Financing the Green New Deal

Sister Ellen—Keep on preaching the truth as demonstrated by the successful social actions of North Dakota's Non-Partisan League, the KfW Bank of Germany, and FDR's RFC. The BIGGEST single impediment to a more enlightened approach to the oncoming catastrophe that is climate change is the fact that we allow our monetary system to be run by thieves.

The Financial Secret Behind Germany’s Green Energy Revolution

Ellen Brown | January 26, 2019

The “Green New Deal” endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D.-N.Y., and more than 40 other House members has been criticized as imposing a too-heavy burden on the rich and upper-middle-class taxpayers who will have to pay for it. However, taxing the rich is not what the Green New Deal resolution proposes. It says funding would come primarily from certain public agencies, including the U.S. Federal Reserve and “a new public bank or system of regional and specialized public banks.”

Funding through the Federal Reserve may be controversial, but establishing a national public infrastructure and development bank should be a no-brainer. The real question is why we don’t already have one, as do China, Germany and other countries that are running circles around us in infrastructure development. Many European, Asian and Latin American countries have their own national development banks, as well as belong to bilateral or multinational development institutions that are jointly owned by multiple governments. Unlike the U.S. Federal Reserve, which considers itself “independent” of government, national development banks are wholly owned by their governments and carry out public development policies.

China not only has its own China Infrastructure Bank but has established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which counts many Asian and Middle Eastern countries in its membership, including Australia, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia. Both banks are helping to fund China’s trillion-dollar “One Belt One Road” infrastructure initiative. China is so far ahead of the United States in building infrastructure that Dan Slane, a former adviser on President Donald Trump’s transition team, has warned, “If we don’t get our act together very soon, we should all be brushing up on our Mandarin.”

And a child shall lead them

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
Isaiah 11:6 King James Version (KJV)

Most of the scientists I rely on for climate change news are old codgers like myself. They are folks who have devoted their lives to finding the most accurate information their precision instruments can reveal. Great people but there is a bit of "whew, we aren't going to have to deal with the end game ourselves—but folks, it will be really ugly" in their approach. So to read about the young Swedish activist who believes that she has most of her life ahead of her and doesn't want fools to screw up her possibilities, is like breath of fresh air.

I have boldfaced the parts I believe are especially perceptive. There may be hope for the next generation, after all. It is the job of us old codgers to give the young the best roadmap possible for what has, and has not, worked in the past when it comes to social change. And yes, I take this as a mandate. Go Greta!

What happens with the new round of sanctions aimed at Russia

Regular readers already know the party line around here is that sanctions have proved very beneficial to the Russian economy because they cut off the country from the worst of the neoliberal economic advice that shows up with integration into the global Washington Consensus institutions. The economics of self-sufficiency has again produced superior results.

One of the details about Russia I learned in 1972 on a tour of Leningrad was that she had within her borders commercial supplies of every element on the periodic table. When I heard that, the thought crossed my mind "if this country could get rid of their economic crackpots, it would be easily the richest country on earth."

Alexander Mercouris presents an informed argument for why Russia is well-prepared for another round of USA sanctions.

Producer v Predator—a battle of Titans

The news that Elon Musk wants to take Tesla private has provided us with a further confirmation of Veblen's class theories. Musk is such an excellent example of a Producer Class Superstar, we should probably be selling a Musk bobble-head doll around here. And he has just pulled off a production miracle. And honestly, he looks terrible—120 hour workweeks will do this to a now middle-aged man. And so he looks up from that effort and discovers that a bunch of Predators are trying to suck out the energy from Tesla by shorting the stock.

My pioneer forebears discovered this grim reality while trying to farm in Minnesota. It was like going on a camping trip to hell. With small children in tow. Winters featuring -30° temps, summers with incredible heat and swarms of biting insects, the problems of breeding animals and sowing crops, and 100 other similar annoyances. And when you had survived that, you had to deal with crazy shipping fees by a railroad monopoly, crooked grain grading systems, usurious money-lenders, and the corrupt politicians bought by those thieves. The producing classes had to organize politically. In Wisconsin it was LaFollette and the Progressive Republicans, in North Dakota is was the Non-Partisan League, and here in Minnesota, it was the Farmer-Labor Party. In fact, nearly all the prairie farm states had  political movements to protect the interests of the Producing classes.

