On Monday morning, CNBC’s Joe Kernen chatted with the network’s Jim Cramer about the overnight U-turn in US equity futures.
The rather stark reversal came courtesy of Donald Trump, who falsely claimed that the Chinese phoned Bob Lighthizer on Sunday evening.
“China called last night our top trade people and said ‘let’s get back to the table’”, the US president told reporters in France.
Subsequently, Global Times editor Hu Xijin suggested Trump was fabricating the call and Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang delivered what amounted to an official denial shortly after Hu’s tweet.
To be clear, you needn’t take China’s word for it. It was obvious that Trump wanted to engineer a market bounce after Friday’s rout. The S&P came into Monday riding a four-week losing streak and the president sent a desperate-sounding tweet on Sunday evening reminding everyone that “My Stock Market gains must be judged from the day after the Election, November 9, 2016”.
Trump spoke about the purported phone call with Chinese officials around 3:00 AM ET. By that time, Asian equities had suffered large losses and although FX markets had calmed down a bit following ostensibly soothing remarks from Vice Premier Liu He (remarks Trump seized on to try and further placate nervous investors) the offshore yuan was still sitting at a record low.
But even if it wasn’t obvious that Trump was desperate to rescue the very markets that he himself tanked on Friday, there’s another very good reason to believe that the phone call with Chinese officials never took place: Namely that this administration lies habitually and more often than not, gets caught in those lies.
One person who isn’t bothered by any of this is CNBC’s Cramer, who, during his meeting of the minds with Kernen, said “it really doesn’t matter if he’s lying if he decides to withhold the tariff increases then that’s – that’s – much different from what we thought about on Friday”.
(If the video does not load, please refresh your page – CNBC article here)
“The predominance of coverage this morning is that the President is lying. I’m not willing to say that he’s lying”, Cramer remarked. “We can doubt him, but in the end we’re doubting a guy that didn’t want the market to crash”.
Of course, if Trump “didn’t want the market to crash”, he might have avoided any number of the bombastic tweets that have either directly caused or, at the least, contributed to market crashes over the past year, with Friday’s absurd screed being just the latest example.
But more importantly, what matters is that the White House is now so notorious for lying to the public that Americans are predisposed to believing Beijing over the president. And, as even Kernen admitted later in the same chat with Cramer, there’s a reason for that. There’s only so many times people can be lied to before they eventually decide that anybody is more trustworthy, even, in this case, the Communist party.
So, CNBC will forgive Americans if they just go ahead and write Cramer off the same way they write off the president, because Jim just told a national audience that “it really doesn’t matter” if the leader of the free world lies to voters.
“I’m aghast we trust the People’s Republic of China more than we trust the White House”, Cramer went on to say.
Well, Jim, some Americans are probably “aghast” you would tell millions of viewers that “it doesn’t matter” if the president knowingly lies to the investing public.
That would be the same investing public you claim to be looking out for every, single week night on that clown show that’s contributed to making you roughly 1,000 times richer than the median American household.**
H you are the man. I really can’t find the appropriate words in english to describe these two parasites, especially Kernen. Normally the voice is off whenever i happen to watch them, i usually follow CNBC Europe the hosts are fantastic and engaging, or Bloomberg of course but even them have gone full millennial mode, so nothing for me except the terminal (not Bloomberg) usually. Back to those two though, they are supposed to be journalists, i am sure they don’t know what their job is there. Kernan thinks he is the spokeperson of the GOP and Cramer thinks he moves markets. Bunch of deluded assholes.
get BBG TV. it’s great
Maybe Cramer is prepping for his next gig. I would imagine his audience is dwindling along with retail trade volume in the market.
That is why trading this market should be an unactionable process unless you are a machine programed without emotion….Cramer …well we should let the reader here figure out where he fits in !! When this market corrects (20% +) it will be a total surprise not because of the correction itself but because of the stealth with which the move occurred
… or options, like most sane professionals
Did it never occur to tv fans that Cramer IS Heisenberg sans hat / shades?
MAGA (with kindergarten intelligence)
Actually, in goose-stepping the propaganda vis-a-vis the Orangehole inside-trading tweet filth and perfidy – I believe that they were just parroting the official mandatory RNC/GOPer credo:
“We accept him one of us! Gooble gobble! We accept him, we accept him! Gooble gobble, gooble gobble! One of us! On of us! Gooble gobble, gooble gobble!”
And, hate me for ad hominem be damned!- huckster goofball Cramer and bloated epicene wig-wearer gimp Kernan would fit right in with that circus…
The main take-away at this point, is to ponder if you’d want trump driving on a highway, in front of you or tailgating you, i.e., when people stop obeying rules and being above the law in their drunk recklessness, isn’t the increased risk a reason to stay off the highway, or to have him tossed in jail? It looks to me that trump is not only gaming the global markets, but seeing how much he can fine-tune that process, to tweet and manipulate markets, slamming on the brakes, then accelerating in a random drunken pattern, swerving like a chaotic drugged up drunken killer, who is out of control!
I guess it’s obvious to everyone but Mitch. Come on Mitch , sober up. We need you.
Why would investors care if the President lied?!
You money managers have been lying and manipulating the investors forever!
Remember that the revolving cast of characters in this White House reality show has consisted of Goldman bankers, hedge fund managers, oil market executives, war-mongers, special interest leaders, etc.
99.9999% of us are being lied from the top down. This is a planned heist.
Cramer looks like he was just caught by his mom spying on his older sister drying off after a shower.