The Idiot Economy

Wall Street luminaries finally realize that they put buffoons in charge of the global economy

“What Trump unveiled Wednesday is stupid, wrong, arrogantly extreme, ignorant trade-wise and addressing a non-problem with misguided tools. - Billionaire investor Ken Fisher

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Bill Ackman, the billionaire CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, endorsed President Donald Trump. Now he’s warning of a “self-induced, economic nuclear winter.”

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon refused to take a stand in the last election. He’s also expressed a willingness to “help Trump.” Now he’s sounding the alarm about rising inflation and a slowing economy.

A recent survey of C-Suite executives by CNBC shows they are turning on Trump.

“He has surrounded himself with an incompetent cadre of yes men and women unable or unwilling to offer him cogent counsel,” said one survey participant.

Were penguins looking to organize on a remote Antarctic island to bypass Trump’s tariffs? Our blustering Commerce Secretary seems to think so. (Illustration: AI Generated.)

[[Don’t Miss These Blunders]]

Trump’s top economic officials were idiots on parade over the weekend as Americans sweated a stock market collapse.

Most Americans don’t really care about the stock market, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Meet the Press on Sunday.

“Americans who want to retire right now, the Americans who put away for years in their savings accounts, I think they don’t look at the day-to-day fluctuations.

“In fact, most Americans don’t have everything in the market,” he added. “People have a long-term view. ... The reason the stock market is considered a good investment is because it’s a long-term investment. If you look day to day, week to week, it’s very risky. Over the long term, it’s a good investment.”

People say he’s a smart guy, but he’s clearly out of touch with reality if he thinks retirees aren’t paying attention to the stock as their expenses mount in an inflationary cycle Trump has done nothing to stem, despite campaign promises no one should have believed.

Then there’s White House trade advisor and economic quack Peter Navarro yakking on CNN on Friday:

“The market will find a bottom. It will be soon, and from there, we’re going to have a bullish boom, and the Dow is going to hit 50,000 during Trump’s term. …The S&P 500 is going to have a very broad based recovery, and wages are going to go up, profits are going to go up, and life is going to be beautiful here in America.”

My favorite episode, though, was Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick defending tariffs imposed on a remote Antarctic island populated only by penguins and seals.

“If you leave anything off the list, the countries that try to basically arbitrage America go through those countries to us.”

Take that, you cold, flightless birds and blubbery sea dogs.

We can’t have global conglomerations setting up shop on your melting ice floes, just so they can slip cheap crap into the United States, tariff-free.

Earlier in our self-inflicted economic meltdown, Lutnick took to Fox News urging Americans to buy plummeting Tesla stock. “It’ll never be this cheap again,” he swore.

Forget about the ethics of Commerce Secretary turned stock promoter. As Tesla stock plummets further, Lutnick has proven that you can lose a lot of money listening to his bluster.

The administration is either incompetent or it’s deliberately trying to crash the stock market and the economy, as some have speculated. To make matters worse, Trump even shared such speculation from some idiot on his favorite Chinese-owned platform TikTok.

Chucklehead economist Kevin Hassett, the White House National Economic Council director, got on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to say that it’s just not so – adding to a mind-numbing array of mixed messages.

“He’s not trying to tank the market. He’s trying to deliver for American workers. … It is not a strategy for the markets to crash.”

Feel better now? They’re not trying to crash the market. They’re just idiots. And with fears of a looming recession and no end in sight to a spiraling stock market, maybe they will eventually have to change course.

Losses don’t lie and Wall Street can’t be fooled forever.