Musk vs the Wall Street crooks will be a titanic showdown. Wall Street is on at least a 45-year winning streak. Musk has been taunting the shorts for several years. Musk does not have a political movement backing him—in fact what he does know about the Producer-Predator conflicts seem to be self-taught. But Musk has a LOT going for him. He has that ultimate Producer skill—vision and the organizational abilities to turn his visions into reality. That skill is so rare that people who possess it attract followers. And Musk has a bunch of them. Does he have enough to take Tesla private at $420 per share? We will see.

NPL in North Dakota (cont.)

Last Thanksgiving, Tony produced a short post on the Nonpartisan League. Think of this as an update. I happen to think the history of the NPL is important because it shows how effective a movement can be if they have a workable agenda. Instead of running against parties and personalities, an agenda-driven party wins because they are FOR something. Even better, an agenda usually outlives even the best supporters. And the State Bank of North Dakota is arguably the best political idea Progressives ever had—the signal accomplishment that lives on to this day.

Protectionism flickers to life

There are times when the conventional disgust with "protectionism" rises to the level of the outrage over pedophilia. Which is strange when you think about it. From Ben Franklin to Abe Lincoln to H. Ross Perot, there have been strong supporters of many of the ideas that the high tariff folks believed in so strongly. When a country is developing a sophisticated manufacturing base, the protectionists usually triumph. It is only when a country gets rich and imperial do the "free" traders win the day. The traders are a fraction of overall economic activity but when the dominant economic strategy favor traders over manufacturing, they get to write the rules in their favor.

Hudson is pretty good on trade issues. He's a ways from Lincoln but he's way better than your typical cable business talking head. So I thought he might celebrate the fact that Trump has at least moved the needle away from the free trade extremism as practiced since the late 1970s. Well, I was wrong. Hudson instead faults Trump for not having a coherent trade policy to back his Twitter outbursts on trade. Fair enough.

Me, I am happy that someone is reopening the Free Trade debate—which has been pretty dormant since the Battle for Seattle in 1999. Free trade has been such an unmitigated disaster there is barely time to count the ways. As someone who comes from the Naomi Klein wing of the DFL when it comes to trade issues, I find it a bit odd to hear some of our best arguments come from the mouth of Trump. I only hope he understands that by even questioning the free trade establishment, he has committed an unspeakable heresy and the the race is on among those who author papers glorifying the conventional economic wisdom to see who can denounce this sin with the greatest fervor.

Even the Paris 2015 climate accords won't solve the problem

Robert Hunziker is perhaps the politician that best understands climate change—and has for some time. He is running for a seat in Washington's 8th Congressional District. I certainly hope he wins.

Whenever I stumble across someone who has a profound and deep understanding of a subject, I am immediately curious as to how he came to be that way. I am especially curious if that person is young. His campaign literature sort of explains his enlightened worldview. Turns out that there CAN be some significant advantages to learning a society from the bottom up. So here's to someone who has had enough exposure to Producing Class virtue to understand that no matter how enlightened a Leisure Class actor, that person cannot build the sustainable future.

Infrastructure funding

Whenever I discuss possible solutions to climate change, it isn't long before someone demands, "How much will this cost??!! And how do you propose we pay for it?" These are in fact excellent questions because the MAIN reason why this civilization-threatening problem doesn't get seriously addressed is the sticker shock that occurs whenever someone gives a realistic estimate for a fix.

Then there's Ellen Brown who reminds us that the problem of not enough money should be the easiest problem to solve of all.  Then she gives us historical examples of why democratic money creation suggest the perfect solutions to the funding problems. Unfortunately, folks who saw the world like Ellen does mostly disappeared by the early 1950s so she has become an almost lone voice for a sane monetary and banking organization.

Which is all the more reason why she should be read.

The Non-Partisan League dramatized

Based on the diaries of a former Non-Partisan League organizer, 94 yo Henry Martinson, Northern Lights is an exquisite examination of the hardships and challenges of organizing arguably USA’s most successful economically progressive movement. Filmed in NW North Dakota by John Hanson in 1978, it would win the Caméra d’Or award (best first feature) at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival.

