[Eleutheria5]

Let me get this straight: The "professional" Fed with its "excellent economists" raised interest rates so they could prove Trump isn't the boss of them and because he's a poopy head for fighting China.

[bert]

There can be no coexistence. The leftists must be ground to dust and then salted

[Louis Foxwell]

The FED is a governmental substitution for genuine market pressures.

[Louis Foxwell]

Correct. The role of the FED is to counteract normal market pressures and create winners and losers by government fiat.

[NFHale]

So.... Trump, successful international businessman, multi-billionaire, self-made man ....

versus...

“Fischer”... probably some parasite sucking off the taxpayer tit for his entire career.

Yeah. Sure. We’ll listen to “Fischer”...

“...only understands if somebody wins and somebody loses....”

CLearly this “Fischer” guy comes from the “Everybody Gets a Trophy Just For Showing Up” School of Assclownery. Hell, he may even have been the Dean of that school.

[freeandfreezing]

How can the Fed be "professional" anything if they were "provoked" into doing something based on their feelings and emotions?

That's not how professionals conduct their working lives.

[Dahoser]

Speaking at the conference, Fischer said: "The problem with Trump's approach to trade is that he doesn't understand trade. Trump only understands if somebody wins and somebody loses. Both sides profit if they have a head on them and they know how to conduct negotiations."

Right, the guy who publicly calls everyone his good friend and how they're working on a super deal while he's privately negotiating with them, doesn't understand both sides profiting and how to conduct negotiations. Even if everyone knows that the President says those things just for show, the idea that he reserves most of his hardball tactics for the negotiating table rather than the glare of the public eye tells you he understands the importance of each side coming away with a profit and that begins by having a good public relationship.

[rlmorel]

Wow.

While it is true that in a legal situation where all sides observe the same rules on a level field and a good business decision makes both sides a willing party to a deal the benefits both, I would characterize the necessary approach to business dealings with China in this fashion:

If a party is being robbed, the existing situation that needs to be remedied is that someone is gaining something illegally and unfairly, and someone is losing something illegally and unfairly.

The only fair and legal resolution should be that the situation is reversed: One party gets to keep what is fairly and legally theirs (not be robbed) and one party is deprived of getting wealthy off of their ill-gotten gains.

It is really that simple. So simple all those “Excellent economists” cannot get it right.

[silverleaf]

Stanley Fischer
Noted businessman and author
Built a fortune of billions while employing tens of thousands.

Wait.
Never mind!

[grania]

Huh? President Trump is a businessman. He understands win/win situations. That's why he's a superior negotiator. The problem he's having now is that his political enemies (everyone associated with the establishment) work their hardest to only have situations in which Trump loses. Even when it's awful for the country, they'd rather have lose/lose than win/win.

They don't care about the country. It's about their survival, not ours. (don't wind me up!)

[Dr. Sivana]

Speaking at the conference, Fischer said: "The problem with Trump's approach to trade is that he doesn't understand trade. Trump only understands if somebody wins and somebody loses. [ . . . ]
br>"I understand that Trump is an expert on this," he added. Fischer also mentioned the book "The Art of the Deal," authored by Trump or someone who wrote it "in his name."

I am glad a I heard the audiobook version of "The Art of the Deal". First, the primary content couldn't have been ghostwritten, because 90% of it consists of some of Trump's deals, describing things that only Trump knew, or only Trump knew in the detail in which he desribed them.

Second, he NEVER says that a deal is "someone wins and someone loses". He suggests finding what the other person really wants, and being creative to give him some of what he wants in order to get most of what you want.

Third, there ARE winners and losers in trade deals. Trump parachuted into a situation where we have been played for patsies. I EVERY kind of "trade", and every financial transaction is a form of trade, terms change over time and the parties may renegotiate. These are driven in everything from the discovered flaws in a used car on a dealer lot to a running back with an exceptional performance (or an injury), to weather disasters that interfere with the international supply chain to new technologies and natural resource discoveries that benefit those countries willing and able to exploit them.

[Dr. Sivana]

Though the global economy has recovered since World War II, Fischer believes that "almost every day" the US takes steps to "weaken the global economy."

Slamming the economic wars between China and the US as "virtually insufferable,"

It wasn't that long ago when we had little trade with Communist China, before Bush let them in to WTO. We got our cheap stuff from Hong Kong (electronics, toys), Taiwan (R.O.C.) (electronics, toys), S. Korea (electronics, shoes), and Mexico (cars). Our economy wasn't "insufferable" in 1990. The dog food wasn't poisoned, and the drywall wasn't moldy, either.

[Dr. Sivana]

Returning to his Trump-bashing, Fischer claimed: "I am almost certain that if Trump had not intervened, the Fed would not have raised the interest rate."

According to him, "Trump provoked them [the Feds] into asking" how they could prove that they were not his followers.

Then they are not professional economists at all, but babies.

[mjp]

Trump only understands if somebody wins and somebody loses

The concept of favorable/unfavorable balance of trade involves winners and losers. If one country has an unfavorable balance of trade, it is importing more goods than exporting and is reducing the overall money supply to some other country. The other country is increasing its money supply. Decreasing the money supply has a negative effect on its economy, and increasing the money supply is a stimulus to the economy.

[PeterPrinciple]

This attitude, he said, is “a large part of our problem.” He added: “The Fed is a professional place with excellent economists.”

---

Who are we going to trust? Trump or the professional place?

[Cen-Tejas]

If you were making $200,000 per year you and your family would be able to afford lots of nice things. If, all of a sudden, you were cut down to $100,000 per year a lot of those toys you had would have to be gotten rid of.

China has been able to buy with our money divisions of troops, aircraft carriers, nuclear missiles, submarines, bullets and on and on.

Trump knows that if he cuts the 545 billion deficit down to zero that a lot of China’s military toys will have to be gotten rid of. The perfect model for this is what Reagan did to the Soviet Union.

Mr. Fischer is too full of Liberalism to grasp this fact.

[Real Cynic No More]

Fischer doesn’t understand Negotiations 101. He should go back to school.

[gogeo]

I shake my head.

Like many amateur economists on FR (and professional free rangers) they really do not understand the limits of their 'knowledge.'

In the middle of a discussion with another 'expert' here...they do not understand that economics is not just about book learning, it's about people...a subject which, to a person, they display spectacular ignorance.

[mosaicwolf]

Somebody wins and somebody loses? True but I think Vince Lombardi, the famous Green Bay Coach said something to the effect: “There is no substitute for Victory.”

[Vendome]

It’s not a game if you don’t keep score...

[YogicCowboy]

China has been winning, and America has been losing. Trump is trying to rectify that.