Stock Market

Trump Hails Stock Market Whose Rise is a Rejection of Him

Posted by on October 12, 2020 at 1:21 pm. NO Comments :

The manic frenzy that is displayed daily on the Twitter feed of Donald Trump is especially heated this Monday morning. He posted 75 tweets before 3:00pm in what may break his all time record of 123 tweets in single day. It’s impossible to say at this point whether the reason for this crazed output is his acute panic at the prospect of a landslide electoral loss to Joe Biden in three weeks, or the side effects of the drugs he’s been taking to treat his coronavirus. Or maybe a catastrophic combination of both.

Donald Trump, Stock Market Crash

The flurry of frantic and anxious outbursts that make up this tweetstorm run the gamut of Trump’s paranoid psychoses. For instance, Trump tweeted about a “Big spike in the China Plague in Europe,” in an attempt to compare it to the U.S., which he apparently doesn’t know is suffering from a similar or worse spike. He tweeted that New York and California are “going to hell.” Which is an odd campaign strategy of maligning the biggest states in the country that you’re supposedly leading. He tweeted that he is “winning BIG in all of the polls that matter.” Which I guess are the polls of boaters and maskless bar patrons. But he wasn’t through.

Trump also tweeted that “We will have Healthcare which is FAR BETTER than ObamaCare, at a FAR LOWER COST.” Which is documented in the invisible plan that he has been saying for three years that he will release in two weeks. And as an indication of what is most important to him, Trump posted ten tweets in support of Eric Early, who running a laughably futile campaign against Rep. Adam Schiff of California. Schiff may be the member of Congress Trump despises most after Speaker Nancy Pelosi. That’s more tweets than he posted in support of his Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett.

However, perhaps the most enthusiastic of Trump’s twittery concerned the performance of the stock market. He managed to get something right for once by noting that it was going up. However, he has no idea why it’s doing so. He, of course, thinks he’s responsible for it. And in a way he is, but not in the way he thinks.

Trump has been shouting from the White House rooftop for weeks that a Biden presidency will thrust the nation into a depression. Let’s just set aside the fact that we are already in a recession during the Trump presidency. Trump’s tweets are cheering on the market’s rise along with fear mongering about a collapse if Biden is elected. Never mind that Obama and Biden presided over a much more robust economic recovery and market advance than Trump has. The five tweets he posted on this subject were evidence of nothing more than Trump’s ignorance and ego. For example…

What Trump is missing is that the rise in the market is occurring simultaneously to the rise in Biden’s polling against Trump. The greater the margin of Biden’s lead, the higher the market goes. That’s the market indicating that it is looking forward to a Biden victory. The market is always representative of the future. And this isn’t just a coincidental observation. According to Goldman Sachs, “A Democratic sweep would mean faster economic recovery.”

“…’a blue wave would likely prompt us to upgrade our forecasts,’ Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius wrote in a Monday report.”

Hatzius went on to note that a blue wave would increase the likelihood of a coronavirus relief bill. He also noted the positive impact of Biden’s spending plans on infrastructure, climate, health care and education. But that isn’t all. Moody’s also weighed in saying that…

“Moody’s Analytics found that Biden’s economic proposals, if enacted, would create 7.4 million more jobs than would Trump’s. The economy would return to full employment in the second half of 2022, nearly two years earlier than under Trump’s plan, Moody’s said.”

Of course, none of this is a guarantee that the market will continue going straight up. There are distinct warning signs for a down turn. The market is already over-valued in some analysts opinions. And the overweighting of just a few stocks (more than 20% of the S&P) that uncharacteristically benefit from the current conditions (Apple: 7.3%, Microsoft: 5.9%, Amazon: 5.3%, Google: 2.4%, and Facebook: 2.4%) don’t tell the market’s whole story. And as anyone with the slightest inkling of knowledge is aware (which leaves Trump out), the stock market is not the economy. Most Americans do not own stocks.

There is, however, one thing that can’t be denied. If Trump’s fear mongering were correct, the market would have been on a downward trend for at least the past couple of months. Clearly the financial institutions that drive the market don’t agree with Trump. The fact that it’s strong and rising is a testament to the market’s confidence in, and preference for, a Biden presidency.

