[edit] As with all these posts that include politics this one seems to have stirred something up that I did not intend. If you think for one minute that I have “reverence” for the Federal Reserve well then you are either not paying attention or my writing style is confusing. My whole point is that the Fed makes monetary policy and that monetary policy has been THE main source of the growing divide between rich and poor and hence, a main instigator of the political divisions we have in this country. Maybe I could have been clearer, but come on guys… do your work too.
Okay, move along. Nothing to see here.
The partisan Senate is going to acquit him after this vote by the partisan House. You can click the headline to get the article if you would like.
I will say one thing about Trump. He is the funny. Do you remember him discussing in the Republican primary debate about how Marco Rubio was sweating too much? I cracked up. A candidate standing right next to one of his rivals on stage saying something along the lines of ‘Oh, he’s sweating too much. Look at him sweat. We can’t have a president who sweats like that.’
I actually cracked up laughing. But then, at the time I did not think Trump would win the Republican primary. Now, the line I’ve marked up on the graphic above. It’s just funny. As is his way of codifying little jingles like “sleepy Joe Biden” and “the Do Nothing Democrats”. He pounds those funny phrases into the heads of his Trumpie supporters and they just eat it up.
But the funny bits aside, it’s dangerous to some, glorious affirmation to others.
But where markets are concerned, 2019… noise, noise, NOISE!!!
In 2020 the stock market and economy will dictate how the public views Trump. If the inflation manifests in what most people think of as a strong and gainful economy he’s in. Deal with it. If the inflation wears down and the bloated stock market tanks and economy weakens after what has turned out to be a predictable Q4 2019 outcome, the clown will be thrown out. If the inflation intensifies and morphs into a STAGflation situation well, we’ll see. There are ways he might be able to spin that negative condition for a while.
Aside from the debate about whether or not he’s fit to be president and to any Trumpies out there who still read this site (and I know there are mentally strong people who can take it, among you), you cannot argue that Trump is some new manifestation of a fiscal reformer who is fixing the economy by bringing “great America” back to the good old days exclusively through fiscal policy. I mean, there is good and bad in that fiscal policy. A fair amount of good, in my opinion, actually.
But behind the curtain Trump pulls the same levers as Obama and Bush. While they did not need to brow beat the Fed the way Trump does, they most certainly sought and benefited from a Federal Reserve ready, willing and oh so able to inflate. Trump is exposed as little more than another in a line of parlor trickster macro magicians where the economic end of his policy is concerned. Otherwise, he’d lay off the Fed and let the natural economy begin to close the gaping chasm between rich and poor. No way ole’ Donny is going to do that. It’s not in his DNA.
As a businessman, Trump lived by the Ponzi (credit and debt err… restructuring) and we may all just die by the Ponzi one day. Certainly, in demanding Zero Interest Rate Policy and QE from the Fed Trump is in essence demanding even more intense division between the haves (asset owners) and have nots (paycheck-to-paycheckers and those even worse off).
If there were organic, sustainable and game changing benefits of fiscal policy like corporate tax welfare and the trade war he would not have been brow beating Jerome Powell to engage in what has been and will ultimately again be destructive policy (you know, the old rich richer, poor poorer thing that has created the great divides in this country to begin with) all year long.
Get this; the US is not great again. It is what it is and in many ways it is what it has been for much of my lifetime, a divisive nation filled with hatred (on both sides of what we think of as the 2 party system) and ongoing contention. But it is not productive contention, like debate. It is division and the divides are getting wider.
It is also as dependent as ever on financial chicanery through monetary policy. The Federal Reserve is monetary policy.
The rest is noise.
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