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That's a Nasty Question

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Leave it to PBS to disrupt a well-choreographed press briefing in the final half hour of stock trading Friday with a nasty question.  Trump had spent his ten minutes trying to dismiss allegations that the White House had been slow to respond to COVID-19 when Yamiche Alcindor had the audacity to ask the president why he shut down the pandemic team in 2018.  Trump wants the public to believe he's in the process of making the CDC and National Security Council more responsive to pandemics given the failures of past administrations, when in fact he's the one who decided to dismiss the White House pandemic team put in place by the Obama administration.

Back in December 2016, Ed Yong wrote in The Atlantic what might happen if a pandemic broke out under a Trump administration.  He wasn't far off.  Trump hasn't declared martial law, but he has declared a national emergency, closed off air traffic from Europe, and tried to keep infected cruise ships from docking in California.  Not only that but he now threatens to cut off the West Coast entirely from the US, in a draconian attempt to contain the virus.  It doesn't matter that Ohio has already estimated as many as 100,000 cases could exist in its state, but until now hasn't had the means to test its residents.

Trump could have made test kits available weeks ago, but it appears he wanted to downplay the number of cases fearing the impact such a panic would have on his vaunted economy and in turn his re-election bid.  Wall Street panicked just the same, leading to a 20+ percent drop across the top stock exchanges, including a 28 percent drop in the Dow, which stood at 21,800 on Thursday after a huge selloff.

With Futures pointing up for Friday, the President wanted to give the Dow a shot in the arm, offering a number of false promises and a so-called stimulus plan, which led to a 1300 point surge in the last 20 minutes of trading to push the day close to a 2000 point gain ending the week off on a positive note. You really have to wonder where all this money came from?  It doesn't matter as we are likely to see another selloff on Monday, when the hollowness of his economic initiatives sink in over the weekend.

Like it or not, we are now fully in a recession.  The only question is how bad.  I was listening to CNBC last night, and one of the commentators showed how the market graph over the past three weeks all too closely resembled that of 2008.  We see all these jagged peaks and valleys but the downward decline remains.  No one seems to think we have reached the bottom.

As more and more cases are reported over the next two weeks, now that states have coronavirus testing kits, you can bet the panic will increase.  The only saving grace is that Spring is upon us and that the virus will likely subside in April and go into hibernation over the summer.  That doesn't mean it won't come back with a vengeance next fall, as was the case with the Spanish Flu back in 1918, killing more people the second time around.  The only question is will we be prepared?

Trump being Trump he is more likely to consider the case closed once the virus starts to diminish.  Stocks will most likely start to rebound as investors feel safe again, and by midsummer the president will  be telling us what a great job he did in battling coronavirus.  One hazards to guess how many lives will have been lost in the process.

You have to hand it to Dr. Fauci and other doctors at the National Institute of Health and CDC for walking the fine line between warning Americans of the severity of the pandemic and massaging Trump's ego.  Necessary if you want to keep your job under this president, who got another clean bill of health from the new White House physician despite having come in contact with persons exposed to the coronavirus.  In fact, the president is regarded healthy as a horse by his surgeon general.

All these lies and deceits are piling up, but the Dow took what the president had to say as positive on Friday and he can go back to the links secure in his view that the stock markets are back on track, at least until Monday.  No more nasty questions please.

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