So keep that in mind when voting. And tell your friends and family. It is Trump who has proven to be an economic imbecile who declared bankruptcy on six separate occasions, lost billions of dollars during the boom times, and currently owes more than $400 billion to – well, we don’t know who because he refuses to release his tax returns. That by itself is reason enough to remove Trump from office. And also to investigate him for criminal activity and crimes against the state.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Whines that ‘Rich Guys’ Profit From the Stock Market that He’s Manipulating

Posted by on May 13, 2020 at 1:25 pm. NO Comments :

The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic is a human tragedy of epic proportions. And due to Donald Trump’s negligence, incompetence, and sometimes deliberate mishandling of the federal government’s response, more than 83,000 Americans have lost their their lives. Current estimates indicate that the number of fatalities is going to increase to 147,000 by August.

Donald Trump, Stock Market

However, this isn’t just a public health crisis. The nation’s economy has taken a historic hit as the country is virtually shutdown in order to mitigate the spread of the virus. More than 20 million people have lost their jobs, and small businesses are struggling to remain viable. The stock market is currently in bear market territory, down about 23% from its recent highs.

The mitigation efforts have been working, but because Trump is worried more about the economy and his floundering reelection prospects than he is about human lives, he is pushing to force people back into dangerous workplaces far too soon. And in the midst of all of this, Trump took time away from his Fox News viewing on Wednesday morning to post a tweet whining about people who are making money trading on the volatile swings in the stock market:

Seriously? There is so much wrong in that brief twantrum that it demands further analysis. First of all, who are these “so-called ‘rich guys'” Trump is complaining about? Wouldn’t they actually be the sort of people that he associates with on a regular basis? And what’s wrong with traders placing bets on the market, which is exactly what they always do, pandemic or not?

What’s more, Trump’s complaint is glaringly incoherent. He begins by implying that there’s something wrong with people trying to drive stock prices down in order to make a profit. This is his way of attempting to make excuses for the recent declines. But then he immediately reverses course, noting that the same people are also driving prices up. That would make their efforts a wash. So what the heck is his problem? He is, as usual, not making any sense. But he thinks this blather will persuade the dimwits who follow him that there’s nothing wrong with the economy.

This sort of trading is common on Wall Street. And there isn’t anything illegal about it. Every stock transaction is a “bet” and experienced traders know that. If Trump were truly interested in unlawful activities, he might have said something about the Trump-fluffing GOP senators – Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler – who sold off millions of dollars of stocks that were plainly at risk before the markets collapsed. Those sales were also after they both had attended hearings that outlined the coming pandemic risks, but turned around and told their constituents that everything was fine. They are currently being investigated by the Senate ethics committee.

In addition to that, Trump and his family were also invested in pharmaceutical companies that stood to gain from the pandemic’s turmoil. Among those investments was the company that manufactures hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug that Trump was irresponsibly promoting as a treatment for the coronavirus.

Trump’s interest in the markets has been ongoing throughout this crisis. He has taken a personal interest in seeking to prop up the markets artificially by pressuring the Federal Reserve Board to lower interests rates. But for some reason he failed to mention that in doing so, he would save millions of dollars on the outstanding variable interest rate loans he owes to foreign banks. Trump was also surely concerned about the fact that revenues for his own real estate holdings were down 30% since the pandemic began. That may explain in part why he’s so anxious to get everyone back to work.

So if anyone was trying to manipulate the markets, it was Trump. His coercion of the Fed and his relentless and misguided happy-talk were all designed to increase his own wealth and to juice his reelection campaign. In light of that, his question as to whether the actions of traders was “barely legal” takes on a whole new meaning. Most likely, Barely Legal was the just the name of the last magazine the Trump subscribed to.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Why is Trump So Desperate to ‘Reopen’ the Country? His Net Worth Has Dropped 30%

Posted by on April 5, 2020 at 2:02 pm. 8 Comments :

For at least two months Donald Trump negligently ignored the mortal threat that COVID-19 (coronavirus) posed to the people of the United States and the world. He mocked its lethal consequences, dismissed its capacity to spread, and lied to the American people when he said that it was “under control” and would soon go away by itself.

Trump Baby on Cash Pile

Compounding his lies at the outset of the outbreak, Trump later tried to boast that he always took the threat seriously and even called it a pandemic before others were doing so. Not only is that brazenly false, it would actually be even more damning if true. It would mean that he recognized the danger early on, but failed to act.