Only four of the actors in this film were professional. The rest were locals. As someone who once lived less than 50 miles from where this film was shot, I can assure everyone that they are very authentic. One of my favorite films—EVAH!

(Sorry, they took down the linked video. Apparently there's a reason a copy of this film is so hard to find.)

This ain't no new fight - The Nonpartisan League, 1919

1919 cover of the Nonpartisan League’s newspaper, The Nonpartisan Leader, portraying “organized farmers and workers” standing tall against big business interests. (Wikimedia Commons).

Something I can give thanks for is the many episodes of history Jon has brought to my attention. One of the most relevant for our time, with our desperate need to reform and revitalize the political system of the USA, is the Nonpartisan League of the upper plains states. The NPL gained political control of North Dakota in the 1910s, and created a lasting legacy which includes the only state owned bank in the country; the largest flour mill in the country, also state owned; and the best rate of internet access in the country.

This evening I found that some scans of the League's newspaper, The Nonpartisan Leader, on Google Books. I thought it would be a wonderful Thanksgiving post, which will hopefully encourage more people to read about the League. A number of pages of Robert Morlan's excellent book, Political Prairie Fire, are also available on Google Books. In July 2016, Bill Moyers' website featured the League in an article entitled, How to Make a Political Revolution, which includes an important description of how the League's legacy is still improving the lives of people today.

The League was heavily slandered, so be discerning as you research more.

The Saker nails it

The Saker has spent a great deal of time in the last decade writing about what it is like to be on the receiving end of USA / Western economic "wisdom"—the various elements of the wholesale destruction of people's lives. I am especially grateful for his insights because I am personally a victim of the neoliberal madness. I lost a business that I had invested every cent I could lay my hands on plus a seeming infinity of hard work to the depression of 1981-82—one deliberately caused by Paul Volcker and his idea that 21% prime interest rates couldn't possibly do structural damage to the real economy. He probably knew this move would hurt real people—he just didn't give a shit. After all, what is a "great" man except someone perfectly willing to sacrifice real people because someone they respect intellectually will assure him that destroying the lives of the peons is understandable and reasonable collateral damage.

Compared to the Russians and what the Harvard gang did to their economy, I got off pretty easy. The disastrous economics were largely the same but the difference was that USA was a lot richer to start with compared to USSR which was still recovering from the monumental damage inflicted by the invading Germans during WW II.

I knew it was especially bad for the Russians. Even so, Saker's description below puts the carnage is especially human terms. And he explains why the Russians are so grateful that Putin put some serious brakes on the neoliberal destruction of his country. Which also explains why the elites in USA are so furious with him. Suddenly, the baseless and mindless Russia-bashing seems to sound almost rational coming from the country's Predator classes. Putin is hated because he partially foiled one of the greatest thefts in history.

Of course, that is also why V. Putin is so beloved. Those constituting the collateral damage classes tend to admire anyone who makes their lives possible again.

America's Russia-gate Obsession - Sign of a Failing Nation

Can the people pushing Russia-gate possibly believe their own BS?? Was anyone so asleep during junior high math that they could believe that a $200,000 Facebook ad buy could swing an election where billions were spent on political persuasion? But the even bigger question is, How much damage can be done by the exposure of such massive stupidity on the international stage? While USA is clearly still the biggest bully in the neighborhood as measured by its willingness to spend so much money on weapons systems and soldiers in uniform, there are a LOT of ways to exercise power. Unfortunately for USA, these alternate methods rely heavily on the ability to convince the rest of the world that competent people are in charge. Between Donald Trump's inability to organize an effective government and the Democrats willingness to push the absurd storylines of Russia-gate, the illusion that USA is run by wise and virtuous people is taking massive hits below the waterline.

The imperial apparatus looks like it is in the process of collapse. The examples of this collapse are numerous but for me, the biggest sign of the loss of imperial power is the overdue attack on the petro-dollar.  So long as petroleum is traded in dollars, the USA can print as many dollars as it wants without fear of inflation because the world is effectively on an "oil standard." With the petro-dollar, multi-billion monthly merchandise trade deficits are essentially harmless. The petro-dollar advantage is so great that oil countries that attempted to opt out of the system—like Libya and Iraq—soon found themselves being destroyed by USA military aggression.

