Here’s a clip of Donald J. Trump talking economic policy with CNBC last week.
And here’s the transcript (typed by yours truly):
Interviewer: “You’ve raised a lot of eyebrows with your position on debt and treasury bills. In an interview the other day, you said you might try to purchase it at a discount – won’t that undermine the full faith in the credit…”
Trump: [interrupts] “No, if we can buy it at a discount that’s a great thing. We have a lot of debt. We have $19 trillion in debt that’s going to be 21 because frankly the budget was horrible that was made 6 months ago, the omnibus budget was a disaster, when it does what it represents it’s going to bring us up to 21 trillion dollars.”
Interviewer: “Who would sell to you at a discount?”
Trump: “We have to do two things, I’m a low interest rate person, now, now if you have inflation we’re going to have to change that theory because you’re going to have to stop things, slow things down, but now we have low interest rates. We have to rebuild the whole infrastructure of our country. I know the infrastructure, I’ve really gotten to know it even better now. You go to airports, they’re falling down. You go to, I mean, you go to La Guardia, you land at La Guardia, it’s an embarrassment. Look at Kennedy, look at LAX and Newark. These airports…”
Interviewer: [interrupts] “If you try to buy debt back at a discount, interest rates are going to go up!”
Trump: “No, you can buy debt back, you buy debt back and you take advantage of certain things. You can, as an example, there are people, large owners, do you know China has right now 1.8 trillion dollars of our debt? Okay? 1.8 trillion dollars. They’re cheating us, and they’re friends of mine.”
Interviewer: “They’re not going to sell to you at a discount!”
Trump: “Oh, you never know. You never know, all of a sudden, they have to sell at a discount. You don’t, you don’t know that. At some point, they might want to get out, maybe they need their money, maybe they want to get out. When you do it, when you can take advantage, you do that. But you might want to issue new long term debt at low interest rates and you might wanna a combination of buy back some debt and rebuild our infrastructure. George, we’ve spent more than 4 trillion dollars in the Middle East, and our country’s going to hell.
Other recent declarations not from this transcript:
“I am the king of debt, I do love debt. I love debt. I love playing with it.”
“I have borrowed knowing you can pay back with discounts” [Note: that’s a euphemism for “I have borrowed knowing that I would default”]
“I was swashbuckling, and it went well for me.”
I don’t think that many people are so brazen that they’d step onto a CNBC program and:
- Openly lie (“I can buy back debt from the cheatin’ Chinese at a discount, because we’re friends, even though I just said that they’re cheating us”); and
- Declare two completely contradictory things (“We’ll buy back debt because we have too much of it #21trillion” and “We’ll take on even more debt to rebuild all of America’s infrastructure”).
It’s breathtaking.
In case you’re interested, take a look at the PolitiFact website, which is dedicated to fact-checking the things that the nominees have been saying.
Here’s Trump’s scorecard:
Here’s “Lyin’ Ted Cruz” for comparison:
And here’s Hilary:
The trouble is: most Trump supporters will see that and declare that he’s being vilified by the media, and targeted by the establishment, and taken out of context. And if they don’t declare it, Donald will.
Oh, the fun.
Rolling Alpha posts about finance, economics, and sometimes stuff that is only quite loosely related. Follow me on Twitter @RollingAlpha, or like my page on Facebook at www.facebook.com/rollingalpha. Or both.
Comments
Anonymous May 9, 2016 at 13:51
The fact that Hillary won’t release her Wallstreet Transcripts puts her in the same boat in my mind.
ReplyJayson May 9, 2016 at 15:56
Oh, I don’t think that’s quite the same boat…
Trump’s boat is filled with fabrications, the casting of openly false and politically devastating aspersions on your opponents, and taking advantage of the deep paranoia of people who feel like they’re being lied to so that the substance of truth gets turned back-to-front.
Hillary’s boat involves not being transparent with what she said at a closed-door speech?
ReplyRich May 10, 2016 at 11:35
For sure Trumps flip flops, lies and exaggerations are to such an extent it becomes preposterous. Take is his recent comments on minimum wage, taxing the wealthy and Raphael Cruz. (Fanned by the media of course).
Hillary is running on a campaign that she is going to be tough on Wallstreet, forced down this road by Bernie Sanders, nevertheless it is part of her platform.
If she then flat out refuses to say what she discussed with Wallstreet months before, how can any voter believe her.
Lets take Goldman Sachs decision making process to donate money to Hillary Clinton.
Lloyd Blankfein would not knowingly donate to Hillary knowing she would implement tougher regulations on Goldman. Yet Goldman Sachs is one of her biggest donors. – Albeit individuals however they will be biased towards their own industry/company.
The transcripts have hurt Hillary’s campaign tremendously, one can only believe then that what they contain is far worse.
The very idea that one is willing to elect a president that will not reveal their thoughts on a significant issue is in my mind just as preposterous as Trumps lies.
It goes back to the belief that “big money” – call it what you want – has captured the democratic process.
How democratic is the process if last presidents were Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Clinton.
Apart from climate change, inequality is one of the greatest threats the world faces and I do not believe Clinton with her ties to wallstreet and based on her peers will do anything about it.
Trump is a madman, but Clinton is deceitful.
ReplyJayson May 10, 2016 at 12:07
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree. Yes, inequality is an issue – but that issue is not going to be fixed by either Clinton or Trump: Clinton may be subject to the self-interest of her plutocratic backers, but Trump is subject to his own plutocratic self-interest. Either way, inequality doesn’t really have a defender (with the exception of Bernie Sanders).
Also, while we’re talking about inequality, one might well call that particular movement “deceitful”. Almost all inequality data is quoted before the impact of wealth transfers and free basic services are taken into account. I’m not saying that the world is equal – it isn’t. But if I have $100 in my bank account, and my dad has $10,000 in his, but I live in his house and he pays for food and electricity and healthcare – is it really honest to say that the inequality gap is 99 times my own wealth? What I’d be arguing is: “One man’s deceit is another (wo)man’s concern about her opponent’s complete disregard for appropriate and relevant context about what might have been said in a closed door setting.”
But that aside, I’d still rather have a President who is secretly sympathetic toward the plutocrats because they paid her to talk at their events, than someone who is a madman.
ReplyRich May 10, 2016 at 15:38
I’m not sure if inequality is deceitful, but yes it is not as simple as the wealth gap difference.
For example does it matter if I only have $100 in my bank account and another has $1 million ,but we both have access to the same free education, healthcare and basic services. I.e quality of life is approximately equal the same.
These basic services for the poor(middle class) were negotiated through the democratic process where the general man was put before the plutocrat donors.
The potential pitfall would be if the donors became to powerful.
The social benefits that the general man would argue for under a fair democratic system would not be realized. This coupled with the trend of a dwindling share in the economic pie for the man on the street would not be a good situation.
Either way I would not be happy choosing a president as an American today.
From across the Atlantic, “safe” from potential ramifications, the nihilist in me would like too see a Trump presidency, if only see the chaos that would ensure. But in reality I would never be able to vote for him if my life was on the fault line that would be the Trump government.