Today’s glowing reports about economic growth under President Donald Trump obscure the painful truth that this buffoon grows nothing but fumunda cheese.
Sure, gross domestic product (GDP) grew 4.2 percent in April, May and June. However that growth is not the result of new demand or consumer spending. It’s the predictable result of the irresponsible deficit spending our Moron President is using to pull demand forward to make himself look good.
It’s a con, just like him.
Think of the U.S. economy as a sugar bowl. You can put a spoonful of sugar in your coffee every morning, just like everybody else, or pour your coffee in the sugar bowl and claim you just made the world a sweeter place. The amount of sugar is the same either way.
Trump’s irresponsible behavior means a sweeter world right now for him and his rich friends, and less sugar down the road for the rest of us. Because overall consumption is unchanged.
Who’s going to pay the bill for the party Donnie Trust Fund is throwing for himself and his country club base?
You and me and whoever inherits the sorry mess this treasonous sonofabitch leaves behind in The Oval Office.
Why?
Because these GDP numbers are total bullshit. The U.S. economy is fundamentally unsound, as is the deficit spending which is fueling Trump’s irresponsible financial sugar high.
The real unemployment rate is still 40 percent, not the official 3.9 percent, just as it was under Obama; new home sales are running about 20 percent below their historical norm on a per capita basis; and we’re getting ready to automate more than 40 million retail jobs and 4 million commercial driving slots. All this in a nation of 327 million people with just 130 million full-time employees.
Trump is using smoke and mirrors to camouflage these painful truths and artificially manipulate the economy in ways that benefit his Country Club base and hurt everyone else. They include the double-barreled irresponsibility of record military spending – in a time of relative global peace – and his absurd tax cuts for the rich.
The GDP gains reported today were driven by the outflow of government dollars to the rich from the five-time draft evader’s tax cuts. It’s been spent mostly on stock repurchases, which have created a new bubble on Wall Street.
Like Trump, they create the illusion of growth by raising share prices. Without any real growth in the businesses issuing them.
It’s pure appearance over substance. Just like the opportunistic con artist in The Oval Office.
The Congressional Budget Office expects Donnie Bagadonuts’ fakakta tax cuts and runaway spending to push the budget deficit to $804 billion this year and just under $1 trillion for the upcoming budget year.
Once upon a time that kind of largesse mattered to the right, before it replaced its principles with the Cult of Donnie Trust Fund’s knowing lies and sins of omission. Now, these poser patriots only oppose the kind of big government handouts which help widows and orphans, the elderly, wounded service members, and laid off workers.
The Moron Administration will borrow about 19 cents of every dollar it spends this year under a Reality TV pretender whose companies have declared bankruptcy an incredible five times. Deficits would grow to $1.5 trillion by 2028 — and could exceed $2 trillion if the tax cuts are fully extended and someone doesn’t clean up Trump’s mess.
And for what?
All Trump did with this giveaway to the rich was pull demand forward for high-end investment tools and consumer goods. Meaning that his plan allowed tax money to be spent by private citizens on themselves, which otherwise would have been spent on us all by the federal government over many years.
It might have paid for some high school field trips and athletic equipment. Instead, our kids will be begging at intersections again while Trump’s worthless spawn is jet-setting around the world on our dime.
It might have paid for some long overdue bridge, tunnel and road maintenance. Instead of Trump’s bogus expense reports for his weekly golf excursions.
How is this kind of irresponsible, big government spending different than running up your personal credit cards to pay for hookers and drugs?
It’s not.
The next American president will either have to pay for Trump’s lavish party, cut military spending, or rob Social Security, Medicare, Welfare, Foods Stamps, and the Veterans Administration.
That’s why the rich don’t care about deficits. They don’t care about deficits because they won’t be the ones paying them down.
The rich use deficit spending to ensure the GOP’s class warfare policies live on after they precipitate a populist backlash among the long-suffering masses. As they did when Reagan used deficit spending to simultaneously fuel record military budgets and bankroll tax breaks for the rich.
Sound familiar?
Corporate Dem Bill Clinton then dutifully paid the deficit down, instead of helping the faltering middle class which elected him. You can expect Trump’s Democratic successor to pull the same bullshit.
The bill for the party Trump is throwing for the rich right now will once again be repaid by the poor and faltering middle class. The very working Americans who are habitually exploited and discarded by toxic elites like Donnie Fuckstick like so much economic cannon fodder.
Let me put it another way: You’re being raped right now and you’re so clueless you’re kissing the guy raping you like he’s your hubby. Well, Trump is not your spouse, he’s the predator who cut the window screen, slipped inside in the middle of the night, and snuggled up beside you while everyone else was sleeping.
How can you not smell his country club stench?
Trump’s economic policies are pure class warfare, meant to make it financially impossible for the U.S. to take care of our own down the road.
“The stock market affects gross domestic product (GDP) primarily by influencing financial conditions and consumer confidence,” Investopedia says. “When stocks are in a bull market, there tends to be a great deal of optimism surrounding the economy and the prospects of various stocks. High valuations allow companies to borrow more money at cheaper rates, allowing them to expand operations, invest in new projects, and hire more workers. All of these activities boost GDP.”
The last time our government intentionally pulled demand forward on this scale was at the height of The Great Recession in 2009. When Congress gave new car buyers a sales-tax deduction and a “cash for clunkers” subsidy.
The subsidies didn’t grow the number of new cars Americans needed, any more than Trump just grew the economy. All they did was spur some people to buy cars in 2009, which might otherwise have been purchased in 2010 and 2011.
That’s not growth.
Growth is more. It’s not the same amount sooner.
Growth is getting a raise from $60,000 a year to $75,000. Not borrowing $15,000 from your home equity line of credit to make a gambling trip to Vegas. Then forcing the wife to take a second job to save the house.
This kind of invasive economic shock therapy was necessary in 2009 because of the global economic crisis which Trump’s Wall Street friends precipitated. It’s not necessary now.
The painful truth is that our mainstream news media is now filled with market cheerleaders. The fact that these journalism posers dutifully regurgitated this Trump bullshit today, instead of challenging it, absolutely boggles the mind.
Why?
Because the idea that all is well is not news. It’s propaganda. If you’re a member of the masses, everything is pretty fucking far from OK.
What’s the moral of the story?
The end is near motherfuckers.
Look in the mirror.
Most of you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing when it comes to the economy and finances – much less leadership – and neither do the posers in your mainstream news media controlled by Wall Street. That’s why you elected an even bigger poser and put him in charge of the world’s largest single economy.
Anyone who can’t see so for themselves just by looking at all the laid off workers wandering aimlessly through boarded up Main Streets in Flyover Country is part of the reason.
Victor Epstein learned about the economy by covering it for a global audience of people who make money from money during his time on the economic indicator beat at Bloomberg News. He’s also written about the economy for The Associated Press and Gannett.
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the gift.