Financial Times (September 28)
“Another tediously pointless, economically debilitating and teeth-gratingly stupid US government shutdown is looming. Goldman Sachs now reckons that there is now a 90 per cent chance it starts this Sunday.”
Tags: 90%, Debilitating, Goldman Sachs, Government, Looming, Pointless, Shutdown, Stupid, Sunday, U.S.
Reuters (September 15)
“A railway hiatus is the last thing America needs.” Fortunately, “the narrowly averted shutdown of U.S. rail services should avoid widespread economic damage.” Even though trucks “carry the majority of freight in U.S. domestic shipments, rail still accounts for about $700 billion worth of annual shipments.”
Tags: $700 billion, Annual shipments, Averted, Domestic shipments, Economic damage, Freight, Rail services, Railway, Shutdown, Trucks, U.S.
Bloomberg (October 2)
For an entire trading day, a “piece of hardware took down Japan’s $6-trillion stock market,” marking the longest shutdown “since the exchange switched to a fully electronic trading system in 1999.” Besides drawing criticism, the malfunction “shone a spotlight on a lesser-discussed vulnerability in the world’s financial plumbing — not software or security risks but the danger when one of hundreds of pieces of hardware that make up a trading system decides to give up the ghost.”
Tags: Danger, Financial plumbing, Hardware, Japan, Malfunction, Security risks, Shutdown, Software, Stock market, Trading, TSE, Vulnerability
Wall Street Journal (April 5)
“At least one-quarter of the U.S. economy has suddenly gone idle amid the coronavirus pandemic… an unprecedented shutdown of commerce that economists say has never occurred on such a wide scale.”
Tags: Commerce, Coronavirus, Economy, Idle, Pandemic, Quarter, Scale, Shutdown, U.S., Unprecedented
Chicago Tribune (April 5)
“Trump is terrible at making deals. His threat to close the U.S.-Mexico border offers the latest example…. Trump tried to get Mexico to pay for his cherished wall and failed. He tried to get Congress to provide $5.7 billion to construct it and failed despite putting the country through a 35-day government shutdown.” The President “is good at making demands and issuing threats, but those are useful only if you know how to bargain and compromise. He fails at making deals because he has never learned that in negotiations, as in war, the other side gets a vote.”
Tags: Border, Compromise, Demands, Failed, Making deals, Mexico, Negotiations, Shutdown, Terrible, Threats, Trump, U.S., Wall
Wall Street Journal (January 7)
“Trump can’t afford to lose.” He has the “biggest incentive” to dig into his position with “more to lose than the Democrats do. This shutdown was neither necessary nor inevitable…. It was the president who delivered the ultimatum: Fund the wall, he demanded, or he’d be “’proud to shut down the government for border security.’” Without an “outright victory,” Trump will lose “a fight that he picked. He’d end the shutdown weaker than he started. And some of his most ardent supporters could well turn on him for selling them out on his signature issue, affecting his re-election in 2020.” Still, “none of this guarantees a Trump victory.”
Wall Street Journal (January 1)
“With the partial government shutdown now into its second week, Donald Trump appears to have no good exit strategy. That’s not surprising since he had no entry strategy.”
Tags: Entry strategy, Exit strategy, Government, Shutdown, Trump
Washington Examiner (December 20)
“It’s beginning to look a lot like a government shutdown.” With little to motivate either side to budge, “looking at where things stand ahead of a midnight Friday deadline, all signs are pointing to a partial government shutdown.”
Tags: Deadline, Government, Motivate, Shutdown, U.S.
New York Times (January 21)
The Government shutdown spotlights Donald Trump’s major shortcoming. The current President proved “woefully inept at making tough deals…. Trump is an unrepentant, unremitting liar. That makes deal-making impossible. His word is meaningless and his policy principles are murky. He is mercurial and inconsistent. This may well have worked in business, to keep people off kilter, but it won’t work in politics.”
Tags: Deal-making, Government, Inconsistent, Inept, Liar, Meaningless, Mercurial, Shortcoming, Shutdown, Trump, Unrepentant
Washington Post (October 17)
“At almost literally the eleventh hour, Congress has approved legislation that will end a costly 16-day partial government shutdown and avert the potentially greater disaster of a default on federal obligations.” Unfortunately, the deal “buys only a short interval of peace.” When that period expires early next year, “it is all too possible that Congress will fail to agree and will deliver the country to the brink of another shutdown or default.”
Tags: Congress, Default, Government, Legislation, Obligations, Peace, Shutdown, U.S.
