well as a less profit oriented healthcare system. He acknowledged that taxes in the U.S. are substantially lower than in Europe but made it clear that translated into more social benefits for Europeans. 

"You will not see a European go bankrupt or become homeless from a medical problem." he averred.

This is where the WSJ piece on Germany's  surplus is misleading because it interprets and frames that surplus in terms of individualistic American nonsense that it must be  "given back" as tax cuts. Yeah, right, and WHO gets most of those cuts? Three guesses but the first two don't count.  This is also something Lazear glosses over in his claims that "government spending discourages work." I defy you to blab that to any red-blooded German, who are amongst the hardest working and most productive citizens in the world. And who - because of that hard work - expect and demand their government use any extra money for taxes on social services. 

As Green Party member Sven Giegold, quoted in the piece put it:

"You need high taxes in order to be civilized. We are very far away from the government having too much money."

And Reinhardt would totally concur because without that gov't support he'd not have been able to retire at age 55 from his auto engineering job and spend the last twenty years  touring various places, including the U.S. and Canada (Whistler, B.C.)  As he put it when we spoke on these issues:

"It is interesting" he said, "but if Americans were willing to pay higher taxes they might have more time for family and travel as well as paying less in healthcare costs because they could have a system more like ours, less based on profits!"

Of course, he is correct, but to the typical  shortsighted, American tax cut money grubber this is somehow  twisted and unnatural. This despite the fact Germany has rarely been in deficit mode because it firmly believes in husbanding resources rather than trickle down BS that gives tax cuts to the rich. As the article notes:

"Germany has among the highest taxes in the world and a habit of heavy state spending."

This prompted former U.S. ambassador to Germany, John Kornblum, to opine in the piece:

"It's sort of a through the looking glass world. Traditionally Germans have been in favor of hoarding resources rather than lowering government expenditures."

Yet the proof is in the pudding! Despite those expenditures it's not running a deficit like the U.S. - a hard fact that Edward Lazear totally ignores in his specious brief for "aggressive cuts in federal spending."  Seems to me (and it would Reinhardt) Germany has some lessons to teach the U.S.- not that a hack like Lazear would take note.

Finally,  we come to:   'Americans Want Big Government',  by William Galston - one of a handful of center left columnists at the Journal.   Galston cited a Pew research poll from last April that showed - for the first time in eight years- "Americans favored a larger government offering more services over a smaller government providing fewer services."   This was bolstered by an NBC/ Wall Street Journal poll last month which showed 58 percent of Americans ("the highest share ever recorded") agreed that "the government should do more to solve problems and help meet the needs of people"-this compared to only 38 percent who felt "the government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals."

Moreover, "Americans favoring a more active government included majorities of all age groups, ethnicities, and education levels"  (Those favoring less gov't included 63 % of Republicans, 65 % of Trump voters and 51 % of white men. In other words, the usual suspects.)

How does this demand for government help break down?

- 50 percent of Americans want the gov't to increase spending for Social Security

- This is vs. 5 percent who want cuts

 - For Medicare the comparable figures were 45 percent and 7 percent.

- For Medicaid, 38 percent vs. 12 percent

In a separate Kaiser survey, 40 % want more defense spending, 19 percent want less.

Similarly, 70 percent want more spent on education and 7 percent want less.

Based on these polls, Galston concluded "Americans want Big Government"

Americans, for their part, may want a big government a la German style but ARE they willing to pay for it?  Let's make it clear you can't have both tax cuts and government extension of services and programs. The way so many grabbed at that fake GOP -Trump tax cut just passed, I doubt it. So I guess they'd rather continue with no paid family leave, no sick days to speak of from work, no government supported pensions like Reinhardt enjoys, and excessively expensive health care with too many dubious outcomes.

When I see Americans vote in their millions against tax cut pols then I might believe the zeitgeist and supply side brainwashing has given way to a new "German" normal. But not until.

See also:

• Oprah got perfect response from Danish woman on their social welfare state