Maggie's Farm

They should be treated like any other adults in a similar situation. Their parents put them in this situation so if they have a problem, the kids should take it up with them not US citizens who had nothing to do with their predicament.

There will surely be some accommodation much more favorable to the "dreamers" than they legally deserve.

As I understand it, the law says they should be deported. Certainly the parents should have been deported a long time ago. This situation exists because the law hasn't been followed. It isn't the immigration system that is broken (though it may need to be reformed), it is the enforcement that has been broken.

I don't have a firm opinion about what to do with the "Dreamers" other than they should not be given citizenship as part of any deal. Their parents and relatives should also not be allowed to immigrate here nor be given amnesty. They should be treated like any other person who wants to legally become a citizen. I can see allowing them to stay with some legal status.

I don't know the actual statistics but I read on several sites that the Trump bump was the highest since FDR. If that's true, you are incorrect.

In any case, Obama's run-up is less impressive because the market crashed. There was bound to be a bounce back. In addition to that Bernanke instituted Quantitative Easing started buying MBSs which injected money into the market. Obama had nothing to do with these moves. For good or evil, Obama continued Bernanke's appointment and he continued his QE programs as well as buying bonds which kept interest rates low and injected more money in to the market keeping the market raising.

QE, MBS and bond purchases were tapered off and interest rates have been very gradually increased so the stimulative environment is receding. The Fed policy is different. Trump's tax, and regulatory policies are drastically different from Obama's. The resulting increase in corporate profits and change in business and consumer confidence is driving Trump's market.

In the first place, whether increase of the Dow in the first year of Trump's administration is higher than the first year of Obama's administration or the highest percentage rise since FDR is of very little concern to me. I could easily look it up but I'm not that interested and I don't think it's that significant.

In the second place, the Dow is a somewhat narrow view of the market since it is only 30 stocks. I realize it is actually more broad than the number of stocks imply since a lot more then 30 business sectors are represented. In any case, I would prefer to use the S&P500 because it is a broader measure of the market. I have no idea how the statistics would be different if the S&P were used instead of the Dow because I'm not that interested and I don't think it's that significant.

In the third place, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that some people might start the statistic at the day after the election. This would indicate the market expectation of that event. I have no idea if that was included or not because I'm not that interested and I don't think it's that significant.

I think there are much more relevant measures of an economy such as GDP, unemployment, business and consumer confidence, industrial production, capacity utilization, and worker productivity to name a few. While most of those are on an uptrend that started around the time of Trump's election or inauguration. This is only one year of data against eight for Obama so there is time for things to turn over but at the moment, it doesn't look like it will turn over any time soon. If we get three quarters of 3+% GDP growth, that will be something Obama never was able to do. As I said, it's worth noticing that Trump has reversed as many of Obama's economic and business policies and the uptick in the economy is coincident with that change so suggesting this is still Obama's economy doesn't make any sense.

You misunderstand my point about trends. Take capacity utilization. It had a local peak on 11/14 at 79.2% and fell till around 11/16 at 75.5%. This played out on several of the indicators I mentioned (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TCU). I readily admit that capacity utilization is still in a down trend that started in 1997. Even your GDP graph shows that during 2016, it flattened out a bit meaning that growth had slowed. Your unemployment graph shows something similar where the down slope slowed down.

As for your last point about GDP growth, there was no time during Obama's term where he had three consecutive quarters of 3+% growth. Your taking the average is interesting but GDP growth varied wildly during his eight years and if you drew a trend line for the quarterly GDP growth over the eight years it would be pretty flat. Remember that GDP growth historically is about 3%/year and the year starts in January. Since the economy has a cycle, if you include most of the quarters where the cycle is up, you will get an illegitimate number.

You assert that the tax cut would siphon off investment from other countries. Why would that be? In fact, there have been some very large investments announced from foreign countries to take advantage of the lower tax rates and decreased regulation.

Then you state that the economy is working near capacity. You have a low opinion of what total capacity is that is not warranted. For one thing, the workforce participation rate is low so there is plenty of room for more capacity, but let's say you're right and we are operating at near capacity, then why do we need all these immigrants? They'll have nothing to do.