Voters overwhelmingly think Trump is making the economy worse (FOX poll)

T. A. Gardner said:
That may be true, but in Trump's case it has gotten to a climax. When virtually every news story on Trump takes a negative spin, there's a problem. The news is no longer some impartial observer reporting on events but rather has taken a side and is now purveying propaganda. That is a huge problem.

That's where the MSM is at today with regard to Trump.

In terms of economic news, what I see the MSM doing is putting a negative spin on everything Trump does with regard to the economy but crouches it in terms of opinion, speculation, and hand wringing. They ignore what the economy is actually doing unless it fits their narrative which at least up to this point is mostly not what they claim would happen.

Is the economy doing great? Meh. I think it could be doing better but it certainly isn't the doom and gloom disaster the MSM tries to paint. If it were the Biden - Harris economy they'd be telling us how great it's doing. I don't accept their version of things and try to find actual data on what's happening rather than highly biased opinion and speculation.
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The negativity towards Trump by the media is nothing new and really helped propel him back into office. People are almost numb to it at this point.

Not everyone watches the nightly news. Not everyone's life revolves around politics. But people do recognize the costs of goods at the store, gas station etc. When those go up, people tend not to be happy (especially those for whom money is tight).

The media isn't causing prices to rise. The effects of tariffs are. Trump knew this but these are the policies he has chosen to pursue with the stated goal of bringing back more manufacturing jobs. If the hope is for the MSM to announce "even though these tariffs haven't brought back manufacturing jobs in almost 8 years of implementation, everyone please just be patient because it will happen at some point", I wouldn't hold my breath.
 
Lionfish said:
Mr. Tiny Penis, we thought you were going to make shooting us a national pastime.
Second thoughts, or have the local police paid you a visit?
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I'm almost certain he's extremely old and in a ton of pain. It's not an excuse for being purposefully ignorant, but it does speak to his emotional responses, reactionary opinions and unstructured arguments aimed at minutiae that do not matter to the subject at hand.
 
Nordberg said:
Inflation is roaring as predicted by Trump's economics. Coffee is up 37 percent. Fruits and vegetables are up about 15. We are hearing economists talk about possible stagflation, which is terrible for the citizens. Labor Dept data says inflation is up by almost 3 percent , hiring has slowed and unemployment is climbing. This is a bad combination.
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The MAGAS on here laugh when I talk about how coffee has gone up.
That is 37% PER POUND . a 42 oz can was $9.99 back around the first of Jan and is now $ 19.99 per can a 100% increase.
And they keep saying go some where else and get it on sale , well that IS on sale, it was $21,95 at Walmart last week.
IMO inflation is going up a lot more then just 3 %., but that is on the cost of everything not just food.
 
Damocles said:
I'm almost certain he's extremely old and in a ton of pain. It's not an excuse for being purposefully ignorant, but it does speak to his emotional responses, reactionary opinions and unstructured arguments aimed at minutiae that do not matter to the subject at hand.
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Tbird19482 said:
The MAGAS on here laugh when I talk about how coffee has gone up.
That is 37% PER POUND . a 42 oz can was $9.99 back around the first of Jan and is now $ 19.99 per can a 100% increase.
And they keep saying go some where else and get it on sale , well that IS on sale, it was $21,95 at Walmart last week.
IMO inflation is going up a lot more then just 3 %., but that is on the cost of everything not just food.
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Drink Tea.
 
Tbird19482 said:
The MAGAS on here laugh when I talk about how coffee has gone up.
That is 37% PER POUND . a 42 oz can was $9.99 back around the first of Jan and is now $ 19.99 per can a 100% increase.
And they keep saying go some where else and get it on sale , well that IS on sale, it was $21,95 at Walmart last week.
IMO inflation is going up a lot more then just 3 %., but that is on the cost of everything not just food.
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Trump's tariffs caused this.
 
Walt said:
What asset bubble? When did it pop?

The whole problem with the liquidity trap was people would not borrow even with low interest rates.
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Not every bubble has to end in a dramatic pop like 2008. QE and ZIRP inflated equity, bond, and housing prices for years. Even Bernanke said the goal was to create a wealth effect through higher asset values. That is the distortion I was talking about.
 
cawacko said:
Not every bubble has to end in a dramatic pop like 2008.
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By definition bubbles end in a popping. Overvaluations can have soft landings, but bubbles pop. There is a chance that the popping is still to come, but if there is no popping, it was not a bubble.

cawacko said:
QE and ZIRP inflated equity, bond, and housing prices for years.
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I agree housing is overvalued, but that seems more structural to me. The areas that are best to live in have severe laws restricting building there. This limits supply, and drives up prices, even with higher mortgage rates.

Bonds and equity were also pushed up, but not to the point of a bubble. I give Bernanke a lot of credit here for really threading the needle.

cawacko said:
Even Bernanke said the goal was to create a wealth effect through higher asset values. That is the distortion I was talking about.
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He saved our economy, and possible our nation from liquidity trap collapse. Deflation is an empire destroyer. He did this without creating a bubble, or massive bank collapse.

The issue here is that I doubt trump will replace Powell with a competent Chairman. I have seen the clown car up to now, I might be wrong, but it seems like there are more clowns to come. So if we need someone to save America again, will we have that person?
 
Walt said:
By definition bubbles end in a popping. Overvaluations can have soft landings, but bubbles pop. There is a chance that the popping is still to come, but if there is no popping, it was not a bubble.


