The 2016 Presidential Election Trainwreck

[HuskyFreeNorthwest]

At least they aren't Scott Baio.

I guess Scott Baio talked at the RNC? The minute I saw of Al Franken's talk I saw he made fun of SB and my honest first thought was "he's at worst your equal interns of fame". I guess AF was part of the cast during the decade people try to pretend didn't happen on SNL.

Franken is also a senator, so he isn't some random celebrity.

He's only a senator because he was moderately famous and moved to a tiny state. I imagine most D/E listers could go that route too. Didn't Tom Osbourne becomes senator? People vote for names they've heard of, Eddie Murphy's Distinguished Gentleman isn't that untrue.

[frank ryan]

I guess Scott Baio talked at the RNC? The minute I saw of Al Franken's talk I saw he made fun of SB and my honest first thought was "he's at worst your equal interns of fame". I guess AF was part of the cast during the decade people try to pretend didn't happen on SNL.



He's only a senator because he was moderately famous and moved to a tiny state. I imagine most D/E listers could go that route too. Didn't Tom Osbourne becomes senator? People vote for names they've heard of, Eddie Murphy's Distinguished Gentleman isn't that untrue.

I don't know that I'd call MN a tiny state. They have more residents than Oregon. Franked has been a senator for awhile. It's not strange to have him speak.

[Uncle Ted]

Oh, so that is how they hacked her email...

Clinton practically handed her email password to the Russians

The Russians didn’t hack into Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server, as others have reported, according to a very reliable source of mine who has connections with US intelligence agencies.


They didn’t have to.


Clinton was so careless when using her BlackBerry that the Russians stole her password. All Russian President Vladimir Putin’s gang had to do was log into Clinton’s account and read whatever they wanted.


They had to be laughing their butts off. So you can add the Russians to the list of people who know bad and personal things about Clinton that the Democrats will wish remain hidden.
[...]
So let’s assume the worst — that Putin knows everything that Hillary did for years by having someone sign in under her password and read her mail. What does he do next? He could, of course, release the 20,000 or so e-mails that Clinton thought had been erased and stir up the November election.


Putin is welcome to give them to me. But he’ll probably go the usual route — WikiLeaks.


Or he could hold some back so he can blackmail President Clinton if she wins.


My continuing point is this: The Democrats should pick someone else. Too many people know too many bad things about Hillary. And someone is going to let loose before November.

http://nypost.com/2016/07/25/clinton...-the-russians/



I wonder when they are going to release the Clinton Foundation emails... http://nypost.com/2016/06/22/hackers...on-foundation/

[HuskyFreeNorthwest]

I don't know that I'd call MN a tiny state. They have more residents than Oregon. Franked has been a senator for awhile. It's not strange to have him speak.

Oregon is an irrelevant state nationally. Franken won his initial election in a way that made Katherine Harris cover her face and whisper "that's embarrassing".

[Commando]

I guess Scott Baio talked at the RNC? The minute I saw of Al Franken's talk I saw he made fun of SB and my honest first thought was "he's at worst your equal interns of fame". I guess AF was part of the cast during the decade people try to pretend didn't happen on SNL.

Noooooo. AF was in there with such luminaries as Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Kevin Nealon, Mike Myers, and overlapped w Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, David Spade, etc. Actually, some of his best bits were, ironically enough, with one Dennis Miller back when he was reigning as the best Weekend Update anchor ever. Stuart Smalley just happened to be the bit that hit big for him, but his best stuff was his editorials on Weekend Update.

[myboynoah]

The ghostwriter speaks (no, not that one from the uofutah, another one)

He took all the money but feels bad. And The Dump is a horrible, horrible person and would be a dangerous President.

But he still took the money, and feels bad about that. He wants you to know that.

[myboynoah]

Boom!

[myboynoah]

A friend of mine wrote this:

I reject the notion that, in voting for a third-party candidate, a voter in some way would bear blame for the success of some other candidate, or that that individual's vote somehow would count less or be wasted in doing so. Responsibility for the acts of elected officials rests squarely upon them and the voters who put them in power, not any one who did not support the main contender. And whichever major party loses will bear the responsibility of not producing a more compelling candidate or, for that matter, ticket.

