Raser’s Edge:  Trump’s “greatest economic turnaround?”  Eh… Not really

Trump just claimed that he is responsible for the greatest economic “turnaround” in American history.  Not really.  If you fact check the real economic performance over the last ten years you will find some of his miraculous numbers are not as good as those during the Obama Administration.  But never mind.  I am fully aware if I were to list the contradictory data, the Trumpists would defend their dearly beloved, claiming my sources are all phony,  liberal lies and, oh yeah, what about Hillary’s emails?  So I am not even going to try.

The fact is, the good American economic performance is a continuation of trends that started at the beginning of the Obama years.  To prove my point, I will use my own personal data which, I assure you, are incontestable “real facts” since I have the IRA and annuity statements to prove it.

When Obama inherited the economic disaster created by George W. Bush and his Republicans, my retirement holdings had plunged 30 percent below what they were when the Bush Republicans took over.  Obviously, it was not a good idea to cash out what was left so I let it sit and hoped for the best.

During the Obama years, my holdings not only recuperated the 30 percent they lost under Bush, but added about another 20 percent by the time Obama left office.    My holdings have continued the upward trend under Trump for which I am grateful and hope it continues that way.  In six months I’ll publish a sequel to this post and we shall see.   So I have Obama to thank for a real “turnaround” from the economic mess George W created.  I really don’t want to see a Trump “turnaround.”    If we do, the DOW will take a nosedive. Once again we have another example that Trump is either lying or he hasn’t the vaguest idea of what he is talking about.

To prove that I am not making this up, I have included a link below to Investopedia that includes a graph based on real Dow Jones numbers corroborating my personal experience. As you can see, the overall stock market shows a constant overall upward trend since Obama took over the economic disaster created by Bush.  So rather than buy into Trump’s unfounded bragging that his policies are a “turnaround” and the best in the history of the universe, let’s give him credit for keeping a trend he inherited going and hope it continues that way.  Stay tuned.

Note:  Now before the Trumpists attack Investopedia’s  facts which are really real, here’s Mediabiasfactcheck’s rating: “ We rate Investopedia high for factual reporting as they present news with low biased wording and always source their information to credible media outlets, therefore we place them in the least biased category.”

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/101314/where-was-dow-jones-when-obama-took-office.asp

Raser’s Edge:  The Observation Deck—What about MY tax dollars?

How often have you heard the so-called fiscally responsible Republicans gripe about “MY tax dollars” being spent on programs that help less fortunate Americans like Medicaid and lunches for school kids.  “My God,” they moan, “I don’t want to see my tax dollars going to ‘those’ people.  That’s ‘socialism’ and I’m a white, god-fearing, patriotic American !”  So now Trump launches a trade war which will cost mid-American farmers a lot of money in lost sales. These farmers just happen to be the ones who foisted Trump upon us.  So what does Trump do?  He wants to give them 12 billion tax payer dollars to help cover their losses which his own trade policies will cause.  So for Republicans, it’s not okay to use tax-payer dollars to give a school kid lunch but it is okay to use tax-payer dollars to make up for farmers’ sales losses caused by a Republican president’s own policies.  I think we should add another term to the political lexicon.  Let’s call it “Trump’s capitalistic socialism.”