Mark down March 3, 2025. That was the day Wall Street finally realized that US President Donald Trump was serious about tariffs. On Monday, the S&P 500 fell nearly 2 percent as Trump confirmed what we at the Atlantic Council predicted in February—that the tariffs on Canada and Mexico were not mere threats, but actually likely to be implemented. The stock markets continued to fall on Tuesday as investors processed the news.
But the tariffs also pay the tax cuts that allow rich people to spend more and to invest more.
We saw how the stock market had nothing to do with the actual economic situation during Covid. While all indicators went down, stocks still went up.
As long as the core principal “US oligarchs get to profit of poorer people in the US and abroad” stays in place, probably the stock values will recover.
Yes!
But the covid situation is way worse than you think. The government stimulus was really helpful to the poor and middle class, but they spent all that money.
And who profited from that? The asset owners. Covid stimulus essentially was a direct transfer from the government to company owners and house rentals. These rich guys then used it to buy other assets such as more houses, equities and businesses. That’s why the stock market went up - your money went straight into it.
The wealthy don’t use their own money to do anything. They use their capital, to back loans, that they then loan to a corporation they created, in return for monthly fees from the corporation (To pay the loan), plus payment back as a loan.
This protects the person from any risk, as the corporation now has all the risk of repayment, and the individual has no risk in it.
No. That assumes the US cannot operate on a deficit. It can and will. We don’t “fund” tax cuts unless someone responsible is overseeing the budget.
Not to mention, every billionaire has their money in the market somehow, they don’t have Scrooge McDuck gold piles. Inflation and market losses erode their money just like it erodes ours. Perhaps even more.
COVID resulted in a marked recession for the global economy, and the US was no exception. But people still had money and spent it regularly, so it didn’t freefall the entire time and at times had rallies. The US stock market is mostly run by a series of competing trading algorithms with tight guardrails these days, for better and for worse. Generally though it does mean that modern nose-dives rarely result in true crashes.
There wasn’t up and downs during Covid. There was a big dip at the beginning followed by a huge increase, lasting well into 2022, despite all the measures, recession and GDP going down. What reduced the index was the increase in interest rates.
The financial markets are strongly detached from the real economy.
Voodoo Donuts > Voodoo economics