Calls to coalesce behind a particular major party's candidate ring hollow to those without a strong party identity, and in any case ignore that couching the process as a binary choice is what has given us the low-effort, uninspiring choices now on offer. Yes, the stakes are high, and game theory would suggest a particular course of action, but settling for one's second or third choice will only shore up the two main parties and ensure less choice in the future.

I don't seek to convince anyone to vote for a particular candidate, only to suggest that change is not going to come from the top of this current system of ours.

I doubt he's writing in Mitt (he's on the left side of the spectrum). Rings true for me.

Write in Mitt!!!

[myboynoah]

Embedded Tweet

[wuapinmon]

Noooooo. AF was in there with such luminaries as Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Kevin Nealon, Mike Myers, and overlapped w Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, David Spade, etc. Actually, some of his best bits were, ironically enough, with one Dennis Miller back when he was reigning as the best Weekend Update anchor ever. Stuart Smalley just happened to be the bit that hit big for him, but his best stuff was his editorials on Weekend Update.

He was even riffing on those Weekend Update bits last night be repeatedly using the line of introducing himself with his full name, over and over.

[jay santos]

Who hired them before these large companies existed? Did people earn more before CEO pay was unchecked by a top nominal tax rate? Do poor people work for these Wall Street companies he wants to kill?

Careful.

oh yeah, before these large companies existed, America was created by coops led by the poor. And no poor people work for Wall Street companies, no poor people buy cheap goods at Wall Street companies, no poor people depend on the earnings of large companies for their retirement.

[YOhio]

oh yeah, before these large companies existed, America was created by coops led by the poor. And no poor people work for Wall Street companies, no poor people buy cheap goods at Wall Street companies, no poor people depend on the earnings of large companies for their retirement.

Bro. Wuap warned you to be careful yet you had to respond.

[Moliere]

Do poor people work for these Wall Street companies he wants to kill?

Yes.

[wuapinmon]

oh yeah, before these large companies existed, America was created by coops led by the poor. And no poor people work for Wall Street companies, no poor people buy cheap goods at Wall Street companies, no poor people depend on the earnings of large companies for their retirement.

Remind me again how much "retirement" poor people have coming?

Also, the financial sector is crowding out real economic growth, and it produces absolutely nothing.

https://www.bis.org/publ/work490.htm (Here's an Economist article that discusses that study, for those not inclined to read so much: http://www.economist.com/blogs/butto...tor-and-growth)

Another study by these same authors (it's behind a paywall, but here's an article about it) explains that when one sector is that hot, it brings in your best and brightest in an inordinate amount so that they're not starting companies and getting jobs in other sectors: http://priceonomics.com/should-the-b...-into-finance/


The Century Foundation agrees too: https://tcf.org/content/commentary/g...onomic-growth/

Here's an IMF study that concludes the same thing: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft...15/sdn1508.pdf

These articles break down that study for the tl;dr crowd:
http://www.ibtimes.com/us-economy-su...-study-1920544
http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveden.../#5c9dbce8171e


Here's some more stuff that's not necessarily research driven:

1. https://medium.com/the-future-of-mon...fa9#.9q2v1zxjs

[COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)]As finance has grown in relative size it has also grown disproportionately more profitable.[/COLOR][COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)][/COLOR][COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)]In 1950, financial-sector profits were about 8 percent of overall U.S. profits — meaning all the profit earned by any kind of business enterprise in the country. By the 2000s, they ranged between 20 and 40 percent.[/COLOR][COLOR=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)] This isn’t just the decline of profits in other industries, either. Between 1980 and 2006, while GDP increased five times, financial-sector profits increased sixteen times over. While financial and non-financial profits grew at roughly the same rate before 1980, between 1980 and 2006 non-financial profits grew seven times while financial profits grew sixteen times.[/COLOR]

2. Warren Buffet gives us an allegory:
http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/05/news...tune/index.htm

