"For Tesla and any US based corporation with substantial foreign markets a stronger dollar is never the way to go." Thanks for reminding me of the dangers of never saying "never."
I guess you've figured out I've drunk the kool-aid of Nobel laureate Paul Krugman and of my teacher in college many decades ago in Macro 101. (Truthfully, I never even saw Paul Samuelson at MIT who was the instructor of record, and he won his Nobel later for giving economics a more mathematical orientation. Got only a B in the course taught exclusively by a Ph.D. candidate from Harvard.) I have a Ph.D. field in international economics from a contemporary of Charles Kindelberger whom I did meet at MIT but only for advising about a potential application for their new Ph.D. program in political science. I can't remember the name of my Ph.D. examiner in intl econ We called him "Smokey the Bear" because absent the fur he was a doppelganger. He gave me great grades but I screwed up in the orals. (I was rejected for doctoral work at MIT in political science but could have pursued an M.S. in mechanical engineering.)
There are many comparisons to be made with the United States and third world countries. There are many others where, of course, we do much better. My wife is from Thailand, where the King who is widely revered is about to be succeeded by a rank amateur playboy completely at the mercy of a military dictatorship.
I fully agree with you about just printing money to finance things. We have one blessing as do the British and others as Krugman points out ad nauseam: we have the benefit of our own currency. There is another advantage, although I’m fuzzy on the numbers, as to who holds our debt. Hopefully, like the Japanese, the bulk of it is in U.S. citizen’s hands or the Federal Reserve. When we hold our own debt, as Krugman constantly reminds us that debt is owed to another U.S. entity. Furthermore, given the size of our economy the Chinese holdings are not hostage to China, as some argue, but China can’t withdraw them catastrophically without losing big time.
Now maybe you can set me straight again but arguing from first principles of logic: it may matter what you spend on with the money you print. And here again I would agree with you about Congress and exporters.
If you spend what will ultimately cost two to three billion dollars (estimated by Joe Stieglitz, another Nobel laureate) on an unnecessary war, say in Iraq, then block or blunt any effort to stimulate an infrastructure program at home, while the president drank the kool-aid of reducing deficit spending at first, and then hold back spending, we look like a third world country when we throw tax exemptions to the rich (hedge fund managers), the banks, the likes of GM (although many suppliers were helped), the stock market (quantitative easing), and more, then we do look like a third world country. (By the way, third world is not the politically correct term, but I use it too. And of course we do know other “advanced” countries have similarly skewed distributions of wealth, so we aren’t alone. Although many, like the Scandinavians, spend their 20 percentage points higher taxes less on the military to finance vastly superior investments in people. I remember in Denmark college students are paid to go to college, but my memory is failing now that I’m 80.)
My wife just interrupted me to eat breakfast but first told me about a dream she had. “It was about a car which had a trunk in front, but I knew it was a dream because it was at our first home which had a leaky thatch roof my mother replaced every two years with branches collected from the forest.”
Gotta go for many alimentary reasons, but will address the political stances of each major candidate pivoting on a previous post by Turing. Despite my progressive bent I have to admit Trump is talking up some good ideas.
Later.
