California Free Press

Repeal and (Don't) Replace

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

"Repeal and Replace" Just a Slogan

Republicans were fine with the way it was for the health care system before Obamacare went into effect. So why not just go back to the good old days when a pre-existing condition was enough to let an insurance company reject you from coverage? The good old days when price gouging by insurance companies was the order of the day. The good old days when pharmaceutical corporations could charge whatever they want for life saving drugs. Oh, that part is still true under Obamacare.

The "Repeal and Replace" mantra was always nothing more than a slogan. Republicans have had 8 years to suggest a different system or enhancements to the one currently in effect. The sticking point is the pre-existing conditions part of Obamacare. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll, 49 percent of respondents said they or a family member have a pre-existing condition. So eliminating that provision of Obamacare will affect a lot of Americans and Trump voters in particular. But Republicans will probably bite the bullet and do it anyway.

First of all Obamacare expanded Medicaid which is health care coverage for poor people. Well, poor people are not the Republicans' traditional constituency. Rich people are, and rich people don't have any problem with their health insurance coverage even if they have to pay through the nose for it. It's a minor part of their expenses. Obamacare also gave subsidies to many people to get health insurance coverage. Well, people needing subsidies are not rich. The rich don't need subsidies from the government. So Republicans don't mind canceling this provision also. That leaves people who don't need financial support or subsidies to provide health insurance for themselves. That means rich or better off Republicans.

Republicans don't care that 20 million people have health insurance due to Obamacare that didn't have it before because that's 20 million poor or lower middle class people, people that vote for Democrats. Republicans would be happy to see all those people lose their health insurance as they subject them to the free market. After all they're great believers in the free market. If you can't afford to pay, you go without, and that's what Republicans believe in. Whether it's food, shelter, education or health insurance, Republicans don't care if those that can't afford to pay go without.

What About Emergency Room Care for Those Who Can't Pay?

So that means that poor people will have to rely on going to the emergency room every time they have a health problem? Don't count on that either. It's simply a law that emergency rooms have to take in people who can't pay and provide some treatment at public expense. That law can be repealed by a Republican Congress just as easily as they can repeal Obamacare. That means that poor people will not be able to access emergency rooms either. They will have to rely on charity as a last resort. Republicans do believe in charity. After all isn't that the American way? Rich people helping poor people instead of the government helping them? Noblesse oblige.

Pretty much charitable institutions are dependent on private philanthropy to keep them afloat. You are increasingly besieged by charitable institutions asking you to support them. Even at the check-out counter. Every time you buy pet food, you are asked by Petco to donate to help a homeless animal. Of course, you are not asked to contribute to homeless humans. They can fend for themselves and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, those lucky enough to have boots, that is.

Even though Trump hasn't come up with a replacement plan, House speaker Paul Ryan has several ideas. One is that, even if you lose your job at which your employer was paying for health insurance, you would still be allowed to pay for it yourself and not lose coverage. Of course, if you lose your job, you could ill afford to pay out of your pocket for health insurance. But that gets back to the Republican principle if you can't pay for something you should do without. And if you miss one payment, that is enough for your health insurance provider to cancel your policy.

Another Republican mantra for replacing Obamacare is to allow health insurance companies to sell insurance across state lines. The idea is that by eliminating the red tape associated with state insurance regulation, insurers will be able to offer national plans with lower administrative costs. Oh, how the Republicans love to deregulate. There would be fewer rules imposed by the states, and insurers would only have to comply with minimal Federal regulations. I emphasize the word minimal. Supposedly this would increase competition among health insurance companies, and Republicans are always in favor of more competition, that is, unless the various corporations merge. Mergers and acquisitions are something Repubs like even more than competition.

Pre-existing Condition? No Problem

Back in the good old days, people with pre-exisitng conditions were covered by what was known as "risk pools." It has been reported:

For sick patients who cannot continue coverage, Ryan’s plan calls for a return to state-run high-risk pools. These pools allow sick people to buy insurance separately, while states, insurers and the federal government help subsidize the cost. The president-elect’s website says he supports risk pools.

