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A week later, I am still crushed. The perspective of a mixed-race marriage and a loss of trust (3 Viewers)

They DO want to keep establishment people in power.  I don't think trying to make him look bad is out of the question, but I am also not holding my breath.
Can you give an example of a policy issue where establishment Republicans would work with Democrats in opposition to Trump?
I'll get back to you as soon as we have the first concrete policy issue from Trump.  Only then would I be able to answer this question.  If I had to try and predict the future, I'd guess something in the "trade" deals Trump wants to do.  Though, I think you misunderstood my comment.  It really didn't have anything to do with specific policy.  Plenty of ways to make Trump look bad.  If their goal is to have "their own" in the positions of power, policy won't get in their way.

 
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A lot of establishment republicans hate Trump. Just had the thought today: what if all of them aligned with democrats in congress and passed anything they wanted and even override potential Trump vetoes. 

Wouldn't that be absolutely the greatest thing to ever happen in politics?
This was the original "Dems and establishment Republicans band together!" post.  This is what I was responding to.

 
I seem to recall several people here refusing to vote for Hillary because of her "ties to Wall Street". Oh well. 

Hillary wanted reasonable restrictions on Wall Street, she didn't see them as great villains the way Warren and Sanders did but she recognized that they could not be left completely to their own devices either. Now we're about to leave them to their own devices. 

 
"Wall Street bankers and their Washington lobbyists are quietly celebrating. They went from expecting fresh crackdowns from a Hillary Clinton administration with Warren wielding heavy influence to the cusp of a deregulatory bonanza with Republicans in complete control of Washington.

“There is a joke going around here that if I’d have known how good Trump was going to be for Wall Street, I’d have campaigned for him,” said one Goldman Sachs executive who declined to be identified by name speaking about the incoming president. “What people are reacting to is this incredible cultural shift. People thought it might be 10 or 15 years until regulators stopped demanding heads and now all of a sudden you can envision it happening overnight.”

Unsurprisingly, it is coming down to the haves and the have nots. What is interesting to me is which Americans think they're in which group, and how they voted.

For example, if I directly benefit from policies such as the above, yet I didn't vote for Trump, that's pretty much a win for me in that scenario. Curious what the Trump voters think about their place, their vote, and their prospects in a haves vs. have nots America. I suspect I already know the reality of that answer for the most part, but I wonder when the realization will hit of what's really happening in America with Trump. Here's a hint: he builds luxury apartment buildings and hotels.

 
“Based on public reports, your transition team and your potential cabinet include over twenty Wall Street elites, industry insiders, and lobbyists,” Warren wrote in a public letter to Trump on Tuesday, demanding that he drop lobbyists and Wall Street executives from his transition team and administration. “Should you refuse, I will oppose you, every step of the way, for the next four years. I will champion the millions of Americans you will fail to protect.”

:lmao: Somehow, I don't think he's going to listen to you, Liz.

 
No crying necessary here.  This is a great thing for the country.  They will keep us out of disastrous trade wars and guide Trump to implement growth friendly policies.  To paraphrase someone quoted in the article, if I'd known this was how it was going to work out, I'd have supported Trump instead of Hillary.
Yeah, this is not an issue where we're in agreement.

 
Family > friends every time.  If someone doesn't accept my family for reasons of race or politics, they're not friends.
Reading down?  There is no indication this was the issue. It was a vote. That's all. Can't believe you got some poverty likes over this post.  You all need play go and animals to pet.  

 
Unsurprisingly, it is coming down to the haves and the have nots. What is interesting to me is which Americans think they're in which group, and how they voted.

For example, if I directly benefit from policies such as the above, yet I didn't vote for Trump, that's pretty much a win for me in that scenario. Curious what the Trump voters think about their place, their vote, and their prospects in a haves vs. have nots America. I suspect I already know the reality of that answer for the most part, but I wonder when the realization will hit of what's really happening in America with Trump. Here's a hint: he builds luxury apartment buildings and hotels.
I doubt it will ever happen.

In 6 months they'll be bragging about Obama's supposedly fake unemployment numbers and claim them as a victory for Trump.

Mark it.

 
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No crying necessary here.  This is a great thing for the country.  They will keep us out of disastrous trade wars and guide Trump to implement growth friendly policies.  To paraphrase someone quoted in the article, if I'd known this was how it was going to work out, I'd have supported Trump instead of Hillary.
It is a positive sign that perhaps the trade wars won't happen. But we'll have to wait and see. 

