[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Nobama

And Obama or Hitlery have these "skills"?

Considering they have been engaged in the diplomatic mission for many years, yes they have those skills. Even someone with no understanding of how diplomacy works should be able to figure that out.

The biggest problem effecting all of us right now is international trade. The US has huge trade deficits with almost every country. It's killing the North American economy. They don't need a "diplomatic PC politician". They need someone to straighten out this financial mess they are in and bring manufacturing and jobs back to North America.

Is this the new moving of the goalposts? Is this the new strategy the conservatives are going to be clinging to now? You would think that you could at least do your homework and see if this latest dittohead nonsense was true?

According to the historical balance of trade the United States has been running a consistent deficit for almost 40 years.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/unit...lance-of-trade

This started under Carter but was amplified under Reagan and H.W. Bush. Clinton erased that for a very short period of time, then went into a trade deficit situation as well. Where things really went all to hell was under the second Bush. He drove the country into a deficit spending spiral that topped out at a record $67.823B. Obama came into office and almost immediately erased $40B of trade deficit. The trade deficit is back up, but that is directly related to the fact that we import much of our energy and consumer goods. Most of our manufacturing capacity of consumer goods is off-shore where businesses can take advantage of cheap labor and keep Americans in a lifestyle they are accustomed to. Also, most of our exports are big ticket items that are the first things to be cut back on when times get tough. So a trade deficit is not surprising, nor is it unexpected.

Hope and Change has done nothing.

Some would disagree with you.
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=^dji+interactive#{%22range%22:%2210y%22, %22allowChartStacking%22:true}
The stock market and Wall Street has done very well under Hope and Change. Sadly that hasn’t trickled down to main street, but that is just more proof that trickledown economics are an abject failure.

Originally Posted by Quincy Egg

The first thing Obama did when he got in office was fill his Cabinet with Wall Street executives. Isn't it a bit odd that we are in a global recession and commodities are in a complete meltdown but the stock market is doing A-OK?

Coincidence.

Did those goalposts just take another wild shift in position? I thought the standard canard was to let the market fix all the problems in the nation? Now that is wrong?

Originally Posted by Calgaryborn

If the USA continues to lose its manufacturing sector it will be game over. Trump is the only candidate talking about this. Seems important to me.

Why? Explain why a trade deficit matters. I’m looking forward to being educated on this. This isn’t a deficit spending thing, where we are racking up huge interest payments. This is something altogether different, and there is no hard and fast position on trade deficits and their long term effects. Since we have been running a trade deficit for almost 40 years, I think we have enough data to make call, yet economists and academics can’t come to an agreement. So please, explain why this is now a hot button issue?

Your second paragraph confuses me. I think this is what the liberal media does to spin the bs from the important issues.

I’m not surprised you’re confused. When you shift the goalposts as often as you do it makes it very difficult to remain on point. Maybe stop shifting the goalposts and start defending a point to its conclusion.

To the Donald Trump is an economic savior angle, can we get serious for a minute. Donald Trump has no idea how to run a business or build anything. He’s all smoke and mirrors and is nothing but a marketer.

Donald Trump made his money in the 70’s being a slum lord, leveraging FHA-backed housing projects to line his pockets. He was a real estate speculator out of college who was lucky to fall into his father’s business after his father’s passing. During the 80’s Trump used the accumulated wealth in his father’s company and got more aggressive in his real estate speculation. He purchased the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, and then tried to build other casino hotels like that around the country. He did this mostly on the back of junk bonds, which sent his company into Chapter 11 protection for the first time. Instead of re-organizing and getting out of debt he used 2nd and 3rd mortgages on his real estate holdings to try and leverage his way back into the black.

What probably saved Trump from being a pauper today is the fact that he had to surrender 50% of ownership in his Taj Mahal holdings to secure lower interest payments, so he could afford to stay afloat. When Trumps partners took the Trump Hotels and Casinos public in the mid 90’s that allowed Trump to dump a majority of his stock to gain a nice $290M nest egg. Trumps next stroke of luck was managing to be in the right place at the right time to snag the Manhattan Trust Building when the US government threatened to seize it as an asset of Ferdinand Marcos. Trump got that for a song, he’ll tell you he paid a million dollars, and that building would become Trump Tower. This building has an estimated worth of several hundred million today.

Where Trump really excels is using his brand to build pseudo-value. He purchased a chunk of the Grand Hyatt building and refurbished up to “his standards,” which went over very well. Hard to believe that opulence would go over big in New York? Being Donald Trump he sold his share back to the Hyatt group and took the money and ran. This is who the real Donald Trump is and the character we see today is all a marketing ploy. He talks a big game, but he only knows enough to buy low, improve the property, and sell as fast as you can. Donald Trump is in essence a real estate flipper.

Trump is not a serious candidate and he will be out of the race quick enough, when the convention comes down to Rubio and Cruz. He will leave with a massive amount of money donated to his superPAC for his troubles of flying high cover for the other conservative nut bars in the race. The Republicans know they cannot allow someone endorsed by the KKK and White Nationalists to be the banner carrier for their party. If that happens this election will be like when the Democrats passed the 1964 Civil Right Act, and the Republican party will lose an entire generation or two of voters. This is where conservatives need to get their heads screwed on straight. They may appeal to the old white racists in the country, but those voting block is dying out, and quickly. The Republican party could make themselves unelectable for decades if they continue down this path. But in the big picture, that is a good thing.