Krugman has a nice succinct explanation – Trump voters are going to pay for the wall with higher prices on the Mexican goods that US companies now make in Mexico, and the produce grown in Mexico. What a brilliant plan. [/snark]
]]>‘Over my dead body’: tribe aims to block Trump’s border wall on Arizona land
]]>The Mexican tariff incident is truly amazing, because it shows dysfunctional, ignorance, and incompetence at multiple levels. The motivation for Spicer’s initial remarks seems to be that Trump is feeling disrespected (again): people are making fun of him (again) because he promised that Mexico would pay for the wall, and it won’t. So someone had the bright idea of claiming that a tariff will do it imagining that the House plan for a border tax adjustment as part of corporate tax reform is the same thing. But it isn’t.
For one thing, that adjustment can’t be country-specific; also, it isn’t really just like a tariff. But wait, it gets worse Tariffs aren’t paid by the exporter; it depends a bit on the details, but it’s basically a tax on domestic consumers.
Wait, it gets worse still: the claim that everyone else taxes imports is wrong too. A VAT is NOT like a tariff. It’s a sales tax that is neutral in its effects on trade. Now, the proposed border tax adjustment is a bit different. It might in fact act like a combined export subsidy and import tariff. But for that very reason, it might well be considered WTO-illegal because it’s not just doing what others do. And even if it somehow doesn’t bring down the world trade system, its effects would be dissipated by a stronger dollar.
So let’s sum up: Trump was probably feeling low, so aides told him they had an answer to his critics but they didn’t understand either the economics or the world trade rules, and didn’t realize how explosive the whole thing was. Now they’re trying to walk it back, looking even more ridiculous in the process. How are we going to survive years of this?
And, Trumpet has helped the Mexican economy. The Peso is up about 1.4 since Nieto told Trumpet to (essentially) drop dead. 😀
]]>And now it seems Trump will lift economic sanctions against Russia, after talks with Merkel & Putin on Sat. & May’s visit. May opened her Trumpet visit by attacking past US foreign policy failures.
The three horsemen ride again! But with Howard replaced by Putin, Shrubbery with Trumpet, & Blair with May (who has fantasies of being Thatcher & admires Reagan).
It’s fitting that the Doomsday clock has been set to it’s closest to Midnight in it’s history.
Nuclear ‘Doomsday Clock’ ticks closest to midnight in 64 years
Twitter users are pissed @ Twitter as they are now censoring.
“Twitter users have been noticing for the past few days that if you search words like “asshole,” racist,” “tiny hands” and “douchebag,” it will bring up a bunch of results, along with President Donald Trump’s profile. Now, it appears that Twitter is actually censoring those results to exclude President Trump.”
I am enjoying Paul Krugman’s tweets however. 😀 He isn’t hiding his absolute disgust. He refuses to even acknowledge Trumpet as “President” & refers to him usually as “Agent Orange”! LOL
And… The WHouse is reporting that the 20% tax on Mexican imports to pay for the wall will be about $10bln. Hmmm. Basic arithmetic on the $316bln reported imports is $63.2bln. A lie, or did they just run out of fingers? Another theory is the *brains* there calculated the amount on the trade deficit of $50 bln. Either way… The USA is sooooo screwed!
Curiously, the first tweet about the tax came not from Dem’s (of course) but Lindsey Graham! “Simply put, any policy proposal which drives up costs of Corona, tequila, or margaritas is a big-time bad idea. Mucho Sad.” LOL
]]>It looks like the Cybercrimes Division screwed up and started to arrest and prosecute hackers who were being protected by other divisions within the FSB.
]]>The world’s weather services have been downloading data, as well as grad students who will need it for their theses .
Kaspersky caught them with their hand in the till and Putin is arresting and/or disappearing anyone involved.
Check out Samantha Bee, Kryten, very similar to “Mr Pie”.
]]>And, this:
Top Russian Cybercrimes Agent Arrested on Charges of Treason
Hmmm!
Also arrested was Ruslan Stoyanov, head of computer incident response investigations at Kaspersky.
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AK-47 Assault Rifles a congratulatory gift from Putin. 😉 😆
(Image actually from Artist Rainier Weber Designs – A unique Gold-Plated AK-47 chair & lamp stand using real rifles.)
Just figured we could use a laugh… That’s not too far from truth. *sigh*
And here, Bryan:
CIA Starts Recruiting Its Newest Asset: Donald Trump
Given CIA’s past recruits… Makes sense. LMAO
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