 
No crying necessary here.  This is a great thing for the country.  They will keep us out of disastrous trade wars and guide Trump to implement growth friendly policies.  To paraphrase someone quoted in the article, if I'd known this was how it was going to work out, I'd have supported Trump instead of Hillary.
If he listens to them on trade, then yes, it's a hugely good thing -- a trade war with China and protectionist trade policies in general would be absolutely disastrous for the country (the world economy, really). I'm not as excited about rolling back regulation and oversight though.

 
If he listens to them on trade, then yes, it's a hugely good thing -- a trade war with China and protectionist trade policies in general would be absolutely disastrous for the country (the world economy, really). I'm not as excited about rolling back regulation and oversight though.
Dodd Frank has been a disaster.

It's hurt the people that most in this thread want to protect from Wall Street.

Dodd-Frank was supposedly aimed at Wall Street, but it hit Main Street hard. Community financial institutions, which make the bulk of small business loans, are overwhelmed by the law’s complexity. Government figures indicate that the country is losing on average one community bank or credit union a day.

 
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"Growth friendly policies" is generally a euphemism for "rich people get richer, everyone else gets ####ed."
Hi, reality is on the phone, and they said "exactly".

Lol at "Trump's bringing back coal". He's bringing back trickle down. People think chet is happy because they might build a wall now?  :lmao:  

This is no knock on chet either, he's exactly right. It's the mouth breathers I can't help but chuckle at. They're too busy right now crying about what the libs are doing.

 
The 90% would benefit if inflation was not minimized, as they would be paying back their debts with dollars worth less than what they borrowed. Minimizing the inflation rate helps the lender (banks), not the borrowers. 
And the economy slows down overall and interest rates go through the roof. That's bad news for the folks living on their credit cards.

 
Yes.  Most of people in this country have little to no wealth and are in debt.  The costs of inflation to them are very low.
Helps most of us here with minimal debt outside of our fixed rate mortgages, sure. But we're not 90% of the population, and interest rates skyrocketing kills people that live on credit.

 
The 90% would benefit if inflation was not minimized, as they would be paying back their debts with dollars worth less than what they borrowed. Minimizing the inflation rate helps the lender (banks), not the borrowers. 
Does that make up for paying more for everyday consumer goods, food, gasoline, etc.? A hypothetical situation in which the prices for all those things stayed close to static (call it a very slow 0.5 - 1.0 % annual increase) for a decade sounds appealing.

 
Yes.  Most of people in this country have little to no wealth and are in debt.  The costs of inflation to them are very low.
Depends on the specific level of inflation, doesn't it? Not sure where the line is between "not too bad, even healthy" and "ruinous", expressed as an annual inflation rate.

 
Does that make up for paying more for everyday consumer goods, food, gasoline, etc.? A hypothetical situation in which the prices for all those things stayed close to static (call it a very slow 0.5 - 1.0 % annual increase) for a decade sounds appealing.
Whether the economy is good or bad, strong or weak, etc, etc.... the 10% benefit more than the 90%. 

The offset is taxes, where the 90% should benefit more than the 10%.... unless of course elected politicians subscribe to trickle down economics and/or Ayn Rand. 

 
Why would the bottom 90% care about inflation?
Inflation hurts the poor more than the rich as a higher proportion of their income goes to essentials.  It also drives up the cost of their cc payments, car payments etc.  Some inflation is good for the economy but high inflation definitely is not.

 
No crying necessary here.  This is a great thing for the country.  They will keep us out of disastrous trade wars and guide Trump to implement growth friendly policies.  To paraphrase someone quoted in the article, if I'd known this was how it was going to work out, I'd have supported Trump instead of Hillary.
It may keep the US from starting trade wars, but it could result in another 2008 meltdown

 
Citing an opinion column from the Wall Street Journal on Dodd-Frank is like citing an opinion column by Bill Cosby on sexual assault laws.
Address some of the points in the column rather than blindly reject it.

