Donald Trump took to Twitter on Wednesday morning to deliver some post-game “analysis” after another Democratic debate which, generally speaking, delivered more of the same and underscored the desirability of cutting the field down to the four or five presidential candidates that actually have a chance.
If you ask the current president, “there is NO WAY that any of the Democrat Candidates that we witnessed last night could possibly become President of the United States”.
Normally, when someone makes such a definitive statement, it’s accompanied by evidence, but this is Trump we’re talking about, so instead, he employed one of the oldest tricks in the book – he simply suggested that if you don’t know why his assessment is correct, you’re an idiot. “Now you see why they have no choice but to push a totally illegal & absurd Impeachment of one of the most successful Presidents!”, he exclaimed.
But that wasn’t the “best” part of the president’s opening barrage of tweets on Wednesday.
About 20 minutes later, Trump said this:
Our record Economy would CRASH, just like in 1929, if any of those clowns became President!
This is a truly despicable tactic for a number of reasons, but it also speaks to a certain desperation. For months, the administration has been worried that the economy might roll over in the face of the trade war, and growth has likely slowed below 2%.
Whenever the president resorts to that kind of economic fearmongering, it’s important to remember that although the Trump economy was somewhat robust early on, there has never been anything anomalous or “tremendous” or miraculous about it. Here is the reality:
Trump’s economy is in the purple-dashed square. As you can see, there has not been an economic renaissance in America. If you wrote down every quarterly, annualized GDP print on individual pieces of paper and arranged them at random on a table top, it would be impossible to point to Trump’s numbers. They wouldn’t stick out at all.
Also, the manufacturing economy he promised to make “great again” is probably in a recession (blue line in the chart). The factory downturn in the US may prove fleeting, but for now it just is what it is.
As for the president’s stock market obsession, his supply-side policies did, in fact, bolster corporate bottom lines and encourage buybacks, which helped to turbocharge equities in 2017. The fiscal impulse also insulated US stocks from tumult abroad in 2018.
But, don’t forget that Trump presided over the worst year for the S&P since the crisis (2018). His government shutdown threat and incessant Twitter bombast aimed at Jerome Powell also contributed to the worst December for Wall Street since the Great Depression. Trump has overseen three of the worst five months for US stocks since early 2009.
None of the above is to suggest that Trump’s economic record (or market record) is bad – it’s not.
Rather, it’s simply to say that the president’s declarations about the economy and about US equities are grossly exaggerated and bear almost no resemblance to reality.
The irony in all of this is that if you’re looking for who to thank (or blame, depending on what it is you’re talking about) for things like record low unemployment (on the positive side) or the October and December 2018 market crashes (on the negative side), you could very easily argue that none of it has anything to do with Trump at all.
The president clearly understands that, otherwise he wouldn’t spend so much time tweeting about Powell and the Fed.
Don’t they usually cue Larry Kudlow here?
“Goldilocks……..growth growth growth…….tax cuts……blah blah”
Clinton stayed in office b/c tech was bubbling; nixon left (in part at least) b/c the economy was rolling over, inflation/oil shocks etc—his fault or not, potus gets the blame/credit.
mkts/econ need to be weak/soft summer 2020 and djt is out. not sure how one could spin it…..even the risk of a dem as potus crashes the mkt?? better just make him prez for life like all his buddies.
The global rebound of employment after The Great Recession crash is obviously linked to a business cycle, which is now trending towards another slower growth period. In addition, the Amazon effect is changing how people work globally and employment as a metric is far more challenging to understand. The recovery that has been in place has been subjected to a great deal of chaos from the American clown/leader and his GDP growth has been nothing less than anemic. As far as any Democrat being able to do better, that is debatable, because if trump isn’t impeached and imprisoned at best he’;; be both a laughing stock and lame duck who will always be symbolic of the most corrupt person ever to occupy the White House.
FRED Clown Chart & US vs Japan GDP: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=pb1w (I need to look at more countries, but it’s sad that trump’s GDP growth is below Japan, so sort of brings up interesting dynamics about MAGA)
==> The “World Employment and Social Outlook Trends 2019” report said unemployment rates were anticipated to fall further to 4.9% this year, which is expected to hold steady into 2020 despite the fact that the number of jobless in real terms is estimated to rise from 172 million to 174 million in that time as the labour market expands.
“The poor quality of many jobs also manifests itself in the fact that, in 2018, more than one quarter of workers in low and middle-income countries were living in extreme or moderate poverty,” the report said.
Global unemployment among young people (between 15-24) stood at 11.8 per cent, higher than other age brackets.
And another thing, it’s interesting that Ukraine GDP is looking stronger than the trump MAGA economy, in fact, it’s fairly easy to see that the MAGA miracle is nothing but total bullshit when one looks at global economic performance, so yes, by all means, only trump and the GOP snakes can offer a path forward … what retarded stupidity. The only thing the GOP is capable of is to enrich their corrupt regime and steal as much as possible before they get booted from power — and if anyone follows history, the GOP has always been a corrupt regime!
https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDP_RPCH@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD/UKR
“Our record Economy would CRASH, just like in 1929, if any of those clowns became President!”
Be careful what you say, Mr. President. You’ve already got your clown hat on, and before you’re out of office it may just be like 1929. Remember Hoover’s Smoot-Hawley Tarriff Act (1930). You just initiated Act II…and the Chinese are licking their chops.