Risk pools have a long and controversial past. Before the ACA was passed, 35 states ran risk pools for people with preexisting conditions ranging from cancer and diabetes to more minor afflictions such as arthritis or eczema. Premiums for risk pool coverage were as much as 250 percent more than a healthy person would pay for individual insurance, and some states, overwhelmed with sick patients, had wait lists for coverage or imposed other restrictions, said [Cheryl] Fish-Parcham [Private Insurance Program Director, Families USA].

“Going back to risk pools is going back to the bad old days,” she said.

“High-risk pools served only 1 percent of the population back in 2008,” said Fish-Parcham. That wasn’t anywhere near the number of people who needed coverage but couldn’t afford it, she noted, adding: “Risk pools simply didn’t work.”

Another way insurance companies get out of paying a lot of money is life time caps. Republicans would be happy to see that as part of the "replacement." So if you have a serious chronic condition, you will be treated up until the time when you reach your life time cap. After that you're shit out of luck. Your benefits will have run out. It's back to the risk pool for you. Or you can throw yourself on charity. Maybe have someone open a Go-Fund-Me website for you. Or you might win with Publisher's Clearing House. Most people though will just have to grin and bear it. And eventually they will die. That's the ultimate denouement.

Republicans are supportive of the rich, the talented and those who can make it on their own. They don't have much sympathy for poor people, especially poor and sick people. The poor and the sick, the lame and the halt, don't deserve to be a part of country club earth. Republicans consider themselves to be the "best and the brightest." They are the ones who need to be supported and encouraged, whose genes need to be transfered to the next generation. They are all about the improvement of the race.

Free College Tuition in New York State?

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

Even in the Age of Trump There is Good News (at the State Level)

Taking a page out of the Bernie Sanders playbook, Governor Andrew Cuomo, with Bernie Sanders standing by his side, proposed free university tuition in New York state for residents making less than $125,000 a year. New York on the east coast and California on the west are taking the lead in preserving and advancing progressive values in the Trump era which will probably see conservative values extolled at the Federal level. But Democrats like Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren and others will do all they can to block Republican efforts to shred the safety net for poor and middle Americans. Meanwhile, state and local governments in progressive states will do all they can to advance the cause of values that benefit average Americans.

Cuomo's proposal would cover state colleges, universities and two year colleges. Cuomo, who is thought to have Presidential ambitions, is tacking left on a number of issues including raising the minimum wage and paid family leave. Bernie Sanders made an issue of free college tuition during his Presidential campaign in light of the exploding student loan debt of over $1 trillion. Indeed, Sanders praised the announcement by saying, “That is a message that is going to provide hope and optimism for working-class families all across the state.”

 Regarding student loan debt, Cuomo said “It’s like starting a race with an anchor tied to your leg,” adding that many students in New York and elsewhere left college $30,000 or more in debt. “This society should say, ‘We’re going to pay for college because you need college to be successful,’” he added. “And New York State is going to do something about it.”

Tennessee and Oregon Lead Nation in Free Community College

Tennessee and Oregon already have programs to cover the costs of community college. Governor Cuomo's plan would include four-year schools as well as the city’s university system — a once-free network whose tuition has risen and reputation has fallen over the last decade.

The New York Times reported:

Mr. Cuomo hopes for a quick start for his idea, with a three-year rollout beginning in the fall, with a $100,000 income limit, rising to $125,000 by 2019, a timetable the administration billed as more speedy than the one embraced by Mrs. Clinton during her presidential campaign. (On Twitter, Mrs. Clinton said she was “delighted” by the governor’s proposal, calling it a plan that she and Mr. Sanders had “worked hard on.”)

It's unclear how much this program will cost. New York already offers in-state students one of the lowest tuition rates in the nation. Current full-time tuition at four-year State University of New York schools for residents is $6,470; at two-year community colleges, the cost is $4,350. Full-time costs for City University of New York schools are about the same. Cost estimates put the price of the new program at $163 million.

There are an estimated 940,000 New York households with college age children who would be eligible for this program. New York state has the nation's largest public university system with 440,000 students and 64 campuses. As student loan debt is greater than a trillion dollars and rising rapidly, something must be done or a whole generation is doomed to debt peonage. A college degree is no guarantee of a job, however. Students need to carefully consider their talents, abilities and interests before committing themselves to years of study in an area in which they might be ill suited. Therefore, high school guidance and career counseling is most important.