Eventually it became impossible for Trump to pretend that there wasn’t a severe public health hazard on his hands. So he assembled a Coronavirus Task Force to address the problem, but then decided against letting them do their job. He hijacked the daily briefings and turned them into campaign events for his 2020 reelection. And our reality TV game show president assessed their value by tracking the Nielsen ratings, as if they were an indicator of his popularity. They most definitely are not.

As the fallout from the pandemic escalated, Trump noticed that it was having a negative effect on the economy. And that’s when his concern kicked into high gear. On March 4, just as the stock market began it’s historic slide, Trump floated a proposal to “reopen” the country by Easter, a date that no public health expert would endorse. By March 24, the day after the stock market had completed a decline of 11,000 points from its recent high only a month prior, he began using reckless and callous rhetoric about not allowing “the cure to be worse than the problem.” That suggests that he believes a weak economy is worse than tens of thousands of people dying.

Trump repeatedly insisted that the nation must return to business as usual within a timeline that was grossly unrealistic. The question is: Why was Trump so adamant about this? Did he really have compassion for the working people of the country who were being subjected to such brutal hardship? Was he worried about the future health of the corporations that support much of the economic infrastructure of the nation?

Doubtful. Trump has never expressed any such sympathies during his term as president or his decades in public life prior to that. It’s unlikely he had some sort of personal epiphany that altered his life-long character, or lack thereof. No, the real reason is the one that is the most obvious.

It is now being reported that Trump’s personal net worth has declined by about a billion dollars. That would represent approximately 30% of his fortune as estimated by Forbes. It’s difficult to provide a precise estimate because after three years as President, Trump still refuses to release his taxes. There must be something truly hideous in there.

Trump’s assets are predominantly in commercial and residential real estate, hotel licensing and management, and golf courses. All of these businesses are especially vulnerable to the consumer pullback caused by the “stay at home” orders issued in at least 42 states in order to “flatten the curve” of the pandemic spread. So it isn’t just coincidence that Trump’s concern crept up just as the economy slumped down. As reported…

“It’s unusual for Trump to lose money because of his presidency. He’s used his position to promote his hotels and resorts, even going so far as to try to host the next G7 summit at the Trump National Doral golf resort near Miami. The Secret Service often stays on Trump properties when the president is on vacation, paying room and board directly to the president’s private business, sometimes as much as $650 per night for a single room. Of course, the hotel industry has been one of the hardest hit by the global economic downturn—including the Trumps’ DC hotel, which had a steady revenue stream from foreign governments looking to curry favor with the American president, and was up for sale up until the current economic crisis.”

Prior to the emergence of the coronavirus, Trump frequently tried to pressure the Federal Reserve Board to lower interest rates. His stated intent was that it would give a boost to the economy. The truth is that Trump was only seeking to reduce his own fiscal burden. He is carrying more than $350 million dollars in variable rate loans from Deutsche Bank and other lenders. So he benefits significantly when rates go down. He also hoped that such a move would juice the stock market which would aid his reelection prospects. But when the Fed did cut rates, the market nosedived, recognizing that it was a sign of trouble ahead in the form of a recession or worse. Trump’s flagrantly self-serving pestering of the Fed backfired.

So whenever you hear Trump whine about how “our country wasn’t built to be shut down” – a bizarre comment that implies that other countries were built for that – remember that Trump’s concern was only triggered with a conspicuous connection to his own financial welfare. The American people do need the country to return to its former stability and growth as quickly as possible. But first they need to ensure the health of themselves, their families, and their communities. And Trump’s rush to superficially attend to the economy, at the expense of public health, must be seen for what it is: unvarnished, self-serving greed.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

HOLY CRIPE: Fox News Blames Stock Market Plunge On – Bernie Sanders?

Posted by on February 24, 2020 at 12:15 pm. 3 Comments :

American investors woke up Monday morning to see a devastating sell off on Wall Street and other markets around the world. The uncontested view of economic experts is that the sharp decline resulted from growing concerns about the coronavirus (Covid-19) as it continues to spread. Factories in China are shut down. Trade is being curtailed. International festivals and conferences have been canceled. The global financial impact is undeniable.

