Another reason to impeach Trump

Here’s Yahoo Finance:

Trump “knows it will play well, not only with the stock markets, but with the voters here in the U.S., that he’s finally resolved this long trade war, this costly trade war for Americans,” said Brett Bruen, president of the Global Situation Room and former White House Director of Global Engagement on Yahoo Finance’s “YFiPM.”

“That’s what I think Beijing is looking at now – how can we extract some of those concessions on hard issues because Trump is so desperate on trying to secure a deal,” Bruen said.

“Beijing is going to entice him with, perhaps, some splashy superficial compromises, but at the end of the day, the substance will not favor the United States in some of these hard issues we’ve been trying to resolve,” said Bruen.

I hope they are right.  It would be wonderful to see the US forced to accept China’s position in the negotiations.

BTW.  A number of my commenters say we need to get tough with China because of their human rights abuses.  But when I mention other countries with horrific human rights abuses, some of which are Trump allies, they suddenly change their tune.  I wonder if the human rights issue is being used for ulterior motives?

PS.  I have a new post on the Eurozone over at Econlog.  But I don’t think my explanation was as effective as it might be.  Think of it this way.  Suppose the Eurozone were a club of 17 countries, each having 1 million people.  You’d still have the exact same one-size-fits-all problem.  But its small total size would mean that it would have no trouble depreciating its currency and creating eurozone-wide inflation.  That’s what I meant by large size being a curse.  The eurozone created disinflation by getting rid of many small currencies. (Not “necessarily”, but in practice, given their use of interest rates as a policy instrument.)

PPS.  People keep asking me about the fed funds market.  Rates briefly spiked.  Why should I care about overnight interest rates?

PPPS.  Here’s my euro tweet:

Theory:  It takes a heap of Harberger triangles to fill an Okun’s Gap.

Practice:  The euro.


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11 Responses to “Another reason to impeach Trump”

  1. Gravatar of dtoh dtoh
    27. September 2019 at 17:42

    Scott,

    Maybe you were referring to other commenters, but please don’t misquote me. I said.

    I don’t favor sanctions to correct human rights abuses/behavior, I favor [them] to prevent illiberal and non-democratic states from building up the economic power and military might needed to militarily dominate other countries.”

  2. Gravatar of Benjamin Cole Benjamin Cole
    27. September 2019 at 18:19

    People keep asking me about the fed funds market. Rates briefly spiked. Why should I care about overnight interest rates?–Scott Sumner

    The Federal Reserve balance sheet is up about 110 billion dollars since September 9. I cannot tell the difference between what the Federal Reserve has done since September 9th and 110 billion dollars of quantitative easing. In both cases the Federal Reserve printed and spent billions of dollars to buy bonds.

    In the old days, the Federal Reserve srinted and pend 50 billion a month in a quantitative easing program. Now, the Federal Reserve has printed and spent more than 100 billion in the span of a couple weeks

    When the Federal Reserve buys bonds does it have any effect?

    Or, as I suspect, global capital markets are so large that when the Federal Reserve buys a few billion, or even a couple hundred billion dollars in bonds, it really doesn’t matter much on a macroeconomic level.

  3. Gravatar of MORGAN WARSTLER MORGAN WARSTLER
    27. September 2019 at 18:25

    I still can’t find a single person to bet me even $100 straight up Trump gets impeached.

    Losers talking about an outcome they do not think will happen, is far worse than Fed failing to hit 2%, they at least BELIEVE their bullshit.

    Wanna bet $100 Scott?

  4. Gravatar of Benjamin Cole Benjamin Cole
    27. September 2019 at 19:31

    “Hunter Biden’s Perfectly Legal, Socially Acceptable Corruption”—headline from leftie The Atlantic.

    Go ahead and impeach Trump, who cares?

    After Trump is gone (sooner or later), there will remain in DC the money-soaked legal culture of corruption, including foreign influence, and multinationals running interference for the Communist Party of China. Or Riyadh.

    The Bidens got $5 million from Ukrainians, but they are not corrupt, and US foreign policy was unaffected! No! Trump did not get a penny, but he is corrupt! Yes! Foreign policy was affected! Danger, Will Robinson, danger!

    Morgan–

    Perhaps you mean “impeached, and then convicted.”

    The GOP staged a monkey-kangaroo-trial and impeached Clinton, but Nixon was never impeached.

    Trump may get impeached. The Senate will almost certainly never convict, a replay of the Clinton fiasco. Trump may get convicted if the Donks were to win a lot of Senate seats in 2020. But they need 2/3rds to convict.

    Whether the Donks of ‘Phants run these impeachments, they strike me as show trials.

