Only 5% of the GOP still has a functioning brain:
Republicans are now using global recession as a cause for celebrating "good news" about the U.S. economy. This week, we learned that the trade deficit is shrinking for the first time in six years, which Faux News has attributed to Trump's "successful" trade war. The inconvenient reality is that the trade deficit always shrinks during U.S. and global recession.
"For decades, China has taken advantage of the United States. Now, we have changed that," Trump said Tuesday night during his State of the Union address."
The trade deficit improved in 2019 because imports fell more sharply than exports – which isn't necessarily improvement for the right reasons"
The inconvenient truth is that Trump's trade war and tax cut WIDENED the trade deficit, and now he's taking credit for a recession. Why? Because he's a fucking moron, and his followers are even dumber than him.
Here we see the Cass freight index imploding. People have forgotten that China is the world's second largest economy and when their economy implodes, the entire world implodes.
"The intensifying coronavirus outbreak constitutes a large negative economic shock to China that will ripple through the global economy"
This data is from BEFORE the virus:
"Great news, we imploded China"
"Awesome, dude"
Manic reach for risk is reaching a crescendo this week due to monetary stimulus overload, Trump acquittal, and of course the total clusterfuck in Iowa for the Democrats, which I will discuss in a moment. As the economy moves closer to recession, euphoria is increasing in lockstep, as Hugh Hendry predicted:
"The worse the reality of the economy becomes, the more we take on the reflexive belief in further and dramatic monetary expansion and the more attractive the stock market looks."
Here we see the level of speculation substantially exceeds the 2018 melt-up:
Speculators are crowding into the riskiest stocks. Outside of Tesla, we see blow-off tops:
In Fintech:
NextGen internet
IPO junk
This week, Wall Street is trying to get the pump and dump back on track after it exploded last Fall. It might not work.
"Casper ended up pricing its IPO on Wednesday evening at $12 per share, giving the company a market value of $476 million. That’s dramatically lower than the $1.1 billion valuation from its latest round of private funding"
Getting back to rigging elections, this latest GOP gambit has backfired, because the impeachment scandal collapsed Biden's chances of winning the overall Democratic primary, while exponentially increasing Sanders'. Now Sanders' odds exceed all others COMBINED. The numbers don't add up to 100% because apparently there's still a chance that some dark horse will join the race. An unknown candidate who is now favored above every other candidate except Bernie. Sure, whatever.
In other words:
"It worked. Again"
Joe Biden was imploded by Trump's latest election-rigging gambit:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-primary-forecast/
In other words, when the Trump bubble explodes with extreme dislocation. We know what is going to happen in November.
And we know what WON'T happen.
No bailouts for criminals. And no socialism for the rich.
Prepare for hardest landing.