Donald Trump, Stock Market

Well, undeniable everywhere but on Fox News, where good news is always due to the heavenly inspired works of Donald Trump, and bad news can only be the work of Satan’s minions in the Democratic Party. Fox News host Charles Payne, in what may be the most idiotic economic analysis of the year to date, sought to carry out that doctrine during an in interview as the markets were in the process of imploding (video below). He was asked by the allegedly “straight news” anchor, Ed Henry, this brazenly leading question:

“Is the sell off all coronavirus, or is this the first time the markets are open since Bernie Sanders took control of the Democratic battle?”

The audacity that it takes to allow that question to slither through one’s lips is impressive. It certainly is the first time the markets have been open since the Nevada primary caucus, but that has nothing to do with the sell off on Wall Street. How would that explain the sell off in markets around the world where Sanders is not running for anything? What’s more, Sanders’ win in Nevada is hardly “taking control” (a loaded term in itself) of the Democratic battle. It is just the third contest out of fifty (plus territories), and represents a small percentage of votes cast and delegates acquired.

Payne’s response to Henry’s stridently biased question was that “The Bernie factor is finally rearing its head in the stock market.” He then rattled off a list of companies in the health sector that are suffering big losses. Of course health-related companies would naturally be hurt by news of an impending global pandemic. And that harm would be throughout the world, just as it is currently playing out. But that obvious fact was incomprehensible to Payne and his Fox colleagues. Their deliberately dishonest banter continued with the following exchange:

Sandra Smith: Can you directly attribute that loss to Bernie Sanders?
Payne: Absolutely…there’s absolutely no doubt. [later adding] This is the first time, I think, that Wall Street has taken Bernie Sanders very seriously.

“Absolutely no doubt”? Neither Wall Street, nor anyone else, should take Fox News seriously. Payne is not just speculating on a possible contributing factor. He is insisting that Wall Street’s alleged fear of Bernie Sanders is undeniably the only cause of the worst drop in the Dow since December of 2018. That’s not just glaringly false, it’s painfully stupid and grossly irresponsible. Ironically, throughout this segment the chyron on Fox News read: “STOCK MARKET SELLOFF ON CORONAVIRUS CONCERNS”

Payne is supposed to be one of Fox’s financial experts (his own program is on the Fox Business Network), although like everyone else at State TV, he weaves his right-wing opinions into all of his comments. He recently made the bizarre assertion that “Wall Street Loves Donald Trump,” as if that was a positive endorsement for his reelection. And like many of the men on Fox, Payne has been charged with sexual assault. Fox settled a lawsuit with Scottie Nell Hughes, a former contributor, who had accused Payne of rape.

The political biases of Fox News are not news to anyone. And with the advent of Donald Trump, they have become even more conspicuously partisan. But this ludicrous attack on Sanders is grotesquely out of bounds, even for Fox. They are fully indoctrinated into the Trump Cult. And nothing better demonstrates that then this asinine attempt to blame Sanders for a pandemic-driven market decline that he clearly had nothing to do with. There is apparently a virus spreading through the Fox News studios that is turning all their brains into oatmeal.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

BULL SCHITT! Trump Resorts to Infantile Profanities to Sell His Lies About the Economy

Posted by on November 16, 2019 at 1:46 pm. 6 Comments :

Remember when Donald Trump was elected and pundits speculated about when his raw and rancid campaign persona would transition into something more presidential? Yeah, that was great. The naivete of the media persisted for months, and some stubborn holdouts are still expecting Trump to pivot from his bombastic bullying to something closer to a statesman. Good luck with that.


On Saturday morning’s regularly scheduled Trump Tweetstorm, the Crybaby-in-Chief unleashed a typically dishonest tirade. It was plainly intended to thrust the nation into fear of the Democrats’ efforts to hold Trump accountable for his cornucopia of impeachable crimes. Nevermind that a majority of the nation favor his impeachment and removal from office, even according to polling by Fox News. The recent impeachment hearings in Congress have clearly flustered the President, as members of his own administration are testifying to his illegal conduct. Consequently, he is reaching for far flung fantasies to frighten his glassy-eyed disciples into propping up his rapidly deflating ego. He tweeted that…

“Pelosi & Schitt”? Is anyone else concerned that our president has the emotional maturity of six year old who was dropped on his head ten or twenty times? And for those who might try to excuse this as an unfortunate typo, be aware that this isn’t the first time that the Trumplet has sunk to this level of asininity. He is merely expressing himself at the level that is natural for him. And coincidentally, it’s the same level as his cult worshiping followers.