Before Dodd-Frank, 75% of banks offered free checking. Two years after it passed, only 39% did so—a trend various scholars have attributed to Dodd-Frank’s “Durbin amendment,” which imposed price controls on the fee paid by retailers when consumers use a debit card. Bank fees have also increased due to Dodd-Frank, leading to a rise of the unbanked and underbanked among low- and moderate-income Americans
It's been a disaster for the poor.

 
Inflation hurts the poor more than the rich as a higher proportion of their income goes to essentials.  It also drives up the cost of their cc payments, car payments etc.  Some inflation is good for the economy but high inflation definitely is not.
You are only looking at one side of the equation.  Income for poor people comes from wages, and wages also rise from inflation.  So while inflation causes lower income people to spend more, it also causes them to earn more.  At least this is what I remember from 25 years ago when I was taking economics classes in college.

 
You are only looking at one side of the equation.  Income for poor people comes from wages, and wages also rise from inflation.  So while inflation causes lower income people to spend more, it also causes them to earn more.  At least this is what I remember from 25 years ago when I was taking economics classes in college.
Incomes for the poor generally don't go up as fast as inflation in higher inflation environments. Here's one article from fivethirtyeight.com about how inflation hits the poor the hardest.

 
Address some of the points in the column rather than blindly reject it.

It's been a disaster for the poor.
I haven't read the article (paywall), but the section you provided links to a Pew Trust letter on the FDIC survey.  That letter and the executive survey seem to say the opposite of what the section of the article says. They say unbanked rates are on the decline both overall and among the poor.  Here's language from the actual FDIC survey:
 

In 2015, 7.0 percent of U.S. households were “unbanked,”

meaning that no one in the household had a checking or

savings account. The unbanked rate fell by 0.7 percentage

points from 2013 (7.7 percent) and was lower in 2015 than

in any of the past years of the survey.
 
Approximately half of the decline in the unbanked rate

from 2013 to 2015 can be attributed to improvements in

the socioeconomic circumstances of U.S. households.

However, even after accounting for these changes, the

remaining decline in the unbanked rate across years was

statistically significant.
I'll stop here and point out that if I was as uninterested in proving causality as this writer appears to be I could claim that the improvements in socioeconomic circumstances could be linked to Dodd-Frank itself and how it's helped us avoid another 2008.  Anyway, moving on ...
 

In particular, unbanked rates declined substantial­

ly among groups that had high unbanked rates in

2013, including households with incomes of less than

$15,000, younger households, and black and Hispanic

households. Despite these improvements, unbanked

rates within these groups remained substantially higher

than the overall unbanked rate in 2015.
There's more nuance and detail of course, including underbanked rates (largely unchanged).  But I think the point is made.  If you want to know about a law, don't ask the ####ing criminal.

 
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Oh, who came up with the smart way of ignoring risk in home mortgages then?
I believe Barney Frank spearheaded legislation circa 2003 to increase the proportion of homeowners in the country.  That caused a lot of unqualified people to buy houses.  At the same time, commercial banks (NOT investment banks) went from evaluating the ability of people to pay to selling those mortgages for a fee to pseudo government agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And you had many people from the general public lying on their mortgage applications--no income verification etc.  Wall Street also played a role by re-packaging those mortgage securities into difficult to understand products.  So, there's a lot of blame to go around.

 
Income for poor people comes from wages, and wages also rise from inflation.  So while inflation causes lower income people to spend more, it also causes them to earn more.
This is the way it's worked traditionally. But -- and I have no stats, just personal impressions of mine and many around me -- it seems like this direct link between inflation and wages has been beaten over the last 15 years or so. It definitely seems like wages have increased much slower than the prices of consumer goods since around 2000.

I also know that a lot of us spend much more on healthcare than we did 10-15 years ago. Really, my impression is that since ~2000, wages have increased a bit but we're getting hit harder financially on all sides in a lot of small ways to more than erase that wage increase.

 
You guys gotten your interment camp badges in the mail yet? 


(ain't happening)

 
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I believe Barney Frank spearheaded legislation circa 2003 to increase the proportion of homeowners in the country.  That caused a lot of unqualified people to buy houses.  At the same time, commercial banks (NOT investment banks) went from evaluating the ability of people to pay to selling those mortgages for a fee to pseudo government agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And you had many people from the general public lying on their mortgage applications--no income verification etc.  Wall Street also played a role by re-packaging those mortgage securities into difficult to understand products.  So, there's a lot of blame to go around.
W had a Home Ownership for All program. No knock on W, it was well intended by him, he linked it to more folks being able to participate in the American dream. A consequence of this was riskier loans to individuals, which led to way higher than historical default rates. The Wall St. bundling of security products with high grade ratings when they were crap loans was where Wall St. got involved, but it wasn't "their fault" alone by any means.

