Dec 5, 2018
Aides and advisers have tried convincing him how important managing the debt is, but those words have allegedly fallen on deaf ears. … Sources close to Trump say he has repeatedly shrugged it off, … because he won’t be around to shoulder the blame when it becomes even more untenable.
… in early 2017 … “Yeah, but I won’t be here,” the president bluntly said, according to a source who was in the room when Trump made this comment during discussions on the debt.
The episode illustrates the extent of the president’s ambivalence toward tackling an issue that has previously animated the Republican Party from the days of Ronald Reagan to the presidency of Barack Obama.
Trump – in the past – has not much cared to even discuss the deficit.
“He understands the messaging of it,” the former senior White House official said. “But he isn’t a doctrinaire conservative who deeply cares about the national debt, especially not on his watch … It’s not actually a top priority for him … He understands the political nature of the debt but it’s clearly not, frankly, something he sees as crucial to his legacy.”
David Stockman: Trump ‘Playing With Fire’; 40% S&P 500 Correction Coming
Nov 19, 2018
Ronald Reagan’s former budget controller, David Stockman, is predicting a massive market collapse of about 40 percent is coming, and he also isn’t too impressed with President Donald Trump’s spending, his attacks on the Federal Reserve or his trade tactics.
Stockman has long been an advocate of balanced budgets and cuts to government spending, and he’s none too pleased with how the current administration has cut corporate tax rates and blown up the national debt, saying Trump is “playing with fire at the very top of an ageing expansion” in a recent interview with CNBC.
He closed with his thoughts regarding the ongoing trade war with China, saying it isn’t “remotely rational.” China accounts for about 30 percent goods imported to the U.S. As a result, tariffs will drive up prices and it “is going to hit the whole goods economy with inflation like you’ve never seen before.”
Soon We May Not be Able to Pay Interest on Debt – Interest Will Sink the Economy
Nov 13, 2018
… the now-rapidly growing deficit does matter — and the interest cost of the debt is why it matters. It’s one thing to run in the red. It’s something else entirely to lack the wherewithal to make interest payments, and that’s where we may be heading.
We can’t know when the bite will come, but all it would take is for interest rates, driven by inflation and a stronger world economy, to climb toward levels seen just 10 years ago. The Fed has promised three more rate increases in just the next year. Indeed, the CBO is predicting even higher future rates.
Wall Street Titans Sound the Alarm on Growing Debt Crisis
Nov 12, 2018
The U.S. budget gap may surpass $1 trillion as soon as next year, which is already causing the Treasury Department to increase the size of some of its monthly auctions to record levels. That hasn’t worked out so well: On Wednesday, a $19 billion sale of 30-year bonds drew the weakest demand since 2009,
China is one of the U.S.’s biggest lenders and it’s never good to fight with your banker the way [Trump] is with China in the ongoing trade war.