“Nothin’ but ‘blue skies’ do I see”

A little Ella Fitzgerald for you today. Kind of fits with what is going on in the US today.

Over at Vox, Matt Yglesias has an interesting article on the Trump Transition Team ordering government economists to cook up rosy economic forecasts. With his far reaching economic “it will be great” promises during the election, delusional Trump has laid out a “blue skies” future which is likely unobtainable with the past economic growth of less than 2%. Trump intends to get there with increased spending on military and infrastructure, tax reform, cuts in regulations, etc. and never touching Randian Paul Ryan’s favorite target of cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Still, The Fed and CBO are forecasting growth at less than 2% going forward.

The Transition Team has a plan . . . “a regulatory rollback and tax reform unleashing growth, driving a recovery in productivity, sending business investment higher, and drawing idled workers back to the labor force.” Trump asserts faster growth to be the result of regulatory rollback and tax reform and will result in economic growth soaring to 3 to 3.5% . . . well above the CBO and Fed’s reasoned estimates. All of this and no Fed interest rate increases forecasted as foreign funds will flock to the US to invest and fund this growth (think of the mortgage market pre-2008 attracting all the foreign money looking for safe haven after Greenspan nixed Fed Rate increases).

The Wall Street Journal’s Nick Timiraos suggests the numbers arrived at for growth were not arrived at by any process at all; instead, “the transition team gave CEA staff the growth target the budget would produce and told them to fill in data supporting the target and necessary to make it happen.” The logic could work if the end result, the target, is realistic. As Matt points out the deficit would be larger; but the economy would be 17% larger and the deficit as a part of GDP much smaller (hmmm, deficit growth . . . sounds like Reagan and Bush II all over again).

So, Trump has an overly optimistic budget based upon phenomenal growth which defies what every one else believes will happen and he will pass the budget to Congress. Watching everything else which has happened over the last 30 days; if Congress balks or does not find a way to make Trump’s budget proposal happen, similar accusations will be forth coming from The White House as to how Congress failed (think Appeals Court) to make things happen which impacts every citizen in the US. Everybody’s fault except his. Then too, Trump was left quite a mess . . .

Expect another week of listening to Trump complaining about how everyone failed him.