Yes William. The government did not follow the law. The law of 1989 to resolve the S&L crisis clearly was for companies to be punished if they loaned money to people who could not reasonably pay it back. The FIRREA bill was added to the CRA law and while most explanations of the law leave it out, one of the reasons it was passed was to give the government power to investigate bad loans made by unscrupulous lenders. It was eventially used in the Great Recession, but not at first. https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-firrea-3305839 Needless to say, banks and politicians owned by banks do not like this law.

In the Great Recession, the loans were bundled and risk applied to those loans was mispriced from the beginning, and I believe the Fed and the BIS were up to their eyeballs in permitting this mispricing of risk. When I first came to Talkmarkets I wrote a few articles about this subject.

Thank you, Bill. History is against Trump and you add the supply chain and ratings issues and many things complicate the Trump plans.

That is a good question. Trump believes other nations will fold. I believe that he has underestimated their resolve, but we will see.

Not sure about this. We have a Fed that does not play by the rules of Keynes and Freidman. It misprices risk. It liquidates credit to all but its favorites in times of trouble. I can't believe Keynes supported this procyclical behavior. Remember when small businesses were left with credit cards to survive in the Great Recession? The Fed could have helped that situation but did nothing. That doesn't sound like Friedman's helicopter monet to me. The problem is the Fed ignores the monetarists when they don't fit its agenda. I think the Fed agenda is a conspiracy but others say it is just incompetence. I think the Fed hides behind incompetence. I wish I could convince George Selgin!

The BIS has said no turning back. Does the Fed ever buck the policy of the BIS?

Amazon has not slowed down other supermarkets. They are just better at what they do than Whole Foods. The same will happen with auto parts stores. They will continue to be better. Maybe Amazon will buy out a chain. Otherwise no serious threat. With groceries, Amazon bought out a chain that is not able to compete with the other major stores. Maybe they could find a better auto parts chain with which to compete.

Keynes spoke about holes, maybe a form of helicopter money when the economy on mainstreet was crumbling. Energy was cheap because nobody could afford it. My parents had to park the car and walk in the Great Depression. I think that was a cheap shot at Keynes.

Let's be fair. Globalization eroded faith in itself, but populism almost always is a poor choice as an alternative. Nice details in this article.

Yes, I have read that. So Amazon will be a job killer.

I am sure that the EU offered to reduce tariffs and it was ignored by Trump.