  5. Gravatar of Jean Jean
    28. September 2019 at 04:20

    You do realize that Pelosi changed the rules in the House so that the Republicans won’t have any input into writing the Articles of Impeachment, right? And that the the IC changed their rules to allow hearsay in August of this year, right?
    You are supporting a coup.

  6. Gravatar of Benjamin Cole Benjamin Cole
    28. September 2019 at 05:32

    BTW, Scott Sumner writes (and very well) for The Hill website.

    Here is something from The Hill:

    “Solomon: These once-secret memos cast doubt on Joe Biden’s Ukraine story”

    “Former Vice President Joe Biden, now a 2020 Democratic presidential contender, has locked into a specific story about the controversy in Ukraine.

    He insists that, in spring 2016, he strong-armed Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor solely because Biden believed that official was corrupt and inept, not because the Ukrainian was investigating a natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, that hired Biden’s son, Hunter, into a lucrative job.

    There’s just one problem.

    Hundreds of pages of never-released memos and documents — many from inside the American team helping Burisma to stave off its legal troubles — conflict with Biden’s narrative.

    And they raise the troubling prospect that U.S. officials may have painted a false picture in Ukraine that helped ease Burisma’s legal troubles and stop prosecutors’ plans to interview Hunter Biden during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

    For instance, Burisma’s American legal representatives met with Ukrainian officials just days after Biden forced the firing of the country’s chief prosecutor and offered “an apology for dissemination of false information by U.S. representatives and public figures” about the Ukrainian prosecutors, according to the Ukrainian government’s official memo of the meeting. The effort to secure that meeting began the same day the prosecutor’s firing was announced.”

    —30—

    The story goes on, and can be read here:

    https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/463307-solomon-these-once-secret-memos-cast-doubt-on-joe-bidens-ukraine-story

    Egads. Recall, it was the Bidens who were getting $50,000 a month from the Ukraine, and not the Trumps.

    As I say, impeach Trump, or erect a monument to Trump and make him President life, it matters little to me. But peeling the onion on this story might be interesting.

  7. Gravatar of rayward rayward
    28. September 2019 at 06:57

    Trump is what’s called a dry drunk. No, he doesn’t drink alcohol, but his behavior is that of an alcoholic: unreliable, erratic, self-absorbed. He has the alcoholic gene: his brother drank himself to death. The problem for us is that alcoholism is a progressive disease. That’s why his behavior has become more unreliable, erratic, and self-absorbed as he has gotten older. And it will get worse.

  8. Gravatar of Xu Xu
    28. September 2019 at 07:02

    When an american citizen hopes and prays that america loses a negotiation with a foriegn country, and thus weakens a nation to the point of economic collapse – based on a misguided theory, that person should be terminated from their position immediatly. Sumner is disgusting. And keep in mind that this treasonuous, nasty, and I do mean nasty, individual, is teaching our children to hate america.

  9. Gravatar of rayward rayward
    28. September 2019 at 08:05

    Trump even brought up Hunter Biden in Trump’s discussions with Stephen Schwarzman, Trump’s go-between in negotiations with the Chinese, in an effort to enlist the Chinese in Trump’s effort to undermine American democracy. Trump’s brazen behavior can only be explained as some kind of mental illness, alcoholism my guess. It will get worse.

  10. Gravatar of Cameron Blank Cameron Blank
    28. September 2019 at 08:30

    Some of these commenters:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

  11. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    28. September 2019 at 16:13

    dtoh, I don’t think I misquoted you, indeed I don’t think I quoted you at all. I have several commenters who cite human rights abuses as a reason we should get tough with China, and then say that we should not get tough with other countries that have human rights abuses. That’s just a fact. They may have good reasons, indeed obviously they must have SOME reason. But that doesn’t change the fact.

    Morgan, You are all confused now. Here you say:

    “I still can’t find a single person to bet me even $100 straight up Trump gets impeached.”

    But what does that mean? If he gets impeached but not convicted (my view of what will happen) who wins?

    Take a deep breath, and be more specific.

    Jean, You said:

    “You are supporting a coup.”

    LOL

    Xu, You said:

    “When an american citizen hopes and prays that america loses a negotiation with a foriegn country, and thus weakens a nation to the point of economic collapse – based on a misguided theory, that person should be terminated from their position immediatly. Sumner is disgusting. And keep in mind that this treasonuous, nasty, and I do mean nasty, individual, is teaching our children to hate america.”

    This is funny on so many levels. First, I’d love to lose my job. It would be like a long vacation. Second, I don’t teach America’s children. I don’t even teach America’s adults. And if I did I wouldn’t teach them to hate America, which has a political system that is far better than China’s.

    Please take a deep breath, Mr. Xu.

    Cameron, Yup.

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