Donald Trump has been taking credit for the record stock market highs. Unless we refute this false notion, many will believe that he has accomplished a feat that he bears little credit for doing. The sum of fallacies can create a report card that maintains his viability as president. One must not allow that.
Ali Velshi debunks Donald Trump stock market fallacy
Ali Velshi continues doing the job of a journalist as he explains why one must not give Trump the credit he is ascribing to himself for the stock market rise. It is important that one does not allow any of the president’s lies to go unchallenged lest one allows its cauterizations in the psyche of many as true.
Chris Jansing asked Ali Velshi if Donald Trump was responsible for the stock market record highs. His answer was a matter of fact.
“Generally speaking presidents are limited in their ability to take blame or responsibility for what goes on in the market,” Velshi said. “There are things in a moment, a declaration of war, a big policy statement that will move the market one way or another, but the market is much more sophisticated than this.”
Velshi then pointed out that the stock market rise began long before Trump came into office.
“This market wasn’t on an upward trend before Donald Trump took the presidency,” Velshi continued. “And what happened is when he won, because of his promises about infrastructure spending and regulation, you know taking regulation back, and reform on taxes, a number of companies that really stood to benefit from those policies surged. So banks, financial companies, Caterpillar, big infrastructure companies, they all gained. So what you saw was a line that was going up like this, suddenly go up like that a little more, and then flatten out and we’ve just been continuing to go on.”
Later on, Velshi revealed the inconvenient truth about several market stats under President Obama that Trump is miles away from achieving thus far.
“This is an interesting one, 2.6% quarterly GDP right?” Velshi said. “Generally guys like me don’t look at quarters. We look at years. But if you want to play the president’s game, 2.6% GDP in one-quarter, it happened fourteen times under President Obama., 3% in any given quarter. it happened eight times under President Obama. So you know when President Trump wasn’t president he would criticize the measures by which we measure these things, the stock market, the unemployment rate, and GDP. Well now it’s the same measures and he’s taking credit for it. So again, if you would ask me this while President Obama was president, I would have said the same thing; careful not too much credit, not too much blame. Presidents have some role to play, not all of it. That’s the same situation here.”
Now the president is touting the stock market gains where those with capital are making huge amounts of money on capital gains and profits. But he must remember that the base that got him elected are not the people his economy continues to work for now or has rewarded in the past. After all, with the stock market gains and all the corporate profits out there, very little of the spoils, very little of the profit from productivity gains are going to those who are doing the real work. WAGES CONTINUE TO STAGNATE.
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