5684

There is no perfect candidate, but I would rather have a candidate whose obvious drawback for some (being gay and married) will generate a lot of backlash with moderate voters.

That’s the problem that I envision with attack Pete on the issue of Family Values. It’s going to turn off a lot of possible Moderate Voters that the GOP still needs to win.

The question is, could Pete turn out voters himself, which the Democrats need, and I don’t know. I think he’ll do well with your White moderate voters, but I could see turn out to be very low in other groups that the Democrats need to win the Presidency.

But damn, that has been the problem with all leading candidates right now. Its hard to satisfy all the different camps that make up the Democratic Party.

5685

This is good news for what might be on the horizon – the economy is clearly pretty hot right now. Very hot, in fact.

5686

The next Democrat running for President has to win more White men without college degrees and / or more White suburban women and / or make gains with Hispanic voters, and hold on to the advantage with Black voters. I would not guess that those groups are going to be among the most progressive voters when it comes to an LBGT candidate.

5687

I’m not sure how to do it, but I’d love for Biden to get on TV and explain why inflation is high right now. It’s great to see unemployment going lower and GDP rising, but the price of gas, and, yes, milk, is meaningful to average people. We need people to be excited that we’re exiting the COVID-related economic downturn, not worried about the future.

5688

so-hot-right-now

5689

Jobless rates at a 52-yr low.

This might be one of the few times you’d ever hear this from me, but it might be time to tighten the money supply.

5690

At minimum the Fed should be tapering their bond buying.

Edit: oh, they are!

5691

They’ve started to. They just didn’t want to go shock therapy.

5692

So someone who’s a money-talking guy riddle me this: what securities has the Fed been buying? Is it all US Treasury debt? And if so, why couldn’t they now just say “Hey US government, you can just forget about paying those bonds back, we’re good” and wipe a trillion or two off the debt?

5693

Generally they have been doing ‘quantitative easing’ which is buying longer duration (like 30 year) bonds off large banks to free that money up for them to lend other places.

They hold them because they can later sell them to pull money out of the market to lower inflationary pressures.

5694

Ok, so they’re buying traditional bonds from banks, not US treasuries. Makes sense.

5695

I think it was the WSJ of all things that pointed out companies were taking the opportunity to bump up prices. Probably icing on the cake that the opportunity presented itself with a Democrat administration in office.

5696

If it’s fewer Americans applying for unemployment benefits, that doesn’t necessarily correlate to increasing employment. Anecdotally, a family member was let go in February of the year and her unemployment benefits were depleted by September. She can’t apply for more. I could imagine a lot of people laid off due to coronavirus-related economic maladies in the same position.

5697

I’m not an expert but I’m sure that they are buying long term treasuries too. The main goal is giving the banks more liquidity to loan out vs having the investments tied up in long term things.

5698

Huh, I felt like that war was won years ago, but happy to see it die completely.

5699

The measure is first time jobless claims, meaning people recently let go claiming unemployment. It is not a track of people who have been on long term unemployment like your family member.

Which does, more or less, correlate strongly with official unemployment measures. Of course some people may not be counted as unemployed after a period of time, and would instead be classified as no longer in the work force, so lower unemployment != more people working, per se.

5700

Depends on the variant of the alt-right that takes the lead of the discussion.

It doesn’t play that well most places, but if say Buttigieg was running or VP, you can bet your ass it would make a comeback.

5701

I don’t know abou the fed, but in the UK the overwhelming majority of QE bond purchases are government debt. This is paid for by currency which appears from the central bank account which can effectively create and destroy money at will.

These are held by the central bank. The government continues to pay interest, which immediately disappears into the central bank account which can effectively create and destroy money at will.

When the bond matures, the government will have to repay the principal, at which point that money disappears into the central bank account which can effectively create and destroy money at will.

So they absolutely could do what you say, and it would be effectively equivalent to printing a trillion or two. Indeed, QE consists effectively of printing a trillion or two, and then potentially removing it at some point in the future.

See https://delong.typepad.com/keynes-1923-a-tract-on-monetary-reform.pdf pp 41 for an explanation of money printing and its effects, anyone who tries to tell you that that has changed since 1923 is mistaken or lying.

There is a widespread belief that once Pandora’s box is opened and governments allow themselves print money to cover spending directly they will never stop, regardless of inflation. Also economists of the right would tend to believe that this would lead to greater distortions in the economy than injecting the money via banks - the goal is to pump up the money supply, not apply fiscal stimulus.

The whole scheme is based on the idea that you can draw a meaningful distinction between

  1. political decisions for the government, which can implement fiscal stimulus but which must operate within fiscal constraints precisely because they are political.
  2. monetary decisions for the central bank, which can ignore fiscal constraints when attempting to manipulate the money supply to prevent deflation.
5702

I’m with Lego. At a first approximation, the only thing that matters is swing voters. If Trump is on the ballot their wont be an issue on turning out voters on either side. The set of Republican voters who’ve actually voted for a Democratic for president, in the last 20 years, or Democratic voters who’ve actually for a Republican in the last 20 years. In 2024, the number of swing voters who’d disqualify Pete because he is gay is tiny…

5703

I do remember the story of one Dem caucus goer in IA who tried to take back his vote for Buttigieg once he found out he was gay.

I do worry some black Dems in particular would be LGBT-hostile, particularly in the South, I saw it in the local party. (Though some are awesome on this!)