Where Spider-Man and Captain America Intern: The White House Economic Team:
The 2019 Economic Report of the President [pdf] runs 705 pages and features chapters on “expanding labor force opportunities” and “ensuring a balanced financial regulatory landscape.” It also claims to be written by Batman.
For the second straight year, the group of economists that do regression analyses and forecast annual growth rates for President Trump has slipped a straight-out-of-Comic-Con Easter egg into its annual report.
[...] The list of Council of Economic Advisers interns on Page 624 of the report includes Steve Rogers (a.k.a. Captain America), Peter Parker (Spider-Man) and Bruce Wayne (Batman). There’s also Aunt May (Peter Parker’s guardian; apparently there are no anti-nepotism rules at the council), J. T. Hutt (a superfan abbreviation for Jabba the Hutt, the “Star Wars” gangster who hangs a frozen Han Solo on his wall), the actor John Cleese, Kathryn Janeway (a “Star Trek” captain) and someone called John Snow
[...] Also, who is this “John Snow” they speak of? Is he the former Treasury secretary under President George W. Bush? An actual intern? Or did the council, in a blow to its nerd cred, misspell the name of the “Game of Thrones” hero Jon Snow?
The New York Times asked a council spokeswoman to clarify. “Have a sense of humor!” she replied.
If the White House hires superheroes as interns, what hope does a mere mortal have of getting a job?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday March 24 2019, @07:35PM (16 children)
I would be willing to accept economic advise from Batman. He would be no better or worse than any other economist. Even better, hire some accountants. At least they can do something useful.
Also, Game of Thrones is too mainstream to have any geek cred. If the interns included Col. Hunter Gathers I would be much more impressed.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RandomFactor on Sunday March 24 2019, @08:31PM
I would have been majorly impressed with the appropriate Catch-22 reference myself.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday March 24 2019, @09:12PM (12 children)
Given his economic success on the side (moonlighting as a successful billionaire with a very profitable company) and the vast information systems at his disposal, I think you couldn't do much better.
But Captain America and Spiderman not so much.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday March 24 2019, @10:02PM (11 children)
Oh, that's right I forgot how Mr. Batman inherited everything he has. That actually makes him sound like an economist.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 24 2019, @10:03PM (10 children)
Because every rich heir is as hypercompetent as Batman is.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 24 2019, @10:17PM (1 child)
Inheritance aside, competence is yet to be convincingly demonstrated.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 24 2019, @10:46PM
Aside from growing the business larger while running as an anti-crime vigilante on an international scale?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday March 24 2019, @10:21PM (7 children)
In my limited experience of the trustafarian in the wild, they are of ornamental value only.
Just like the economist.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 24 2019, @10:46PM (6 children)
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday March 24 2019, @10:56PM (5 children)
Well, he has them beat in that he's fictional and they have to live in the hum-drum of reality, but yes he is a superhero so of course he has them beat.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 24 2019, @11:42PM (3 children)
Batman being fictional didn't bother you a few posts ago when you considered him for economic advice. What changed?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday March 25 2019, @12:16AM (2 children)
Nothing changed you troll. It was a joke, as you're well aware.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 25 2019, @03:26AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday March 25 2019, @07:17AM
Pardon?
(Score: 2) by DeVilla on Friday March 29 2019, @04:23AM
Yep. I don't think anyone is going to tell Bruce Wayne "Always be yourself, unless you can be an accountant. Then be an accountant."
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday March 25 2019, @02:41PM (1 child)
Not sure about taking financial advice from Hunter, but I definitely would accept the counsel of Dr. Henry Killinger. Would definitely like to see him take out a copy of the report from his magic murder bag.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday March 25 2019, @06:34PM
Oh yes, that's a much better choice.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 24 2019, @08:06PM
Good response.
(Score: 2, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday March 24 2019, @09:11PM (3 children)
I'm becoming very famous. And White House is becoming very famous. Because we're getting the word out on Social Media, I have over 100 million Friends & Followers on that. And I'm one of the biggest people on Social Media. Even bigger than PewDiePie. This is something that's almost a full time job for me. For Dan it's a full time job. And for Brad, very big part of his job. Very big.
For years, my predecessors had a White House website. And no one knew, no one looked at it. And if someone looked, they wished they hadn't. Because it was very ugly -- Drupal. But, also very expensive. That one was costing our long suffering Taxpayer $6 million a year. I said to my cyber guys, this is our website now, it has to be one of the most beautiful ones in the entire world. They put in all new digital, called WordPress. Looks so incredible and I'm getting many compliments about our "pages." Many compliments. While we save 60% of the money.
Lot of money and we're leaving that in the pockets of American business -- big and small. So the small ones can get bigger and the big ones can get overwhelmingly huge. We dropped the top Corporate Tax by 13 percentage points, big drop. Very big drop and our companies love it. Look what happened to Jeff/Amazon(Bozo). He's the richest "person" ever -- because of me. I don't even like the guy but I did him the biggest favor anyone's done in his entire life. And I did it, very proudly, with our House & Senate G.O.P. We call it, Tax Cuts & Jobs Act.
And so many Americans are much richer than they were on that incredible night with the maps. Do you remember that one? Republicans are red and Democrats are blue. And that map was so red it was unbelievable. And they didn't know what to say. The American "people" know. They know. They're saying THANK YOU. For the privilege, and the opportunity, to vote for me. Because, they were a millionaire. Now they're a billionaire. Something nobody thought would happen, it happened.
