Just when you think it would be impossible for the Trump Presidency to become any more of a tragi-comedy, Trump manages to turn the volume up to eleven by appointing Larry Kudlow as his chief economic hit-man. In 1999, Kudlow predicted that the Dow would hit 50,000 by 2020:

To direct his National Economic Council, meanwhile, Trump has nominated Larry Kudlow, who also proposed a wildly optimistic take on stock prices back then, in his case a prediction that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would go to 50,000 by 2020…Kudlow, the more interesting of Trump’s Dow dreamers, didn’t seem to be chastened by this experience; he went on to a career as a TV business commentator, delivering an amazing series of bum steers as the years rolled by. And now, as if in recognition of his dreadful lifetime achievements, he is to be appointed director of the National Economic Council. He has failed about as far as one can fail…”

The quote above is from an article published in The Guardian today by Thomas Frank: Dow dreamers show Trump’s war on elites is pure fantasy.  Frank goes on to warn:   “The real danger in elevating Kudlow to a position of such great public authority, I think, is not that he will continue to misapprehend the world (though of course he will), but that he will be in a position to put his destructive ideology into effect.”

The person who sent me the article wrote in the subject line of the email: “we are so economically f*cked.”  What’s even more amusing about that preface is that most Americas already are economically f*cked.   They just don’t realize it yet because up until now, the Fed and the Government gave the average American enough rope in the form of easy access to debt to hang himself.   As an example, the average car loan balance outstanding is $31,000.  Yet, according to the Social Security Administration, in 2016 (the most recent annual data available from W2’s) 55% of all wage-earners made less than $34,000.

Good luck with that.  The trade war initiated by Trump is little more than the symptom of a collapsing economic system.  The stock market is warning us that something ugly is on the horizon.  The middle class supporters are screwed. Watching them cheer for Trump is analogous to watching chickens in the barnyard cheer for Colonel Sanders…it is indeed one big tragi-comedy…