 
Incomes for the poor generally don't go up as fast as inflation in higher inflation environments. Here's one article from fivethirtyeight.com about how inflation hits the poor the hardest.
Thanks for this article.  It basically says that, for the last few years, there has been more inflation on stuff that poor people buy than on stuff that rich people buy.  And wages have remained stagnant.  So in the short-term past, the poor have been hurt more than the rich.  But the article notes that "this trend is unusual."  It also concludes with some paragraphs suggesting that the trend may reverse itself:

It’s hard to know whether the divergence in the rates of inflation between different income groups will continue. Real estate developers are racing to build apartments in many cities, but rents are likely to keep rising until supply catches up with demand. On the other hand, there are signs that the long rise in college tuitions may at last be slowing. Health care inflation has slowed too, but no one is sure how long that trend will continue.

The overall rate of inflation, however, is likely to rise as the economy improves. The Federal Reserve expects prices to rise faster over the next two years, gradually returning to the Fed’s long-term target rate of 2 percent annually. Few consumers will welcome faster price growth, but if that inflation is the result of faster economic growth, it might also bring a more welcome development: faster wage gains.
So I guess I feel like I need to do some more digging to get a feel for this stuff.  My instinct is still that the big losers from inflation are people with a lot of cash, because that money gets devalued. 

With all that said, there's a part that all the articles seem to ignore, which is that we have inflation because the government is printing more money, and so a big winner from inflation is the government itself.  So to the extent the government is doing things that help poor people like investing in education or improving infrastructure, poor people will benefit indirectly on that end.  When the government tries to keep inflation low, it has to use more taxes to get revenue, and those taxes may cost the poor more than the inflation does.

 
This is the way it's worked traditionally. But -- and I have no stats, just personal impressions of mine and many around me -- it seems like this direct link between inflation and wages has been beaten over the last 15 years or so. It definitely seems like wages have increased much slower than the prices of consumer goods since around 2000.

I also know that a lot of us spend much more on healthcare than we did 10-15 years ago. Really, my impression is that since ~2000, wages have increased a bit but we're getting hit harder financially on all sides in a lot of small ways to more than erase that wage increase.
Yup, that's what the 538 article chet linked says.  According to the article, it's unknown whether we should expect that trend to continue or reverse itself.

 
I believe Barney Frank spearheaded legislation circa 2003 to increase the proportion of homeowners in the country.  That caused a lot of unqualified people to buy houses.  At the same time, commercial banks (NOT investment banks) went from evaluating the ability of people to pay to selling those mortgages for a fee to pseudo government agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And you had many people from the general public lying on their mortgage applications--no income verification etc.  Wall Street also played a role by re-packaging those mortgage securities into difficult to understand products.  So, there's a lot of blame to go around.
Without the magic "let's make the risk appear to disappear" swaps the scope would have been far smaller.

 
I believe Barney Frank spearheaded legislation circa 2003 to increase the proportion of homeowners in the country.  That caused a lot of unqualified people to buy houses.  At the same time, commercial banks (NOT investment banks) went from evaluating the ability of people to pay to selling those mortgages for a fee to pseudo government agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And you had many people from the general public lying on their mortgage applications--no income verification etc.  Wall Street also played a role by re-packaging those mortgage securities into difficult to understand products.  So, there's a lot of blame to go around.
The crash began with Clintons community reinvestment act. 
 
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W had a Home Ownership for All program. No knock on W, it was well intended by him, he linked it to more folks being able to participate in the American dream. A consequence of this was riskier loans to individuals, which led to way higher than historical default rates. The Wall St. bundling of security products with high grade ratings when they were crap loans was where Wall St. got involved, but it wasn't "their fault" alone by any means.
Higher home ownership is a good goal.  However, over the last few decades, wages have been stagnant while housing prices have continued to increase strongly.  That means higher ownership has been accomplished by the increased financialization of the economy and indebtedness of the working classes.  Trump isn't going to do anything about wages, so he will need to deregulate more.

 

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