Bernie Sanders Suggested It First

Bernie Sanders was effusive in his praise of Mr. Cuomo’s idea, calling it “a revolutionary idea for higher education” that he envisioned would be emulated elsewhere. “Here’s my prediction,” the senator said. “If New York State does it this year, mark my words, state after state will follow.” Well, the blue states perhaps. But not in the south or the midwest. This proposal might appeal to a lot of Trump voters who have some college education but found the financial hurdles involved in getting a college degree just too insurmountable.

College students would still have to pay for room and board as well fees and books. So it is not a total panacea. Living at home would make getting a college education doable. Undoubtedly, many would move to New York just in order to be able to participate in such a program. Students would have to graduate in either two or four years or else lose their eligibility. They would also have to be qualified academically in order to gain admission to the colleges and universities in the first place. That means they would have to do pretty well in high school or they wouldn't even be accepted. But not everybody is college material, something that for profit colleges seem to ignore. They take everybody and sign them up for a student loan. Many do not even graduate, but still are stuck with a lot of debt.

Private For Profit Colleges Drive Student Debt

If this idea catches on, it could put the for profit private colleges out of business. They are the ones mainly responsible for driving up student loan debt. Good riddance to them, I say. Just this week SAGE college in San Diego abruptly closed shop leaving hundreds of students, some close to graduation, in the lurch. Students said Sage College withheld information and in some cases continued to collect federal student loan funds and tuition payments as recently as a few days before closing. That's money students will have to pay back despite the fact they never got their degree or credential.

The San Diego Union reported:

“They told us in October that we had 18 months and that they would take care of us,” said Marissa Maginnis, a single mother from Spring Valley working toward her court-reporting certification. “We were supposed to have finals next week. A lot of us feel like we’ve just been scammed.”

Maginnis said she owes $23,000 in student loans — money she thought was a good investment because court reporters can earn $80,000 a year or more in San Diego. She hopes to get all or part of her loan forgiven.

While Trump appoints an Education Secretary devoted to privatizing the public schools, Betsy DeVos, Governor Cuomo of New York is taking the opposite tack by expanding the public school system. We'll see how this plays out over the next four years as political rivals seek to influence the American people towards either free public education or private charter schools run with public money.

Trump's Goldman Sachs Connections

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

Restocking the Swamp

Trump's new pick for Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, his top campaign fundraiser, was a Goldman Sachs executive.  Mnuchin spent 17 years working at Goldman Sachs where he became a partner. He also worked for hedge fund manager George Soros, founded a hedge fund of his own and was the lead investor in IndyMac, a failed subprime lender that turned into a “foreclosure machine” during the housing crisis.

As the financial crisis worsened, Mnuchin was looking to make a profit off of homeowners who couldn't pay their mortgages. In 2009, he got together with a group of billionaire investors and bought a failed California-based bank, IndyMac, which had been taken over by the FDIC after its portfolio went bust. Mnuchin and his partners bought IndyMac on the condition that the FDIC agree to pay future losses above a certain threshold. They renamed the bank OneWest Bank and, after running it for six years, they sold it last year for a profit, estimated at close to $1.5 billion.

According to NPR:

According to the coalition, OneWest foreclosed on more than 36,000 homeowners under Mnuchin. During that time, the FDIC made payments to OneWest totaling more $1 billion. Those payments went to the "billionaire investors of OneWest Bank," says Stein, "to cover the cost of foreclosing on working-class, everyday, American folks," many of whom lived in California.

Rex Schaffer, 86, and his wife Rose were among those who lost their homes, in a OneWest foreclosure. After living nearly 50 years in their home in La Puente, Calif., the Schaffers took a home equity loan but struggled to make the payments. They say they qualified three times for a government assisted modification, but OneWest failed to modify the loan.

"It was a disaster dealing with those people," Rex Shaffer says. "We'd have a different person every time we called in." He counted 33 OneWest employees, in all, and each one would give him "a different story."