I agree housing is overvalued, but that seems more structural to me. The areas that are best to live in have severe laws restricting building there. This limits supply, and drives up prices, even with higher mortgage rates.

Bonds and equity were also pushed up, but not to the point of a bubble. I give Bernanke a lot of credit here for really threading the needle.


He saved our economy, and possible our nation from liquidity trap collapse. Deflation is an empire destroyer. He did this without creating a bubble, or massive bank collapse.

The issue here is that I doubt trump will replace Powell with a competent Chairman. I have seen the clown car up to now, I might be wrong, but it seems like there are more clowns to come. So if we need someone to save America again, will we have that person?
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We may disagree on definitions, but I don’t think it’s controversial that QE and ZIRP pushed asset values higher than they would have been otherwise. I get that Bernanke avoided a total collapse, but that does not erase the distortions from chasing a wealth effect. Whether you call it a bubble or just overvaluation, it creates risks when prices lean so heavily on ultra-easy policy. That is the part I am focused on. We all remember the taper tantrum. The market was so reliant on stimulus it resisted when the Fed tried to pull back. That kind of dependence is what I mean by distortion.

Edit: We can also add that people love to complain about institutional investors owning single-family homes. We really have ZIRP and QE to thank for that, since those policies forced investors to chase yield and pushed them into the housing market
 
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cawacko said:
I don’t think it’s controversial that QE and ZIRP pushed asset values higher than they would have been otherwise.
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We were in the beginnings of a liquidity trap, where deflation pushes down prices. We desperately needed prices pushed up at a target inflation 2%. QE and ZIRP were used to push up inflation to the right spot.

2% growth is not a bubble. That is normal boring growth.

Now you can argue that 2% was just the average, and that some assets grew much more than others. For instance, bonds values grew at a paltry rate. What is interesting is that did not have a very distortive effect on the economy.

The reason why it did not distort the economy as much as you would expect is what is called the least dirty shirt rule. This rule posits that the world is full of nothing but dirty shirts, and you need to wear a shirt, so you put on the least dirty shirt. Some investors absolutely need to buy bonds, so are willing to buy bonds that pay almost nothing, as long as they are the "least dirty shirt."

cawacko said:
We all remember the taper tantrum.
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How many banks failed? One? We went from almost losing our entire banking system to losing one bank.

There was other damage, but we were not going to escape the Great Recession with no damage. I think the difference here is I am looking at where we were headed, and saying thank God we did not end up there. You are looking at where we ended up, and say couldn't we have gotten better?
 
Walt said:
We were in the beginnings of a liquidity trap, where deflation pushes down prices. We desperately needed prices pushed up at a target inflation 2%. QE and ZIRP were used to push up inflation to the right spot.

2% growth is not a bubble. That is normal boring growth.

Now you can argue that 2% was just the average, and that some assets grew much more than others. For instance, bonds values grew at a paltry rate. What is interesting is that did not have a very distortive effect on the economy.

The reason why it did not distort the economy as much as you would expect is what is called the least dirty shirt rule. This rule posits that the world is full of nothing but dirty shirts, and you need to wear a shirt, so you put on the least dirty shirt. Some investors absolutely need to buy bonds, so are willing to buy bonds that pay almost nothing, as long as they are the "least dirty shirt."


How many banks failed? One? We went from almost losing our entire banking system to losing one bank.

There was other damage, but we were not going to escape the Great Recession with no damage. I think the difference here is I am looking at where we were headed, and saying thank God we did not end up there. You are looking at where we ended up, and say couldn't we have gotten better?
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I don’t dispute that QE and ZIRP may have been necessary at the start to prevent collapse, but we had multiple rounds after that. Those additional rounds were not necessary, and that is where the distortions really piled up. Avoiding collapse does not mean the side effects were not real. By stretching emergency measures for years, the Fed conditioned markets and investors to expect constant support. That dependency was the distortion, and the taper tantrum made it obvious.
 
cawacko said:
I don’t dispute that QE and ZIRP may have been necessary at the start to prevent collapse, but we had multiple rounds after that.
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We had as many rounds as we needed to get to 2% target inflation. With inflation and deflation, you either catch it early, or you have to do ten times more to get rid of it. So had we allowed deflation to stay a little, it would have meant a lot more to get rid of it.

And even with the multiple rounds we were not firmly at 2% yet.

cawacko said:
Those additional rounds were not necessary
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We have made the mistake of leaving jobs half done in the past. What happens is that you lose everything, and it takes a lot more to get things going again. You either get it done, or you fail.

In other words, those additional rounds were more necessary than the original rounds. Maybe things would have bounced back without any intervention. It is extremely unlikely, but possible. Once the Fed intervened, they absolutely had to see it through.

cawacko said:
Avoiding collapse does not mean the side effects were not real.
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One bank failed... And that bank did not fail until the pandemic, so that also played a part. I am just not seeing that great of side effects.

And that is the oddest part of it all. We did not get extreme side effects.

cawacko said:
By stretching emergency measures for years, the Fed conditioned markets and investors to expect constant support.
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By withdrawing it slowly, the Fed reconditioned markets to survive without the support.

The end of the support fed right into the pandemic, and the beginning of the support, so it is hard to tell how bad it would have been... But it was not.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
A big part of this I think is that people are generally figuring out that the government inflation numbers are fiction.
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Trump claimed crazy numbers for inflation when Biden was in office. Now his economy may be a lot worse than we have been told. Trump will lie the other direction now. He does not seek the truth. The people must not know what he is doing.
 
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