And, yes, all investors feel richer when stocks soar. But an owner can exit only by having someone take his place. If one investor sells high, another must buy high. For owners as a whole, there is simply no magic -- no shower of money from outer space -- that will enable them to extract wealth from their companies beyond that created by the companies themselves.
Indeed, owners must earn less than their businesses earn because of "frictional" costs. And that's my point: These costs are now being incurred in amounts that will cause shareholders to earn far less than they historically have.
To understand how this toll has ballooned, imagine for a moment that all American corporations are, and always will be, owned by a single family. We'll call them the Gotrocks. After paying taxes on dividends, this family -- generation after generation -- becomes richer by the aggregate amount earned by its companies.
Today that amount is about $700 billion annually. Naturally, the family spends some of these dollars. But the portion it saves steadily compounds for its benefit. In the Gotrocks household everyone grows wealthier at the same pace, and all is harmonious.
But let's now assume that a few fast-talking Helpers approach the family and persuade each of its members to try to outsmart his relatives by buying certain of their holdings and selling them certain others. The Helpers -- for a fee, of course -- obligingly agree to handle these transactions. The Gotrocks still own all of corporate America; the trades just rearrange who owns what.
So the family's annual gain in wealth diminishes, equaling the earnings of American business minus commissions paid. The more that family members trade, the smaller their share of the pie and the larger the slice received by the Helpers. This fact is not lost upon these broker-Helpers: Activity is their friend, and in a wide variety of ways, they urge it on.
After a while, most of the family members realize that they are not doing so well at this new "beat my brother" game. Enter another set of Helpers. These newcomers explain to each member of the Gotrocks clan that by himself he'll never outsmart the rest of the family. The suggested cure: "Hire a manager -- yes, us -- and get the job done professionally."
These manager-Helpers continue to use the broker-Helpers to execute trades; the managers may even increase their activity so as to permit the brokers to prosper still more. Overall, a bigger slice of the pie now goes to the two classes of Helpers.
The family's disappointment grows. Each of its members is now employing professionals. Yet overall, the group's finances have taken a turn for the worse. The solution? More help, of course.
It arrives in the form of financial planners and institutional consultants, who weigh in to advise the Gotrocks on selecting manager-Helpers. The befuddled family welcomes this assistance. By now its members know they can pick neither the right stocks nor the right stock pickers. Why, one might ask, should they expect success in picking the right consultant? But this question does not occur to the Gotrocks, and the consultant-Helpers certainly don't suggest it to them.
The Gotrocks, now supporting three classes of expensive Helpers, find that their results get worse, and they sink into despair. But just as hope seems lost, a fourth group -- we'll call them the hyper-Helpers -- appears. These friendly folk explain to the Gotrocks that their unsatisfactory results are occurring because the existing Helpers -- brokers, managers, consultants -- are not sufficiently motivated and are simply going through the motions. "What," the new Helpers ask, "can you expect from such a bunch of zombies?"
The new arrivals offer a breathtakingly simple solution: Pay more money. Brimming with self-confidence, the hyper-Helpers assert that huge contingent payments -- in addition to stiff fixed fees -- are what each family member must fork over in order to really outmaneuver his relatives.
The more observant members of the family see that some of the hyper-Helpers are really just manager Helpers wearing new uniforms, bearing sewn-on sexy names like HEDGE FUND or PRIVATE EQUITY. The new Helpers, however, assure the Gotrocks that this change of clothing is all-important, bestowing on its wearers magical powers similar to those acquired by mild-mannered Clark Kent when he changed into his Superman costume. Calmed by this explanation, the family decides to pay up.
And that's where we are today: A record portion of the earnings that would go in their entirety to owners -- if they all just stayed in their rocking chairs -- is now going to a swelling army of Helpers. Particularly expensive is the recent pandemic of profit arrangements under which Helpers receive large portions of the winnings when they are smart or lucky, and leave family members with all the losses -- and large fixed fees to boot -- when the Helpers are dumb or unlucky (or occasionally crooked).

