by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Monday morning:
As the American stock market begins sliding into its third consecutive day of free fall, Donald Trump, who has returned from the White House following an extended weekend of golfing in Florida, is telling us to take our "medicine" and chill out. He's in charge, after all.
I heard a statistic on the radio the other day which said that 62% of Americans own stock, a figure I was able to verify over the internet - where I also learned that at least 58% of American families are invested in the stock market in one form or another. That's quite a few people having to take their medicine at one time. Is that something that RFK, Jr, deem to be wise?
It's just after 9:00 a.m. in the midwest. I checked the DOW ten minutes ago and it was down over 1,500 pts. Now I have checked it again, within the last minute, and it has miraculously risen to just over minus 900 pts.
I understand the wisdom of not panicking and haven't sold off anything, and probably won't, but this is still quite a bit of absolutely unnecessary aggravation that has been inflicted upon US and world markets by a politician who is planted in a golf cart.
Remember back during the presidency of George W. Bush, the second dumbest administration in history, when they were promoting the idea that American's should be "free" to invest their social security retirement savings in the stock market. That malarkey ended when the market tumbled and shortly thereafter we entered the "Great Recession" of 2007-2009. Americans dodged a major bullet by not throwing their retirement savings into the fires of corporate greed.
The next recession was a short-lived affair in the spring of 2020, and it was rooted in the economic chaos brought about by the COVID pandemic. But the economic impact of the world-wide crisis was worsened because President Trump had deliberately trashed the Obama administration's national response plan for a pandemic. When the reports of the virus began appearing in the international press, Trump ignored and minimized them for three months, time to give the viral disease a permanent and deadly foothold in the US - followed by a panoply of quack cures, some of which were spread by the White House, rather than a reliance on rigorous science.
Now, of course, we are knocking at the door of the second Trump recession, one that our leader has seen fit to inflict upon us himself, and while the price of everything except stocks is on the rise, he is busy flying back and forth to Florida to to play golf and to rent rooms in a resort that he owns to his staff and secret service detail - all on the dime of the American taxpayers.
The irony and absurdity of that is so unbelievable it would not even make a good comedy routine!
It is now 9:45 a.m. and the DOW has 'risen' to minus 890 pts.
It's time to put the stable genius out to pasture where he can golf in peace.