Another thing nobody thought would happen, we have so many folks wanting to come to our Country from Norway. From Sweden, Denmark -- many places where, unfortunately they tried Socialism. Very high taxes and their "people" are doing the math. Seeing they can live better and pay a lot less tax in U.S.A. Buy a nice condo in Florida -- Trump Towers Miami for example. Or N.Y.C. People don't know this, all the beaches in New York are topless. The ladies that don't want to go topless don't have to. But, the ones that want to, can -- and believe me, they do. Something you don't see a lot in Norway. Horrible weather there, we're famous for our magnificent weather -- I'm working on making it PERFECTO. We're seeing tremendous numbers of immigrants from Northern Europe and it's actually becoming a big problem. Because my Customs & Immigration, my U.S.C.I.S., is having trouble keeping up with all those applications. Takes a long time because we need to do Extreme Vetting on these "people." They're coming from places with Socialism and with a lot of Radical Islam, or Islamism. Our economy is ROARING amazingly, we need immigration because frankly, there aren't enough Americans to do all the jobs we're creating. But we don't want to let the wrong people in. Look what happened in New Zealand.
Our G.D.P., our Gross National, is doing magnificently. G.D.P. growth during the four quarters of 2018 was the fastest since 2005. 3.1 G.D.P. for the year, best number in 14 years! This Administration is the first on record to have experienced economic growth that meets or exceeds its own forecasts in each of its first two years in office. Growth is beating market expectations. And we have a great looking article about it on our WordPress. whitehouse.gov/articles/2018-banner-year-u-s-economy [whitehouse.gov]
I'm a New Yorker, and a very successful New Yorker at that. So the Corrupt Failing Fake News New York Times naturally hates me. But even they are coming around. They're coming around. Because outside New York, I'm very popular. One of the most popular "people" ever. And they must be saying to themselves, wow, look at Donald J. Trump now! They see my Twitter, my Instagram, my Facebook, YouTube. And I'm over 100 million. Fantastic, right? They see my WordPress, a website nobody had heard about. They've heard about it now. And it's becoming one of the most famous websites in the entire world. Where we have so many gorgeous reports. Very impressive and New York Times, can you tell they're impressed? Believe me, it shows. The regression analysis -- trust me, there's no regression, folks. We're moving forward very quickly, very strongly. Cutting burdensome regulations. Dropping taxes massively -- and getting more money than ever for our great, and very brave soldiers. The guys & gals that just ELIMINATED I.S.I.S. from Syria. That are getting ready to eliminate Socialism from our Hemisphere. Big fight and nobody thought we could win that one. J.F.K. (RIP!!) couldn't win it. Bush Jr. couldn't win it -- Chavez. I'm the only guy that can win it.
And by the way, we always always have job openings at the White House. And we have the best internships. For our amazing superheros and for regular folks. And in a way, everybody on my White House staff is a hero -- even more than John McCain (RIP!!). Everybody that works here leaves with a very inspiring story. A story of great service. To me, and to America. It's called putting America First. It's what we do. MAGA!!! apply.whitehouse.gov [whitehouse.gov]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday March 24 2019, @09:35PM (2 children)
For the past couple decades comic book and TV superheroes (even Captain America) have been depicted as undocumented socialist radical transsexuals of color out to promote unfettered immigration of third-world filth and kill the white man to distribute his riches amongst the welfare queens.
I would have expected this of the Obama administration hiring radical interns, but not you.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday March 24 2019, @10:53PM
In my White House there's no such thing as too ethnic or too womanly. And I broke the glass ceiling for non-black women of color in our government.
Seema Verma from Virginia, I put her in charge of Medicare & Medicaid. We're looking at, can we do the expansion of that? But before we expand, we're looking into the waste. The Fraud. And, the abuse. Seema just did a very strong report on that. Very important Audit. Louisiana, we've been having big problems with them and we found $85 million in fraud there. Where they were paying the medical for folks that weren't eligible. Known as, the Ineligibles. They changed their cyber, put in brand new cyber and hopefully it's going to be a lot more accurate. Seema's keeping an eye on them, looking at that one very closely. And if they don't clean up their act, she's going to move very strongly and take that money back.
Like we're doing with the money for the Crooked Failed California Bullet Train to Nowhere. Was supposed to be San Francisco to San Diego. You get on the train in San Diego, you hand the conductor $500 or $1,000, take a little nap and 5 minutes later you're getting off in San Francisco. That was the promise. They changed it, now it's Madera to Shafter. Beautiful little farming towns and we love our farmers, but this is a $77 billion Infrastructure Project, it needs to hook up the biggest cities or it's very foolish.
And we're not going to have foolish projects like that anymore, believe me. I hired Elaine Chao from Taiwan, she's doing transportation, Secretary of Transportation. Very smart Infrastructure lady and we're building the Infrastructure much faster than anybody imagined. I've seen a highway recently in a certain state, I won't mention its name, it's 17 years. Took 17 years to build that one because of all the regulations. And we're getting it to where we can build that same highway, it's not going to be 17 years anymore. It's going to be 17 days and it's going to be a much better highway. For much less money.
Nikki Haley from S.C., she was my Ambassador to U.N., to United Nation. She did a great job with that one. Big help with the Syria situation and we're seeing great results there now. We just announced, no more I.S.I.S. in Syria, very proud of that one. Nikki is pursuing some other opportunities and we wish her well. We wish her the best. Thank you, Nikki!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @12:43AM
the welfare queens are the hillbillies on trucks right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 24 2019, @09:37PM
If someone tried to refuse paying for them to do this they would get thrown in jail. How hilarious!