Facing threats that their home would be auctioned off, the Schaffers finally got through to a OneWest vice president. According to Rex Shaffer, the VP said, "I'm going to get you a 60-day extension on the sale date, so we can work this thing out." That was on Feb. 17, 2011. But the next day, the Schaffers' house was sold without their knowledge. "We didn't even know it — didn't have the faintest idea," Rex Shaffer says.

Despite their hardships at the hands of Mnuchin, the Shaffers voted for Trump. I guess victims really are attracted to those who abuse them.

Gary Cohn Was Second in Command at Goldman

Then there is Trump's pick for Director of the National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, who was second in command at Goldman in his prior life. Cohn was President of Goldman and also Chief Operating Officer. Cohn joined Goldman in 1990 and rose through the ranks to become Lloyd Blankfein’s deputy. Blankfein is CEO and Chairman of Goldman.  Cohn will help Trump set economic policy. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is good friends with Cohn. Kushner can’t take a West Wing post for legal reasons, so Cohn will be his proxy inside the administration.

Conservatives are upset by the appointment of Cohn who they don't feel is conservative enough. Cohn is a member of the clique of global superrich and superelite in contrast to the populist and nationalist values that Trump preached on the campaign trail. Trump's designated Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon, is also a Goldman Sachs veteran. Preventing Cohn from exerting too much influence on Trump seems to have become a goal for Bannon. “He’s a huge Democrat and knows zero about politics,” Bannon supposedly said.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump was no fan of financial industry giant Goldman Sachs. One of his campaign ads in the days just before the vote even featured Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein. The voiceover didn't name him, but as his image flashed onscreen, the narration described “a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.” Trump never lost an opportunity of rubbing Hillary's Goldman connections in her face. In a CNN town hall forum when asked why she accepted $675,000 for speeches to Goldman Sachs, she replied “That’s what they offered,” adding that “every secretary of state that I know has done that.”

According to public records, Clinton gave 92 speeches between 2013 and 2015. Her standard fee was $225,000, and she collected $21.6 million dollars in just under two years including the $675,000 from Goldman for 3 speeches. Hillary would not release the transcripts of those speeches. During one she cozied up to Lloyd Blankfein in a two way conversation. Blankfein was a Clinton supporter.

On the campaign trail, Trump also attacked Republican rival Ted Cruz for his ties to Goldman Sachs. Cruz’s wife worked at Goldman, and he’d taken a loan from the bank to help fund his campaign. So now that he has won the Presidency, Trump follows preceding Presidents by filling up his administration with Goldman Sachs former employees. This is draining the swamp?! Goldman has been in the swamp through numerous other administrations and has never had to leave. They are permanent residents of the swamp.

Many Presidents Including Obama and Clinton have had Goldman Alums as Treasury Secretaries

Like Trump Obama ran as an outsider. He attacked NAFTA and wanted to soak the rich. Then he appointed Tim Geithner his Treasury Secretary. Supposedly only a Goldman former managing director and President of the New York Fed could get the country out of the economic crisis. Geithner's solution was to pay investors back 100 cents on the dollar while giving little if any relief to homeowners who had been foreclosed on. Geithner was totally on the side of the banks, not the average American. The banks were seen as crucial to the economic system; the average homeowner was just collateral damage.

In all there were 34, count 'em, people in the Obama administration with Goldman connections including Larry Summers, Obama's chief economic adviser and head of the National Economic Council; Neel Kashkari, former VP at Goldman; Gary Gensler, an Obama appointee to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is supposed to regulate derivatives trading. Gensler, a former Goldman banker had been instrumental in helping to pass the infamous Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which prevented regulation of derivative instruments like collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps that played such a big role in cratering the economy last year. Then there was Peter Orszag, Obama's Budget Director. Orszag was founding director of the Hamilton Project, funded by Goldman Sachs and Robert Rubin. I could go on but I refer you, dear reader, to the link.

As Geithner's replacement Obama appointed Jack Lew, Treasury Secretary. Lew sits on the Brookings-Rubin funded Hamilton Project Advisory Board. Lew has been called an acolyte of Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary and Goldman alum, Robert Rubin. Before his government service, Rubin spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs. Rubin oversaw the loosening of financial industry underwriting guidelines which had been intact since the 1930s leading to the 2008 financial crisis. Rubin was later at Citigroup where he went to claim his reward for his government service.