So now the Chinese and Russia have banded together to make war on the petro-dollar. Russia has a massive resource base while China has become an industrial superpower. Both have nukes and neither likes being pushed around. But probably the deciding factor in their decision to move against the petro-dollar now are the obvious demonstrations that USA is being run by badly-educated, misinformed, wildly-incompetent, fools. Ken Galbraith used to say that successful revolutions are usually a matter of someone kicking in a rotten door. Hard to imagine a door more rotten than one composed of Trump and those buffoons who are pushing the hoax that is Russia-Gate.

Tucker Carlson destroys Max Boot

Tucker Carlson used to drive me into fits of rage. So now he has a gig at Fox News and suddenly, he has almost become a voice of reason. Yesterday, (12 JUL 17) he has Max Boot on his show and proceeded to tear him a new one on the subject of foreign relations in the age of Trump. Whatever feelings I may have had for Carlson (an arrogant, overprivileged rich kid with a career path greased by well-connected parents, for example) they pale in comparison to my loathing of Max Boot, one of the nastier house neocons over at the Council on Foreign Relations whose lies have caused the deaths of thousands (if not millions) of people. As John Lennon once wrote:

There is room at the top they keep telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be just like the folks on the hill

A Working Class Hero

After Carlson got done with him, Boot was NOT smiling—even though I am certain he smiles a lot for his employers over at CFR.

Sovereign Debt Jubilee?

Whenever someone suggest that we fund a Green "New Deal" (to use the phrase of Green Party candidate Jill Stein) a howl goes up of "you must be crazy-don't you understand the national debt is already in the $20 trillion range?" And unfortunately, that pretty much ends the discussion. And so we keep doing nothing because paying the interest on the national debt is SO much more important than doing something meaningful to save the ecosystems that make human life possible. Massive death by compound interest, anyone?

The power of creditors to force people to do very unpleasant things is really quite amazing from cultural intimidation, to evictions, to debtors prisons, to various methods of physical torture employed by loan sharks—and all to enforce a "reality" that exists mostly as a line of bookkeeping. Think about it—we have been prevented from doing things that are utterly necessary to the survival of the species because of "information" that exists as an electronic charge in the memory of some computer. This reality is so fundamentally insane that its no wonder the creditor classes must resort to their bag of cultural and physical violence to enforce their claims on your life.

The intimidation must be total because the nature of debt can be changed with almost tiny revisions in law and practice. Here Ellen Brown outlines how Japan is in the process of wiping out half of its national debts with almost invisible changes to the way their central bank operates and asks, "Why cannot we do the same thing?"

How the radical left shaped the New Deal

Last Sunday there were dueling diaries that reached the recommended list on DailyKos: History Tells Us The Extreme Left Cannot Beat Trump and What History Really Tells Us About Defeating Trump.

I did not agree with either one.

I am not a historian, but I have read a lot of American history. I am, after all, a frigging book dealer, so I should read a lot of books, right? And I don’t think it is conceit on my part, as I shuffle past the three-score mark in this mortal veil, to assert that I know a bit more about American history than a lot of other people appear to know.

For example, neither one of the two dueling diaries mentioned what, to my mind, is the obvious role played in American history by the leftist populist movements of the late 1800s. Nor did either of the diarists discuss the crucial role of the radical left in shaping the New Deal.

I was going to write a comment outlining some of what I knew, mostly by cutting and pasting from a diary I posted in December 2015, but realized there was not enough detail there about what I wanted to write about. So I went traipsing down various corridors of The Tubez, and came upon a truly wonderful article by Van Gosse, a history professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn. Professor Gosse co-founded Historians Against the War in 2003, and focuses on the African American struggle for full citizenship since the American Revolution, the New Left as a "movement of movements," and the Cold War in Latin America. The article by Gosse I found is entitled, What the New Deal Accomplished, and I will excerpt liberally (ha-ha) from it.

Even better, Professor Gosse has agreed to be my first subject of an interview-by-email, an approach I’ve been cogitating for quite a while now.

