Tag Archives: Stock Market

economic news

Market collapse? Yeah … right

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald J. Trump and I have something in common.

Neither of us can predict outcomes worth a damn.

Perhaps you’ll recall one of the consequences Trump said would occur were Joe Biden elected president of the United States in 2020. He said the stock market would collapse, that the economy would fall into a death spiral, that Americans would be clamoring for Trump’s return to the White House.

Hmm. None of that happened. Indeed, the stock market has done quite well since President Biden took office, the economy is starting to rev its engines and, oh yeah, I don’t hear many Americans — other than the members of the Trump Cult Club of Lunatics — wanting any part of the former Imbecile in Chief.

All of this good news is helped, of course, by the success we have had in fighting the COVID pandemic.

With that I wish to declare that Trump and I do share a common trait. Now, if we can just get Trump to declare that he won’t offer lame-brained predictions in the future.

economic news

It was inevitable, one should suppose, that crisis would produce scandal

I suppose it was expected, that we shouldn’t be surprised at the news flying out of Washington, D.C.

The world is reeling from a deadly pandemic. Now we hear that some members of the U.S. Senate sought to take advantage of their power, their influence, their access to classified information to — allegedly! — score huge profits.

What is it about crises that they seem to attract this kind of potentially scandalous behavior?

We are saluting the heroes and Good Samaritans among us who are performing acts of kindness, empathy and care for those who need help coping with the coronavirus.

It’s also good to condemn those who potentially could use their influence to (a) mislead the public regarding the severity of the crisis and (b) profit from their misdirection.

Several senators allegedly have sought to do profit from the confusion and chaos brought by the pandemic.

One of them allegedly is Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C. He attended a classified meeting in January where he and other senators were told of the dangers that the coming pandemic posed to the economy, as well as to people’s health. Burr then soft-pedaled the threat, telling the public that all would be just fine.

Meanwhile, he allegedly sold millions of dollars of stock just prior to the stock market’s shocking collapse. Do you get it? Sen. Burr got his while the gettin’ was still good, leaving millions of other Americans in the lurch while their retirement accounts were flushed away as investors started to panic.

Is this how it’s supposed to go? Of course not! It’s just a sickening symptom — again, allegedly — of behavior that those in power too often exhibit.

There needs to be a full, frontal investigation into what Burr and some other senators knew and when they knew it. If they are determined to have committed illegal acts, they need to be prosecuted aggressively … for violating their sacred public trust.

None of us should be surprised that this scandal has been revealed.

national news

They throw ’em in jail for this kind of thing, senators

What do you know about this?

Four U.S. senators, three Republicans and a Democrat, allegedly have been caught doing something that gets many of the rest of us tossed in the slammer.

GOP Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, along with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, allegedly dumped a whole lot of stock immediately before its value tanked. A coincidence?

Many of us are quite skeptical of the timing of it all.

It’s called “insider trading,” which is what some individuals are able to do when they get information about investment value that isn’t known widely to the rest of the public.

Burr has asked for a Senate Ethics Committee probe into the matter. He also denies doing anything wrong. Sure thing, senator. That’s what they all say.

Feinstein is the Senate’s senior Democrat; Burr chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee; Inhofe has been in the Senate for many years; Loeffler is a GOP newbie, having just taken office in recent weeks after being appointed to succeed Sen. Johnny Isaakson, who retired.

This doesn’t look good for any of them.

Calls are beginning to mount for a full-blown investigation into what they knew and when they knew it. Others are calling for all of them to resign.

This is infuriating, if true. Part of me wants to grant them all the due process they deserve; they are, after all, citizens just like the rest of us and they deserve the presumption of innocence. Another part of me, though, tends to believe the allegations. They need not quit the Senate just because someone has leveled a serious charge against them.

However, all Americans — millions of whom are suffering terrible financial pain as a result of this pandemic — need and deserve answers into what these so-called “guardians” of the public trust knew before they dumped their stock and made all that dough.

economic news

No, Mr. POTUS, economy doesn’t hinge on your re-election

Mr. President, you need to stop the braggadocio. As in right now!

I know you don’t heed this advice, but I have to get it off my chest.

You have declared that the fate and future of our nation’s economic well-being depends on your re-election. I read where you tweeted some nonsense about how the market will crash in unprecedented ways if you lose the election next year.

C’mon! Knock it off! If the economy craters it will do so on the basis of a lot of factors that have nothing to do with your re-election. It might have everything to do with the idiotic policies you seek to enact. Starting with those tariffs on imported goods from Mexico.