Clinton's Treasury Secretary Responsible for Deregulating Wall Street

Rubin was Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary from January 1995 until July 1999 and was an architect of the financial deregulation that left financial derivatives largely free of controls. This paved the way for the large-scale, unregulated speculation in financial derivatives by Wall Street banks beginning in the early 2000s.

Common Dreams reported:

Taken together, the rash of appointments with ties to Bob Rubin may well represent the most sweeping influence by a single Wall Street insider in the history of government. "Rather than having a team of rivals, they've got a team of Rubins," says Steven Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. "You see that in policy choices that have resuscitated - but not reformed - Wall Street." While Rubin's allies and acolytes got all the important jobs in the Obama administration, the academics and progressives got banished to semi-meaningless, even comical roles.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the panel responsible for determining who and what caused the financial meltdown that lead to the worst recession in decades voted to refer Robert Rubin to the Department of Justice for investigation. The panel stated it believed Rubin "may have violated the laws of the United States in relation to the financial crisis." Rubin, the commission alleged, along with some other members of Citi's top management, may have been "culpable" for misleading Citi's investors and the market by hiding the extent of the bank's subprime exposure, stating at one point that it was 76% lower than what it actually was.

The George W Bush administration had a similar cast of Goldman characters including Bush's Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, who was at Treasury from 2006 to 2009. His former Goldman Sachs Title: Chairman and CEO (1998-2006). If anyone doesn't believe that Wall Street bankers formulate the economic policy of US Presidential administrations, they have another think coming. This has been true throughout American history. Trump is no different. Both he and Obama campaigned against Wall Street and then, as soon as they were elected, they got in bed with them. Hillary's mistake was to get in bed with them before she was elected.

Trump is not the first US President to attempt to run the country as a business. That was Calvin Coolidge who famously said, "The chief business of the American people is business." In All the President's Bankers, author Nomi Prins says: [Coolidge's Treasury Secretary, Andrew Mellon, wrote] "The Government is just a business, and can and should be run on business principles." Mellon's principles included lowering taxes to 25% during the Coolidge administration, a move that benefited him personally more than any other person, except one, in the country. There's not a dime's worth of difference between Coolidge and Trump. Coolidge left office in 1929 shortly before the stock market crash that year that precipitated the Great Depression. During his Presidency, though, he made America great again. As a Coolidge biographer wrote, "He embodied the spirit and hopes of the middle class, could interpret their longings and express their opinions."

The War on the Poor Starts in Soon

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

The Safety Net Will Soon be in Shreds

The Trump administration will take over in a couple weeks. Essential benefits for tens of millions of low-and moderate-income Americans are in danger of being phased out or canceled immediately. These include the Affordable Care Act, the Medicaid health-insurance program for the poor and further reduction of already squeezed funding for scores of other important programs serving the most vulnerable Americans such as rental vouchers for low-income families, programs to fight homelessness, job training, funding for poor school districts, Head Start for young children and Pell grants to help low-income students afford college.

Republicans are all about cutting non-defense discretionary spending, and that means any program that helps the poor and middle class. After Trump showers tax cuts on the rich and corporations, the Republican Congress will attempt to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. It's what they've been trying to do for years, but Obama stood in their way. Now they have a green light. In the House GOP’s most recent budget plan, 62 percent of a stunning $6 trillion in budget cuts over 10 years would come from programs to help the poor.

Tax cuts for the rich with a pittance of a tax cut for the middle class while adding to the military budget will most likely not only run the country into the ground but will also cut the legs out from under the homed poor making the hard streets of San Diego and America teem with homeless including children and elderly. Rent assistance will be gone; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP - food stamps) will be gone. The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program for the elderly and disabled poor will be gone.