In What the New Deal Accomplished, Professor Gosse writes:

Three movements stand out as directly influencing the key New Deal programs. First was the radical movement of the unemployed which surfaced in early 1930. Through "hunger marches," constant lobbying and local protest, it forced the issue of relief for the unemployed onto the national policy agenda. Second was the movement to provide pensions for the aged, led by a California doctor named Townsend, which made the idea of universally-available government pensions so popular that Democrats adopted it. Finally, and most important, was the movement for industrial unionism embodied in a new labor federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

Professor Gosse then proceeds to examine each of these three movements, beginning with the unemployed.

Where to go—Frank on the Democrats

Tony noted a few posts back that we have not been especially enthusiastic about covering the election of 2016.  To which I plead guilty.

• One of the things that most impressed / saddened me about this Presidential election is how amazingly trivial and irrelevant these things are. The old saying that "if elections actually changed anything, they would be illegal" seemed especially appropriate this time around. My favorite subject is climate change. Ms. Clinton promised some scolding and few dimes tossed at the problem while Trump actually claims to believe this is all a hoax. Good Lord—What a terrible choice.
• I find the fact that the Clintons and their gang of thieves managed to steal the party of those who sacrificed a LOT to make it the Party of the People—and then sold it to Wall Street—to be utterly depressing.  My contempt for these crooks is absolutely total.
• Trump probably did not really believe he was going to win. He had no party infrastructure or book of principles around which to organize.  So we really have no idea what kind of government he will form. He has 4000 policy jobs to fill and it is highly unlikely that he even knows 4000 people that interested in politics. Some appointments look pretty damn awful.  On the other hand, his appointment of Terry Branstad as ambassador to China looks inspired (Mike Mansfield or Walter Mondale as ambassadors to Japan, anyone?) It is probably good to wait and see what sort of government the man actually forms before passing judgement.
• The Democratic Party I once knew was a party of ideas. Now we see that the party elites—the same people who managed to blow an easily winnable election—are now advising that we become a party of disruption and civil disobedience. Well screw that! We should be getting up every morning thinking about the agenda we would advance if we were in power. And if our ideas aren't a whole lot better than neoliberalism and neocolonialism, we should shut up and work hard until they are!

William Black on Krugman

The economists from UMKC are on a tear.  As well they should be.  They have been beavering away in almost total obscurity keeping the light of Institutionalism alive.  It's kind of a lonely pursuit but it has one overwhelming advantage—you are correct so much more often than the convention-wisdom economists (who are almost always wrong.) And the folks who got it so disasterously wrong in 2008 haven't altered their worldviews one iota so they are still disasterously wrong.

Today, we see Bill Black give Paul Krugman a royal smackdown. Krugman has a lot of fans so taking him on entails some risk.  But the fact remains that while Krugman is easily the most enlightened economist who is allowed to write for the New York Times, he is a thoroughly conventional thinker. And in his recent role as defender of Clintonism, he was forced to sound even more like a shill for Wall Street than normal. So Black is facing a high hanging curve ball here because Institutionalists live to take on anyone willing to embarrass themselves by spouting the neoliberal idiocies.

Even so, I am pretty sure that folks like Black and Hudson are NOT getting ahead of themselves. The neoliberals are shameless.  They do not change their POV just because they are wrong.  So I must assume that most of the time, the heterodox economists at UMKC must content themselves with celebrating their small victories at their small parties.

Rethinking the economy with Hudson and Brown

Micheal Hudson is on a roll.  In this video, he explains that mainstream economics is not nearly so sub-moronic as it looks.  Rather these folks are doing their fine work to provide an intellectual gloss to activities that actually harm the economy by claiming that the pirates are really earning their crazy paychecks.  Economics once called these financial extractions "unearned income."  (I remember those lectures...sigh)  He also does a fine job of explaining what happens to any economist who dares challenge the dominant narrative.

Published on Nov 2, 2016

With every major financial recovery since the second World War beginning in a place of greater debt than the one before it, how could we not have foreseen the financial crisis of 2008? In this episode of Meet the Renegades, economics professor and author, Michael Hudson argues we did.

How could an economy that created so much debt also save the banks rather than the economy itself, following the 2008 financial crisis? Michael discusses the phenomenon of debt inflation and how the economic curriculum should change.

"If you're teaching economics, you should begin with the relationship between finance and the economy, between the build up of debt and the ability to pay."

