Donald Trump is the anti-Midas. Everything he touches in business turns from gold to dross. If ever there was a man who whose crystal ball was blind, it is the blustering, blowhard former president.
In April 2019, as he was campaigning for the 2020 presidential election, he crowed about the strong economy, the gains in the stock market, and as usual, gave himself credit for all the good news. Of course, when the pandemic came and the wins turned to huge losses he accepted no blame. In all his campaign rallies he predicted that if Joe Biden should win the election, the stock market would crash and the US would go into an economic depression.
Fast forward to 2023 and we see just how wrong the self-declared “stable genius” was on all counts. In a flurry of ironic tweets and posts, people are recalling his blunders.
The Stock Market is having a red-hot Santa rally and we should all rejoice for our 401K’s.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged to more than 37,000 points for the first time as investors celebrated a statement from the Federal Reserve on Wednesday that it could cut its benchmark interest rate next year, fueling even more optimism for the coming year.
The blue-chip index jumped 512 points, or 1.4%, to end the day at 37,090, topping its prior peak of 36,799 in early 2023. The broader S&P 500 rose 1.4% and is within 1.9% of its own record. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite added 1.4%.
The Dow Jones is now in uncharted territory, as it was in 2019 when Donald Trump was president and was blustering his way through the election campaign, but I don’t hear Joe Biden shouting from the rooftops to take the credit for a remarkable comeback after the pandemic that devastated not only the US economy but the global one as well.
On the political front, it seems to be a case of déjà vu all over again–to use Yogi Berra’s famous and charming malapropism– as once again we have the possible impeachment of the sitting US president front and center in the news during a surging economy.
On Wednesday, the same day that the stock market set a record, the House Republicans voted to launch an impeachment inquiry into Biden.
In April 2019 Trump was complaining bitterly about being impeached when the market and the economy were surging. In his mind, a strong economic performance precluded the impeachment, regardless of the allegations against him that had nothing to do with the economy.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) he boasted about the then-record-breaking market and complained he was under threat of impeachment.
“You mean the Stock Market hit an all-time record high today and they’re actually talking impeachment!?” he asked. “Will I ever be given credit for anything by the Fake News Media or Radical Liberal Dems?”
The first Trump impeachment inquiry was authorized only after public revelation of Trump’s attempt to use presidential power to coerce Ukrainian leaders into announcing an investigation into presidential rival Joe Biden. And the second Trump impeachment followed only days after the former president’s attempt to overturn his election loss produced a riot in the Capitol—an event that was witnessed live in the media.
The major difference between then and now is that “the most remarkable feature of the Biden inquiry vote is that no one really knows exactly what the inquiry is supposed to be about. The resolution authorizing the inquiry specifies no subject matter beyond saying that it can include matters described in a Sept. 27, 2023 memo by Committee Chairs James Comer (R-KY), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Jason Smith (R-MO)”.
What we do know is that the GOP is eager to get revenge for the Trump impeachment and that they are hell-bent on making it happen, regardless of whether there is solid ground under the allegations or not.
Today Joe Biden is under threat of impeachment and the market is once again on a tear into record territory, only this time the investigation launched into Biden’s alleged actions are yet to be determined, despite inquiry after inquiry found no basis for an investigation to go forward. In this regard, there is no déjà vu all over again.