The Affordable Care Act Will Be the First to Go

To achieve their goals, Republican leaders plan to push through two major reconciliation bills in 2017. The first would repeal the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansions which would double the number of uninsured Americans from 29 million to 59 million and leave the United States with a higher uninsured rate than before the ACA. The second reconciliation bill would cut Medicaid, SNAP and other programs. There's nothing the Democrats in Congress can do about these "reconciliation" bills since Republicans control all the levers of power in Washington. They can use a fast-track budget process called “reconciliation” to ram through an agenda without needing a single vote from the other party. Due to reconciliation, the filibuster won't work. And Obama won't be there to stop them. Trump will sign anything his Republican buddies recommend into law.

A Republican trick is to give the states block grants to fund these programs with inadequate pots of money and then let the states (especially red states) do the dirty work of restricting eligibility and cutting funding. You want another bowl of porridge, Tiny Tim? The money is just not there. Why don't you get a job? The money has all been spent on the rich by giving them tax cuts. A shrinking of health, food and cash assistance under Medicaid, food stamps and SSI would take critical benefits away from tens of millions of struggling low-income families and children. Those children will be left behind in school and many of them will likely end up in jail where the Corrections Corporation of America will profit from their incarceration.

Trump's OMB Pick a Conservative Budget Hawk

Trump's pick for Office of Management and Budget, Rep. Mick Mulvaney, a South Carolina Republican is a hard line conservative who will most likely shepherd budget cuts for programs that benefit the poor through the Oval Office. After all Trump promised them jobs not benefits! Let's see how many jobs he actually delivers. Tiny Tim and Grandma will have to go to work. Mulvaney is a fiscal hawk. He never met a budget program that helped the poor that he didn't want to slash. After he was elected to Congress he played a key role in the 2011 showdown between President Obama and House Republicans that ended in the passage of strict budget caps.

The Washington Post reported:

“We are going to do great things for the American people with Mick Mulvaney leading the Office of Management and Budget,” Trump said in a statement. “Right now we are nearly $20 trillion in debt, but Mick is a very high-energy leader with deep convictions for how to responsibly manage our nation’s finances and save our country from drowning in red ink.

“With Mick at the head of OMB, my administration is going to make smart choices about America’s budget, bring new accountability to our federal government, and renew the American taxpayer’s trust in how their money is spent,” he added.

This OMB is responsible for producing the federal budget, overseeing and evaluating executive branch agencies and otherwise advising the president on fiscal matters. It’s a position with tremendous, far-reaching power, even if the public doesn’t pay much attention to it. Mulvaney has repeatedly voted against his own party because he thought they weren't conservative enough. That pretty much means he wants to get rid of any and all programs which benefit the poor.

Trump wants a $7 trillion tax cut and a half trillion infrastructure program. This will explode budget deficits. So how does this square with Mulvaney's fiscal conservatism? It doesn't. It's a fundamental contradiction of the Trump administration. But it will certainly play out as Mulvaney tries to squeeze every penny out of any program to help the poor. The poor have no lobbyists supporting them, and they usually don't vote. Every Republican constituency does. The corporatists, the pharmaceutical companies, the military - they need not worry. Their bank accounts will flourish.

Trump Suggested the US Could Default on its Debt (and get away with it)

Trump has been exceedingly casual about America's debt obligations even going so far as suggesting that the US could default on its debt and that would be no big deal. In a CNBC interview in May, he suggested that his experience in offloading private debt would translate nicely to federal obligations. That is, he’d simply persuade the country’s creditors to accept less than full payment. However, if the US seriously considered defaulting, it would upset the world's whole financial system since US Treasuries are the linchpin thereof. The whole shebang is predicated on the inviolability of US Treasuries. Suggesting that the US should screw around with them would produce chaos and panic in financial markets throughout the world and produce a crisis unlike any ever seen before.

The US has $19 trillion in debt, and Trump thinks he can make a deal with US creditors to take a haircut and not be paid back 100 cents on the dollar? Good luck with that. US Treasuries are the foundation upon which the world's financial system is based. Other countries have Sovereign Wealth Funds composed in large part of US Treasuries. The US has only a Sovereign Debt Fund because after all, we're exceptional. We can run up debt with no consequences. Aren't we the protectors of the Free World? Defaulting on US debt or even running up a lot more, Trump style, will turn the US into just another Banana Republic. And the poor will continue to suffer.

Trump and his OMB pick may clash big time. What will happen then? Will cooler heads prevail? Stay tuned.