3. The OECD gave us this Policy Note in June 2015 on the subject: https://www.oecd.org/eco/How-to-rest...ive-growth.pdf
"Financial expansion fuels greater incomeinequality, mainly because: People with higher income benefit more thanpoorer ones from credit-financed investmentopportunities."
Here's an article from The Guardian that examines that PN: https://www.theguardian.com/business...er-inequality4. The Harvard Business Review writes about the "Price of Wall Street's Power." https://hbr.org/2014/06/the-price-of-wall-streets-power

5. Lynn Stout has disproven Milton Friedman's assertion that CEOs only duty was to maximize returns to shareholders, with CEO's claiming that they have a "fiduciary duty" to do so. That's bullshit, and it's not true either in a legal sense. https://www.amazon.com/Shareholder-V...=1&*entries*=0

6. The Iowa Policy Project's Colin Gordon published this at USC's born-digital scholarly writing platform (SCALAR): http://scalar.usc.edu/works/growing-...ise-of-finance
Who in the hell is he, you ask? Author of these books:
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...s=colin+gordon
One of those is a textbook, but the rest are from peer-reviewed university presses (U of Penn, Oxford, U of Chicago)

7. For you math-loving types, here's a proper research paper on the subject from a professor at UC-Santa Cruz: http://economics.ucsc.edu/research/d...lopment_LS.pdf
It was published in a peer-reviewed journal, but they want $35 for a pdf at this link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...al/03784266/41

The empirical results indicate that there isa threshold effect in the finance-growth relationship. In particular, we find that thelevel of financial development is beneficial to growth only up to a certain threshold;beyond the threshold level further development of finance tends to adversely affectgrowth. These findings reveal that more finance is not necessarily good for economicgrowth and highlight that an “optimal” level of financial development is more crucialin facilitating growth.

[wuapinmon]

8. Ben Bernanke's report on the Global Financial Crisis: https://www.federalreserve.gov/newse...e20100902a.htm

"First, too-big-to-fail generates a severe moral hazard. If creditors believe that an institution will not be allowed to fail, they will not demand as much compensation for risks as they otherwise would, thus weakening market discipline; nor will they invest as many resources in monitoring the firm's risk-taking. As a result, too-big-to-fail firms will tend to take more risk than desirable, in the expectation that they will receive assistance if their bets go bad. Where they have the necessary authority, regulators will try to limit that risk-taking, but without the help of market discipline they will find it difficult to do so, even if authorities are nominally sufficient. The buildup of risk in too-big-to-fail firms increases the possibility of a financial crisis and worsens the crisis when it occurs. There is little doubt that excessive risk-taking by too-big-to-fail firms significantly contributed to the crisis, with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being prominent examples.
A second cost of too-big-to-fail is that it creates an uneven playing field between big and small firms. This unfair competition, together with the incentive to grow that too-big-to-fail provides, increases risk and artificially raises the market share of too-big-to-fail firms, to the detriment of economic efficiency as well as financial stability.
Third, as we saw in 2008 and 2009, too-big-to-fail firms can themselves become major risks to overall financial stability, particularly in the absence of adequate resolution tools. The failure of Lehman Brothers and the near-failure of several other large, complex firms significantly worsened the crisis and the recession by disrupting financial markets, impeding credit flows, inducing sharp declines in asset prices, and hurting confidence. The failures of smaller, less interconnected firms, though certainly of significant concern, have not had substantial effects on the stability of the financial system as a whole.
If the crisis has a single lesson, it is that the too-big-to-fail problem must be solved. Simple declarations that the government will not assist firms in the future, or restrictions that make providing assistance more difficult, will not be credible on their own. Few governments will accept devastating economic costs if a rescue can be conducted at a lesser cost; even if one Administration refrained from rescuing a large, complex firm, market participants would believe that others might not refrain in the future. Thus, a promise not to intervene in and of itself will not solve the problem."

9. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...t-coup/307364/

In a primitive political system, power is transmitted through violence, or the threat of violence: military coups, private militias, and so on. In a less primitive system more typical of emerging markets, power is transmitted via money: bribes, kickbacks, and offshore bank accounts. Although lobbying and campaign contributions certainly play major roles in the American political system, old-fashioned corruption—envelopes stuffed with $100 bills—is probably a sideshow today, Jack Abramoff notwithstanding.
Instead, the American financial industry gained political power by amassing a kind of cultural capital—a belief system. Once, perhaps, what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Over the past decade, the attitude took hold that what was good for Wall Street was good for the country. The banking-and-securities industry has become one of the top contributors to political campaigns, but at the peak of its influence, it did not have to buy favors the way, for example, the tobacco companies or military contractors might have to. Instead, it benefited from the fact that Washington insiders already believed that large financial institutions and free-flowing capital markets were crucial to America’s position in the world.
One channel of influence was, of course, the flow of individuals between Wall Street and Washington. Robert Rubin, once the co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, served in Washington as Treasury secretary under Clinton, and later became chairman of Citigroup’s executive committee. Henry Paulson, CEO of Goldman Sachs during the long boom, became Treasury secretary under George W.Bush. John Snow, Paulson’s predecessor, left to become chairman of Cerberus Capital Management, a large private-equity firm that also counts Dan Quayle among its executives. Alan Greenspan, after leaving the Federal Reserve, became a consultant to Pimco, perhaps the biggest player in international bond markets.

These personal connections were multiplied many times over at the lower levels of the past three presidential administrations, strengthening the ties between Washington and Wall Street. It has become something of a tradition for Goldman Sachs employees to go into public service after they leave the firm. The flow of Goldman alumni—including Jon Corzine, now the governor of New Jersey, along with Rubin and Paulson—not only placed people with Wall Street’s worldview in the halls of power; it also helped create an image of Goldman (inside the Beltway, at least) as an institution that was itself almost a form of public service.

[/QUOTE]

10. The European Central Bank gave a policy note speech about this: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/...100415.en.html

Financial markets are crucial players in a dynamic modern economy, channelling resources from savers to borrowers and allocating them to productive investment opportunities. At the same time, our experience in the past decade has highlighted the dangers of allowing financial sectors to become “too large”. In doing so, negative developments like the hunt for rents, the propensity to herd and create bubbles, the misalignment of incentives, and the proliferation of complex innovative financial instruments may outweigh the benefits of finance. There are plenty of examples pointing to the fact that before 2007 the financial sector may indeed have grown “too large”, mainly due to developments outside of the traditional banking system. The consequences of this expansion have been disastrous and will perhaps be felt for years to come.
Given the obvious negative impact of an excessively large financial industry, we keep asking ourselves whether limits should be imposed on the size of the financial sector itself. I hope it is clear from the evidence I have presented that the answer to this question is yes. However, it is also essential to make sure that we do not repress financial markets to the point of jeopardising their contribution to growth. Therefore, the measures I outlined are aimed at making the industry safer rather than weaker, and should not be considered “punitive.” Their goal is to “re-direct” the financial sector so that it avoids embarking on unsustainable patterns. These actions are aimed at commercial banks as well as at non-traditional financial players to make sure that excessive risk-taking is not taking place outside the auspices of regulators. Ensuring that the financial sector is large enough to strengthen the economy while not being “too large” is a task that we take very seriously. There is a clear trade-off between economic growth and financial stability, and it is a difficult but critical task to strike a good balance, ensuring that we end up neither with too little growth nor with too little stability.

11. Der Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-781590.html

I could go on and on, but I'm bored with looking up the stuff that you should read, jay.

But what about the opposing view you ask? Here's an Op-Ed from the Washington Post that says all this data is wrong or interpreted incorrectly, but read the entire article. The author's conclusions are not grounded in reality, and I believe that he unethically fails to mention the lobbying efforts of these financial institutions to change the very laws and rules that he claims prevent them from doing again what they did before. Here's a report that the same author wrote for the Brookings Institution: http://www.brookings.edu/research/pa...-baily-elliott

If you want to rebut the overwhelming consensus of scholarly and governmental research on the subject, have at it.