This pandemic has dramatically increased the importance of very specific qualities, like clear communication and acting preemptively, which happen to not be Trump's strong suit.

To name an example of better leadership by him, look at how he handled the Iran situation in December/January: He managed to withstand the pressure from within his administration and certain circles in Washington to get dragged into a larger war with Iran. Instead, he opted for a measured, surgical drone strikie taking out a supremely important figure in Soleimani, which is a success in and of itself. He made the right call in betting on the Iranians not having the resources and strength to retaliate meaningfully against his assassination. And it sent a clear message to Iran to not mess with the US too much.

Or take the Kavanaugh situation: it would have been far easier to replace him with a dfferent nominee, and there reportedly was some pressure within Republican circles on Capitol Hill behind the scenes. Instead, Trump decided to stick with him. In the end, he got the nomination he wanted and also made a huge stand for the principle of "innocent until proven guilty", a huge stand against the idea that even uncorroborated accusations of sexual misconduct shall be enough to ruin a man's career.

Bull. Fucking. Shit.

These qualities are always important in a leader, not only because you don't get to choose when disasters happen and therefore your leader needs to be capable of these things regardless of if you are currently in a disaster, but he's also fucked up a ton of things in his administration already by not having these things. For example, we now don't get nearly as much military information from Israel or Great Britain as we used to because Trump has both directly leaked secrets to Putin and because he's tweeted things like satellite pictures that revealed top secret military capabilities that our enemies didn't know we had.

You're praising his leadership for carrying out a drone strike instead of getting into a war with Iran? Really? That's the bare minimum of military competence. Or are you one of the "Hillary will definitely have us go to war with Russia" types as well?

As for Kavanaugh, he really should have replaced Kavanaugh. Not because of any accusations, but because he did not display a temperament befitting the highest court in the land during the hearings about the subject. The supreme court is probably the one office we should hold to an even higher standard than the presidency.




Honestly, this post is just a great example of exactly what I was saying. You go out of your way to find accomplishments for Trump and downplay his poor qualities.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Apr 25 2020 09:07pm

The world would fucking be on fire if Biden was at the helm. You have no perspective let alone a grasp on reality.

And you're a diabetic incel.

According to reporting the Soleimani strike was an extreme option presented by the Pentagon with the intent to sway Trump towards other choices. I don't have strong feelings about the decision either way, but it wasn't some brilliant example of leadership. And there's always voices in Washington calling for war with Iran... but most Republicans and Democrats don't want that.

HW Bush didn't abandon Clarence Thomas after a credible accusation of wrongdoing. The "Republicans don't fight" talking point is one of the silliest justifications for Trump, because it's just not true. Republicans under Obama fought him all the time. It's more of a visceral need that Trump supporters have for the Dear Leader to be cruel and nasty to the opposition. See Adam Serwer's "The Cruelty Is The Point" article.

Trump's not a leader... he's a campaigner, pundit, and entertainer.

Very good piece by The Economist on coronavirus GDP forecasts for European countries. It's behind a paywall so I've summarised it here:

https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2020/04/16/how-deep-will-downturns-in-rich-countries-be







US, UK and Germany look in decent shape and may only lose 6% of GDP this year, compared to 8 - 8.5% for poorer European states.

it would be impressive if this is attained, given how far-reaching the shutdown has been worldwide

Good summary, thanks for posting it!

I'm not so sure that Germany is in decent shape. We have a large sector of small- and medium-size firms, and our economy is very export-oriented. If the whole world economy is going through a downturn all at once, this should hurt our export companies a ton. Also, fiscal stimulus only goes so far to stabilize demand in foreign markets. Like... if the US or UK government take a lot of debt to stablize their domestic consumption, this has a stronger stabilizing effect on the respective economies than if the German government did the same, simply because a lot of our most important markets wont be able to avoid the bottom falling out.



My personal theory is that the economic curve of the crisis will end up looking like a mirrored square root sign: a sharp recession, followed by a sharp recovery which, however, doesnt get back up to the pre-crisis level.




If the lockdowns can be loosened and the economies start running again over the course of May and June, then a lot of the missed production and consumption can be caught up. The bigger problem that I see is that tourism, sports, entertainment and live event industries will keep hurting a ton, and the longer-lasting loss of income and economic activity in these sectors will dampen the entire economy through falling demand/disposable incomes.

In the intermediate term, in 2-3 years, we might run into a massive issue with public debt and inflation.

Most of the models are operating under the assumption that Q1 is low growth +0.5%, Q2 -30%, then Q3 and Q4 pick up again significantly but not quite back to pre corona levels. Annualised that puts GDP growth in the -6-8% range for most countries, but the IMF are already saying those estimates could be optimistic