Michael discusses the 'Great Moderation', a common misrepresentation of a healthy economy in which job productivity was increasing, labor complacency was at an all-time low was a complete myth. Michael argues that 'traumatized' workers were too in debt to fight for better working conditions leading up to the 2008 financial crisis and how this reflects neo-classical ideas.

Michael offers solutions - urging the importance of writing down the debt and keeping basic services in the public sector, ridding the economy of financial tumors through a proper tax policy based upon the this public sector model.

Here Ms. Brown explains how Trump, if he actually knew the history of monetary practice, could make good on his promise to rebuild the nation's infrastructure.  In addition, he gets to appoint at least five new Fed Governors so all of this is well within the realm of the possible.  The only thing stopping Trump from becoming the greatest builder in USA history is that he doesn't seem to have a clue about this history.  He should do some homework.  Hiring Ms. Brown to explain this to him would also work.

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek on the USA election

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek has taken considerable thought, time, and energy to try to understand the craziness we called an election.  The following clip is truly remarkable.  I cannot recommend it more highly.  It runs about 20 minutes.

This is followed by St. Clair's trenchant observations on the incompetence and hubris it required for the Democrats to lose to a 70-year old reality-TV star with enough scandalous baggage to sink a container ship.  Of course, it can be argued that the Democrats have been losing their way since Jimmy Carter deregulated the airline industry or appointed Paul (21%-prime) Volcker to head the Federal Reserve in the 1970s. Hillary Clinton is just the logical conclusion of this crazed and twisted journey—a peak idiot, if you please.

I probably won't write much more about this election.  I have spent entirely too much of my life trying to help the Democratic Party make better and more informed choices.  Obviously, I have not influenced much as Hillary Clinton represents almost everything I believe foolish, absurd, and criminal. I hold the somewhat naive opinion that the purpose of government is to organize the necessary tasks that are too difficult, expensive, and complex for individuals to accomplish on their own.  Ms. Clinton and her posse apparently believe the purpose of government is to provide them with cushy ego-satisfying jobs and beautiful offices in Washington D.C. There seem to be quite a few of us who utterly despise that type.  But quite honestly, I didn't think there were enough of Hillary's victims to pull themselves off the mat in a final and probably futile gesture of keeping her out of the White House. Worse, the guy who will be heading for 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is not exactly Mr. Deep either.

So back to refining strategies for building a sustainable future.  If I did not have that problem to think about, I would have most certainly lost the will to live by now.  Building is the only truly satisfying activity of my life and thinking about the world that could be created is enough to help me ignore the industrial-strength idiocy that we have just witnessed.

There are people who are justifiably thrilled by a Trump victory

One of the more baleful effects of "American Exceptionalism" it that even some pretty good people really could not care less what happens to the "collateral damage" of the Empire.  They don't care because they don't know.  For example, because I have a strong historical interest in what happened to USSR as the result of the German invasion in 1941, I have read many accounts of the incredibly fierce fighting that happened in the Donbass.  If it weren't for the rich mineral deposits of the region, the area would probably still be depopulated because so many were killed.  In the annals of human struggle, there are few that top the struggles of Donbass.  It was so devastated that many monuments to the defenders weren't built until the 1960s.

I am 67 years old and have met exactly no one who has ever expressed interest in this story.  So when the people of Donbass had to suffer yet one more effort at ethic cleansing, this time at the hands of home-grown Nazis who happened to have power as the result of a USA-sponsored and organized coup in the Ukraine, no one I knew had any idea of the magnitude of the tragedy. Because Victoria Nuland, one of Hillary Clinton's favorites, had her fingerprints all over the coup, there is an understandable outbreak of joy in the Donbass over the election of Donald Trump (see below.) For many, there is now a better possibility that people of the east Ukraine will be able to watch their children grow up. No small matter, that.

Not everyone is as thrilled as the people of Donbass over the election of Trump.  Personally, I will be happy if he is a marginal improvement over Reagan or the Shrub and do not expect even that.  But a victory by Clinton would probably have triggered clinical depression.  The idea that someone so corrupt could have seized the political party my parents and grandparents struggled to build, and sold it to Wall Street crooks, was a reality I could not bear. So even though my expectations for a Trump administration are essentially zero, I am willing to give him a chance because a President Hillary would have been a predictable disaster.