As for his stock market prognostications, Trump could not be farther from reality. Consistent with his recent relentless lying about the economy, his fear mongering that the market would crash and thrust the nation into a depression if he were impeached has no factual basis. Particularly because all the evidence shows that the stock markets have performed better during Democratic administrations than when Republicans were in charge.

What’s more, Trump’s motivations with regard to the economy are uniquely personal. All he is looking for is a short-term stimulative effect on the stock market. That’s partly because he wants to artificially boost the market in advance of the 2020 presidential election to enhance his own reelection prospects. But Trump is also a failed businessman who has racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, much of it with variable-rate loans. When he took office in 2017 he was the most indebted president in history, owing more than $350 million to Deutsche Bank alone. That debt is expensive to service. But when interest rates go down, as he has been prodding the Fed to do, so do the costs of servicing that debt, and he saves literally millions of dollars.

To be sure, there is a recession on the horizon. It is unarguably the Trump Recession that is the result of his reckless policies. Among them, there was the tax scam reform bill that cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy while throwing crumbs to everyone else. That has produced the biggest annual deficit in the nation’s history, reaching into the trillions for the first time. That, in turn, has resulted in the highest federal debt ever, exceeding $22 trillion. Other signs of the recession include…

  • Equity outflows into the relative safety of bonds
  • Interest rate cuts that are generally done when the economy is weak
  • Trump’s tariffs causing bankruptcies and job losses
  • Tepid GDP growth of 1.9% (well short of the 4% to 6% Trump promised)
  • Manufacturing declines
  • Weak wage growth
  • The highest income inequality ever

So Trump’s boasting of the Dow hitting 28,000 doesn’t really mean much. In fact, it’s really just a Wall Street head fake that occurs prior to almost every downturn. Institutions are buying equities to drive prices up so that they can sell high into the rising market. When they do the rest of the market – and most citizen investors – will be stuck holding stocks worth half as much. Smart investors are getting out now, as indicated by the inflows into bonds noted above.

No one can predict with precision when the recession will hit. But when it does you can rest assured that Trump will blame it on Democrats. That’s true whether he’s impeached or not. His story changes to fit the circumstances. In recent weeks Trump has tweeted that his impeachment is a drag on the stock market:

However, now that the impeachment hearings have gone public and are much bigger news than ever, he’s celebrating new highs in the market. So that must mean that impeachment is boosting the markets. Right? Well, only if you expect Trump’s babbling to be honest or consistent or logical. And if you do, you’re probably already headed for a severe depression.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump is Panic-Tweeting Fox News Denials of Imminent Threat of the Trump Recession

Posted by on August 14, 2019 at 12:13 pm. 3 Comments :

In case you haven’t noticed, Donald Trump has failed at nearly everything he promised to accomplish. There is no wall on the southern border. HIllary Clinton has not been locked up. He has no denuclearization deals with Iran or North Korea, no trade deals with China or Mexico or the EU, no infrastructure bill, and Obamacare has neither been repealed nor replaced.

Donald Trump, Stock Market

The one key issue that Trump has been clinging to for two years is his argument that the economy is booming. Let’s set aside for the moment the fact that that isn’t true. Many critical indicators such as wage growth and job creation are lagging (and trailing Obama’s record). But Trump has been using the stock market as his evidence of a strong economy. That, of course, demonstrates his ignorance of economics. The stock market only reflects the value of equities that are mainly traded by giant financial institutions. It is not a gauge of the economies health.

However, now even Trump’s misapplied measuring stick is biting him in the asinine analyses he’s been peddling. On Wednesday the market has fallen off a cliff, and specifically due to Trump’s ill-considered policies on trade and taxes. And the site of this downturn has thrown him into a tizzy of excuse-making. If he doesn’t have this to brag about, he’s got nothing but his racism left to hold his cult together.

Consequently, Trump unleashed a series of tweets intended to shore up the catastrophic financial news of the day. And they leaned heavily on his top economic advisers at the White House – er, I mean at Fox News. Trump’s Shadow Cabinet was busily papering over the bitter truth that everyone can plainly see. And Trump embraced it frantically for fear of having to take any responsibility. Rest assured that he will greedily steal credit for the economic boom times from 2010 to 2017, during the Obama administration, but blame Obama for the crash of 2019.

