The are few snarkier defenders of the current rotten financial status quo than Ben White of Politico’s Money Morning. So it’s not surprising that he is out this AM with the latest Trumb-o-phobe meme from Swamp Dweller’s Central.
To wit, the renewed stock market swoon is purportedly all the Donald’s fault owing to his unhinged tweetstorms, protectionist trade initiatives and attacks on the casino’s sacred cow of the moment, Amazon:
WELCOME TO THE TRUMP SLUMP – President Donald Trump is killing his own stock market rally. The president’s tweet storm attacking Amazon and his protectionist trade actions against China and other nations helped crush the stock market on Monday with the Dow falling over 700 points in late afternoon trade before closing down 458, or close to 2 percent.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell even further, led by a five percent drop in Amazon after the president ripped the company over its delivery deals with the United States Postal Service. The Dow, Nasdaq and S&P are all now down for the year. The Dow has plunged 11 percent since its all-time high of 26,616 on Jan. 26, entering official correction territory.
Traders, money managers and economists on Monday laid much of the blame for recent declines on Trump, who spent most of 2017 bragging on a near daily basis about the massive run-up in stock prices that followed his election and the passage of sweeping corporate tax cuts.
The above is just unadulterated rubbish, of course. It’s a tribute to the mindless anti-Trump bias that dominates the Imperial City press and the context-free Recency Bias that passes for financial analysis.
On at least this matter, the Donald is definitely not guilty because he hasn’t been around nearly long enough to take the blame or the praise for anything related to the economy. The phony stock market boom has been gestating for three decades owing to central bank monetary madness; the up-leg since election day reflects nothing more than the final phase of a horribly metastasized financial bubble that has now reached its sell-by date.
In fact, our clueless medicine show impresario has confused the last gasp of the robo-machines and dip-buyers for an endorsement of his cockamamie brew of protectionism, nationalism, populism and unhinged Keynesian borrow and spend. So rather than puncturing the bubble he accurately identified during the campaign, he’ll soon be dripping with implosion splatter from comb-over to toe.
