The ruinous impact of the Coronavirus was clear to see when I checked my IRA. It had been at an all-time high for me until February 19, when the Trump Stock Market Crash began. This is money I’m planning to live on for the rest of my life.
I’m certain that my 74 million fellow Baby Boomers checked their retirement funds and saw the same thing. Many sensible Americans like me will blame Trump for his incompetence and lies about the Coronavirus that led to this crash and the coming Trump Recession.
Consider that:
- According to JPMorgan’s John Normand, financial markets see an 80% probability of recession happening. The Fed has slashed interest rates to near zero, but that won’t help. Soon the mass layoffs will begin at stores, restaurants, hotels, airlines, cruises and the food-service industry.
- Meanwhile between 160 million and 214 million people in the United States could be infected throughout the Trump Epidemic, and 1 million may die from it.
- The hockey-stick chart below shows that the Coronavirus exploded from 15 cases on February 20 in the US — to 2,179 cases on March 13 — during a lack of action by Trump. That’s a 145% jump in 22 days. This means we will soon experience what’s happening in China, Italy, Iran, South Korea, Spain and France right here in the US. Go to any grocery store and you’ll see empty shelves which once held water, dry foods and toilet paper.
- There are now more than 3,000 cases of coronavirus in the US — which is certainly an undercount, because testing kits are not widely available here.
The hockey stick curve shows the rapid rise in Coronavirus cases.
When times were good, Trump wrapped himself in the now-dead bull market and took credit for the good economy. This strategy will now backfire on Trump and cause him to lose the 2020 election.
Professor Allan Lichtman, who correctly predicted the last 9 presidential elections, warns Coronavirus could ‘doom’ Trump in 2020.
Lichtman said, “We have no idea, the crisis could peter out or it could lead to a worldwide pandemic that could slide America into recession, which would obviously doom Donald Trump.”
The Week reports:
An election-year downturn is bad for any incumbent presidential party. There have been three presidential elections since 1960 where the election year saw a recession. The incumbent party lost all of them. One of political historian Allan Lichtman’s famous “13 Keys to the White House” is that the U.S. economy is not in recession during the election campaign. But a downturn would be especially damaging for Trump, who has made a de facto bargain with voters: I may tweet lots of crazy stuff and engage in lots of dodgy behavior, but I won’t screw up this long economic expansion.
The Trump Epidemic has shut down all my favorite events like the Fourth Avenue Street Fair, the Tucson Folk Festival and the Festival of Books. The Loft Cinema closed down. I had to cancel meetings of Democrats of Greater Tucson and called off the Citizens for a Safer Pima County protest for gun safety at the Fair Commission meeting.
A restaurant owner told the NY Times, “Last week, I would have told you nothing had changed,” she said. “This week, it has all gone to hell.” Americans vote with their pocketbooks and this spells doom for Trump.
