President Donald Trump’s launch of a nationwide “affordability tour” this week may look to some like an admission that Americans are struggling under the weight of the administration’s tariffs and rising utility and grocery costs—but Trump assured one reporter on Tuesday that he would acknowledge no such thing.
I mean, it sort of does, particularly as far as retirement is concerned. I know some MAGA diehards that are, to a significant degree, judging by the metric of their 401k/Roth retirement savings accounts, and the value of those accounts are necessarily going to be tightly linked with the overall performance of the stock market by virtue of the fact that they are investment account.
Now, if we’re being honest with ourselves, the US stock market has been largely decoupled from reality since at least 2008. Consequently, the current state of the stock market no longer functions as any kind of meaningful metric for economic health. It is, in my view, just a system for speculation which exists to transfer wealth out of the pockets of the people attempting to beat the market and into the pockets of the people who already have enough money or influence to make the market. Even decoupled from reality as it is, however, I find it a dubious prospect that the line can ever keep going up indefinitely - they never do, and especially not when so many other (arguably more concrete) economic indicators are pointing the other way.
Looking at you, load-bearing (and suspiciously bubble-shaped) AI hype, looking at you.
Should such a crash happen, I’ll be very excited to hear what rationalization they pivot into this time. Who knows, maybe Trump will get control of the fed like he wants and then we can throw hyperinflation (and likely a subsequent de-dollarisation) into the mix to really take the already roaring garbage fire up a notch. I’m certain that this fascist will be just as cautious and responsible with the money cannon as his dictator peers have historically been.