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| It isn't easy to be simultaneously an incompetent leader and a corrupt crook, but this idiot hits the all the marks as he makes America $6 trillion poorer —and counting |
His sentences, read in a near monotone, ran into one another as if there were no punctuation between them. He projected the conviction and the confidence of a pebble.
With reassurance like that we don't need a global plague. But we've got one. And not only isn't he helping, he's hurting. This morning (Wednesday) the stock market took yet another turn south. Where the Dow a short while ago was in the 27,000 area, it was at 21,550 the last time today I could look at it without vomiting.
The financial markets are, shall we say, not pleased?
"Sell signal: Trump's shallow virus plan blows floor out of markets," reported the apolitical financial wire of Reuters. Feel free to read the whole horror story, but here are a few choice excerpts:
That [Trump's announced efforts] fell way short of market expectations for relief from an outbreak that has spread to 122 countries, infected more than 126,000 people, sowed fears of a world recession and wiped about $6 trillion off the U.S. stock market.
Even expectations that Trump would try to fix the delays in getting U.S. virus testing up to speed were dashed.
“I am just left speechless for Trump to say this is the most comprehensive plan,” said Rob Carnell, chief Asia-Pacific economist at ING in Singapore.
“Without all the additional testing and tracing and containment measures that certainly aren’t taking place in the United States, it’s just a PR stunt.
White House tries to criminalizereporting on what it's up to
Of course, when you're doing the lousiest job of President in the history of United States Presidents, your first instinct might be to try to bottle up any information that demonstrates how awfully you're doing.
Yup. Charlie Warzel of the New York Times noticed that, too.
On Wednesday, Reuters reported that the White House told officials at the Department of Health & Human Services to classify coronavirus deliberations, adding a layer of secrecy to the government’s responseRight. Are hundreds of thousands of people getting sick? That's classified. Does the Trump Administration have no credible plan to deal with the matter? Say too much about it and you might go to prison for revealing classified information. There, that'll fix the problem!
But you can still play
golf on a Trump course
At first, one of the most puzzling aspects of Trump's address to the nation was why he banned travelers from the parts of Europe called the Schengen Area, but excepted travel to and from England, which is having plenty of Corona Virus problems of its own, and Ireland. Fortunately, Politico cleared up that matter.
The United Kingdom, which is home to Trump Turnberry and Trump International Golf Links, and Ireland, which is home to another Trump-branded hotel and golf course at Doonbeg, do not participate in the Schengen Area. Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania are also not part of the Schengen Area. All three of the resorts are struggling financially.
4 comments:
In fairness to the Orange Idiot, stock markets outside of the US are in freefall as well. A plague will do that even in the absence gross political mismanagement.
Well here's the story, Anonymous: We're all part of an interlocking global economy and the United States is one of the biggest parts of it. So when stocks go into free fall in the United States, the world follows us down the rabbit hole.
Today's fall was in response, according to Reuters and other financial reports, to Trump's speech on Wednesday night. That would be the sacred Free Market, so beloved by Conservatives.
Speaking of which, as of close of business Thursday, the Dow had fallen 28 percent, and the S&P 500 27 percent since their peaks in February. And at this stage, one avalanche sets off another avalanche. So it's a good bet there's more crashing to come.
Thanks to Donald Trump and his bumbling attempt to sweep the plague under the rug, and then make light of it, and then do too little about it, we are all royally fucked.
Yours with extreme crankiness,
The New York Crank
Even Rod Dreher was critical, which I think is a first. Let's hope this is the moment when the 40% start abandoning Hair Fuhrer. They don't want to die.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-coronavirus-speech-reaction/
In principle, stock markets are betting pools on future economic demand.
The current predictions for the future call for 15-70 million dead within six months and a $2.4 trillion hit to global GDP every year for the foreseeable future.
There is absolutely no way any market should be looking at this picture and reacting with anything but contraction.
Public reassurances sooth the nerves of the population but cannot change the fundamental reality that future economic demand will be a lot lower.
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