Trump says economy would take off like ‘a rocket ship’ if Fed cut rates, ending tightening policy

The best way to understand trump speak is that it's basically a raw stream of thought. There's good and bad to this. This means he says what he feels, regardless of whether he believes or knows its true. If he feels like something is a useful emotional response in the moment he will say it.

This makes his dialog unique in two ways: 1) his rhetoric is actually a response to what is happening, instead of canned pre-answers, in this way he tries out positions and ideas on his audience to see what sticks. 2) Accuracy, sensitivity, etc doesn't matter as long as the discussion is being moved in a certain direction.

Contrary to what people say, who call trump stuipd, trump has average-ish intelligence. When it comes to finance he is just talking from experience in terms of really simple ideas. Sometimes those ideas are shit, but it's actually less likely you are going be completely off if you try out lots of simple ideas in a pseudo intellectual non-commital way. With math and logic, you can be more precise, but it is easy to be very precise and completely wrong, like flipping a negative sign in an equation to get the exact opposite of the right answer.

When you approach a problem emotionally or in simple terms, your ideas have a lot less precision, but overall can move you toward the right answer in gradual increments. All the bad ideas are just random noise, but the ones that are actually good arguments/correct will make the difference. It's basically a epistemological crapshoot, but with some valid strategy to it.

So yes, I think trump's ideas about finance actually make much more sense in many instances than people who have very precise and well defined ideas, who also happen to be completely wrong on key assumptions. Does that mean he's progressing the discussion? Maybe a little, but it can only go so far.

As for the fed lowering rates making the economy take off like a rocket, that not realistic, because monetary policy isn't as effective or consistent in the long run. But yes, lower rates are good in a lot of other ways.

/r/mmt_economics Thread