Your delusion is sounding more like desperation, if you want my humble view of it.

You’ve boasted about having that “big brain,” about how you know the “best words,” how you cut the “best deals,” how you surround yourself with the “best people” and how you are a “stable genius” who attended the “best schools” in human history.

If you were as great and glorious as you say you are, why do so many of us out here — even in Flyover Country — want to see you walk out of the Oval Office for the final time?

Yeah, I know. You have your supporters. God bless ’em. They see things differently than I do, or the way most Americans apparently do.

Just cool it with the bragging and self-aggrandizement. You work for us, Mr. President. Let us decide how you are doing. I am one of your bosses who wants you replaced.

business news

How about that DJIA, Mr. POTUS?

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Donald J. Trump keeps telling us about his business acumen and, I presume, his wisdom about big-ticket market activity.

So, why does he keep yapping about something that has happened dozens of times while he has been president?

He tweeted self-congratulations when the Dow Jones Industrial Average topped 25,000 points. He did the same thing a year ago. He’s done it several times.

The DJIA has this cyclical aspect to it. The Dow goes up. It goes down. The president is delighted to tell us when the Dow climbs. He falls into a Twitter stupor when it plummets.

How active was Trump when the Dow was cratering though much of December 2018? We heard the proverbial crickets.

Now the Dow is back up. Trump is all over it. He’s taking credit he doesn’t deserve. In actuality, that doesn’t bother me so much any longer. What’s annoying is that a guy with all those business smarts (allegedly) is getting worked up over a recurring fiscal event.

economic news

Bulls to bears: Why has POTUS gone silent?

Donald Trump has this annoying, perhaps sickening, habit of taking credit when he doesn’t deserve it. He behaves a bit like many of his presidential predecessors in that regard, although they usually have done so with a bit more, um, style and subtlety.

Not Trump. Take the stock market, for example. He bellows, blusters and bloviates when then market hits all-time highs. He suggests quite openly that his policies are the cause of all that wealth.

Now, though, the wheels seem to be coming off that economic hay wagon. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has tanked . . . bigly! The bull market has turned bearish.

Where is the president now? Doesn’t he deserve to take the blame as well as hog all the credit? Are there factors above and beyond one man’s economic policy?

Of course there are! It works in both directions. When the market skyrockets — as it has done — the president doesn’t deserve to take all the credit. When it plummets, he doesn’t deserve to take the heat.

It’s just that with this president, you always can expect bluster when positive opportunities present themselves.

When it goes badly? Crickets, man!

business news

Dow plunges … and they still clap?

It happened this week yet again.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average collapsed more than 1,100 points Monday, the largest single-day point drop in the history of Wall Street.

I commented on this strange reaction back in 2009. Here’s what I wrote then:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2009/02/clapping-for-what/

The earlier blog post questioned why those financial gurus standing in the balcony overlooking the trading floor were clapping after a measly 250-point drop in the Dow average.

Another set of financial types and perhaps a celeb were standing on that balcony clapping and grinning as if the Dow had gained 1,100-plus points rather than lost it.

I must conclude that they might know something about this latest financial collapse that the rest of us laypeople don’t understand.

Perhaps they foresaw what would happen today, that the Dow would gain back about half of what it lost Monday. The DJIA finished up a little more than 560 points today.

I’ll take it, folks. I also will accept that the podium cheering section had good reason to clap and grin today.

business news

Market craters: Time for calming words from POTUS

Wall Street took a header today.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted more than 600 points, signaling — possibly, maybe, perhaps — a new Black Friday.

I get that one day does not portend a stock market crash by itself.

However, I am wondering if the president of the United States is capable of offering some calm words of assurance rather than assigning blame for what happened today to millions of Americans’ retirement portfolios.

Ours took a beating today. I am not worried irrationally about our retirement future based on the market’s woes.

Donald Trump has spent a lot of emotional energy of late boasting about how Wall Street has reached record highs in record time. He has taken all sorts of credit for the market performance. He deserves some of it, although millions of the rest of us understand that the market has been climbing steadily during the past eight or nine years after it went through a serious crash to trigger the Great Recession of 2008-09.

Here’s what I would like to hear from the president: I would prefer he would provide some calm words of assurance. I mean, he is a self-described business whiz who’s made zillions of dollars. If he has any knowledge of what transpired today — and if it is a harbinger of more to come — then let’s hear it.

Talk to us, Mr. President, but speak to us like a grownup.