Slow news day. CNBC offers this:
Trump is on his way to an easy win in 2020, according to Moody’s accurate election model. Moody's does three different models, and comes up with a Trump win each time. Strong wins. These models have been wrong only once--in 2016. Woops! Here are the bullet points:
1) President Donald Trump will win re-election easily in 2020 if the economy holds up, modeling by Moody’s Analytics shows.
2) “If voters were to vote primarily on the basis of their pocketbooks, the president would steamroll the competition,” the report states.
3) Three models show Trump getting at least 289 electoral votes and as many as 351, assuming average turnout.
4) The Moody’s models have been backtested to 1980 and were correct each time — except in 2016, when it indicated Clinton would win a narrow victory.
UPDATE: Sean Davis succinctly states what's pretty obvious by now:
If the Moody election models prove correct, does Obamacare offer mental health counselling for those affected by his victory?
ReplyDeleteDoes O-care cover splody head?
ReplyDeleteI've never approved of the way Trump takes so much credit for the economy. Yes, his regulatory policies are a vast improvement over the fool who preceded him. They've had an effect. And yes, he should take some credit, especially for the tax cut.
ReplyDeleteBut, oh, the spending! Which is not him per se, it's the Dems. But Trump is no fiscal conservative.
My concern is if there is a recession, he is because of his preening on the upside going to have to take the blame for the downside.
Better in the first instance for him to have been a bit more modest on the upside.
The real issue, or the way I see it, is that the economy is held together with sealing wax. We remain in the throes of a credit fueled expansion that has no historical forebear (I don't think).
Von Mises tells us what's coming.
I can only hope: after the election.
As far as I can tell--and I won't pretend to have any economic expertise--the hope is that there was previously so much slack in the economy that the jiggered stats were hiding that there's still room for expansion.
Delete"Predictions are hard, especially about the future."
DeleteBut, Trump, more modest? Nnaaahh, not likely.
Tom S.
"Predictions are hard, especially about the future."
DeleteThat's been my experience. But it hasn't stopped me.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/20/no-predict/
Moody's analytics is run by Mark Zandi, who has possibly the worst record as a forecaster or prognosticator extant. He's basically an entertaining showman--who is apparently a bit jealous of the notoriety that Nate Silver started getting a decade or more ago. (Silver said Hillary's win in 2016 was a lock.)
ReplyDeleteBack in 2008, Zandi went so far as to pronounce the date the housing crisis would end. (If only it were a housing crisis, not a banking and leveraged finance crisis.)
This isn't to say Moody's Analytics is wrong--it's to say that this is an exercise in attention-seeking marketing promotion whose true value is suspect to the point of useless. Even blind chipmunks find an acorn--but we don't waste time discussing the effectiveness of blind chipmunks.
Whenever I hear “he should be more modest; more humble” bit, my mind flashes to Dickens’s Uriah Heep, who was always ever so ‘umble…
ReplyDeleteNo, thanks...