Did going bankrupt in 1991 prepare Donald Trump for the office of President?

yeshuaslavejeff said:

Well, there seems to be some fairly good posts exposing some really bad things in this thread,
but society won't be changed.

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"There will be a sudden rush to buy farms, ranches, and homes in the country.

Thousands will attempt to flee from cities, hoping that a return to the land and

nature will provide security. There will be a growing urge to "get away from it

all"---and much money will be invested in land and acreage in rural areas by

people who have secret dreams of raising their own food and cattle and of

becoming self-supporting. The price of open rural land will continue to soar.

Acreage within 100 miles of most major cities will skyrocket out of reach to

all but syndicates." (David Wilkerson, The Vision, page 18,19).

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"The Lord is now preparing courageous leaders who
will be willing to fight a spiritual civil war in order to set men free.
The main issue, as in the American Civil War, will be slavery versus
freedom. The secondary issue, which will be the primary issue for some,
will be money.

Just as the American Civil War at time looked like it would destroy the entire
nation, that which is coming upon the church will sometimes appear as if it will
bring the end of the church. However, just as the United States not only
survived but went on to become the most powerful nation on earth, the same
is going to happen to the church. The church will not be destroyed, but the institutions
and doctrines that have kept men in spiritual slavery will be" (Rick Joyner, The Vision, page 39)

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paul1149 said:

Where does $222 Billion a year, plus administrative costs, come from?

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"Why was a much larger national debt shrugged off in 1945, while today's much smaller debt (as a percentage of GDP) is being used as an excuse to let the economy stagnate?"

"The answer can be found at the Bank of Canada. During the war, and for 30 years afterward, the government could borrow what it needed at low rates of interest, because the government's own bank produced up to half of all the new money. That forced the private banks to keep their interest rates low, too.

"Since the mid-1970s, however, the Bank of Canada, with government consent, has been creating less and less of the new money, while letting the private banks create more and more. Today «our» bank creates a mere 2% of each year's new money supply, while allowing the private banks to gouge the government — and of course you and me, as well — with outrageously high interest rates. And it is these extortionate interest charges that are the principal cause of the rapid escalation of the national debt. If the federal government were paying interest at the average levels that prevailed from the 1930s to the mid-1970s, it would now be running an operating surplus of about $13 billion!"

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"Clearly the current problem of the Canadian government's deficit is not its absolute size, or its size relative to the GDP, but the insane way it is being financed. A return to the policies of the World War II era, when the Bank of Canada produced almost one-half of the new money at near-zero interest, would do wonders for the economy, while greatly shrinking the deficit... The first order of business for a post-Mulroney- era government must be to regain effective control of the Bank of Canada and make it the primary source of money creation.

"It is ludicrous for the government to put billions of dollars into circulation by borrowing from the private banks, when it can create the extra money it needs, virtually free. "(by Harold Chorney, John Hotson, and Mario Seccareccia) .

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paul1149 said:

I'm not following this on a couple of counts. First, there's the math. Your $19B number is per month, not per year. The yearly number is over $225B plus administration.

That's not an insurmountable figure, but I'm also stuck on the principle of it. Governments don't create wealth by writing money, they create inflation by doing so, because goods and services remain the same but the money supply increases. At least that's how I think it works. Maybe the increased money supply stimulates the economy? Not my strong suit.

I'm also concerned about yet another move to make people more dependent on government. "Call no man father..." (Mt 23). The downside here seems especially great because of the threat of AI and robotics to the job pool.

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Meanwhile, the intellectual wing of reform conservatism likes these plans because they reduce government and offer citizens more control, at least in theory. Yuval Levin, one of the authors of the reform-conservatism manifesto Room to Grow, has praised Ryan’s plan, saying it would “give people more resources and authority and greater freedom to find new and more effective ways up from poverty.” Liberal wonks, on the other hand, have claimed it’s actually a paternalistic program at odds with the traditional Republican desire for less-intrusive government, since it relies on providers who make decisions for beneficiaries.
In any case, these ideas are circumscribed by traditional boundaries. Neither is a truly radical small-government idea alternative. But one idea that Frum highlighted is more radical: a guaranteed basic income, otherwise known as just giving people money.


The idea isn’t new. As Frum notes, Friederich Hayek endorsed it. In 1962, the libertarian economist Milton Friedman advocated a minimum guaranteed income via a “negative income tax.” In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.” Richard Nixon unsuccessfully tried to pass a version of Friedman’s plan a few years later, and his Democratic opponent in the 1972 presidential election, George McGovern, also suggested a guaranteed annual income.

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paul1149 said:

Though I admittedly have not read up on it, I'm not so sanguine on this. Government does charity poorly because it is ineffective and inefficient. It is ineffective because it is prohibited from discriminating between those who will use the help wisely and those who won't. Indeed, welfare often brings disincentives to people trying to raise themselves up out of poverty - reach a certain income level, and you lose benefits, etc. It similarly has been credited with the destruction of the family unit, as single mothers get more benefits than married. And the more babies they have the more money they get. Since the plan you cite will be an unqualified distribution, it would seem that much of this would be avoided. But I wonder about the general disincentive of a "free" lunch on the entrepreneurial spirit.