The tweetstorm began with a familiar Trump whine: “The Fed has got to do something! The Fed is the Central Bank of the United States, not the Central Bank of the World.” Indeed. And the Fed is doing its job. But that job is not to save the stock market. It is to manage inflation and to promote monetary and financial system stability. Trump only wants the Fed to cut interest rates for his own selfish interests. First, he hopes that it would artificially stimulate further over-exuberance in the stock market, boosting his reelection prospects. And secondly, it would reduce his own interest payments on over $350 million dollars of outstanding variable interest loans.

The next tweet was another Fox News reference wherein they blindly praised Trump’s tariffs saying that “you can’t tell me that it has hurt our economy.” That’s obviously true. Not the part that tariffs haven’t hurt the economy (they have), but the part where he says you can’t tell him that. And you can’t tell Trump that (or anything) either. It’s like yelling a non-existent border wall. He will continue to tell the same lies, even after he’s been proven to have lied.

Trump then tweeted that “Tremendous amounts of money pouring into the United States,” because “People want safety!” That completely contradicts the movement in the markets. Then Trump quote-tweeted another Fox flunky who said that Fed Chair Jay Powell was making mistakes by, among other things, being “data dependant.” Because why would anyone want to rely on actual data to make important decisions? That’s goes against the core philosophy of the Trump Doctrine of Alternative Facts.

LATE ADDITION: Trump squeezed out another couple tweets on this subject in the afternoon. One declared defensively, and without foundation, that “We are winning, big time, against China,” before deciding that “China is not our problem … Our problem is with the Fed.” That led into the second tweet that lashed out at “clueless Jay Powell” and the “CRAZY INVERTED YIELD CURVE!” This was not only a display of Trump’s wildly unbalanced mental state, but further evidence that he doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

So as the stock market descends, Trump grasps for support from his State TV fluffers who he knows will always prop him up, no matter how ludicrous and desperately they have to revise reality. There is no coherent argument that justifies Trump’s failures but, fortunately for him, Fox News is adept at spinning lies for any occasion. And the glassy-eyed Deplorables will believe anything that Dear Leader tells them.

Trump’s Ludicrous Demand to ‘Feel’ the Stock Market Proves He’s an Economic Imbecile

Posted by on December 24, 2018 at 11:33 am. 2 Comments :

One of Donald Trump’s favorite subjects to brag about is the performance of the stock market since he became president. He has proclaimed himself to be a brilliant economist who knows more than anyone else, despite his six (at least) bankruptcies. And he promised that he would achieve historic gains through the sheer strength of his will. But given the recent turn of events in the markets, Trump is resorting to his customary back-up raving: Blaming anyone and everyone other than himself for the bad news.

Donald Trump, Stock Market

What’s happening in the markets was perfectly predictable. In fact, it was predicted here on News Corpse at the beginning of this year in a warning to Trump not to rest his laurels on the market’s performance:

“It’s always dangerous to rely on stock market performance to validate the economy. There are too many factors that can shift investor sentiment. It is a fluid indicator that could reverse course tomorrow. Indeed, many stock analysts regard the market’s current position as overvalued. These analysts are predicting a “correction” that could send the markets down significantly. Furthermore, the market does not reflect the economic realities of most Americans. Other economic indicators (i.e. wages) are showing only small advances. The beneficiaries of stock gains are predominantly the usual suspects of the GOP (Greedy One Percent).”

Trump chose to ignore these warnings. Instead he ventured off on a campaign of idiotic initiatives intended to make cosmetic improvements in the state of the economy. That failed bigly. Trump’s agenda was centered on three actions that informed economists knew wouldn’t work.

First there was his Tax Scam, a reform bill that provided most of its benefits to corporations and the wealthy.But it was also an unnecessary stimulus to an economy that was already overheated and it produced new debt in excess of $1.5 trillion, which makes investors nervous about rising inflation and interest rates.

When an economic stimulus is used at a time when it isn’t needed, that means that it won’t be available in the future when it might actually be useful. That led to investors looking forward to a future market correction, or even a bear market, and the government would have no tools to respond or mitigate the damage.

