On the recordApril 4, 2025
Donald Trump is ruining the economy on purpose. He is ruining the economy on purpose. I am not sure if there has ever been an American President, let alone a Chief Executive of any country, that has ruined the economy on purpose. The stock market had its worst day in 5 years yesterday. I just checked before I delivered these remarks--just before, 5 minutes ago: 1,600 down on the Dow Jones, S&P down 5 percent, NASDAQ 4 percent, the Russell 5 percent. What does that mean as a practical matter? It means if you spent all your life working and saving and investing and you are on the edge of retirement--let's say you have $312,000 plus your Social Security income, you just lost $30,000 in 2 days because of Donald Trump. Because of Donald Trump, you lost 10 percent of what you earned over a lifetime. Now, for Howard Lutnick and Elon Musk and Donald Trump and everybody that surrounds him at Mar-a-Lago, they can ride this out. They can short it. They can buy crypto. They can do all kinds of wonderful things to make sure they can ride this out. Regular people cannot ride this out. The dollar hit a 6-month low. Layoffs have already started. Consumers are cutting back on spending. By the way, the data is there--but also just talk to anybody, just talk to anybody about how they feel about spending right now--and the likelihood of a recession went up 20 percent in a day. JPMorgan now says it is more than 60 percent likely. So what is this even for?…