There also are the inefficiencies and corruption inherent in any bureaucracy. Of every dollar we give to government, how much do we get back in actual services minus legitimate expenses? This is why many want limited government that does only what it must - national defense, infrastructure, etc.

There may be other unintended consequences as well. One is capital flight. Depending on how the money is raised, expect the wealthy to do what they can to avoid paying taxes. And that might include picking up stakes and moving themselves and/or their businesses out.

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If we change the way we are, then we can change the future which they showed me. They showed me a view of the future, at the time of my experience, based upon how we in the United States were behaving at that time. It was a future in which a massive worldwide depression would occur. If we were to change our behavior, however, then the future would be different.

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paul1149 said:

IIUC, these derivatives have no inherent value and will crash dramatically and turn into junk should the market collapse, and you are trying to prevent that by propping the economy up with a $500 monthly government stipend to each citizen. Well, desperate times call for desperate measures. The US did a lot of government-based stuff when the Great Depression hit back in 1929-. It got a lot of roads and bridges built, which is an investment in the future, but I don't think we came out of the depression until our economy took on a war footing. And I think it's conceded that the bailouts of 2008-9 did little to help us out of the recession, and ended up being little more than corporate welfare.

I'm still not convinced this is a good idea. I much prefer to rebuild the fundamentals of the economy, so it can better withstand the inevitable vagaries of time. I believe Trump is doing this by restructuring the tax laws, rebuilding the industrial base and the general business environment, and stopping the exploitation of one-sided trade deals, China being the worse infractor, which we have suffered under inept "leadership" for decades. I would go with that, and with the increased job opportunities it brings, before I would invite the government in to mess up the economy further.

Just my perspective. Be well.

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City in Austria Printed Local Currency

Worgl, like many other European towns and cities, was hit hard by the Great Depression. There was mass unemployment; four of the five local factories had closed, and the people were starving in the streets. Nobody had any money to buy anything. One of the features of an economic depression is that there is not enough money in circulation to ensure that people can meet their basic needs, and in the 1930s, the shortage of currency in many countries of the world became catastrophic.

The mayor of Worgl, together with local businessmen, decided to try to break this economic impasse by creating their own local currency. They printed and issued 60,000 Austrian shillings worth of local currency. These shillings could only be spent in Worgl, so they remained in the local community and were exchanged over and over again.

The positive impact was immediate and surprising to everyone. In only six weeks, unemployment disappeared, all the factories had reopened and everyone had food. For the inhabitants of Worgl, the economic depression was gone. This dramatic transformation became known as the “miracle of Worgl.” Surrounding towns, inspired by the success of Worgl, immediately started printing their own local currencies.

Sadly, the miracle did not last long. When the Austrian Central Bank heard about Worgl’s local currency, they initiated legal proceedings against the mayor and local businessmen. According to Austrian banking law, it was illegal for anyone except the Austrian Central Bank to issue money. The bank won the court case, and the mayor was ordered to shut down the local currency, which he did, under threat of imprisonment. The town then returned to the devastating economic depression of the 1930s, with all the human pain and suffering associated with this catastrophe. Factories closed, and once again, the people starved.

Alternative Currency in the U.S.

Irving Fisher, an American professor of economics at Yale University, visited Worgl before the local currency was suppressed and witnessed the ‘miracle’ firsthand. When he returned to the United States, Fisher spread the word by traveling and lecturing across the country, advocating the use of the Worgl ‘scrip’ everywhere. Inspired by his vision, hundreds of communities began issuing their own currency, and by 1934 there were over 1,000 local communities using ‘scrip’ throughout the U.S.

Every one of these communities experienced a tremendous rejuvenation of their local economies. They thrived while others suffered. Fisher then met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, proposing the implementation of government-sanctioned local ‘scrip’ in every community in America. When FDR consulted with his top financial advisors and bankers, however, he was advised to shut all the ‘scrip’ systems down, which he did. Instead, he borrowed large amounts of money from bankers, at interest, and used it to pay for the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the other work-creation projects, which collectively came to be known as the ‘New Deal.’ So ended the last widespread use of a local currency within the U.S.

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DennisTate said:

I am of the belief that each large church in North America should discuss the printing up of their own church currency unit such as has been done by a group of socially active citizens in Calgary, Canada with their CalgaryDollars.ca

Here is a good article on how important local currencies were during the Great Depression:


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Surely everybody who reads this article would agree that we have many advantages over the people who lived in Worgl, Austria during the Great Depression?!

If they can do it....why can't we?

Here in Canada the only problem that we have to watch out for is that we must pay the same rate of taxation if we earn Calgary Dollars as if we had earned Canadian dollars....so we have to keep our level of bartering at the point where our tax bill doesn't get too high.....but if we volunteered our time and our church earned a local currency from another church....it could be amazing where this could lead!

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yeshuaslavejeff said:

No need to laugh at it,,, just realize it is not Biblical, it is not God's Plan, and it is of evil sinful wicked flesh or demonic origin (i.e. it is hasatan's type of plan, which btw God does laugh at the plans of the wicked) ....
Even the ideas of relatively wicked and relatively righteous are not found in His Word, apparently, and indicate a source of the original idea as not being righteous nor right nor good to think about at all.

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