Second, Trump declared a trade war on pretty much the rest of the civilized world. His attacks extended to old foes/competitors like China, but also to friends and trading partners like Mexico and Canada. The result was a weakening of economic alliances and cooperative trade relations. Trump’s revamped NAFTA is a perfect example of a trade agreement that did nothing but alienate our allies. It also harmed the economies of those nations, which made them less able to consume American goods and services.

Finally, Trump’s tariffs accomplished only the price inflation of imported products into the U.S. It means that Americans would have to pay more for the same goods because the tariff penalties would be added to the cost for consumers. That is not the way to boost economic activity domestically, or exports to foreign markets who are responding with retaliatory tariffs of their own.

All of this has resulted in a stock market that is suffering its worst December since the Great Depression. It’s down 2,000 points this week, and 5,000 this quarter. As noted above, this was predictable. But Trump chose to lie to the American people about his divine ability to push the market ever upward. That is already causing some serious harm to the people who were foolish enough to believe him.

In the meantime, Trump is tweeting incoherently about “feeling” the market. In one tweet he literally said to “Feel the market, don’t just go by meaningless numbers,” and in another he said “The only problem our economy has is the Fed. They don’t have a feel for the Market.” Really? The market is one of the most data-driven institutions in the public sphere. And while it can sometimes react emotionally, it always settles into what the numbers tell us.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump’s childishly simplistic understanding of the market (and everything else) is reminiscent of Stephen Colbert’s admonition to “go by the gut” rather than the brain. Which Trump agreed with saying that “My gut tells me more than anybody’s brain.” No, really, that’s exactly what he said:

A Tweet For Everything: What Trump Said About the Stock Market Just Six Months Ago

Posted by on June 25, 2018 at 3:53 pm. 1 Comments :

The current President of the United States has shown repeatedly that he is an unstable and ill-informed custodian of the nation’s resources. Donald Trump has a tenuous grip on the complexities of economics, and reacts out of panic and vengeance more than careful study and reason. As a result the country has been burdened with policies that work against the interests of its citizens.

Donald Trump, Stock Market

About six months ago Trump joined with the Republican Congress to pass a tax reform bill that was widely criticized as a giveaway to the wealthy that would balloon the national debt by trillions of dollars. Trump celebrated the legislative victory at a White House ceremony where he reduced it to flagrantly personal terms saying that “It’s always a lot of fun when you win.” It didn’t get a single vote from Democrats.

Republicans, however, were swelling with pride, despite the unfavorable public response shown in most polls. The Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, said confidently that “When people see their paychecks getting bigger in February […] that’s going to change its popularity, I am convinced.” The GOP Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, gloated that “My view of this is, if we can’t sell this to the American people, we ought to go into another line of work.”

I hope he’s dusted off his resume, because the latest polling shows that the Trump Tax Scam is less popular now than ever. It currently has about thirty-four percent approval from the American people. Which isn’t surprising considering the fact that it was crafted to benefit corporations and the rich. Which makes this Trump tweet from December 14, 2017, all the more ironic and sad:

Well, that rosy scenario has wilted. Trump told reporters when the bill passed that “the results will speak for themselves.” Six months later it’s clear that his prediction is true, in the worst possible way. Workers have not received the benefits they were promised. Businesses are taking their profits and putting them into stock buybacks that benefit the executives. Harley Davidson announced today that is the latest company to be moving some of their operations (and jobs) out of the country.

On top of that, the stock market suffered a serious decline on Monday with the Dow Jones down 328 points (1.33%), and the Nasdaq down 160 points (2.09%). The market is negative by almost two percent year-to-date, and is down over 500 points since the tax bill was signed. Even more troubling is that it is off about 2,300 points from its high in January. You don’t hear Trump talking about any of that.

Short term movement in the market is never a good indicator of trends over time. But Trump’s boasting about the market’s performance has blown up in his face because he doesn’t understand it in even the simplest terms. And the trading in the wake of the tax bill, Trump’s punitive tariffs, and associated red flags in bonds and overseas markets are telling us a cautionary tale. At some point the markets are going to reverse course, as they always do, and it may come sooner rather than later. But Trump’s mismanagement of the economy has left us with few and/or weak tools with which to respond. The smart money is taking protective measures, and so should we all.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.